What's Behind Left Behind?
Luke 21:5-11, 20-28
God of the day of Pentecost, who came as the rush of a mighty wind and as a holy fire,
Calling the Church into being, on your people pour your power this morning, renewing our faith and re-creating your Church for mission in the world.
Convict, convert, consecrate, until we are truly yours. Make us brave disciples of Jesus Christ. We do not ask you to keep us safe, as much as we pray you will keep us faithful. Come, Holy Spirit come. In the spirit of Jesus Christ who is the Alpha and the Omega of our lives. Amen.Come Holy Spirit, come
Come as the fire and burn
Come as the light and reveal
Come as the rain and cleanse
Come as the wind and heal.What’s behind Left Behind? The series of books known as Left Behind, written by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, are today the best selling books in the United States. These books about the end of the world are currently outselling Stephen King, John Grisham and every other novelist in America.
The first volume, published in 1995, begins with The Rapture. Perhaps you have seen the bumper sticker: “If this car is empty I’ve been raptured,” which means “carried into Heaven.”
The 12th book in the series, Glorious Appearing, published last March, is the final installment in the series, not counting the possibility of numerous sequels. Glorious Appearing sold almost two million copies even before it was published. Currently it is Number 11 on the New York Times Best Seller list, which does not count sales at Christian book stores. Don’t bother asking me at coffee why this is so; I do not know, but it is. The Left Behind books have sold 62 million copies.
The title of the concluding book, Glorious Appearing, comes from a verse in the New Testament book of Titus, but could also refer to Revelation 19:11-16 in which Jesus rides into battle on a white horse. The story line centers around airline pilot Rayford Steele and journalist Buck William, left behind to struggle here on earth through the seven-year tribulation and rule of the Anti-Christ, until the return of Jesus, the battle of Armageddon fought in the Holy Land, and the final Day of Judgment.
We all know beliefs have consequences. We become careless and say things such as: “It doesn’t matter what people believe as long as they believe something,” which we know, even as we say it, is utter nonsense. In what ways have these Left Behind books with their view of the end of the world influenced the belief and action of the millions of people who have read them? For example, in the books, the Anti-Christ is the Secretary General of the United Nations, his assistant is the Pope.
Question: Have the books influenced leading politicians, including the President, resulting in apocalyptic rhetoric and confrontational Mid-East politics? For example, one United States Senator (James Inhofe of Oklahoma) has supported the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank by citing the Book of Genesis and calling the debate on the issue “not a political battle at all.” “It is,” he said, “a contest over whether or not the Word of God is true.” The Left Behind books show the common Christian Right’s sympathy for the support of Israel and the Jewish people who, according to the authors, exist only to be converted to fulfill the prophecy of Scripture.
Question: Are the books more interested in God’s wrath rather than God’s love? Causing someone to remark: “God so loved the world God gave the world World War III.” Is there something here mainline Christians can learn? Have we over-emphasized the grace and love of God at the expense of the wrath, judgment and accountability to which God may well hold us on that day when we stand before God unable to answer once in a thousand times? Years ago, theologian H. Richard Neibhur commented on how easy we have made our religion. He said: “We prefer a God without wrath who brought men and women without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”
Question: Do the Left Behind books create an atmosphere of disregard for the environment? After all, if the world is on the verge of being destroyed, what difference does it make if the polar ice cap melts and Cape Cod and Florida disappear?
Question: Are the books, as some have said, “Pulp fiction based on a particular reading of the Bible”? (Randall Balmer, Chair of the Religion Department at Barnard College) Do the books encourage people to see the world in terms of black and white, good and evil, with us or against us? These are some of the questions which need to be wrestled with as we consider this publishing phenomenon known as Left Behind.
