What the Left Behind Series Left Out

010

One of the most amazing phenomena of recent Christian publishing is the remarkable success of Timothy LaHaye’s Left Behind series. These novels have been outselling all other Christian literature, with the possible exception of the Bible itself.

It’s not difficult to understand the popularity of these apocalyptic accounts. We live in uncertain times, a time of rapid change and considerable chaos. It is an age ripe for apocalyptic and eschatological speculation.

The Left Behind novels tap into the curiosity of many about what the future holds, and what the forces are that control our universe. They present an apocalyptic worldview that many conservative Christians find comforting and helpful as they try to live in an increasingly non-Christian environment.

Unfortunately, not all apocalyptic thinking is good apocalyptic thinking, and this is especially true of the so-called dispensational theology that informs these novels. The most distinctive feature of dispensational theology is what I call the “Beam me up, Scotty” belief—the notion that at the end-time, believers will be raptured into heaven and will thus avoid the Great Tribulation forecast as the precursor to the end of the world.

This rapture is of course not for every generation of Christians but only for those who are living at the time the Great Tribulation breaks out. Previous generations of Christians simply had to endure, persevere and even give up their lives on occasion. It is worth asking why anyone should think that only the last generation before the tribulation should be exempt from martyrdom. After all one can do no more than give one’s life for the faith. Why should the last generation of Christians expect to do less cross-bearing than previous ones? Members of the “beam me up” school claim to base their thinking on the Book of Revelation and other apocalyptic portions of the New Testament. But their biblical interpretations are unwarranted. John’s message is the same for 21st-century readers as it was for his first-century audience.

First, all of the New Testament books were written for the edification of first-century Christians. The idea that John of Patmos, the author of Revelation, intended his message to be understood only by a late-20th- or 21st-century Western Christian audience is not only arrogant—it flies in the face of what John himself writes in Revelation 2–3. Here, John states quite clearly that his intended audience was Christians in western Asia Minor at the end of the first century A.D.

These Christians were familiar with the legacy of Jewish apocalyptic literature, and they knew very well that while this literature was meant to be referential (referring back to real-life events), it was not meant to reveal detailed specifics about the distant future. The idea, for example, that the Book of Revelation has coded references to events that wouldn’t take place for hundreds of years (say, to Saddam Hussein, oil in Kuwait or the crisis in Afghanistan, as some dispensationalists claim) would have made no sense at all to the original audience for whom these prophecies were written. Apocalyptic literature offers multivalent symbols that can be applied equally well to war, famine, persecution or earthquake in any and every generation of Christian history.

Second, the Left Behind series misrepresents the claims of the New Testament. The Book of Revelation is a book of comfort intended to assure its readers that God will watch over and preserve them through all their trials and tribulations. It never promises that people will be free from suffering and martyrdom; it only promises that they will be protected through it all, that God will not abandon them or allow them to have their faith stripped from them. Divine presence in this world—that is the promise of Revelation, not a rapture that will take Christians out of this world and away from any suffering.

The Left Behind series borrows its title from passages like Luke 17:35, in which Jesus makes an end-time prophecy about two women grinding meal at a mill. When the Kingdom of God is at hand, Jesus predicts, one woman will be taken and the other left behind. A first-century audience would have understood this to mean one will be taken away for judgment, while the other will escape judgment by remaining where she is. This is clear from the context, which is about the coming judgment—a judgment that, in Jewish literature, everyone is expected to face. This is very different from saying one will be raptured and the other judged. 052Similarly, the oft-cited Pauline prophecy in 1 Thessalonians 4:16–17 (“For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever”) is not a reference to a rapture into heaven. Rather, it refers to the people meeting with Christ in the sky and then returning to earth with Christ to reign with him there.^a

To understand the Book of Revelation and other ancient apocalyptic works, we must read them in the context of early Jewish apocalyptic literature—for instance, in light of Daniel, Ezekiel and Zechariah, as well as the noncanonical books of 1 Enoch and 4 Ezra. The Left Behind series and other modern readings that ignore this original historical context and orientation only distort the authors’ message. They are proof that a text taken out of its original context can mean whatever anyone wants it to mean.

The primary rule to follow in interpreting such literature is, What it meant to the original audience is still what it means today. It was God’s revelation to them first. It is our task to do the best we can to hear such words in their original historical, literary, social, ethical and theological contexts.

One of the most amazing phenomena of recent Christian publishing is the remarkable success of Timothy LaHaye’s Left Behind series. These novels have been outselling all other Christian literature, with the possible exception of the Bible itself. It’s not difficult to understand the popularity of these apocalyptic accounts. We live in uncertain times, a time of rapid change and considerable chaos. It is an age ripe for apocalyptic and eschatological speculation. The Left Behind novels tap into the curiosity of many about what the future holds, and what the forces are that control our universe. They present an apocalyptic […]