Much has been discussed and written about speculation leading up to this calendar date. That the Rapture must happen during this year’s Jewish Feast of Trumpets observation is the central subject of the frenzied conversation.

To be honest, I’ve not looked very deeply into the Feast of Trumpets, as to its meaning and all attendant to it. I do have a general working knowledge of that tradition and others held by the Orthodox Jewish community but have come to believe and accept that the Rapture is not linked to any Jewish day of observation, so far as its timing is concerned.

Some scholars of the Jewish holy days say the Feast of Trumpets this year was to be September 16–17, not September 23–24. But here we are, at this posting, on September 22.

I would love, despite my skepticism, for the speculation that the Rapture will happen at this time to be correct. I, like most of us who believe the pre-Trib Rapture to be the correct view from what the Apostle Paul and Jesus, Himself, have said, am always “looking up” (Luke 21:28) and “looking for the blessed hope” (Titus 2:13). We are “watching” (Mark 13:37). We believe the Rapture can happen at any moment. It is imminent.

So, do I believe it can happen on September 23 or 24 of 2025? Absolutely. I believe it can happen on this much-talked-about date.

Do I believe it definitely will take place on this date? No, I do not. It could happen as I’m writing this almost a week earlier!

If the Rapture does occur on the date being speculated by many, then it will make no difference to believers who have been raptured about whether it happened on the date predicted other than that we will be celebrating eternal, joyous bliss! But if it doesn’t happen on that date, I’m concerned that the faith of some will be shaken.

This has always been the deleterious result of past date-settings regarding the Rapture. Many have gone into deep crises of faith in God’s promises over such failures.

So, with that as a preface, I’d like to examine why it is necessary for God to Rapture the saints of this Church Age—why He will be true to His Word and will do so, I believe, very soon.

The tremendous ramping-up of evil taking place today as humanity proceeds farther toward God’s judgment against sin and rebellion is most relevant to the premise implicit in the title of this commentary: “Why the Rapture Must Happen.”

When looking at the black-and-white films the Allies shot within the Nazi death camps following victory over Adolf Hitler’s Germany in World War II, it’s difficult to comprehend that level of evil. The images of walking skeletons that were the Jewish “survivors” of those camps remain etched in the memory of anyone who has seen those videos.

Upon viewing those films, one instinctively senses that there must be eternal punishment for anyone who perpetrates such absolute evil.

The same level of pictorial record doesn’t exist for the genocidal rampages inflicted on their own people by Josef Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, and the murderers of the other despotic regimes in modern times. However, eyewitness accounts and some photographic evidence make it hard to fathom that those beastly tyrants were restrained in their butchery.

The Bible nonetheless bears witness that God the Holy Spirit governs the human conscience. In biblically prophetic terms, this is most evident in Paul’s second epistle to the Thessalonians:

For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming. (2 Thessalonians 2:7–8)

Paul was saying here that evil was at work in a big way even at the time he was writing the letter. Still, the Holy Spirit was then “restraining” and would continue to hold back that evil until the Holy Spirit withdraws as the Restrainer of evil. Then all hell will break loose as the Antichrist is revealed. The spirit of Antichrist is already present in the world—and was manifest even during John’s day (read 1 John 4:1–3). The mystery of iniquity about which Paul prophesied and this spirit of Antichrist are interlinked in the ancient web of lawlessness we call evil.

Jesus told what will happen once the Restrainer (the Holy Spirit) withdraws from governing the wickedness in the hearts and minds of people of the post-Rapture world:

For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. (Matthew 24:21)

The Lord said just how bad things would become:

And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened. (Matthew 24:22)

God will shorten the days of the great Tribulation, because if He were to let things go on to their conclusion, without the return of Christ, every being of flesh and blood on the planet would be destroyed. Such is the mystery of iniquity that exists today, and it will become exponentially worse once the restraint of evil is no longer in place. Then, the ultimately evolved man—as evolution would have it—will step to the forefront of fallen human history. Antichrist will inflict horrors on the people of earth in ways Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and the rest of history’s madmen could not have even imagined. His regime will be the most bloodthirsty of all time.

Lawlessness is everywhere we look. Whether considering the Middle East and the unspeakable evil of satanic forces like Hamas, the absolute wickedness of mutilating children fostered by the trans movement, or America and the devil-inspired anti-Semitism of youth groups indoctrinated by US universities, the “mystery of iniquity” is swelling like a great caldera that is about to explode across the world.

Evidence of the growing global lawlessness is compiled hourly through reports like the following:

As recent as 2019, The Economist’s Safe City Index placed Amsterdam at the top in Europe and fourth worldwide, behind only Tokyo, Singapore, and Osaka, but a new debate hosted by local broadcaster AT5 has revealed that seven in ten panel members avoid certain parts of the city because they now feel unsafe.

That figure rises to 85 percent among women, while half of the women surveyed reported experiencing some form of harassment, with some subjected to intimidation, being followed, or assault.

The issue has gained urgency after several high-profile crimes, including the murders of two 17-year-olds, Rivaldo, shot dead on a soccer field, and Lisa, who was brutally murdered by a 22-year-old asylum seeker as she cycled home. Multiple sexual assaults have also rocked the city in recent weeks, and police were on high alert after recording three explosions in five days last week.

Headlines at the time read: explosions-rock-amsterdam-as-dutch-capital-continues-to-reel-from-recent-teen-girl-allegedly-murdered-by-asylum-seeker. (“Amsterdam used to be the safest city in Europe; now a majority of its citizens are afraid to go out at night,” Rapture Ready News, September 12, 2025)

The youth, guilty of most of such lawlessness in inner cities across the world, have been taught by cultural inculcation that they have been held down by the affluent, so their actions are justified. The inference is that it is no more than simply Robin Hood robbing the evil sheriff of Nottingham.

Can there be much doubt that if they commit such bold acts now, then when the Holy Spirit is no longer restraining such evil thinking and actions, even America will quickly become a hellish existence in which anything goes?

It is almost as if the US federal governmental powers-that-be have taken Paul’s 2 Thessalonians 2:7–8 passage to heart. It seems they anticipate a time when draconian measures will be necessary to restrain the evil that is coming. Antichrist’s restraint will be even more draconian, but his own evil will far surpass all other iniquity of history, the Bible says.

Judgment of such rebelliousness awaits implementation by the God who must bring back the righteousness lost in Eden. Our Holy Heavenly Father is the only One who can cleanse humanity of this satanic infection called sin.

Only those who are born again through belief in the Lord Jesus Christ–God’s Son who has taken away the sins of the world—are not subject to God’s judgment of those left behind at the Rapture.

This is the purpose of the Rapture: to rescue all who are in God’s family through belief in Jesus. We are “not appointed to wrath,” which the world of left-behind rebels is about to experience during the Tribulation (Revelation 3:10).

God must remove all who are righteous and all those who have died while in Christ’s saving grace before His judgment and wrath must begin cleansing this fallen world. He will then, again, begin dealing with His chosen nation, Israel, to bring a remnant to accept their Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus will return to the planet’s surface, destroy all enemies of God, and set up His Millennial Kingdom.

Ultimately, God will purge all sin, bringing humankind and all of creation back to the perfection that was lost when iniquity was found in Lucifer, and when sin and death entered through Adam’s disobedience.

It will all begin with the Rapture of the Church, which has been being constructed by the Lord Jesus since His death, burial and Resurrection, and His sending the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

This is why the Rapture must happen. Here is how to be sure you go to the Lord Jesus and be rescued from the coming judgment and wrath:

That if you will confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and will believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart man believes unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. (Romans 10:9–10)