Over the last week, my TikTok FYP has become increasingly enthralled by the end of the world. And I don’t mean in a philosophical, TikTok, think-piece kind of way — I mean millions swearing that the end is nye. Really nye. Most people seem to be preparing Bibles with advice for those left behind, but others are quitting their jobs, selling their cars and mourning the final moments with their children.

And it all began with one man — No, not that man. Pastor Joshua Mhlakela went viral for saying that Jesus personally alerted him to mark Sept. 23-25 as the Rapture.

A few months ago, the pastor welcomed his day like he would any other morning — by reading the Bible — when, as he put it, “Jesus appears” in front of him, dressed in a white robe.

“I’m looking at him and he says these words,” Mhlakela recalled. “‘From the time Israel became a nation in 1948, there will be 77 years to the Exodus.’”

This anecdotal evidence is all that has been provided. One man with a tale void of hard evidence, but rooted in personal revelation.

And as the calendar flips closer to the allegedly divine date, a TikTok frenzy has increasingly intensified. One man sold his car, others are sharing their Rapture survival kits and others are trying to capitalize on the opportunity.

But many are experiencing deja-vu, advising others not hold their breath. In 2011, Harold Camping, a Christian fundamentalist who was 89 years old at the time, predicted that precisely at 6 p.m. on May 21st that year, destruction would ripple across the globe — but he was wrong for the second time since his 1994 prediction. Dec. 21, 2012, the Maya Long Count Calendar marked the end of a major cycle, but it also sparked a doomsday frenzy, similar to Y2K when New Year kisses were held a moment longer just in case it would be their last.

Though these moments might feel like laughable memories in hindsight, they’ve had real consequences, especially when tied to the power of spirituality — job losses, suicides, disillusionment and deep trauma.

Unrooted in reality, these prophecies come with two guarantees: they never come true, and they always thrive in uncertain times.

A man with conviction, however, “is a hard man to change,” As Leon Festinger wrote in A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance.

As Festinger’s classic study When Prophecy Fails showed, when people have sacrificed for a belief and find community around it at the same time, even failed prophecies can deepen conviction — especially online, where millions provide instant social reinforcement in personalized echo chambers.

Mothers have spent the last week logging on to share their tears with the internet, crying over the idea of saying goodbye to their babies, holding their children and promising them that, so long as they’ve been faithful, they’ll be together wherever is “next.” These videos aren’t just resurrecting the memory of Jesus, but of their own raptures.

Maria Carvajal, raised as a Baptist Christian, shared her story of growing up with trauma from being taught the Rapture as a child.

“We had to get a priest to come to my house to pray with me because my panic attacks had gotten so bad,” she said.

By the time she was in seventh grade, Carvajal was so afraid of being left behind that she started having panic attacks. She remembers regularly checking the weather in every country, because she thought that if the weather aligned or the wind was above 13 mph, the Rapture was looming.

“It got so bad where I was literally having to get checked out of school. Mind you, I didn’t even know what anxiety was,” Carvajal said. “I was having to sleep at the foot of my parents’ bed because I was having panic attacks in my sleep.

The big takeaway here is that viral prophecies — whether they were written in the Bible or on Twitter — might tell us more about human psychology than about the end of the world.

Ultimately, If you’re reading this on Sept. 25, the world didn’t end — but neither has its obsession with doomsday.