This article was originally published in a slightly different form in the November 2000 issue of
This Rock magazine,
a publication of
Catholic Answers.
In 1970 a youth pastor from southern California published a book titled The Late Great Planet Earth. It would become the best-selling nonfiction book of the 1970s, going through more than one hundred printings totaling thirty-five million copies and making Hal Lindsey a household name among those who had an interest in "Bible prophecy." Lindsey continues writing "end times" prophecy books (close to twenty at last count) and also peddles his teachings about the end of the world through a regular television program, speaking engagements and Holy Land tours.
But Lindsey's long and lucrative reign as king of the Bible prophecy ended a few years ago. In 1995 Tyndale House Publishers published Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth's Last Days, co-authored by Tim Lahaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. Initially meant to consist of seven books, the ongoing series - now expanded to twelve novels - has sold well over 10 million copies, setting a string of publishing and sales records. The seventh book of the series, The Indwelling: The Beast Takes Possession, was released in May 2000 and immediately recorded several milestones, including being the first work of Christian fiction to be #1 on the New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal and Publisher's Weekly bestsellers lists. The series has become a full-blown industry, with a Left Behind series for kids, audio tapes and CDs, and a major motion picture in the works. The popularity of this series and the goal behind them is worth examining since many Catholics are reading them and nearly everyone knows someone who has read part or all of the series. What follows is a look at the novels, the theological premises they rest upon and the revealing attitudes the authors have toward the Catholic Church.
While Lindsey was an unknown at the start of his rapid rise to
publishing stardom, neither Lahaye or Jenkins are strangers to
success in the evangelical Protestant publishing world and
beyond. This
Wikipedia article provides an
impressive list of some one hundred books that Jenkins has authored
or co-authored, including being the literary sidekick for
best-selling autobiographies by Billy Graham, Hank Aaron, Walter
Payton and a host of other celebrities.
Lahaye,
a graduate of Bob
Jones University, has been a well-known pastor, author and
speaker in various evangelical circles since the 1970s,
pastoring a mega-church in San Diego, founding FamilyLife
Seminars and the
PreTrib Research Center,
and has been active in Christian education. He has also
authored non-fiction books on marriage, sexuality, personal
growth and, of course, Bible prophecy, to the sum of several
million copies.
Novels about the end times and the Rapture have been regular and popular fare within Fundamentalist and evangelical circles since the 1970s, and in many ways the Left Behind books are par for the course. One unique feature is the arrangement between Lahaye and Jenkins: the former provides the general storyline; the latter does the actual writing. The books attempt to render the events of the Book of Revelation in a fictional narrative, following the lives of several characters in the aftermath of the Rapture - the secret, silent removal of "true Christians" from earth prior to the seven years of Tribulation.
These characters discover that they've been "left behind," come to accept the Biblical "truth" of the Rapture, have "born again" experiences and begin working to save as many souls as they can from impending destruction and the emerging Anti-Christ. All of this is in keeping with the premillennial dispensationalist view of the end of the world which is the preeminent eschatological system of conservative American Protestants (see "Waiting To Be Raptured", This Rock, April 1999).
From a literary perspective the Left Behind books are less than impressive, even for fans of supermarket paperbacks. The writing is mediocre, saturated with cliches and filled with wooden dialogue between two-dimensional characters, as shown by this exchange which takes place between Raymond, a pilot, and his daughter Chloe after realizing his wife/her mother has been raptured:
"You're saying the only logical explanation is God, that he took his own and left the rest to us?"But the average writing and paper thin characters hardly matter since the real point of the series is to present a theological system, as evidenced by the nearly endless number of pages filled with sermons, lectures and explanations about the Rapture, impending doom and . . . well, the Rapture. In essence, the books are "tract-novels," stories wrapped around huge chunks of blatant proselytizing.
"That's what I'm saying."
"I don't want to hear this."
"Chloe, our own family is a perfect picture of what happened. If what I'm saying is right, the logical two people [mother and son] are gone and the logical two are left."
"You think I'm that much of a sinner?"
"Chloe, listen. Whatever you are, I am. I'm not judging you. If I'm right about this, we missed something. I always called myself a Christian, mostly because I was raised that way and I wasn't Jewish."
"Now you're saying you're not a Christian?"
"Chloe, I think the Christians are gone."
"So I'm not a Christian either?" (p. 165)
This is not lost on many readers of the series, as a perusal of their reviews on the internet indicates. Some readers who were not Christian expressed annoyance at the "religious jargon," but many others enthused with comments such as "I just finished this book and must say that it's the best novel I ever read" and "Upon stumbling upon Tim LaHaye & Jerry Jenkins' novel, Left Behind, I could finally get a grasp of Revelation through the glimpse of modern-day and real people I could relate to." One reader launched this revealing defense of the books:
"I have a hard time understanding those who berate this or any of the books in the series. Except the fact that their [sic] blind to the truths revealed. You have to remember that this is Biblically based fiction. And the authors are trying to get a message out. Will you hear it? . . . These novels were inspired by God - to give a realistic look at the horrible ordeal that those who've been left behind will endure during the tribulation. The point is... you don't have to be. Left behind that is. This series has given enough truth that those who haven't yet made a decision to follow Jesus Christ, have been given a chance to see what they'll endure if they refuse to acknowledge him as Lord. That's the whole point of these novels. I'm thankful that I won't have to endure it, but I am concerned for those who will." (www.amazon.com, June 13, 2000).
