Many of the Left Behind series of religious novels by Tim LaHaye and
Jerry Jenkins made the New York Times bestseller's list. The movie "Left
Behind" is making the rounds around the country. They are now being
produced into a series of motion pictures with video releases. Fiction it is.
Biblical teaching it is not. As fiction — what a plot! A vindictive God
battles against a superman antichrist for the souls of men. The time frame is
a future seven-year tribulation in which this vindictive God rains all sorts
of horrors on the followers of Antichrist. A gigantic burning mountain and
falling stars kill hundreds of thousands. Fire burns up one-third of the
earth. The horrors continue. By the end of 3-1/2 years, three billion people
are killed.
The series is not fully released but LaHaye has already told us the
outcome. Cataclysmic killings continue. Finally, a worldwide earthquake wipes
out all the cities, mountains and islands. And you know what? Whatever people
were left cursed God. The Antichrist character sure has dynamic influence.
The superman Antichrist gets his comeuppance. He is thrown into the lake of
fire to be tormented forever. That is not half of it. All those deceived by
Antichrist — the majority of the world's six billion inhabitants — are
thrown into the lake of fire. Antichrist went down fighting, but he won! He
won the battle for men's souls. Antichrist got the majority.
Left Behind is breathtaking drama, but Bible teaching it is not! It is
revisionism. It disowns the historic Protestant teaching expounded by Martin
Luther, Calvin, Chemnitz, and other Reformation reformers that Antichrist was
not an individual but a system — Papacy. It embellishes the Catholic Jesuit
counter reformation concept of the Book of Revelation put forth between AD
1580 and 1595. No Protestant embraced the secret rapture seven-year
tribulation literalism before 1829. It did not even become popular among
Christians until after World War II.
Historic Evangelical scholars believed Revelation was symbolic, not
literal. Mountains are symbolic of nations (Isaiah 2:2-4), stars symbolic of
teachers (Jude 13) and earthquakes symbolic of revolutions (Rev. 11:13 KJV
margin). The best is symbolic of Antichrist which is a church state system —
Papacy (Rev. 13:1-3).
Over against this flawed concept of Left Behind, Scripture clearly
teaches , and we teach accordingly, that the kingdom of Christ on earth will
remain under the cross until the end of the World, Acts 14:22; John 16:33;
18:36; Luke 9:23; 14:27; 17:20-37; 2 Tim. 4:18; Heb. 12:28; Luke 18:8; that
the second visible coming of the Lord will be His final advent, His coming to
judge the quick and the dead, Matt. 24:29, 30; 25:31; 2 Tim. 4:1;2 Thess. 2:8;
Heb. 9:26-28; that there will be but one resurrection of the dead, John 5:28;
6:30, 39, 40; that the time of the Last Day is, and will remain, unknown,
Matt. 24:42; 25:13; Mark 13:32, 37; Acts 1:7, which would not be the case if
the Last Day were to come a thousand years after the beginning of a
millennium; and that there will be no general conversion, a conversion en
masse, of the Jewish nation, Rom. 11:7; 2 Cor. 3:14; Rom. 11:25; 1 Thess.
2:16.
According to these clear passages of Scripture we reject the theology of Left
Behind, since it not only contradicts Scripture, but also engenders a
false conception of the kingdom of Christ, turns the hope of Christians upon
earthly goals, 1 Cor. 15:19; Col. 3:2, and leads them to look upon the Bible
as an obscure book. So beware of the Left Behind series. It is fiction!