They KNOW NOT the Hour – Understanding Rapture

The Illusion of the Chosen Few

Last week in many parts of the world especially in Africa and the U.S.A. there were people who awaited the day of rapture as forecast by a South African pastor named Joshua Mhlakela to occur on September 23–24, 2025. There were those who sold their cars, their homes and left their jobs on the basis of a forecast from an authority who clearly was and is ignorant of the true meaning of the nature of rapture as pointed toward in the Bible.

The word “rapture” itself doesn’t appear in the Bible, but the idea comes from a particular interpretation of several New Testament passages—mainly in Paul’s letters and apocalyptic texts. The people of the rapture take the teachings in the Bible literally and most of them do so selectively. Clearly, they have ignored the statement, “They KNOW not the hour.” Historically, this has been used as a caution against date-setting predictions (like rapture forecasts).

The experience of rapture is REAL but not in the way that those who follow a forecasted time of rapture understand. There is a paradox to be experienced within the true experience of rapture. This experience is not time based. Rapture takes you out of time but not out of the form of the body. Rapture is not where the body ascends skyward as supposed by those awaiting the experience they hoped would manifest last week. Rapture is a felt experience as a consequence of consciousness ascending from identification with your time bound form and personality into awareness of the timeless formless experience of the impersonal or transcendent. This can’t be forecast by the human mind because the human mind exists in time, and the experience of rapture is outside of time. It’s the experience where you KNOW you are eternal. What could be more rapturous than to know that you live as LOVE forever.

The REAL Experience of Rapture

Rapture is not an outer experience but an inner revelation. It’s an experience within consciousness which is not to be confused with an experience within thought. The personal sense of “I am” merges with the one universal “I AM.” This is the meaning of “I AM the Way.” It is the way to KNOW heaven on earth, rather than leave the earth by way of bodily ascension, (which doesn’t ever happen) is through direct communion with “I AM.”

With this mergence there is no loss. This merging is the REAL “born again” experience, but it is birth into the TIMELESS that is without beginning or end. This is the real KNOWING of Heaven which is not a place you go to after you die but a state of consciousness that awakens within you and allows you to KNOW eternal life. This is the direct KNOWING of the experience that you are never born and thus you never die. You KNOW Heaven on Earth, and you are in the world but not off it and especially not focused on leaving it because you think you are one of the self-appointed chosen.

At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a spark which belongs entirely to God. This little point is the pure glory of God in us. It is in everybody. - Thomas Merton - Trappist Monk and Christian Mystic

This born-again experience is not of this world of time and space. There is no literal bodily ascension which the people expecting rapture on September 24^th or 25^th expected to experience and which is never going to happen. Ascension is rapturous but it takes place within consciousness. You don’t do it, and your pastor or clergy can’t tell you when it will happen. In the Substact newsletter The Tipping Point with its focus on “The End Times” the presenters are clearly ignorant of the reality of the rapture and ascension experience but assure their paid readers and listeners that they have authority in such matters. You can only be a paid subscriber to The Tipping Point. Clearly there is good money to be made in claiming you have knowledge of something you have no knowledge of other than as a concept.

God Made In Your Own Image

It’s a great selling point to assure people that they belong to a select group and how they can be assured of a place in Heaven while the rest of us can go to hell in a hand basket. This kind of understanding clearly shows ignorance of what it is “To KNOW God aright.” The idea of the “End Times” arises from a God made in their own image. There is a loathing of the material world expressed from a conscious or unconscious sense of guilt and self-hatred projected unto an image of God made in the image of the separate personal self. Last weeks promised rapture and ascension that did not materialize must have been a big disappointment to all those individuals who are the self-proclaimed chosen people. All that investment in an illusion promoted by some self-appointed oracle in South Africa.

The REAL question to ask is, “Why do people really love the idea of the world ending.” For Christians this is to ignore a central teaching of the Master Jesus Christ who in the only prayer he left his followers includes the revolutionary line, “Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.” This is distinctly different from the promotion of the “End Times” were adoptees clearly refuse to do the will of the Father in Heaven as directed by the Master. To think you will ascend to Heaven and remain as a persona is illusion.

Thus, you have the ignorant leading those who want to feel special and belong to a self-centered group of the saved who don’t give a damn for those who aren’t. To do the will of your Father in Heaven means you die to sense of personal separation you feel, and this includes the idea that you have to be saved. The idea that you have to be saved is another projection of the personal mind. Anyone who has ever had a direct experience of the ground of BEING pointed to by the word “God” KNOWS that there is no one needing saved because in reality you are never and have never been separate from the Divine. The problem is that with your focus on your personal sense of self you create the feeling of being separate. You are the prodigal son and daughter who has left their Father’s house and gone to venture in the far of land of personal separation.

The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me. My eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love. - Meister Eckhart - German Christian Mystic

The experience of rapture which is an inner experience of KNOWING God aright allows you the revelation that God and you are never separate but from your end the sense of being separate feels real. This sense of separation is your foundational belief and is stronger than any belief you have in God. Revelation/rapture is awakening to the reality of Oneness. You become the atonement but not out of guilt. Guilt is an energy of the separate sense of the personal self and becomes a barrier to the flow of the Divine Presence that expresses through you for the highest good of all and not simply for you and the self-appointed chosen few.

The “End Times,” the rapture is the experience of the end of time. The end of time is not the end of the world but the turning point where you live in the eternal NOW. The end of time is an experience of higher consciousness which is given different names in different cultures. In the West it is called Christ Consciousness in India it is called Krishna Consciousness. In Buddhism it is called Enlightenment. This experience happens by way of grace, and you can’t know when it will happen because it is outside of time. In the Bible this experience is shared in the parable of the vessel virgins who are advised to stay awake because no one KNOWS when the bridegroom (the experience of rapture) cometh.

Conclusion

The truth of rapture is not found in forecasts, predictions, or the illusion of belonging to a chosen few. It is revealed in the stillness of your own heart, when the veil of separation dissolves and you awaken to the timeless presence of God within. This is the rapture that no one can sell you, no pastor can time for you, and no end-date can contain. It is grace moving in silence, birthing in you the awareness that you are eternal, you are love, and you are never apart from the Divine.

To live in this consciousness is to embody the prayer of the Master: “Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.” Heaven is not a distant place to which the chosen ascend, but a living reality available here and now. The end of time is not destruction but awakening—the end of separation and the beginning of Oneness.

So, remain awake. Remain open. Do not wait for a date on a calendar, but let rapture find you in the eternal Now. For in the moment you truly KNOW God aright, you will see that there was never anything to fear, never anyone to be saved, and never a world to escape—only a Love without end, calling you home.

Tony Cuckson, Cordressagagh, Ireland (The Mindful Gardener)