Who reads these books? According to the publisher, Tyndale Press, only 6% of the readers are from the Northeast, which is why you may not be aware of the books. In order to obtain wider publicity, Tyndale sponsored a NASCAR racer with the unlucky logo Left Behind. The great majority of the readers are from the South and the Midwest. The average buyer, according to the publisher, is a 44-year old, born-again Christian woman, married with children, living in the south. Author Jerry Jenkins tells of being in Sam’s Club one day, standing behind a woman in the check-out line carrying a copy of Left Behind in one hand and a fifth of whiskey in the other. He remarks: “Something was going to put her to sleep that night.”
Someone has observed, “This isn’t the Sex and the City crowd,” which may explain why it took so long for the media to notice that one in eight Americans was reading all these strange books about the end of the world. And why are so many people eager to read these books? Well, watch the news this evening and you’ll have the answer. As the world becomes ever more frightening, with much of the trouble centered in the Middle East – just where you would expect it from reading the book of Revelation – even secular Americans sometimes wonder (or at least wonder if they ought to start wondering) whether there might be something after all to this end of the world stuff. Especially after 9/11. And it is no coincidence that the books are a favorite with American troops in Iraq.
There is really nothing new about all this. For a long time there has been this theme of apocalyptic eschatology (this fascination with the end of the world) in American religious thought. For example, William Miller, a Baptist lay preacher, used the Bible to predict the Second Coming and the end of the world in 1843. One of his followers, Ellen White, helped found The Seventh Day Adventists. Miller had a brisk sale of ascension robes. The day for the world to end came and went. Miller re-calculated, announced another day and time, sold many more ascension robes. If you have looked around this morning, you know he was in error.
The basic story line for what is known as Premillennial Dispensationalism – the system of thought which informs the Left Behind series, originated at about the same time as William Miller. It was introduced by, among others, John Nelson Darby, a disaffected former Anglican priest. This version of eschatology holds that the Bible, when read correctly, contains a schedule for the final events that will precede the end of history. Darby believed that God deals with the world differently in each of what he identified as seven dispensations, or eras. Accordingly, we are now in the sixth era of world history, soon to be followed by the seventh – the End Times.
The first event in the chain of dominoes that will lead to the end is, as we have seen, the Rapture – the secret return of Jesus to transport all “True Believers” to heaven. This does not include mainline liberal Protestants – sorry to have to be the one to break this news to you, but you might as well hear it from your pastor. Those left behind will endure seven years of tribulation inflicted on the world by the Anti-Christ. This global warfare, coupled with a series of horrible natural disasters, will make the world a truly nasty place. Some of you, however, will be given one last chance to become Bible-believing Christians who will band together to resist the power of the Anti-Christ. So all is not lost.
Finally, after seven years of death-dealing by the Anti-Christ – again the Secretary General of the United Nations – Christ will return a second time to defeat the forces of evil at the battle of Armageddon in the Holy Land. Christ will then reign for a thousand years over a politically reconstituted Kingdom of Israel full of Jewish people who have converted to Christianity, before the world finally ends.
In the Left Behind series the authors make full use of high tech computers, satellite phones, the Internet, covert underground bunkers, super-futuristic weapons, massive Range Rovers – not unlike Lord of the Rings and Star Wars – this is clearly not your grandmother’s Scofield Bible.
Historians note that dispensationalism and its fiction arose just as American culture was undergoing tremendous social change in the late 19th and early 20th century. It offered reassurance that conservative social values would some day be vindicated. The Left Behind series stands in a long line of books reacting against change – not only against independent and strong women, but also against gays and lesbians.
There is, for my taste, a little too much eagerness for the end of the world, for all the trials and tribulations, in the Left Behind series: too much enthusiasm for the final battle, the separation of the sheep from the goats, the rescue of the faithful and destruction of creation. Much of it is a major distortion of the biblical material. Our reading this morning from the Gospel of Luke is like listening to the Evening News as Jesus announces one bad event after another. As his disciples admired the temple, Jesus says that what they thought was secure and holy would crumble. Then Jesus tells them to beware they are not led astray, for false prophets will come in his name and say, “The end is near.” As we listen to the Gospel reading of the morning, it is scary stuff Jesus is telling us. It’s the kind of thing that can make you want to grab your children, pack the car and head for the hills. There are even those who are doing exactly this as they take passages like this one from the Gospel of Luke as a timetable for the end of the world, in spite of Jesus saying no one knows the day or the time.
