Christ is Coming. Again.

Photo by Domina Petric on Unsplash

It happened. Again. On Monday, September 22, 2025, at 1:19 p.m. Central Daylight Time, the darkness took over. The defeat of the light became apparent as the shadows grew long and the darkness ascended to the throne. The earth's axis turned its attention to the relentless forces of darkness. Again. 

Of course, it was only the yearly exchange of the earth's orbital challenges and the annual autumnal equinox. That was the good news. For a while we had been steadily pushing to yet another "Signs-of-the-End-Times" rapture prediction. When I heard the news on Monday, I thought maybe we had just missed the grandly announced date. Again. I'm not sure why, but at the church I attended and on the campus of Trevecca Nazarene University, where I teach, that week we walked around on tenterhooks on Tuesday the 23rd and Wednesday the 24th because of a widely predicted end of the world "Rapture Announcement" by a pastor in Africa. One of my friends who pastors a church in Mississippi, where such predictions seem to roll off the tongue with relative ease and almost yearly, if not monthly, recurrences, told me that a man no one had ever seen before walked into church completely uninvited with the news in early August. Just stood up, made the Rapture Announcement, gave them the date(s), and as he made his way out to the parking lot to drive away in his shiny new Jaguar, yelled back over his shoulder, "Y'all have been warned!" We held our collective breath for the coming return of Jesus, the Rapture, and the end of the world. Again.

To add to the fun of the week, on Sunday, September 21, my wife brought home an old wall motto sign from the early days of Trevecca, a simpler time at a college founded in 1901, when Jesus did not show up after the "Rapture Announcement" at the turn of the century in 1900. To keep the college open, we had to sell songbooks, Bibles, calendars (of all things), gospel tracts by the likes of perhaps the greatest of all Holiness End Times Prophets, W.B. Godbey, and wall mottos with cheery sayings designed to keep the home fixed on Christ and the Holiness folk happy, wealthy (only in the spiritual sense of things), and wise. She had been cleaning out the boxes in her parents' garage and came upon a Benson Company Wall Motto, probably dated in the early 1910s, that was owned by her grandparents and probably hung on the wall in their house. On a rich, royal blue background, all in glittered letters and with a portrait of the Savior to boot, was the comforting message: Christ is Coming Again. Be Ye Ready! (in the KJV, no less). 

We set it on our dining room table, where it remains as I write these words. We just can't seem to let it go. It is too charming, too enrapturing to put away. We are, after all, Nazarenes of the Early American Methodist variety, Nazarenes whose chosen name when we broke away from our parents in 1908 was simply code for "Angry Methodists." We are "Signs-of-the-End-Times" rapture people, and we have lived enough of these eras of spiritual fervor to know how to enjoy them.

I remember my first great rapture alarm. It was the summer of 1979. I was sixteen years old and doing time working off my sins at the Nazarene campground in Batesburg, SC, where one of my seven maternal uncles managed the place. The “Fire-Baptized-Old-Timey-Sanctified-Holiness Nazarene” tribe in South Carolina gathered at the camp every year to rally the troops and keep the faith alive. We were End Times people. Jesus is Coming Soon, Morning or Night or Noon, Many will meet their doom, Trumpets will sound people. We knew all the words to the End Times Songs. That year at Youth Camp, at one of the nightly bonfires they held before they put us to bed, we sat alarmingly close to the flames, even though it was still about 103 degrees at 10 p.m. at night in the July sweltering heat of South Carolina. Being who we were, our counselors felt obliged to remind us of our eternal destiny if we did not turn from our wicked ways. The Youth leader, Max Downs, who pastored the church in Hartsville with his wife and two daughters, Mona and Lisa, stood steadily in front of us and held up something we had never seen before. A brand new, shiny thing called a credit card. Mastercharge was on the logo. We were told it had arrived in the mailbox of one of his members the previous week, completely unbidden and taking the termination date of April 1980 and the last three digits on the card being the ominous 666, she had turned it over to her pastor to help rid her of what was obviously the mark of Cain and a clear sign of the imminent rapture. Not that we, being Nazarenes and previously Methodists, would ever scare anyone with such an announcement.

It happened. Again. It was the fall of 1988. I was returning for my third year of theological training within the hallowed halls of Nazarene Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Missouri. Placed within each one of the straight-lined, carefully-crafted wooden mailboxes of each student was a copy of a book that someone had purchased so that we would not miss out. As I took it in hand, the title was clearly intended as a warning. It was Edgar C. Whisenant’s 88 Reasons Why the Rapture will occur in 1988, published by the World Bible Society. Jesus was coming. Again. When the date passed that fall, we let out a collective sigh of relief, only to be greeted the next fall when we returned to Whisenant's 89 Reasons Why the Rapture will occur in 1989. In between, Whisenant had published another diatribe to bolster his message called Living on Borrowed Time. That title seemed to me to be more fitting both for him and for us. 

It happened. Again. In January of 2011, a number of billboards popped up all over Nashville. Judgement Day, May 21, 2011—The Bible Guarantees It!. Yet another “End-Times-Rapture-Jesus-Is-Coming-Soon” prediction. The message was warmly received, and pulpits all over Nashvegas began to trumpet the date. I had to give the Bible Sunday School Lesson at my church's camp meeting the weekend after the predicted date. When I announced as my title, “I Did Not Prepare For Today,” the gathered faithful failed to see the humor in things as I did. I understood. We are serious people. Holiness Nazarenes with a lineage of the true Wesleyan faith. Such messages should not be taken lightly.

When the Announcement came (Again!) out of Africa, that the longed-for Rapture would take place on September 23 or 24 (take your pick!), I was reminded (Again!) of the Lord's promised return and the refrain from my childhood baptism into such things rang (Again!) in my ears: Jesus is Coming Soon, Morning or Night or Noon, Many will meet their doom, Trumpets will sound. And here we are, awaiting the return of the Lord. Again. 

These days, when I leave my house every morning, I pass by that Benson Company wall motto featured prominently on our dining room table, and I smile (Again). It was pulled out of one of the collected boxes of our holiness-Christian-Wesleyan-Nazarene-Methodist memory, to be found in our parents' attics, something we probably need to pay attention to—albeit with a bit more seriousness and a lot more historical perspective. My wife and I just can’t seem to move that reminder somewhere else, to a place where it will be neglected and out of the way of our busy lives. When I see it, I hear it all. Again. And I smile. I am also reminded that when questioned about the date of his return, Jesus simply responded: I don’t know. Only the Father in Heaven has that knowledge (Matthew 24:36). Given such a response and realizing that there is something that even the Lord doesn’t know gives me pause and a bit of a shudder. We should take such things seriously as serious people do.

And I smile (Again!), realizing I was fortunate enough to be born into a church that loves the Lord with all its heart and takes the things of God with great seriousness. Perhaps my wife and I leave the sign out as a reminder of that truth that we need to hear. Again. Christ Is Coming Again. Be Ye Ready. Y’all have been warned.

Steven Hoskins is Professor of Church History at Trevecca Nazarene University in Nashville, TN. He serves on the Editorial Board for Firebrand.