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SarahSmile
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After the first volume, the plots cleave to an instantly predictable structure: The previous book’s culminating disaster is summarized. The main characters spend approximately four hundred pages dashing about the globe looking for each other and earnestly discussing Revelation . Another seal is broken , a new disaster vents itself, and the wheels are in motion for the next volume. No one is able to influence the course of events or do much but sit and watch those horses galloping across the sky. But it has to be that way, you see, since these characters are dwelling, not in real life, but in the fatalistic world of “Bible Prophecy.” Speaking of which, let’s move on to theology. Since the fourth century, when the expectation of Christ’s imminent return passed, the Catholic Church (and subsequently, most mainstream Protestants) has followed Jesus’ instruction that “you know not the day or the hour” and taught the fundamental truths we find in Scripture about the end of time: At some point, God will conquer evil once and for all, Jesus will return in judgement and believers, living or dead, will enter the fullness of eternal life.Following the example of St. Augustine in The City of God, the teaching Church has been cautious about interpreting the visions in Scriptural apocalyptic literature literally, and, most especially, about connecting these visions to contemporary events. Not so fundamentalists. Unpacking “Bible Prophecy” is a central occupation of Biblical literalists. And, just as any issue that comes up within the ranks of those who insist on the literal “plain meaning” of the Scriptures, they fight like banshees about just whose interpretation of the plain meaning is correct.
Dispensational Premillenarianism claims that when you do this literal interpretation, you come up with the following scenario for the endtimes: Then the Rapture will snatch up the true believers, protecting them from the wrath to come. They get that from First Thessalonians and Matthew. Seven years of really bad stuff follows. That’s the Tribulation. The general timeline comes from Daniel and the nature of the events – those wars, earthquakes, big man-faced locusts and the Antichrist – mostly from Revelation, but Ezekiel and Daniel come in handy, too. After that’s over, the Millennium will arrive, during which Jesus will physically reign over the earth. Then, after a little bit more trouble, the world will end and it’s time for everyone to go to heaven.The problems with this view, of course, are legion, beginning with the insistence that all of the apocalyptic material, including that obviously written with the travails of second-century BC Jews(Daniel) or late first-century AD Christians (Revelation) in mind, should be interpreted as a coarsely literal “prediction” of future events. Besides, it doesn’t even make sense on its own terms. In No Fear of the Storm, Tim Lahaye wrote, “The pre-Tribulation view is the most logical view of Second Coming when Scriptures are taken for their plain, literal meaning…” Really? The more you know about this view, the more absurdly strained it is in its attempts to fit wildly disparate Bible passages, all taken completely out of context, into the script. Just take the concept of the Rapture as a distinct event – such a view isn’t supported by Scripture at all, which always associates the taking up of living believers with the Second Coming of Christ. The “Pre-Trib” view, as it’s known, isn’t uncontroversial among evangelicals either, many of whom critique it for that very failure to be as “literal” as it claims. So where did this whole idea come from?The PreTribulation eschatology that’s being pushed in the Left Behind series is a recent invention. It was initially dreamed up by a 19th-century Englishman named John Nelson Darby and popularized in the United States by Cyrus Ingerson Scofield, who integrated the view into the footnotes of his immensely popular Scofield Reference Bible, first published in 1909 and still in use today.If all this isn’t enough, be warned that these books are unapologetic in their standard fundamentalist anti-Catholicism.
Dispensational Premillenarianism claims that when you do this literal interpretation, you come up with the following scenario for the endtimes: Then the Rapture will snatch up the true believers, protecting them from the wrath to come. They get that from First Thessalonians and Matthew. Seven years of really bad stuff follows. That’s the Tribulation. The general timeline comes from Daniel and the nature of the events – those wars, earthquakes, big man-faced locusts and the Antichrist – mostly from Revelation, but Ezekiel and Daniel come in handy, too. After that’s over, the Millennium will arrive, during which Jesus will physically reign over the earth. Then, after a little bit more trouble, the world will end and it’s time for everyone to go to heaven.The problems with this view, of course, are legion, beginning with the insistence that all of the apocalyptic material, including that obviously written with the travails of second-century BC Jews(Daniel) or late first-century AD Christians (Revelation) in mind, should be interpreted as a coarsely literal “prediction” of future events. Besides, it doesn’t even make sense on its own terms. In No Fear of the Storm, Tim Lahaye wrote, “The pre-Tribulation view is the most logical view of Second Coming when Scriptures are taken for their plain, literal meaning…” Really? The more you know about this view, the more absurdly strained it is in its attempts to fit wildly disparate Bible passages, all taken completely out of context, into the script. Just take the concept of the Rapture as a distinct event – such a view isn’t supported by Scripture at all, which always associates the taking up of living believers with the Second Coming of Christ. The “Pre-Trib” view, as it’s known, isn’t uncontroversial among evangelicals either, many of whom critique it for that very failure to be as “literal” as it claims. So where did this whole idea come from?The PreTribulation eschatology that’s being pushed in the Left Behind series is a recent invention. It was initially dreamed up by a 19th-century Englishman named John Nelson Darby and popularized in the United States by Cyrus Ingerson Scofield, who integrated the view into the footnotes of his immensely popular Scofield Reference Bible, first published in 1909 and still in use today.If all this isn’t enough, be warned that these books are unapologetic in their standard fundamentalist anti-Catholicism.
