The 23rd of September 2025 is the day when the Lord will rapture his church from the world so that the 7 year Tribulation can start! We are living through prophecy in real time!! If you call me tomorrow, and I don’t answer—you’ll know where I am, and you’ll know what is coming.

Now that I have everyone’s attention: the title and first paragraph of this article are shameless clickbait. I am writing this article so that I can respond to some false eschatological claims circulating online. Let me explain what’s going on.

Contexts

For those who may not know, “the rapture” is a teaching by some Christians that Jesus will supernaturally remove Christians from earth and take them to heaven shortly before the end of human history. The most common view of the rapture is the so-called “pre-Tribulation rapture” (hereafter PTR); this is the idea that Christians will be snatched away from earth shortly before a 7-year long period known as the “Great Tribulation.” This Tribulation is understood as a period of intense global suffering, in which God will punish the wicked and destroy the earth.

In Dan 9 there is a prophecy known as “Daniel’s 70 Weeks.” In this prophecy, a period of 490 years is broken down into 70 units of seven years each—i.e., 70 “weeks” of years. According to PTR advocates, the last seven-year unit—Daniel’s “70th Week”—is the Great Tribulation. The Jewish Temple will be rebuilt in Jerusalem and animal sacrifices will take place. Then the Anti-Christ will make a seven-year peace treaty with Israel; but in the middle of the “week,” he will break the peace treaty, put a stop to animal sacrifices, and set himself up in the temple as if he himself is God. PTR advocates refer to this last action as the “Abomination of Desolation,” drawing on language from Daniel (e.g., 12:11) and from Jesus in the Olivet Discourse (e.g., Matt 24:15).

With this context, we are now prepared to evaluate recent end-time claims online.

Claims

Recently online, people have started to claim that 23 Sept, 2025 is the date of the rapture—the day when Jesus will take Christians to heaven and the Great Tribulation (Daniel’s 70th Week) will begin. Here is how the claim goes.

Allegedly the Great Tribulation is supposed to last exactly 2550 days, just a few days shy of exactly seven years.¹ This number is calculated based on Rev 11:1-3, which mentions a period of 1260 days, and Dan 12:11, which mentions a period of 1290 days.

The Jewish festival known as the Feast of Trumpets begins tomorrow, on 23 Sept, 2025. Many people believe that Trumpets has eschatological significance, because verses like 1 Cor 15:52 and 1 Thess 4:16 say that God will sound a trumpet when Jesus returns to earth. If you count forward 2550 days from 23 Sept 2025, you end up at 15 Sept 2032—which is when the Day of Atonement falls in 2032.²

So, the claim is that the Great Tribulation runs from the Feast of Trumpets 2025 until the Day of Atonement 2032. Some online are claiming that this is one of the only times in history that there has been exactly 2550 days between these two Jewish holidays; and some have used AI chats to “prove” that 2025-2032 is the last time in all of human history that there will be exactly 2550 days between these two holidays.

But the plot thickens. On April 13, 2029 a large asteroid named Apophis is due to make a near flyby of earth. Some online are suggesting that this asteroid will actually impact; this, they suggest, will fulfill Rev 8:11 which mentions mentions a star called Wormwood falling to the earth.

So, is tomorrow the Rapture? Will 23 Sept, 2025 be the day when the seven-year Great Tribulation begins? Will the Anti-Christ set himself up in a rebuilt temple 1260 days from now?

Corrections

The short answer to all of this is no. I will quickly explain why.

The entire idea of a seven-year Great Tribulation is based upon a misinterpretation of Daniel’s 70 Weeks. These 70 weeks of years—i.e., 490 years—are about Jesus Christ, not the Anti-Christ. And they relate to Jesus’s first coming, not his second coming.

Daniel receives his 70 Weeks prophecy during the Babylonian captivity, after the city of Jerusalem had been destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar. Dan 9:25 says that the time “from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince there will be seven weeks and sixty two weeks” (NASB), or 69 weeks. Since we are dealing with weeks of years, this means that there will be 483 years between the command to rebuild Jerusalem and the arrival of the Messiah.

In Ezra 7 Artaxerxes I made a decree to rebuild Jerusalem; this decree was issued in the seventh year Artaxerxes’ reign—i.e., 458BC. If you count forward 483 years from 458BC, you end up at 26AD—the year that Jesus the Messiah began his public ministry.