A notable feature of the Left Behind books is the absence of denominations - characters are either Christians or destined for destruction. The Catholic Church is hardly mentioned at all, a near absence that is not altogether surprising for a couple of reasons. The first is that the dispensationalist system stresses that the "true Church" is invisible and that "true Christians" come from every sort of denomination, making such distinctions meaningless. Of course, what constitutes a "true Christian" usually involves adhering to substantial portions of the dispensational perspective.
The second reason is practical. Christian novelists such as Lahaye know that Catholics make up a substantial part of their market and will often respond positively to the "soft sell." Thus, when a reader claimed that one of the books depicted most Catholics as being "left behind," Jenkins responded by saying the books are "not anti-Catholic" and that "[a]lmost every person in the book who was left behind was Protestant. Astute readers will understand where we're coming from. True believers in Christ, regardless of their church 'brand' will be raptured." (www.amazon.com, August 26, 1999).
But while Jenkin's reply is accurate - the novels aren't anti-Catholic per se, although their worldview is in opposition to Church teaching. But Jenkin's response doesn't tell the whole story. For that one must turn to Lahaye's three "non-fiction" books on Bible prophecy. Two of these - Rapture Under Attack and Revelation Unveiled - are recently revised and reprinted editions of earlier books and the third, Are We Living In The End Times? is a new release co-authored with Jenkins. Rapture Under Attack is an emotional and combative defense of the pre-tribulational Rapture, light on scholarship and heavy on bombastic rhetoric. For example, it includes the highly ironic claim that both "a-Millennialism and post-Millennialism" use methods of Scripture interpretation similar to that of Christian Science, the Jehovah's Witnesses, Armstrong's World Church of Tomorrow "and most of the cults" (p. 223) - a remark that shows both Lahaye's polemical bent and his lack of scholarly honesty.
More interesting, however, are the latter two books, since both are packaged to tie-in with the Left Behind books. Both contain lengthy and blatant anti-Catholic attacks which would make Jack Chick, Loraine Boettner and Dave Hunt proud, especially since much of the anti-Catholic material used is directly or indirectly taken from those authors.
In Revelation Unveiled, Lahaye uses the traditional Fundamentalist tactic of correlating the church of Thyatira (Rev. 2:18-29) with "The Pagan Church" of Rome. This apostate Church mixes paganism with Christianity, resulting in the Dark Ages and the existence of "Babylonian mysticism," a term used repeatedly to describe Catholicism. Boettner's infamous list of "doctrines" is provided (p. 66), including the especially horrible practices of using holy water and singing the Ave Maria.
Lahaye later praises "the greatest book ever written on [Babylon] . . . the masterpiece The Two Babylons, by Rev. Alexander Hislop . . ." and states that "to my knowledge" the book has never been refuted (p. 266), indicating once again the low level of scholarship he practices, not to mention his ignorance of Catholic apologetics (and historical scholarship) refuting the bizarre claims of Hislop and others like him. After reproducing several paragraphs of Hislop's book Lahaye proclaims that "[a]fter reading the above quotations, you may be inclined to think me anti-Catholic, but that isn't exactly true; I am anti-false religion." (p. 269).
Are We Living in the End Times?, co-authored by Jenkins and laced with excerpts from the Left Behind series, is cut from the same anti-Catholic cloth. Writing about the "Mystery Babylon religion," the authors make the remarkable and unsubstantiated claim that "[e]very false religion in the world can be traced back to Babylon." Babylon "is the mother of all false religions and Jerusalem is the mother of true faith" while Rome "is the mother of an unholy mixture of the two" (p. 172). The history of Christianity's demise into pagan practices such as "prayers for the dead, making the sign of the cross, worship of saints and angels, instituting the mass, and worship of Mary" are presented in breathless Chick-ean fashion (ps. 173-174).
The "spiritualizing of Scripture" instituted by Augustine is pinpointed as the key moment in the decline in "scriptural authority" (p. 174), while the disappearance of the Scriptures for 1100 years is fully explained: they "were kept locked up in monasteries and museums" while "the Dark Ages prevailed" (p. 174). After Lahaye and Jenkins solemnly note "that as many as 40 million persons were killed during that period when Babylonian mysticism controlled the church" (p. 175), one can only come to one conclusion: Lahaye and Jenkins are anti-Catholics of the classic Fundamentalist variety - and proud of it.
Despite the authors' biases and abysmal scholarship, the Left Behind series will undoubtedly continue to set sales records, and the sort of Bible prophecy that Lahaye and Jenkins propagate will continue to live on. The genius of premillenial dispensationalism is that it rests on the hinge of the Rapture, which does not rely so much on dates as on world events. Thus any given day's events can be read into this "end time" system, guaranteeing elasticity, longevity and a hefty bank account. As the end of time keeps moving beyond our reach, millions of people have left behind their cash at their local book store in exchange for Lahaye and Jenkins' vision of the future - will you be next?
©2000 Carl E. Olson