Are You Rapture Ready?

Today might be the day!

I hope I manage to get this newsletter out before the Christian faithful get taken up by Jesus. Apparently, The Rapture is coming anytime in this three-day window. It didn’t happen yesterday, but it could be today or tomorrow.

Perhaps what Christians mean by The Rapture is, actually, the shift in worldview from scientific materialism to monistic or analytic idealism, which opens new possibilities in consciousness, mysticism, magic, and social evolution? I explore this paradigm shift in my latest video essay (please like, subscribe, and share):

The Rapture is a strange belief system. You don’t find it in The Bible. There is a reference to something Rapture-like in 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17: “Then we who are alive… will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.” And in Matthew 24:40-41: “Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left.” However, these vague descriptions apparently do not describe any pre-Tribulation absorption of good Christians into Heaven, according to historians. They were meant to foreshadow the Second Coming and resurrection at the end of history.

Preacher John Nelson Darby (1800 - 1882) gave us “The Rapture”

The Rapture originated in the 1830s, concocted by John Nelson Darby, an Anglo-Irish preacher and founder of the Plymouth Brethren. Durdy toured America, disseminating a belief that faithful believers would get air-lifted off-planet before the Second Coming and the Resurrection, missing the big “end-times” show. The Rapture gained popularity in the U.S. in the 1950s, perhaps reflecting anxiety over nuclear war and other rapid social and technological changes. Today’s Rapture craze was unleashed by a South African pastor, Joshua Mhlakela. Mhlakela spoke about his vision of Jesus returning on September 23–24, 2025, coinciding with the Jewish holiday Rosh Hashanah. TikTok (RaptureTok) picked it up . It started spreading like wildfire.

@raptureclowneryarchive"This will be my last video." Oh, thank god. There is too much crazy on her account to keep track of it all. @romans.ten.9through11 #rapture #rapturetok #september23rd #religiousphychosis #fyp

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This week’s Rapture frenzy corresponds synchronously with one of the most brain damaged speeches I have ever heard: Trump’s rambling hour-long speech to the UN General Assembly. I just wrote about how people in the “consciousness” community find it unbearable to focus on what’s happening politically. It does feel as if Trump’s public expression of mental decay and malignant insanity is a deliberate strategy, with the goal of making it impossible for anyone who cares about literally anything to fully believe this is happening. Most of us have to tune out his malignant blather to protect our psychological integrity.

As bizarre as our political situation is, we can at least appreciate that we are in some kind of epochal transformation for our civilization.