"Be ready!" I grew up with that admonition ringing in my
ears. Perhaps you did too. I remember it especially being used
as a method to keep adventurous teenagers in line - the implied
threat that we had better stay on the straight and narrow, or we
might find ourselves doing something or being somewhere that
would be horribly embarrassing if Jesus came back at that moment
and caught us. "Be ready!"
What brings that to mind this week is the impending release
of Volume X in the Left Behind series, those incredibly popular
books which offer a fictionalized account of the events which,
according to one stream of theology, will precede the end of the
world. The new book, The Remnant, has an initial press run of
some 2,750,000 copies, insuring the series' lofty position far
atop the history of religious publishing. And there are three
more books to come.
This is big news. TIME magazine's cover story this week is
devoted to it.(1) People are fascinated with end-of-the-world
scenarios, and apparently always have been - you heard it in the
lesson: "As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the
disciples came to him privately. 'Tell us,' they said, 'when will
this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the
end of the age?'" Anyone who offers to make sense out of what
generations have puzzled over in scripture, is bound to attract
an audience, even if the explanation is couched in fiction.
As we have discussed before, the authors of Left Behind and
its sequels have been clear that their work is fiction. But that
affirmation is a tad disingenuous because, if you pressed Tim
LaHaye, the pastor whose idea for the series sparked the
phenomenon, I suspect he would say that the CHARACTERS are
fictional, but the EVENTS in the midst of which they find
themselves are not. The events reflect LaHaye's understanding of
what lies in store just prior to the promised return of Jesus
Christ. "Wars and rumors of wars...Nation will rise against
nation, and kingdom against kingdom...famines and earthquakes...
an increase in wickedness." We have all that, so these must be
the last days. Soon comes the Rapture, the instant calling to
heaven of all good Christians, while everybody else will be LEFT
BEHIND (thus, the title of the series).
You have seen the bumper stickers: "Warning: In case of the
Rapture, this car will have no driver." Perhaps that is part of
God's judgment on unbelievers - all these out-of-control vehicles
careening every which way and mowing down any reprobate who
happens to be left in the road. Then there are the bumper
stickers in response: "In case of the Rapture, can I have your
car?" Uh huh.
For what it is worth, the popular interest in the Rapture
pre-dates the Left Behind series. In fact, you may very well
have its precursor on your own bookshelves: Hal Lindsey's, The
Late, Great Planet Earth.(2) Lots of folks do. It predicted the
fiery end of the world based on Lindsey's reading of the Old and
New Testaments, and especially the book of Revelation, with the
affirmation that believers need not concern themselves though
because they would be miraculously spared, RAPTURED!
Lots of folks take this incredibly seriously. The TIME
magazine feature introduces us to Todd Strandberg, by day an
airplane mechanic at Offutt Air Force Base in Bellevue, Nebraska;
by night, the webmaster at raptureready.com and the inventor of
the Rapture Index, which he calls a "Dow Jones Industrial Average
of End Time activity." Instead of stocks, it tracks prophecies:
earthquakes, floods, plagues, crime, false prophets and economic
measurements like unemployment that add to instability and civil
unrest, thereby easing the way for the Antichrist. As you might
imagine, ever since our experiences last fall - the terrorist
attacks, the anthrax deaths, the market uncertainty - lots more
people have become interested. Thus, the popular fascination
with the Left Behind series - people are not reading it as
something to pass the time at the beach, but almost as if it were
tomorrow's newspaper.
If you recall, at the start of Book 1, on a 747 bound for
London from Chicago, the flight attendants suddenly find about
half the seats empty, except for the clothes and wedding rings
and dental fillings of the believers who have suddenly been swept
up to heaven. Down on the ground, cars are crashing, husbands
are waking up to find only a nightgown in bed next to them, and
all children under 12 have disappeared as well. (By the way, no
one has ever explained to me why all these good Christians are
being caught up to the beyond minus their clothes - this gives
the term "rapture" an entirely new connotation.) At any rate,
the next nine volumes in the series chronicle the terrible
tribulations suffered by those left behind along with their
struggle to be saved.
Now, as I have explained before, the theological
underpinning of such a scenario is not generally accepted by the
mainstream church. This concept of a "Rapture" in which
Christians are snatched away from the troubles of this world at
the return of Jesus comes from a fellow in the middle of the 19th
century named John Nelson Darby, a lawyer turned minister who was
a member of the Plymouth Brethren in England. Darby preached
something called Dispensational Premillennialism which said that
all of history could be divided into seven eras or
"dispensations" and that the present age, which he called "the
age of the church," immediately preceded this "Rapture." Darby's
excuse for a Rapture was that a seven-year period of terrible
tribulation was coming and the church was going to be spared that
misery. Once the tribulation was over, then a thousand-year-long
reign of God - the Millennium - would follow. The "Rapture" idea
does not come from the book of Revelation (as the concept of the
tribulation and the thousand-year reign of God do) but rather
from Darby's literal reading of that one tiny passage from the
Apostle Paul in his letter to the Thessalonians which we heard
earlier. Chapter 4, verses 16 and 17:
For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a
loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with
the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will
rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are
left will be caught up together with them in the clouds
to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the
Lord forever.
