It sure does. I actually read the whole “Left Behind” series along with my Protestant BFF. She enjoyed the first few books, I think up through around book 8 or 9; I enjoyed some of the storylines that were not specifically related to the whole ‘rapture’ idea but more about the main characters and their personalities and relationships, but did not enjoy the very antiCatholic side riffs (The Pope at the time of the ‘rapture’ for example WAS ‘raptured’ because he had streamlined the Church and was more Protestant in outlook, and this was very clearly stated, and the man who became Pope for most of the series was worldly and sinful and there was far too much about him wanted to be called Pontifex Maximus and all the beast stuff. . .but of course as it got closer to the whole mark of the beast and how it was implemented, and especially the last book when Jesus returned, it was very much nonCatholic and very jarring! And you know, my friend didn’t care for it because she found that although it obviously relied on a particular ‘following the book of Revelation’ perspective, it was entirely TOO speculative yet presented as ‘gospel’.
So even evangelical Protestants like my friend don’t always have the ‘same’ kind of view, but unfortunately a lot of the views which are more particularly antiCatholic seem to them to be just incredibly solid —they all, to a man (or woman) accept Mary as not a virgin after Jesus’ birth, Jesus with tons of siblings, as a given. So they miss out on some of the important Christological perspectives. . . If Jesus had ‘biological siblings’, the idea of us being His brothers and sisters is just another part of HUMANITY, it’s not an incredible, miraculous gift of God the Father to humanity THROUGH Jesus. If Jesus’ mother is not solely HIS, then Mary as Mother of us and the Church is likewise watered down to nothingness.
That being said, there are evangelical perspectives that tie in well with Catholicism and aren’t a problem at all. Most of them for example have a ‘young” Joseph and that’s a perspective that Father Donald Calloway pursues very convincingly from a Catholic perspective in his latest book on St. Joseph, yet it is very different from the last centuries’ ‘old Joseph’ that has somehow become the ‘only view.’ I’m with Mother Angelica, “old men don’t walk to Egypt!”
