Plenty of people are staking their hard-earned cash on the return of Jesus Christ – and if you reckon he’ll make a comeback in 2026, you could win big
Holy rollers are gambling millions on whether Jesus will return for a second coming. The punters placed £2.5million on betting the messiah would make a comeback on Earth in 2025.
Second coming flutters soared last Easter. And for those who bet ‘No’ against the probability of God’s son returning to mortals at the time, the investment returned a tidy annual profit of 5.5%.
Yet there were strong enough believers to keep the probability of Christ’s return by the end of 2025 above 3%.
John Holden, associate professor of business law and ethics at Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, said he’s not surprised there were takers of the oddball odds.
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He said: “People buy lottery tickets despite astronomical odds.”
The Jesus bets were placed on prediction platform Polymarket via the ‘Will Jesus Christ Return in 2025?’ wager option.
Polymarket and its rival, Kalshi, have generated plenty of buzz in the gambling community.
Experts say the sites are regularly upheld as cutting-edge ways to get reliable odds on crucial real-world events.
They include results of elections or the chances of war breaking out.
There are stacks of bets on offer, from the frequency of Elon Musk’s tweets to even late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein turning up alive.
Industry sources say the sites tap into trending social media topics, and compare the flutters to having the same chances as the likes of using slot machines.
One user has speculated online whether the Jesus comeback bet was established as some kind of tax avoidance scheme.
Another gambling fan vented: “This is the dumbest market I’ve ever seen.”
Melinda Roth, associate professor at Washington and Lee School of Law, ranted: “A market like this is distracting. It also diminishes the value of actual prediction markets that provide insights and useful information.”
Despite the outrage, betting on religious matters has a long history.
Blaise Pascal, the 17th-century mathematician who pioneered concepts in probability, used the payoff calculations as one justification for belief in God. Known as Pascal’s Wager, it argues it’s more rational to believe in God as the potential reward of infinite eternal life outweighs the finite cost if the big man is non-existent.
Christians, religious sects and psychics have spent decades predicting when Jesus will return.
Wagering on his comeback has now shifted to whether he will return by the end of 2026.
Polymarket punters are currently giving it a 2% chance, making the gain on a winning ‘Yes’ at over 5,700%.