En-raptured: what's behind 'left behind'?

Christian Century, April 20, 2004 by Jason Byassee

Rapture Culture: Left Behind in Evangelical America.

By Amy Johnson Frykholm, Oxford University Press, 240 pp., $29.95.

The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the book of Revelation.

By Barbara R. Rossing. Westview, 224 pp., $24.00

I HEARD THAT when the tribulation comes, China will be one of the few countries with a big enough army to take over the United States." My parishioner looked at me earnestly, awaiting confirmation of her theological and political observation. This woman, the spiritual rock of the church, doesn't fit the media profile of those who believe in the "rapture." She is well educated, deeply involved in the community and a successful businesswoman and civic leader--hardly a Neanderthal or escapist.

I decided to respond with what I took to be a fairly plainvanilla, noncontroversial geopolitical observation: "Actually, North Korea's army is bigger than China's." She nodded, satisfied, and headed off to her third church meeting of the week.

What a failure on nay part. But I wasn't equipped to respond adequately. I had seen the glossy displays of the Left

Behind series in bookstores, had heard claims that the novels (the 12th and final installment is due out this spring) had sold more than 60 million copies, but had never met anyone who actually believed in the rapture, neither in my college evangelical fellowship groups nor in seminary. Then I received my first rural church assignment and quickly discovered that out here I was the only person who didn't believe in the rapture. My parishioners simply assume that this is what the Bible teaches. And why shouldn't they--they've never beard otherwise from their preachers.

That I didn't even know enough about dispensationalism to disagree with it intelligently is no accident. Mainline seminaries have ignored this phenomenon in inverse proportion to its growing social and political influence. Meanwhile, the rapture's proponents have not only established a publishing juggernaut; they have also been influencing members of Congress and presidents.

This is deeply ironic. For generations mainline Protestants have tried to "demythologize" the contents of scriptures and creeds in an effort to gain social and political influence, while dispensationalists have avidly "mythologized" the Bible into ever more incredible systems of belief about the "end times." Mainline churches' influence has sagged as we have carried out this bargain, while the dispensationalists' has grown immensely. The rising tide of end-times fiction and politics urges us to take a long, hard look in the mirror.

For befuddled pastors, help is on the way. Two new and quite different books offer a glimpse into the thought world of those who believe in the rapture. Amy Johnson Frykholm analyses the literature from a broad range of perspectives--literary, critical, historical, sociological, feminist and theological. (The theological focus is impressive in a scholar who professes to be a recovering former fundamentalist and mostly nonreligious.) While Frykhoh has no sympathy with the Left Behind series theologically, politically or literarily, she has a great deal of sympathy with its readers and she explores why people with interesting lives are drawn to such schlock in their religious reading. Her book is a good place to start if you're wondering what these novels are about and why they appeal to people.

Barbara B. Rossing's book is more polemical. Anger drives this Lutheran minister and seminary professor. She hates what Left Behind has done to popular Christian eschatology, to the Bible, to public policy and especially to Christians' attitudes toward the environment. (Why save trees when the world is soon going to burn up anyway?) She seeks to rebut the dispensationalists' views and offer a more deeply biblical vision of Jesus' eschatologieal kingdom.

THE BASIC storyline of premillennial dispensationalism--the system of thought that informs "rapture fiction"--originated in the mid-19th century in the teachings of John Nelson Darby, a disaffected former Anglican priest. This version of eschatology holds that the Bible, read aright, contains a schedule for the final events that will precede the end of history. Darby believed that God deals with the world differently in each of seven "dispensations," or eras. We are now in the sixth era of world history; soon to be for lowed by the seventh--the end times.

The first event in the chain of dominoes that will lead to the end is the "rapture"--the secret return of Jesus to transport all true believers (i.e., not mainline liberal Protestants) to heaven. Cars, trains and planes will fly into one another as believers are suddenly taken heavenward, leaving their clothes, personal effects and vehicles behind (hence the bumper sticker: "Warning: in ease of rapture this vehicle will be unmanned"). Those "left behind" will endure seven years of tribulation, mostly inflicted on the world by the Antichrist, disguised as the leader of a one-world government (read: the United Nations). Some of those shocked by the sudden disappearance of their loved ones will become true "Bible-believing" Christians who will band together to resist the wiles of the Antichrist and conduct secret evangelism campaigns meant to grow the power and numbers of their "tribulation force."