Culture

Selling the Apocalypse: The Rise of Premillennialism from Fringe Belief to Growth Industry

Mark Powell

Over a decade ago, Ron Beers, the publisher of Tyndale House Publishers, a then mid-sized Christian press located in Carol Stream, Illinois, received a proposal for a novel titled Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth’s Last Days. The novel was to be coauthored by Dr. Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, two writers well known in the Christian book community. But for Beers—thinking (rightly) perhaps he had found a modern incarnation of Hal Lindsay’s apocalyptic The Late Great Planet Earth—the title was reason enough to snap up the proposal. His prescience was astounding. In 1995, Left Behind was released and promptly sky-rocketed to the top of the New York Times’ best-seller list. In 2005, the twelfth, and purportedly last (though prequels are in the works), of the Left Behind series was released. That Glorious Appearing pre-sold its entire 1.9 million print-run three weeks before release seemed somehow fitting: over ten years at least 70 million books had been sold; Tyndale had become a major publishing house, with sales of its flagship series rivaled only by the Harry Potter series; and Bible prophecy had (again) become mainstream suburban entertainment.

But of perhaps even more importance was the accompanying seismic shift in industry thinking. The “Rapture/End Times” market, as it quickly became known, is, as one commentator put it, “a new growth industry” in the United States. Chris Berlet of the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University describes it as “a subculture that is one of the largest in the U.S.” On the heels of Left Behind came a slew of copycat books, along with greeting cards, calendars, videos, “survival kits,” movies, and, most recently, a controversial (and frighteningly violent) video game. While marketing analysts in New York and Los Angeles may have been initially stunned by the explosion of a prophecy culture few outside evangelical and fundamentalist churches understood, they wasted no time in rushing product after product to market. For whatever muddled signs one might find regarding the End Times one thing was perfectly clear: selling the Rapture equaled big bucks. For this, they had LaHaye and Jenkins to thank.

Long before becoming a best-selling author, Dr. Tim LaHaye (who has a Doctor of Ministry degree from Western Conservative Baptist Seminary and a Doctor of Literature degree from Liberty University) was a Field Marshall in the American culture wars, allying himself with the likes of Pat Robertson, James Dobson, and Oral Roberts. A founding member of the Moral Majority, LaHaye later founded the American Coalition for Traditional Values, an organization that played a central role in helping to re-elect Ronald Reagan. Not to be outdone, LaHaye’s wife, Beverly, founded the conservative group Concerned Women for America. All the while, LaHaye was pastoring Shadow Mountain Community Church, a large evangelical church in southern California, and turning out self-help books on topics like marriage and overcoming fear.

Before celebrity beckoned in the form of falling airplanes and a purportedly assassinated UN General Secretary, Dr. Jerry Jenkins (the doctorate in this case is Honorary) was a wildly prolific ghost writer, authoring over 160 “as told to” first person biographies, including books “by” Nolan Ryan and Walter Payton. Jenkins now owns a film production company, Jenkins Entertainment, and, like LaHaye, stunning religious and political influence, to say nothing of their collective economic clout.

Arguably, not since Cyrus Scofield have more influential figures in the world of Bible Prophecy lived. The difference is that while all three have disseminated or promoted a particularly narrow reading of the Bible (focusing on the Book of Revelation), shaping the religious and cultural landscape of America, LaHaye and Jenkins are, economically speaking, treading terra incognita. The Rapture is no longer just about Christ’s return; the Rapture is about selling Christ’s return—and selling it in the worst of economic times. These days, from books to video games to water filtration systems, nothing sells like the Apocalypse. The Rapture has reached an economic apotheosis in the Left Behind franchise through a combination of adroit marketing and brand management, American exceptionalism, and an appeal to those who feel culturally marginalized: the “left behind” of conservative, middle-class America.

While the selling of the apocalypse is a modern phenomenon, the ideas surrounding the End Times are not. “Millennialism,” the belief that our earthly world will end giving way to the kingdom of God, has been present in some form for almost two thousand years. American culture, from Puritans to Southern Baptists, is rife with belief in the End Times. “‘America,’ states historian Richard Landes, head of Boston University's Center for Millennial Studies, ‘was born in an apocalyptic stew.’” “Premillennialism” is particularly prevalent in modern Protestantism. The belief holds that the Second Coming will take place before the thousand year period so that Jesus can reign on earth. Believers, however, will first be “raptured”: whisked into the sky “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye” (I Corinthians 15:52).

