NZ Skeptics Articles

The End of the World as we know it: September 24th

Mark Honeychurch - 15th September 2025

Sara Passmore, the President of the NZARH (Rationalists & Humanists) and one-time committee member of the NZ Skeptics, recently shared with me a link to an interesting Official Information Act request. The request was sent by Melanie Petrowski to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet on August the 22nd this year (2025). Now, Melanie’s an interesting character - she’s a Christian, and hosts the hour long weekly show “Mel’s Magnificent Bible Study” on Radio Hawkes Bay. She’s also known in her home town of Hastings as something of an anti-vax protester, and even her own father has had to step in in the past to help the police curb one of her more enthusiastic protests, where she stationed herself outside a supermarket with a megaphone.

Melanie is also an author, having written a book titled “I met Jesus when I was 14 years old”. The book’s description on New Zealand online bookshop The Nile says:

A powerful testimony of a life-altering meeting in 1990. At 14, a young girl, in a moment of desperation, cried out to God, admitting her doubts about His existence and that of Jesus.

The very next day, Jesus Himself appeared, revealing not only His existence but also a profound truth about His nature…

Melanie Petrowski, now a 48-year-old from Hastings, New Zealand, shares her incredible story thirty years after it occurred. Though she once longed for marriage and children, she dedicated her life to following God’s call. Melanie’s passion for Christ and His children shines through her involvement in various church ministries and her diverse experiences in social work, education, and politics. With a background in spiritual formation, education, and social sciences, she felt divinely inspired to finally write about the day she met Jesus, making this her debut book.

The Amazon book listing gives us some more details of Melanie’s background, going into details about her education and her decision to stay single:

A testimony of a teenager meeting Jesus face to face back in 1990. 14-year-old cries out to God ironically telling Him that she does not know whether He exists, and she does not know whether Jesus exists. But the very next day Jesus turns up to show her that not only does He exist, but He’s married… Melanie Petrowski is a 48-year-old woman from Hastings, New Zealand. Her heart’s desire was to be married with children but felt the Lord say it was not His will, so sacrificed that desire to focus on the calling of God. She is passionate about Christ and His children, and enjoys dancing, singing, and travelling. She has volunteered in the greeting, kids’ teaching and worship teams at several churches in Auckland and Hawke’s Bay, NZ. She has worked in social work, early childhood education, and has been involved in local and national politics. She has completed a Certificate in Spiritual Formation and Pastoral Care, a certificate in Education and Social Sciences, a Diploma of Arts in Politics and International Relations, and near completed a Bachelor of Social Work. Melanie felt the Lord tell her to write the story of their meeting many years ago. Thirty years after meeting Jesus, she was inspired to write about her experience. This is her first book.

The book is currently on sale on Amazon for about $8, but at only 25 pages I think I’ll save my money for something more substantial. Although Amazon has no reviews, a single 5-star review on The Nile (where a paperback copy is being sold for $27) is somewhat suspiciously written by a verified buyer called “Melanie”, and says “Brilliant little real life story of the reality of Jesus and His love for the church as the Bridegroom.”

Melanie has also dabbled in politics, with her political career being launched after a car crashed into her house in 2018. She first ran for Hastings District Council in 2019, and managed 358 votes. She then ran in the 2020 general election as a candidate for the One Party (Alfred Ngaro’s Christian party, which has now been renamed to NewZeal), and received 175 votes. Trying again for Hastings District Council in 2022, she managed a worrying 3,221 votes - enough that she narrowly missed out on winning one of the seven available council seats. Finally, in the most recent General Election in 2023, she ran as an independent and received just 181 votes. It looks like she’s not running in the current 2025 Hastings District Council elections, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she popped up again come the next general election.

Okay, so given Melanie’s beliefs and her political ambitions, what was the OIA request about? It’s about the Rapture, and Melanie’s trying to use the Official Information Act as a way to warn the government of our impending doom. There’s a lot of different ideas mentioned in the request, so let’s go through the entire thing and see if we can figure out what she’s talking about:

Dear Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet,

With the Prime Minister supposedly being a Christian so he should know his Holy Bible, especially the Book of Revelation, which I believe we are living in right now…

What kind of emergency protocols do you have ready for the Tribulation period of 7 years after the rapture of Christ’s church that supposedly is going to happen on Wednesday 24th September 2025?