If you’re paying attention, you’ll notice that Weeks 1-69 get us from the time of Ezra to the time of Jesus. But if PTR advocates are right, the 70th Week hasn’t happened yet. How does that work? PTR advocates suggest that there is a gap between Week 69 and Week 70. This unspecified gap of time is the era of the church—the time when Gentiles can be saved. If PTR advocates are right, this gap is nearly 2000 years long at this point!

But this alleged gap makes no sense: all the other 69 weeks have been sequential, so why wouldn’t the 70th week be?

Let’s say I told you, “70 days from now, I prophesy that God is going to bless you with a million dollars.” On day 71, you come to me and say, “Hey! Where’s the million dollars you prophesied about?” I respond, “We haven’t gotten to day 70 yet! There is a mysterious, unrevealed amount of time between day 69 and day 70. But when day 70 gets here, whenever that is, then you’ll get your million!” In this scenario, I hope everyone would look at me like the false prophet that I would be. And the same goes for Daniel’s 70 weeks. Week 70 came right after Week 69, just like Week 69 came right after Week 68.

So what about all that stuff where the Anti-Christ makes a treaty with Israel and then breaks it in the middle, and puts a stop to temple sacrifices during Daniel’s 70th Week? This is a misinterpretation; Daniel’s 70th Week is actually about Jesus’s New Covenant with Israel.

Dan 9:25 says that 69 weeks (483 years) after the command to rebuild Jerusalem, Jesus the Messiah begins his ministry (in 26AD). During this ministry, Jesus “confirms his covenant with many for one week”—i.e., the 70th Week, the final seven years of Daniel’s prophecy (9:27). During this 70th Week “Messiah will be cut off and have nothing” (9:26); Jesus died during the final seven-year period of Daniel’s prophecy. Dan 9:27 says, “And he will make a firm covenant with the many for one week, and in the middle of the week he will put a stop to sacrifice and grain offering.” Notice that the sacrifices stop “in the middle of the week”—i.e., after 3.5 years. Jesus’s ministry was 3.5 years long. After 3.5 years of ministry, Jesus died on the cross and made OT sacrifices obsolete—they were no longer necessary because of his perfect sacrifice.

But since Jesus died after 3.5 years, how did he “confirm the covenant for one week” (i.e., for seven years)? For the first 3.5 years after Jesus’s crucifixion, the church consisted entirely of Jewish believers. After that, Gentiles began to enter the church with Cornelius.

So we see, Daniel’s 70th Week actually has nothing to do with the Great Tribulation—if there even is such a tribulation at all. Rather, Daniel’s 70th Week is about the ministry of Jesus’s New Covenant with Israel.

Consequences

Two consequences flow from the above correction.

Firstly, the 2550 space between the Feast of Trumpets 2025 and the Day of Atonement 2032 is purely coincidental. Tomorrow doesn’t start the beginning of a seven-year Tribulation—because, as we have seen, Daniel’s 70 Weeks has nothing to do with the Tribulation. Since Daniel’s prophecy doesn’t teach a seven-year tribulation, 23 Sept, 2025 isn’t the start of a seven-year tribulation.

Secondly, when tomorrow comes and goes without the rapture occurring, it is your duty as a Christian to identify and reject all the false prophets who promoted the silly idea that 23 Sept, 2025 was the rapture. Don’t excuse their behavior as a “mistake:” they are false prophets and should be ignored. Only God knows the day of Jesus’s return. When Jesus said, “no man knows the day or hour” (Matt 25:13), he meant it. No matter how convincing, don’t fall for the foolishness.

In closing, I would like to issue a word of advice to any false prophets who may be reading this piece. Guys, it would be soooo much easier for y’all to stay under-cover as true prophets, if you would just not prophesy the one thing that Jesus said was impossible to predict. It is like you can’t help yourselves, or something. I mean, good grief; predict political unrest or economic collapse or literally anything else. But for the sake of your own careers as false prophets, please quit predicting when Jesus will return / rapture his church.

And gullible Christians, for the love of God please quit believing this stuff.

1. 365 x 7, factoring in leap years, apparently results in 2556 days. ↩︎
2. See Hebcal’s Jewish calendar for 2032 here. ↩︎