James H. Moorhead uses a Sherlock Holmes reference, describing Apocalypticism in modern Protestantism as “the dog that did not bark.” “Beginning with the so-called Great Awakening of the 1740s,” writes Moorhead, “periods of religious excitement and numerous conversions intermittently rumbled across the American landscape and continued well into the nineteenth century.” Protestants tended “to associate these awakenings with millennial hope.” Paul Boyer describes prophetic belief as “a continuing motif” that “periodically flared to even greater levels of intensity.” These modern “flare ups” offer windows into the evolving notion of the End Times in the culture of the United States.

The father of Premillenial Dispensationalism was John Darby. Born in 1800 and ordained in the Church of Ireland in 1825, Darby soon withdrew from the church and in 1837 became a traveling preacher, frequenting the United States. His teachings were not new. Centered on dispensations, they argued that one cycle ended with the crucifixion of Christ and that another cycle would commence with the Rapture. Following the disappearance of Christians, the Tribulation would begin: a seven year period during which the Anti-Christ would rule. This period would end only with the Battle of Armageddon, when Christ and his sainted army would return to defeat the Anti-Christ and his forces. Thereafter would come the Millennium, a thousand year rule by Christ, a final uprising by Satan, Satan’s defeat, the resurrection of the dead, and, finally, the Last Judgment.

This Apocalyptic timeline had been around for sometime, dating, in a similar form, all the way back to Joachim of Fiore. But Darby was the first to create a “cohesive system…buttressed at every point by copious biblical proof texts, then tirelessly promote[d] through his writings and preaching tours.” But why did Darby’s system of Dispensationalism move from fringe to mainstream Protestantism? Boyer cites three reasons. First, Darby’s beliefs were anti-institutional in nature, complimenting the individualist ideology of a nation that was still in large part a dangerous frontier. Darby also avoided Miller’s mistake(s) of date setting. The second reason for the popularity of Dispensationalism revolved around Darby’s “two prophetic tracks—one for Jews, one for Gentiles.” Rejecting both England and United States as candidates to be the “New Israel,” Darby believed the Jews would return to their homeland and rebuild the Temple. Again, while Darby wasn’t the first to give the Jews a key role in the End Times, he was the first to codify this belief. Lastly, the timing of Dispensationalism was paramount. Fundamentalist readings of the bible were beginning to be challenged from varied sources. In 1859, Charles Darwin had published On the Origin of the Species; meanwhile, historical-critical scholars were gaining prominence in Germany. Darby gave evangelicals the kind of system needed to combat their antagonists.

Following the cataclysm of the Civil War, the importance of Dispensationalism for fundamentalists grew as the Social Gospel, the idea that the Kingdom of God was tied up with progressive action on earth, took root in mainstream Protestant congregations. Early on, both liberal and conservative Protestants worked for progressive causes like child labor and low wages. But fundamentalists, particularly during the Progressive age of 1900-1920, came to view the Social Gospel as a misguided attempt to save a doomed world. Liberals were seen by Fundamentalists as substituting works for traditional faith.

The period from 1865 to 1914 was a tumultuous time of growth and radicalism; Apocalypticism was exempt from neither; and while the Social Gospel of Walter Rauschenbush represented the majority of Protestants, by 1900, Dispensationalism was “bedrock doctrine” for fundamentalists. As Darby wrapped up the last of his six tours of the United States, Robert Anderson, an investigator for London’s Scotland Yard, was writing The Coming Prince, yet another tract to reinforce the foundation of the imminent Second Coming. A hugely influential book, The Coming Prince was reprinted as recently as 1986. American premillennialists were also doing their parts, particularly James Brookes and William Blackstone, both of whom authored influential books while organizing some of the earliest conferences on Dispensationalism in 1875 and 1878. Dwight Moody founded the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago while preaching the Second Coming. Indeed, a far-flung, though often hidden, network of evangelists and congregations were taking shape; a development whose full impact would not be realized for another half-century.