The strange and interesting thing is that Jesus tells us these things not to terrify us, but to encourage us. Jesus is not saying, “Get out while the going is good,” but rather, “Know that such events will happen and don’t allow them to knock you off balance.” Jesus doesn’t say these things to warn us when we see these events happening we are to turn in our voter registration card for an assault weapon. Quite the contrary! Jesus is reminding us once again that God is present in the very midst of these events. God has not abandoned you; God has not forsaken you. The Everlasting is right here among you in the very midst of the ever-fleeting.
Jesus did not tell his followers these things, as some seem to believe, so we can do some insider trading and bail out before the world falls apart. Jesus tells us this so we will not be terrified, so we will not panic, for God is a God of love and God has something else in God’s mind and heart beside the destruction of the world which God loves. When events of history seem overwhelming, Jesus says, it is not the time to hunker down, but to stand up. It is not the time to escape into selfishness and become silent, it is time to speak up, to continue to be concerned for the environment, to join the struggle for justice and peace, to pledge yourself anew to the hard work of building communities of inclusivity, to witness in your own life to the Good News of the Gospel, to tell the old, old story of Jesus and His love which has sustained people of faith through the very darkest of hours.
When we are tempted to head off by ourselves, to look after “Number One,” to go deeper into ourselves, to isolate and insulate, Jesus says that is precisely the time to stand together, to join hands and hearts, refusing to break off or break away. In his teaching about time, Jesus says over and again that what counts is not how we anticipate the future but how we use what time we have today and how we work to redeem the present. The crucial question for each of us and for our community of faith is not what will happen at the end of the age, but what is to be done in the Spirit of Jesus in the meantime. We are wise when we follow the person who, being told that the end of the world was at hand, went out and planted a tree as an act of courage and as a sign of hope. Let us be quick to act on the counsel of John Wesley who said, “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as along as ever you can.”
The Left Behind series offers a teachable moment for mainline Christians and mainline churches. We might well learn and begin to articulate why this view of the world in the “Left Behind” books conflicts with Scripture and the historic faith of the Christian church. As millions of “Left Behind” books are sold and powerful legislators are elected as the readers become politically active, may it motivate us in the mainline churches to speak out more persuasively in the national debate, in the spirit of the One who calls us to do justice, love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God and with each other. Most of all, teach and witness to your family, friends and neighbors by holding tightly to the good and blessed truth – that nothing, nothing in all creation – will ever be able to separate you from the love of God made known in Christ Jesus our Lord.
In the spirit of the One who is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end of our lives, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
End Notes
“En-Raptured”, Jason Byamee, The Christian Century, April 20, 2004.
Newsweek Magazine, May 24, 2004.Scripture Readings
Revelation 1: 1-8
The revelation of Jesus, Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place; he made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who testified to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw.Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of the prophecy, and blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written in it; for the time is near.
John to the seven churches that are in Asia:
Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.
Look! He is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail. So it is to be. Amen.
“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.
Luke 21: 5-11, 20-28
When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, Jesus said, “As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.”
They asked him, “Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?” And he said, “Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and ‘The time is near!’ Do not go after them.
“When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately.” Then he said to them, “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.
“When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near. Then those in Judea must flee to the mountains, and those inside the city must leave it, and those out in the country must not enter it; for these are days of vengeance, as a fulfillment of all that is written. Woe to those who are pregnant, and to those who are nursing infants in those days! For there will be great distress on the earth and wrath against this people; they will fall by the edge of the sword and be taken away as captives among all nations; and Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.“There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”