Two problems. First, the imagery is supposed to be
understood as poetic, not photographic - it was a wonderful word
of hope for Christians who were terribly worried that friends and
relatives who had died would miss the return of Jesus - Paul says
NO, they will be included too. The second problem is that Darby
has taken two texts from two different sources and joined them as
if they were a seamless whole. That is an interpretive no-no -
as someone very wise has said, "A text without a context is a
pretext." This idea of a Rapture is a relatively new concept in
the church, and despite all we hear about it, has hardly any
biblical support.
Barnard College's Randall Balmer, the author of several
books on Evangelicals, has called Darby's Rapture "a theology of
despair." In the new volume, The Remnant, one character remarks
that "the world is a spent cartridge." Things are going to hell
in a handbasket, but that is OK - when things get bad enough,
Jesus will come again to rescue his faithful. In real life, when
televangelist Pat Robertson floated his presidential run in 1986,
a New Hampshire pastor complained, "Wait a minute. The next
event on the [End Times] clock is the return of Christ. Things
in society should get worse rather than better. If Christians
worked to turn our nation around, that would delay Christ's
return." Hmm.
Truth is we probably should not bother. As we read a moment
ago: "No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in
heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." OK. As one
commentator notes,
"Jesus says that he does not know...There were things
which even he left without questioning in the hand of
God. There can be no greater warning and rebuke to
those who work out dates and timetables as to when he
will come again. Surely it is nothing less than
blasphemy for us to enquire into that of which our Lord
consented to be ignorant."(3)
The TIME article quoted an annoyed St. Augustine: "To all
those who make calculations... 'Relax your fingers and give them
a rest.'"
So saying, a TIME/CNN poll finds that more than one-third of
Americans say they are paying more attention now to how the news
might relate to the end of the world, and have talked about what
the Bible has to say on the subject. Fully 59% say they believe
the events in Revelation are going to come true, and nearly
one-quarter actually think the Bible predicted the September 11th
attack. And even though the mainline church has been clear about
our position concerning the UNbiblical nature of Rapture
theology, there is plenty of interest in what IS biblical. How
will it all come out? Two-thousand years ago, the disciples
wanted to know. Twenty-first century disciples want to know as
well.
In answer to the questions from the Twelve, Jesus responded
with warnings about world events - the destruction of Jerusalem
and its magnificent Temple, the coming of false teachers who
would claim to speak on Jesus' behalf, wars and rumors of wars,
rampant evil, a litany of despair. This world is not an easy
place, and it is not going to get better.
The scene shifts down through the corridors of history. We
find suicide bombers in Israel, genocide in Rwanda and Kosovo,
22-and-a-half million Africans with AIDS, 600-million children
around the world living in absolute poverty,(4) everyday the threat
of another September 11th. Even here in peaceful, placid Warren,
once-solid businesses go under, jobs are lost, marriages founder,
disease takes it toll, politics are in chaos, and if that's not
enough, a landmark goes up in smoke. Another litany of despair.
This world is not an easy place, and it is not going to get
better.
Where then is our hope? More than 400 years ago, in another
time of great social conflict - the Reformation raging, people
fighting and dying in support of their beliefs - two young men
(one a pastor, the other a professor in the local university)
were asked by their German Governor to put on paper just what
Reformed Christians believed. They were asked to write in simple
terms so the next generation, the youth, would not have so much
trouble.
We still have the results of their work in our Presbyterian
Book of Confessions. It is called the Heidelberg Catechism, a
series of 129 questions and answers that provide an overview of
the faith.(5) They are all helpful, I suppose, but for me, the
very first question and answer make the whole thing worthwhile.
When all around you is in chaos, when life seems no longer worth
living, when it seems to be the end of the world, "What is your
only comfort in life and in death?" The answer:
That I belong - body and soul, in life and in death -
not to myself, but to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ
who, at the cost of His own blood has fully paid for
all my sins...that he protects me so well that, without
the will of my Father in heaven, not a hair can fall
from my head; indeed, that everything must fit His
purpose for my salvation. Therefore, by His Holy Spirit He assures me of eternal life, and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for
Him.
That is gospel. I belong to Jesus, and even if it seems
like the end of the world, I am safe. That makes all the
difference, not only in this world but in the whole new world
still to come.
Amen!
1. Nancy Gibbs, "Apocalypse Now," TIME, 7/1/02, pp. 40-48
2. With C. C. Carlson, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1970)
3. William Barclay, The Daily Study Bible, CD-ROM edition (Liguori, MO: Liguori
Faithware, 1996) used by permission of Westminster/John Knox Press
4. G. Thompson Brown, "A New Initiative," The Presbyterian Outlook, 7/1/02, pp. 6-7
5. The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (USA), Part I, The Book of Confessions,
(Louisville, KY : General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA)), 4.001 ff.
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