Such success leads one to again ask: why did Apocalypticism and all its attendant beliefs thrive? There was, as already pointed out, the function of the doctrine as both antidote and alternative to the misguided ends of the Social Gospel, but that doesn’t explain the classless nature of the belief. As Paul Boyer notes, Apocalypticism was not “merely the desperate creed of the disinherited.” In fact, outrageously wealthy men like Cyrus McCormick, J. P. Morgan, and John D. Rockefeller subscribed, at least in part, to some tenets of Fundamentalism. The answer seems to lie to some extent in the vague nature of what steps, if any, should be taken. Capitalism was corrupting, but taking action against it seemed as pointless as any other reform. God’s plan would unfold (in the very near—though never specified—future) regardless of the work of humankind (excepting mission work, an imperative gleaned from Matthew 24:14). Premillennialists were against Darwin, vaguely against democracy; they rejected social action. Dispensationalism, then, at least for the masses, might be seen as something of a lassiez faire revenge fantasy, a populist appeal in an age of populism: a doctrine that required nothing of its followers excepting belief.

The apotheosis of this creed reached an early peak in the figure of Cyrus Scofield and his Scofield Reference Bible. Following what might generously be called a “colorful” past fighting for the Confederacy and fleeing a wife and two children following accusations of he had stolen political contributions to a former partner, Scofield, in jail on forgery charges, experienced a religious conversion. Thereafter, Scofield pastored a church, founded a monthly magazine, conducted a Bible correspondence school, and joined the faculty of one of Moody’s Bible schools But it is his Reference Bible for which Scofield is remembered.

Scofield placed the texts and his notes on the same pages, a technique that leant great authority to his Dispensational beliefs. The Reference Bible is arguably the most important “single document in all of fundamentalist literature,” do in no small part to the five to ten million copies sold by Oxford University Press from 1909 to 1967. The notes were accessible, deeply suspicious of all power, and described the present as a “layman’s age”—all of which held great appeal. Dispensationalism in large, held a bleak view of humankind, a belief buoyed by the 1914 outbreak of the First World War.

War was seen by premillennialists as preparing the way for the Second Coming. Fundamentalists were not alone in their dire reaction. The wholesale slaughter of the “Great War” made it difficult, if not ridiculous, to believe in the march of progress. Karen Armstrong cites the terror of the war as shifting conservative Protestants into the Fundamentalist camp. The British government’s 1917 Balfour Declaration helped to speed such shifts—surely, given British support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, the end was near. Scofield pointed to the Bolshevik Revolution and the formation of the League of Nations as signs. “‘PROPHECY,’ declared a Moody Bible Institute textbook, ‘[IS] CHANGING THE MAP OF EUROPE.’” As the fever spiked, Fundamentalist congregations began to consolidate power and move for the marginalization of liberals. This effort would reach a crescendo in William Jennings Bryan and the 1925 Scopes “Monkey Trial.” Mocked by H. L. Mencken and the national press, Fundamentalism in all its premillenial incarnations would go “underground” for the near future, creating a vast network of colleges, presses, and radio stations.

Many Americans now thought Fundamentalism to be a thing of the past. But like Mark Twain, rumors of its death were greatly exaggerated. Premillennialism reemerged as Fascist governments came to power, citing first Mussolini, then Hitler, as possible candidates for the role of Anti-Christ. But it was only in the early 1950s when the extent of grass-roots Fundamentalism became clear. In Billy Graham, one of the earliest “televangelists,” Fundamentalists found the perfect vehicle for delivery of their premillennialist message. Along with Graham came Oral Roberts, Bob Jones and his eponymous university, Wheaton College, and Joseph McCarthy’s “red scare”—all flourishing in the shadow of greatest sign yet of the coming Apocalypse: the atomic bomb.