May I urgently urge the government and the whole of parliament repent (confess your sins) and accept the Lord Jesus Christ by believing in your heart and confessing with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord and tell the country to do the same, before it’s too late.

Romans 10:9-10

New International Version

9 If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.

Otherwise because of pride and stubbornness, and the love of the things of this world, you need to prepare for people desperate for help and answers as many babies and children will also disappear, even out of their mother’s wombs.

So, this first part is all about the Rapture - a Christian idea that when Jesus returns to earth and all Christians - dead and alive - will be taken away to heaven. A popular version of this has living Christians either suddenly disappearing, leaving only their clothing behind, or floating up into the sky.

This idea, as is often the case for Christian theology, is based on scant mention in the Bible - in 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 there’s a single use of the word ἁρπάζω (harpazo), meaning to “snatch away”, “seize” or be “caught up”. Here’s the NIV translation of the passage:

For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.

Apparently the idea of taking this idea literally has been around since about the 1830s, and it’s gained traction in recent years due to its mention in popular Christian media such as the Left Behind Christian book series and movies.

Will the Prime Minister or Deputy PM (if Luxon gets raptured) lie and tell the nation it was an alien abduction? Don’t lie but repent.

It turns out that some people are really worried that the Antichrist will trick those who are not raptured into believing that those who suddenly go missing were abducted by aliens rather than taken away by Jesus. Dr Janelle Zeeb’s website suggests that recent news stories about UFOs have been planted by the Devil to help him with this deception, and that Christians should not be fooled by his trickery.

Will you force the people of New Zealand to take the MARK OF THE BEAST which is Luciferase (you can’t get more obvious), a quantum dot UV light tattoo? Please do not allow this. Without this people cannot buy or sell so please allow cash to still be used which is currently still legal tender.

This idea is related to a science news item from 2019, just before the COVID pandemic started, which gained popularity - both positive and negative - during the pandemic. The article this idea is based on talks about being able to use an invisible ink tattoo within tiny dissolving needles to mark when someone’s received a vaccine. This tattoo is then only visible in near-infrared - and this is relatively easy to see using a CMOS camera sensor that hasn’t had an IR filter fitted (mobile phones can easily be modified to see these tattoos by removing their IR filter, and this mod is something I’ve done in the past when using a webcam for amateur digital astronomy).

The main target for this technology is children in third world countries, where keeping track of which children have received which vaccines is a hard task, and would be made a lot easier if digital or paper records weren’t needed.

Now, there appear to be two different parts of this research that have made it fodder for conspiracy theorists. And nope, it’s not the idea that this technology should be used on children. Firstly the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation funded the work that was done, and Bill Gates is implicated in a whole heap of conspiracy theories around depopulation, nanotechnology, vaccines and population control. And secondly, the research talks about testing various fluorescent inks. There’s a fluorescent chemical called luciferase, and there are a bunch of fringe religious ideas about this chemical being connected to Lucifer (which, obliquely, it is - both words mean “light bringer”).

In reality, the study doesn’t mention luciferase. Some standard inks were tested, and were found to either break down too quickly or not show up well enough under normal lighting conditions, so tiny nanoparticles (quantum dots) were designed that provided the best of both worlds - longevity and visibility. And it’s worth bearing in mind that this is just a single study - the technology hasn’t yet progressed to anywhere near the stage of being usable in humans.

This claim is also related to the Beast System nonsense that you’ll find a little further down the article.

Will you let the UN or WHO or any one world or new world order system take over this nation? Don’t, but let this nation be for refuge and for learning about the Lord, God Almighty the creator of the Universe and the Wrath of the Lamb.

Or will you let agents or police from another country take over? Will you have them knock on every door and force the citizens of NZ to take the mark?

I spoke about this conspiracy theory, that UN soldiers had arrived in New Zealand and were going door to door, on the radio back in 2021. Here’s what I said:

_There’s a rumour going around in conspiracy circles that the UN, and/or Italian soldiers, are due to come to New Zealand at the end of November, or that they might already be here.

It’s not obvious what the troops are for. Some people think that Jacinda Ardern has invited them in to the country to crack down on dissenters who are refusing the COVID vaccine. Others are suggesting that Jacinda will be arrested and tried for war crimes.

