Claim:
A video authentically recounts the story of a 99-year-old former atheist named Walter Briggs being baptized as a Christian.
Rating:
A rumor that circulated online in December 2025 claimed a video authentically recounted the story of a 99-year-old former atheist named Walter Briggs being baptized as a Christian.
A Snopes reader emailed a link to the clip on YouTube, asking, “My mom sent me a video and I want to see if it’s fake or not.”
On Dec. 1, a user managing the When God Spoke To Me YouTube channel posted that same linked video (archived), including with the title, “99-Year-Old Atheist Goes Viral for His Baptism — He Finally Tells All.” Other users shared the clip on Facebook (archived), Instagram (archived), TikTok (archived), X (archived) and YouTube.
The video begins by showing an elderly man with deep wrinkles speaking into a camera for an interview. He says, “My name is Walter Briggs and I am 99 years old, and I am the man that went viral for getting baptized after being an atheist my whole life.” The next scene allegedly depicts a pastor baptizing the elderly man in a church.
In short, the story was fabricated and the video was completely fake, and both were created with artificial intelligence (AI). The YouTube clip featured advertising, indicating the channel’s partial or entire goal of seeking to profit from users wrongly believing in the inauthentic content.
Snopes contacted a manager of the When God Spoke To Me YouTube channel to ask questions, including inquiring for details about the AI tools used to create the video. We will update this article if we receive further information.
Evidence the story and video are fake
The video featured numerous signs indicating a user generated its contents with an AI tool.
For example, the fake elderly man’s skin appears overly shiny and smooth — a key indicator of AI-generated videos — and his mouth movements fail to consistently match the words supposedly being spoken.
After the man introduces himself as “Walter Briggs,” the unnamed man baptizing “Briggs” — a person not wearing baptismal waders or other traditional baptismal clothing — calls “Briggs” the name “Mr. Henry.” The clip offers no explanation for the different name.
The YouTube text description appearing under the video claims the elderly man said people who “call his story ‘fake’ and ‘AI-generated’ breaks his heart.”
Also, in the video at the 18:30 mark, the fake elderly man speaks of people who might claim the clip was made with AI:
If you are someone who looks at a testimony like mine and your first instinct is to say, “That is fake. That is AI. That is not real,” Then I want you to check your heart because you are standing exactly where I stood for most of my life. The devil is the liar. He loves confusion. He loves doubt. And he especially loves it when people dismiss the work of God as a trick.
However, the user who posted the clip to the YouTube channel answered “yes” during the upload process to the question of whether the video featured AI-generated content — adding the YouTube-enabled label reading, “Altered or synthetic content.”
At various points in the video — for example at the 0:30, 2:35 and 5:30 marks — a very small logo for the Google Gemini AI tool appears in the bottom-right corner of the frame. A book icon also appears during moments showing vertical clips, including the baptism — likely intentionally covering a watermark for the popular OpenAI Sora 2 video-generation model.
The bottom of the video’s text description continues with the channel manager admitting to fabricating the story: “This is a dramatized Christian storytelling video using fictional characters. It’s shared for spiritual reflection and encouragement, not as a record of real events or as medical, psychological, legal, financial, or professional counseling advice.”
When God Spoke To Me
As of this writing on Dec. 5, the When God Spoke To Me YouTube channel displayed a creation date of Oct 5, 2025, with over 28,000 subscribers, 136 videos and more than 11 million views. The channel also featured links to other associated pages, including on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, as well as the whengodspoketome.com website.
For example, the When God Spoke To Me Facebook page‘s “transparency” information showed a creation date of Nov. 17, 2025, displaying over 47,000 followers added in less than three weeks. The “transparency” data did not yet feature details about the country in which its creators reside.
Regarding the whengodspoketome.com domain, a GoDaddy.com Whois lookup — a free search for information about website domain registrations — displayed the registration date of Nov. 18. Attempts to access whengodspoketome.com failed, indicating the person or people behind the domain had not yet launched the website.
Other popular fake videos on the When God Spoke To Me YouTube channel included the fabricated story of 73-year-old “John Parson” with the clip title, “He Went Viral for Saying “I Saw Jesus” — Now He Reveals What Really Happened,” as well as the tale of 73-year-old “Samuel Williams” showing the title, “He Went Viral for Crying ‘Jesus Is Coming Soon’ — Now He Shares the Full Story.”
These stories all very much resembled glurge, which Dictionary.com defines as stories “that are supposed to be true and uplifting, but which are often fabricated and sentimental.”
For further reading, we previously investigated a video alleging to show a cross catching fire during a Mass in Dallas, Texas.