With the arms race and the lowering of the Iron Curtain, the bomb demanded a new consideration of eschatology, eschatology beyond the bounds of the sanctuary. So as Israel was founded, technology progressed, cold wars flared hot, the Cuban Missile crisis came and went, and Graham preached to mass audiences, premillennialism flourished. The end, predicted the Moody Bible Institute, could come at any moment. But what came were the 60s and the spirit of revolt. It was impossible, however, for premillennialists to read even these events through any lens excepting that of the End Times. Sexual permissiveness, drugs, rebellion—surely these were (again) signs that the end was near. Other developments helped to spur Fundamentalism forward, particularly the growth of the south. As the “sunbelt” or “New South” emerged, Southerners found their world “invaded” by a flux of northerners often seeking work or to retire in a milder climate. With these “modern carpetbaggers” came liberal and progressive ideas that ran counter to traditional conservative codes. The reactions of southerners was, in large part, a further retreat into premillennialism, their “literature of resentment.”

Then came the 1967 Six Days War and the publication of Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth, the most direct antecedent to the Left Behind series. While contributing nothing new to premillenial interpretation, Lindsey did translate (and disseminate, to the tune of millions of copies sold), traditional apocalyptic notions into the language of nuclear Holocaust. The prose itself is patronizing, alarmist, curiously dated (full of post-hippie vernacular), and celebratory, seemingly itching for the coming slaughter. Lindsey offers a brief survey of Old Testament prophets, then moves on to the “keys to the prophetic puzzle”—Israel. Working from the lexicon of the Cold War, “World War III” will begin with a Russian invasion of Israel and Egypt, followed by a Pan Arabic assault, followed by a Russian counterattack—the Battle of Armageddon. Lindsey’s book is important not only for its further popularization of premillennialism, but as an early indicator of the public appetite for apocalyptic beliefs filtered not only into modern scenarios, but into contemporary vernacular as well—exactly the formula Jenkins and LaHaye would take to new heights.

But first would come the laying of the political groundwork: the Reagan 80s and the rise of Jerry Falwell and Pat Roberson (Graham, of course, was, and is, a prominent figure. But in the 80s his sermons and books moved in emphasis from the apocalyptic to social issues, even the moral necessity of disarmament). Founder of the Moral Majority, Falwell, described by Boyer as the “prince of the electronic church,” was both confidant to Ronald Reagan and premillenial (false) prophet holding that nuclear war was “inevitable, imminent and…inescapable.” Pat Robertson founded the Christian Broadcast Network, another vehicle key in disseminating the Fundamentalist message, while preaching the end, going so far as setting a date: 1982. When the date passed, Robertson, like Falwell, backpedaled away from prophesying the end. Premillennial views even reached as far as the White House. Falwell and Robertson are also important for their roles in the exploding culture wars—wars that helped pave the way for “Rapture boom” of the next decade.

Falwell’s Moral Majority was seen initially as the vehicle through which Fundamentalists might “put America back on the right path.” As Karen Armstrong, among many, notes, the message of the far-right was nothing new. The Moral Majority was “against” far more than it was “for”: against feminism, abortion, the United Nations, the “liberal establishment,” and equality for homosexuals. The majority of Americans, claimed LaHaye, already a major figure in Fundamentalist politics/religion, was tired of being manipulated by a secular liberal minority. The revolt had begun, with Fundamentalists emerging onto the public stage. The early nineties and the relatively progressive presidency of Bill Clinton seemed at first to be a precursor to the latest demise of premillennial Fundamentalism. This, however, proved to be anything but the case. The impeachment of Clinton (important in that it rallied the [the] beleaguered far-right), preceded by the 1995 release of Left Behind (re)exploded the popularity of Apocalypticism. Coupled with the catastrophe of September 11th, the Biblical rhetoric of George W. Bush’s War on Terror, the Second Intifadah, the war in Iraq, and the 2008 global economic collapse the signs (once again) seemed to be aligning. Meanwhile, Fundamentalists, having moved into the ranks of the middle class, were lining up to buy whatever products could be rushed to market. The Apocalypse as a “Growth Industry” was now de rigueur: it is simply (and rightfully) taken for granted that any product dealing with premillennialism would sell.

Chip Berlet writes that, “Since the 1970 publication of The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey…the end times have been a growth industry,” steadily, and then rapidly, gaining strength. Among the available products are novels, commentaries on the Book of Revelation, video games, and post-Rapture survival guides and kits. The internet has been a boon to armchair apocalypticists, allowing sites like RaptureReady.com, RaptureIndex.com, and LeftBehind.com to thrive.