Obviously none of this is happening, but I was interested to find out where the idea came from. It took me a little while to find the source of this silliness, and it’s a man from the UK called Simon Parkes.

Simon is known in the UK for having been a Labour councillor in Whitby… and for having claimed that his adoptive mother was a 9ft tall alien, and that he fathered an alien baby with an alien called the Cat Queen. He’s also a QAnon believer and thinks that Electromagnetic Frequencies are making us all sick. He runs a YouTube channel called Connecting Consciousness where he just asserts all sorts of nonsense without any evidence - and this one particular video, mentioning New Zealand, seems to have been swallowed hook, line and sinker by our local conspiracy theorists._

If World War 3 or civil war breaks out, will you make our troops or cops fight against their own people? Please don’t do that. It seems the Covid mandates protest police brutality was a trial run. That whole period of time was a cake walk compared to what’s coming.

I’m guessing that this concern is based on watching the Police interactions with protesters at the parliament occupation back in 2022, where many protesters tried to talk Police officers around to joining them, telling them that everyone was on the same side, and that the Government was the real threat.

Will you let Marshall law take over with drones surveillance everywhere in the sky? Don’t.

There are probably some legitimate concerns around potential increased use of drones, and their implications for our privacy - but Melanie’s concerns about “Marshall [sic] law” enforced by drones seem unfounded. I can’t find any established conspiracy theory that talks about drones and martial law, so I wonder whether this is Melanie’s own creation.

Will you allow the waters to be poisoned? Don’t.

One of Melanie’s major concerns is around community water supply fluoridation, and she complained about fluoride in an article profiling her a few years ago, saying “I just want to see clean, fresh water coming out of our taps. Unfortunately, I’ve had to spend over $2000 to get a filter for my house”.

What’s weird about this is that she said this in 2022. Hawkes Bay’s water supply was fluoridated until 2016, when Havelock North suffered from a major campylobacteria outbreak where over 5,000 people became sick. At this point, as the council’s equipment was only capable of adding one chemical to the water supply, the council made the wise decision to replace fluoride with chlorine. Then, on the back of the recent nationwide plan to ensure most New Zealand water is fluoridated, new equipment was installed by the council and fluoride was re-introduced last year, in 2024. So, at the time Melanie was complaining that she had to install a filter to remove the fluoride from her water, her water supply had been unfluoridated for the previous six years - and for two years afterwards.

Will you bow to the BEAST SYSTEM? Don’t.

Revelation 13, verses 16-17, talks about the Mark of the Beast. I’m going to quote it here from the King James version, as that seems like the appropriate wording for text as batshit crazy as Revelation is:

And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

This idea of everyone being forced to carry the mark of the beast has been a popular one, with Christians warning of new technologies from all the way back to barcodes being the proposed method by which everyone will be marked.

But there’s a recent idea that the Beast System, a technological tool for tracking each and every one of us, has either already been implemented or is about to be deployed. This System will apparently be used to track our every move, control our every decision and/or decide whether we can buy or sell goods and services. It’s surprising just how many videos there are on YouTube (many of them filled with AI slop and stock footage) warning everyone of this supposed Beast System:

Will you allow Islam to take over and force people to bow and if they don’t, be beheaded? But people who become Christians during the Tribulation will happily be beheaded as they will go to glory in Heaven.

While there are pockets of Islam that seem to have a weird desire to force their religion on everyone, with harsh punishments for non-believers, this is something of a fringe belief. I imagine if the mostly moderate Muslims in New Zealand took over our country, they wouldn’t be beheading everyone who didn’t “bow” (and I’m not sure who we’d be forced to bow to - Imams? Certainly not to pictures of Mohammad). I can’t help but think that this idea is not just daft, but also racist.

Read the Book of Revelation and Daniel and all other scriptures that pertain to the rapture and what will happen afterwards.

BE WARNED. BE READY. REPENT. JESUS IS RETURNING ON 24TH SEPTEMBER 2025.

Yours faithfully,

Melanie Petrowski

This is not the only OIA request Melanie has sent through the FYI website. She’s sent 10 requests in all, and most of them have been refused either due to the information she’s asked for not existing, or because the information is already available online. Starting with her earliest, from back in 2019, here are the titles of her requests over the years - and after what looks like a promising, common-sense start, things start to go downhill:

I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to look into any of those conspiracy ideas that you’ve not heard of before.