Pentecost 2004
From the Editor...
The Challenge of the
“Left Behind” Series
The end of the world. That was the title of a recent article
by Jane Lampman in the Christian Science
Monitor on “the phenomenal success of the Left Behind series of novels
(58
million sold).” A recent (February 2004) 60
Minutes program also covered this theology which has some followers
among a
minority of American Christians.
Central to these books is the idea of “the rapture” of
Christ when it is claimed that he comes quietly and takes his followers
suddenly out of the world. In the movie Left behind, after “the
rapture” planes
and cars crash because the Christians driving them have disappeared.
Those
remaining face terrible trials during the great tribulation, after
which Christ
will return again to earth.
What are we as Anglicans to make of all this?
It is quite wrong to say that the rapture is scriptural, it
is no such thing. There are no references to it, zero, nada in the
Bible. The idea comes from a Latin translation of a
verb, “snatch,” which the Vulgate uses a word with the root “rapt” to
translate.
The
rapture is part of a much larger schema of eschatology
called dispensational premillenialism. It was developed by John Nelson
Darby
(Church of Ireland
originally!) in the 19th century, and Darby taught that Christ’s return
would
be in two stages: one FOR his saints at the rapture, in which the
church is
removed from the world, and the another WITH his saints at the end of
the great
tribulation.
This theology made it into the Scofield Reference
Bible and has been hugely influential in
American Christianity down to this day.
There are so many problems with this
view that one hardly
knows where to begin. It has to postulate a coming of Christ in two
stages, a
total of three resurrections, and a sharp distinction between national Israel
and the church. Careful exegesis does
not support any of this.
It leaves us with a world-eschewing
theology, which is
completely at odds with the vision of the martyr church which is at the
heart
of the book of Revelation.
It takes away from the heart of
effective eschatology which
at its center is Christological (we wait for Jesus’ coming, not our
removal or
snatching), ecclesiological (the church is the martyred pilgrim people
of God
waiting for Christ, living in faith that he who came is he who is
coming), and
cosmological (Jesus is coming to redeem the WORLD which God made by his
word
and which is the theatre of his redemptive activity).
In short, it is awful theology, even
though it is nearly
ubiquitous in American free church Protestantism. The New
Testament only knows of one coming of
Jesus, when he will judge the quick and the dead, when he will judge
and
complete his story which is what the word history really means.
The only way I know to teach about
eschatology is to teach
what Christians have understood about these things, and then to
dialogue with
dispensationalism and explain why those who teach it are wrong. I
believe dispensationalists deserve our great
respect, because at least they are TRYING to understand these vital
subjects,
whereas nearly every Episcopal Church ignores them. It is
hypocritical in the extreme for mainline
churches to sneer at the authors of Left
Behind without explaining why they are wrong (which they are) and what
the
RIGHT theology is in all of this.
Christ has died, Christ is risen, yes, but also, Christ will
come again. Thinking carefully and
scripturally about that last phrase is part of our responsibility as
Christians.
The Rev. Canon Dr.
Kendall S. Harmon
Contact Dr Harmon by
e-mail at ksharmon@mindspring.com
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