The rapture happens TOMORROW (according to TikTok)

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Great to be here, but there's little time! According to the Christians of TikTok, the rapture is happening tomorrow. Or maybe the day after. You can never be sure! But these folks are pretty sure.

For the uninitiated, some Christians – mostly evangelical Protestants – believe that at the end of the world, Jesus is going to come back and all the true Christians in the world will levitate into the sky and go to heaven. Everyone left behind will go through horrible trials and tribulations as the world is remade.

Most Christians don't believe this, but it is the theology behind the wildly successful Left Behind books, which I confess as a teenager I read with great enthusiasm. It was also made into a movie – twice! The second time starring Nicolas Cage lol.

Anyway, some TikTok users are so sure the rapture is happening tomorrow (or the day after), they're posting about the Bibles and food stocks they plan to leave behind for the unraptured. Honestly? That's very kind of them. Others are less magnanimous toward their spiritual lessers. Oh well.

This is one of those things where it's actually really hard to tell who is being sincere or not. For example, is sonj779, with her Rapture Trip Tips videos where she recommends everyone buy fresh underwear and hide messages in their pockets, actually for real?

In the comments of this video where she recommends airborne Christians should not try to hold on to anything or look down, she says she's doing satire. But other videos on her page are very sincere Bible studies about the end times. I guess you can have a little fun about the rapture before you get raptured. That's allowed.

Click through to watch the video.

But the fact remains this parody by satirist Maggie Reed, which is clearly inspired by sonj799's Rapture Trip Tips videos, isn't immediately clockable as materially different to its source material.

Other users are making fun of the true believers with varying levels of scorn. Dan McClellen has also waded in, saying in no uncertain terms that the rapture is not happening because the doctrine was only developed in the last 200 years.

On Bluesky, people are mostly fantasising about a world with no Evangelical Christians. Meanwhile Jesuit priest and game developer Shane Liesegang points out that the rapture is not Catholic doctrine and says it's "rooted in an individualist heresy". Also, streamer and left-wing political commentator Hasan Piker covered it in his stream yesterday.

I really enjoyed this article I found on Black Girl Nerds about the algorithmic amplification of this... meme? Jamie Broadnax traces the trend to a South African pastor's TikTok prophecy.

Let’s start at the source. The original prophecy clip, with its urgent warnings and dramatic delivery, was chopped up, remixed, and reborn with ominous text overlays: “It’s happening. Midnight. Be ready.” Some creators prayed in the comments. Others cracked jokes. And thousands more jumped in to duet, offering everything from tearful confessions to side-eyes that said, “Didn’t y’all say this in 2012?” TikTok did what TikTok does best — take a very specific piece of content and transform it into a multi-genre saga.

Jamie points out that amid all the arguments and jokes, many people are experiencing "end-times anxiety". I've seen a few people triggered by this meme, either because of a religious upbringing or just the general contemporary political violence we're all exposed to online.

And so I guess it's not surprising that there's a new wave of rapture hysteria building online – things are obviously bad! Feeling anxious isn't an unreasonable response to what's happening in many parts of the world right now! So on one hand it's nice to think you might be getting whisked away to a place with no troubles any moment now. On the other, the tribulations promised to those left behind don't feel so hypothetical – whether the rapture happens or not.

"You've had 2025 years for a save-the-date but do you have to fucken pick my 60th fucken birthday?"

By the way, if you want a soundtrack for the end of the world, may I suggest the Modern Relics Advent Apocalypse playlist? Advent isn't for a few months, but perhaps we'll never get there. This is a playlist of eschatologically-appropriate bops gathered from Modern Relics readers and my own brain. It's always a work in progress, so if you have a song suggestion, leave me a comment!