A South African pastor whose prediction of the Rapture failed to come true last year is once again warning that the end is near, claiming he has received a new message from God revealing that the long-awaited biblical event will happen on October 12 or 13, 2026.
Joshua Mhlakela, who attracted international attention after declaring that Jesus Christ would return in September 2025, insists his latest prediction is different. Despite being wrong before, the self-proclaimed prophet says he is now certain that believers have only days remaining before the Rapture.
“God told me because there’s no other date coming out, 12 to 13 October, which is the true feast of trumpets, which is when I will be meeting my savior face to face in The Rapture,” Mhlakela declared in a YouTube video.
His renewed warning has sparked another wave of discussion online, with some religious followers taking his claims seriously while critics question why anyone should believe a prediction that has already been revised multiple times.
Mhlakela first made headlines in 2025 after claiming that God and Jesus had appeared to him in visions and revealed the precise timing of the Rapture. He initially identified September 23 and 24, 2025, as the dates when faithful Christians would be taken to heaven.
The prediction quickly spread across TikTok, YouTube and other social media platforms, where thousands of users discussed the possibility that the world was approaching a dramatic biblical turning point.
For some believers, the warnings reportedly became more than an online discussion. Accounts circulated of people quitting their jobs, selling personal possessions and making significant changes to their lives because they believed they would soon be leaving Earth behind.
One disappointed social media user even claimed to have skipped important school exams after believing the end was imminent.
“I didn’t do my exams because I [thought] it doesn’t matter,” the individual wrote in a TikTok post cited in media reports.
The extent of those reported sacrifices has not been independently established, but the controversy illustrated how predictions about the end of the world can influence people who genuinely believe them.
When September 23 and 24 passed without the predicted event, Mhlakela did not abandon his prophecy. Instead, he offered an explanation involving differences between historical calendars and moved his prediction to October 2025.
That date also came and went without the Rapture occurring.
Now, more than a year after his original warning, Mhlakela is promoting yet another explanation for why his previous calculations were incorrect.
The pastor claims the October 12–13, 2026, window corresponds to what he considers the true Feast of Trumpets, a biblical observance associated with the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah.
He has also incorporated astronomical interpretations into his reasoning, arguing that the timing of religious events must be understood through the positions of the sun and constellations.
According to his explanation, earlier calculations were mistaken because they did not properly account for the relationship between biblical festivals and the zodiac signs Pisces and Aries.
However, his interpretation is disputed and is not an established method of determining the dates of Jewish religious observances. The generally recognized Jewish calendar places Rosh Hashanah in September 2026, not October 12 or 13.
Mhlakela nevertheless maintains that his revised timeline is based on divine revelation rather than an ordinary mathematical error.
His repeated changes have drawn criticism from other Christian leaders, including those who believe strongly in the Second Coming of Jesus but reject attempts to predict exactly when it will happen.
One of the central objections comes directly from the Bible.
In Matthew 24:36, Jesus tells his followers that no one knows the day or hour of his return, not even the angels in heaven.
That passage has long been cited by Christian theologians as a warning against religious figures who claim to possess exclusive knowledge about the timing of the end times.
Christian preacher Vladimir Savchuk previously challenged such predictions, arguing that anyone attempting to establish a specific date for the Rapture contradicts the biblical teaching.
The controversy also highlights an important distinction within Christianity. Although many evangelical Christians believe in a future Rapture, Christian denominations differ over how the event should be understood, when it would occur and whether it should be considered separate from the Second Coming.
The Rapture is commonly described in evangelical teachings as the moment when believers are gathered to meet Christ, based partly on passages in the New Testament’s First Letter to the Thessalonians.
For those who accept that interpretation, the event represents a central part of their expectations about the end times. However, the Bible does not identify October 12 or 13, 2026, as a date for the event, and there is no verifiable evidence supporting Mhlakela’s prediction.
His warnings are also part of a much longer history of failed attempts to predict the end of the world.
In the United States, Christian radio broadcaster Harold Camping famously predicted that Judgment Day would occur on May 21, 2011. His claims attracted widespread publicity, and some supporters spent their savings promoting the warning.
When nothing happened, Camping revised his timeline to October 21 of that year. That prediction also failed, and he later acknowledged that attempting to determine the exact date had been a mistake.
More than a decade later, Mhlakela’s latest announcement demonstrates how quickly similar predictions can gain attention in the age of social media, particularly when they are presented as urgent messages from a higher power.
For his critics, the approaching October deadline raises an obvious question: If the pastor was certain about his previous predictions, what makes this one any more reliable?
Mhlakela appears unwilling to reconsider his position, continuing to insist that October 12 and 13 represent the final window for the Rapture.
With those dates now just days away, his latest prophecy is facing the same test as the ones that came before it.
And while the pastor claims humanity is approaching an extraordinary biblical event, his prediction remains a matter of personal religious belief rather than an established fact.
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