Unusual Market on the Second Coming

Alas, Jesus Christ did not return to Earth in 2025.

This might not come as particularly surprising or noteworthy to most people. But for a certain crowd of bettors, it was terrific news.

There are any number of random, oddball bets offered on the prediction market Polymarket, though few are quite as curious as the “Will Jesus Christ Return in 2025?” wager.

Some $3.3 million was placed on the bet over the course of the year.

Most of that money, of course, came in on “No” and yet there were strong-enough believers among the Polymarket crowd, it turns out, to keep the probability of his return by year-end above 3% throughout most of the spring.

Returns That Beat Treasury Bills

For those who bet “No” in April, when Second Coming speculation crescendoed on the site, the investment returned a tidy annualized profit of 5.5%, albeit before fees, according to one reckoning. That’s better, it’s worth noting, than U.S. Treasury bills — the financial-market baseline for a sure thing.

Polymarket and its rival, Kalshi, have generated plenty of buzz.

They’re often held out as a cutting-edge way to give reliable odds to crucial real-world events — like an election’s result or the outbreak of war — by tethering the power of high-stakes betting to the wisdom of the crowd.

From Serious Forecasts to Slot-Machine Style Bets

But for all the serious talk, there’s no shortage of contracts (on the box-office gross of the thriller “Greenland 2: Migration,” the frequency of Elon Musk’s tweets, or even Jeffrey Epstein turning up alive) that tap into social-media chatter and in many cases are little different from a pull on the arm of a slot machine.

Debate Over the Jesus Market

The Jesus wager was the subject of some discussion.

One user speculated over whether it was set up as a tax-loss scheme. Another said, “this is the dumbest market I’ve ever seen.”

“A market like this is distracting,” said Melinda Roth, associate professor at Washington and Lee School of Law. It “also diminishes the value of actual prediction markets that provide insights and useful information.”

A representative for Polymarket didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Religious Odds and Pascal’s Wager

Putting earthly odds on religious matters has a distinguished history, though. Blaise Pascal, the 17th-century mathematician who pioneered the field of probability, famously used the payoff calculations as one justification for belief in God. It’s known as Pascal’s Wager.

Christians have long awaited Jesus’ return, with sects and soothsayers occasionally going so far as to claim it was imminent. In the gospels, Jesus prophesied about it but cautioned that even he didn’t know when it would come.

How the Market Was Resolved

The contract wasn’t very specific about how Polymarket would determine whether Jesus had returned — “The resolution source for this market will be a consensus of credible sources,” it read — but the site promptly posted a win for the “No” camp on Jan. 1.

The wagering has now shifted to whether Jesus will return by the end of 2026. Right now, Polymarket bettors are giving it a 2% chance, making the gain on a winning “Yes” more than 5,700%.

Why Some Bettors Still Take Long Shots

John Holden, associate professor of business law and ethics at Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, said he’s not surprised there’d be some takers: “People buy lottery tickets despite astronomical odds.”

Lee and Tsekova write for Bloomberg.