Rapture Ready is one of the more interesting (and accessed) sites, averaging more than 5400 visitors a day. The site features all the touchstones of Rapture beliefs though: a slew of articles on Futurism and Prophecy; a weekly column called “Nearing Midnight;” a page of FAQs that answer questions like “Why is wrong with date setting?” and “Since things are getting worse, is the Devil working overtime?”; a chat room with almost 80,000 threads; a gallery of photographs of world leaders labeled “The Mr. Anti-Christ Evil Pageant;” a gallery of photographs showing “Signs of the Time” featuring an iPod, a homosexual couple, and an unidentified “false prophet;” timelines of various events/nations, like abortion, “Russia (Gog)” and “Rock and Roll;” and, of course, a store. The stores sells books, clothing, and, strangely, a cookbook compiled by Rapture Ready contributors.

The Rapture Index links from Rapture Ready and evaluates factors like “Global Turmoil,” “Economy,” “Israel,” and “Inflation,” thus offering a real-time calculation of just how near the end might be. The website offers the following explanation:

The Rapture Index has two functions: one is to factor together a number of related end time components into a cohesive indicator, and the other is to standardize those components to eliminate the wide variance that currently exists with prophecy reporting.

The Rapture Index is by no means meant to predict the rapture, however, the index is designed to measure the type of activity that could act as a precursor to the rapture.

You could say the Rapture index is a Dow Jones Industrial Average of end time activity, but I think it would be better if you viewed it as prophetic speedometer. The higher the number, the faster we're moving towards the occurrence of pre-tribulation rapture.

At present, the index value is 161, a net change of +2 since the previous reading. The categories are listed as follows:

Rapture Index of 85 and Below: Slow prophetic activity
Rapture Index of 85 to 110: Moderate prophetic activity
Rapture Index of 110 to 145: Heavy prophetic activity
Rapture Index above 145: Fasten your seat belts

It’s unclear how much stock a Premillenialist might put in such an index, but it is clear that the site is heavily accessed (see above data). Anecdotally, at least according to chat room posts, more than a few rely on the index for direction.

LeftBehind.com is probably the sleekest and most user-friendly of the Rapture sites. The site might best be described as combining a shopping mall, a self-help group, a fantasy sports league (though in this case one handicaps the end of the world), a premillenial primer, and a guide to interpreting world events—all with the end of promoting Left Behind products. The site even manages to poke fun at itself, listing the “Top Ten Ways to know you’re obsessed with the End Times,” including 2. Never buy green bananas, and 9. You use the Left Behind books as devotional reading. Nevertheless, the site does consider itself as having a role to play (beyond it primary function of selling, that is): the dissemination of prophecy. For this, Dr. Stu Jackson keeps watch in a (sometimes daily) post.

But in the end, the website if about selling the Rapture, not predicting it. Products are always touted and pushed, the latest of which is a controversial video game called Left Behind: Eternal Forces. Violent, judgmental, and already hugely controversial, Eternal Forces may prove that Tyndale House Publishers’ reach has finally exceeded its grasp. Jonathon Hutson, a prominent Christian blogger, writes that the game, “caricaturizes Christianity as a crusade, puts modern military weapons in the hands of children, sends them on a mission to convert or kill infidels, and even lets children role play commanding the armies of the AntiChrist, unleashing demons that feast on Christians.” A recent Washington Post article raised the subject of religious intolerance. New York magazine chided Tyndale House for being anti-Semitic, homophobic, and strikingly insensitive in its depiction of a smoldering New York skyline. Strangely enough, however, those aspects may not be the undoing of the product: rather it is the fact that a “gamer” can role play as the Anti-Christ that seems to most upset potential buyers.

Left Behind Games, an independent company licensed by Tyndale House, has struck back with a publicity blitz meant to deflect criticism. “It's distressing to see such an egregious misrepresentation of our game,” write Troy Lyndon on the Left Behind Games website. “The recent comments posted on several blogs and websites are nothing short of gross distortions and total untruths. Comments by those writing/involved with these articles have been done without ever having seen the game!” It remains to be seen whether the game, due to be released just before Christmas, will succeed. But it seems doubtful it will match the sales and enthusiasm of the book series from which it derives.

