Left Behind Is Best Left Alone

A few weeks back I had a hankering for some easy-to-read fiction.

Life was getting a little rough, and I wanted to escape to a comfy armchair with a cup of tea and a novel. Not a literary classic that would make me work too hard — just a fun detective story, clean historical romance or maybe a fascinating fantasy. Off to the library I went.

Once I got there, one of the first things to catch my eye was the Left Behind series. I knew these books had been best sellers since the appearance of the first volume in 1995, and that one was made into a movie that has proven quite popular as a video. I'd seen them on the shelves of K-Mart, a rare honor for works of religious fiction, being snatched up by housewives hungry, like me, for a little wholesome entertainment. I suppose it was the stark, black covers with their ominous TITLEs that attracted me. I knew that the eschatology — that is, the end-times theology — in these books was erroneous, but that didn't worry me. After all, I was just interested in pure escapism.

Returning home to that comfy chair, I quickly understood the mass appeal of the Left Behind series. (As of late February, the ninth installment in the series, Desecration, was still in the top 25 on the New York Times' best-seller list for hard-cover fiction.) Like many best-selling authors, Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins don't waste time getting readers onto the edge of their seats. The first book opens with the mysterious disappearance of millions of people around the world. They've left no trace except for the clothing they were last seen wearing, which litters the earth in little piles.

This is a sign of the “Rapture” — which, in fundamentalist Christian eschatology, is a secret coming of Christ, prior to the last judgment, to save his flock from the anti-Christ and the seven years of tribulation he will usher in. (The “Rapture” theory comes from a semi-literal interpretation of the Book of Revelation subscribed to by many evangelicals and fundamentalists.)

A shocked and grieving world grasps for an explanation, but the only ones who know the truth are the heretofore “unsaved” friends and relatives of the vanished Christian believers. These people realize the error of their ways, “accept Christ as their personal lord and savior” and form new congregations of “tribulation saints” who must endure a world in long-term crisis. They do their best to convert others and throw a few wrenches into the plans of the anti-Christ.

Their hope is to survive for seven years until the “Glorious Appearing” of Christ, who will then set up an earthly kingdom for 1,000 years. Meanwhile, things are stirring in Israel, where 144,000 Jews accept Christ and start evangelizing the rest of the world, even as the anti-Christ begins cracking down on anyone who doesn't join a new one-world religion. This is headed by — who else? A newly elected Catholic pope, who moves his see to the rebuilt city of Babylon.

Novel Doctrines

Sound confusing? You haven't heard the half of it. I eventually plowed through six of the nine (and counting) Left Behind volumes. Although the characters kept me interested for quite a while with their unique personalities, personal crises and romances, I soon found myself skimming over page after page of overheated fire, brimstone and heavenly chastisement.

The blatant anti-Catholicism didn't do much for me, either. Indeed, the writers didn't even bother to learn enough about the Church they vilify to make their Catholic characters talk like Catholics. The liberal American bishop who gets elected pope calls the book of Revelation the “Apocrypha” and refers to his religion as “Holy Roman Catholic Mother Church.”

Who would tell today's oppressed Christians that God has promised to spare 'true believers' from persecution?

At last, I had had enough. My jaunt with escapism, it seemed, had awakened in me a craving for truth.

Providentially, this reversal of appetites coincided with my hearing about a new book from Ascension Press examining the Left Behind phenomenon from a thoroughly Catholic perspective: The Rapture Trap: A Catholic Response to ‘End Times' Fever by Paul Thigpen.

I soon learned that the rift over the “Rapture” is not about Catholics vs. Protestants. In fact, although a few early-American Protestant ministers suggested that Christians would be “caught up in the air” well before the last judgment, the idea was not well received until the 19th century, when John Darby, a British minister, began preaching a “secret rapture of the faithful.” His followers began spreading this teaching to North America, where it was readily accepted by non-denominational congregations. Rapture theology, known as dispensationalism, was taken up with enthusiasm by tent-meeting revivalists in the south and west.

Today, most fundamentalists and a great many evangelicals are the heirs of the dispensationalist system. According to these beliefs, God's dealings with man can be categorized into seven periods, called “dispensations.” With each dispensation came different revelations, covenants and laws. Therefore God's plan for the people of Israel has no connection to the historical Church. Because they rejected Christ, God set the Jews aside for the time being, and set up a new dispensation with the gentiles — the Christian church. Christian believers will eventually be removed from the face of the earth — that's the Rapture — in order to clear the stage for Israel to come to the forefront again. Then God will be able to pick up with them where he left off 2,000 years ago. Hence the fundamentalist obsession with fitting the doings of the modern state of Israel into their interpretations of the book of Revelation.

Suburban Messiah

Thigpen points out some of the flawed ideas behind dispensationalist theories. Among them is an unbiblical outlook toward suffering: “[The rapture doctrine] can be understood to imply that ultimately God wants to shield contemporary Christians completely from the injuries of those who oppose them for taking their stand with Him,” he writes. “Yet the life of Jesus Christ and the lives of His saints throughout history amply demonstrate otherwise. … The Left Behind series assumes a worldview that is seriously limited, displaying the cramped horizons of all too many comfortable, suburban, middle-class Americans. A broader range of vision would show that, even now, Christians in places such as China and Sudan are being imprisoned, enslaved, tortured, murdered, some even brutally crucified, for their faith. Could we dare to look them in the eye and tell them that God has promised to spare true believers from persecution?”

Along with showing up the rapture doctrine for the relatively modern aberration that it is, the author also accentuates the positive. He gives a Scripture-saturated overview of God's real plan for mankind, beginning with Christ's first coming and redemptive death, through the establishment of his Church as the sign of his continual presence among us. Later chapters detail all that the Church has taught through the centuries regarding the end of the world. A final section gives Catholics some guidelines for discernment regarding the many private revelations that purport to give information about various end-times events.

Thigpen concludes by reminding us that the second coming of Christ is something to be ardently hoped for by Christians. He suggests that we may even be able to hasten Jesus' approach by praying and working for the salvation of the “full number” of souls that God desires.

Left Behind was an interesting ride, but I don't know if I'll ever complete the series. Our local library hasn't acquired the last few volumes, and I'm not exactly holding my breath any more, waiting to find out what happens to the characters next. But, if I do succumb to a new fit of trash-fiction addiction, I'll remember to follow up each session in my armchair with a prayer for the many readers who have been caught in the rapture trap. May the light of Catholic truth set them free.

Daria Sockey writes from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

Editor's note: To order The Rapture Trap: A Catholic Response to ‘End Times’ Fever by Paul Thigpen, call Ascension Press at (800) 376-0520 or visit www.ascension-press.com on the internet.