Left Behind begins with (married) airline captain Rayford Steele airborne and contemplating seducing an attractive and younger flight attendant, Hattie Durham. Meanwhile, young Cameron “Buck” Williams, a hot-shot reporter in first-class, types on his laptop while recounting his witnessing of a failed Russian attack on Israel some fourteen months prior. Here we get a bit of backstory: Chaim Rosenzweig, Nobel Laureate and Global Weekly’s “Man of Year,” has created a sort of Miracle-Grow substance allowing the deserts of Israel to bloom. Somehow, though it remains unclear, a preponderance of flowers and grain has brought peace to the Middle East—until, of course, the Russian attack, miraculously beaten back without the Israelis firing a shot. When we return to the present chaos ensues: passengers are missing, leaving behind clothes, jewelry, even a hearing aid, on their seats. They have been Raptured, though those left behind seem to think of every other possible explanation besides this. Below Captain Steele’s lumbering 747 the world is equally chaotic: unmanned cars careen off highways while planes fall from the sky, all of it, one presumes, set to the soundtrack of Biblical wailing and gnashing of teeth. Rayford, learning from a Concorde pilot of the disappearances, turns his plane back toward Chicago, descending onto O’Hare and into the maelstrom of the tribulation.

To say the plot devolves from here, to steal a line from Buck, is “like saying the Great Wall of China was long.” Rayford finds his Christian radio-listening wife and young son have disappeared, though his daughter has not. Rayford becomes determined to unravel the mystery of the Rapture. Soon he will form the “Tribulation Force,” in place to fight against the Anti-Christ and his “one-world” programs. Meanwhile, Buck has been assigned to discover the truth of the disappearances. Mix in “drop-dead gorgeous” flight attendant Hattie, Rayford’s Stanford educated daughter Chloe, a Romanian Anti-Christ, and dashing young Buck (estranged from his family as he may be), and the plot points converge like drunken hummingbirds: jaggedly, and without coherence, but with amazing speed.

That might explain much of Left Behind’s success: it is an action movie in (horrendous) clipped prose. Written in short, bullet-like paragraphs building to short, bullet-like chapters, the book is an amazingly quick read chocked full of special effects and maudlin dialogue. But there are countless books that do explosions, political assassinations, and heavy-handed declarations better than Jenkins. Of course, most beach reads don’t purport to offer eternal salvation. Therefore, one must look below the surface action to a miasma of factors that serve simultaneously encourage, titillate, and reinforce the beliefs of the desired reader. The factors are generally intertwined, making it best to approach them in a more holistic fashion rather than as separate (and distinct) issues.

If indeed a number of factors have converged in the Left Behind franchise the first must surely be accessibility: anyone can read the books, wears the shirts, even download the cell phone ring tones. Thus, there is a clubby aspect to the franchise: what are they, after all, if not the elect? But beyond mere accessibility and availability, the franchise has been adroitly marketed, at first bypassing traditional advertising and going straight to the desired demographic: white, middle-class evangelicals. As Left Behind perched atop the Times’ Bestseller list, a publishing executive was asked to comment. She admitted to having never heard of the book. This shouldn’t be surprising: Tyndale House marketed the book directly to the “one hundred million evangelicals” in America who feel derided by popular culture. That the prose is simplistic means anyone, especially those who seldom or never read—which means most American adults raised on Arnold Schwarzenegger movies—can make headway.

Tie-in products mean one can display their “membership,” lending a sense of fellowship and community to movements (both evangelicals and fundamentalists) who often feel marginalized. The books also serve to under-gird conservative political beliefs, thus offering “authority” to positions often viewed by society at-large as reactive and discriminatory. To the fundamentalist (and, to a lesser extent, the evangelical), the world is upside-down. The fundamentalist believes homosexuality and feminism are evils to be eradicated. The world responds by calling the fundamentalist a homophobe and chauvinist. Left Behind offers a “world made straight.” Here, homosexuality is exposed as an egregious violation of God’s law and women are consistently subversive. When one includes scenes, more prevalent in later books, highlighting the evils of abortion, virtually every principle conservative social issue has been touched.

Further, the books, despite nationalities seeming to blur into the background, are also wildly patriotic, trumpeting the sort of American exceptionalism on which conservative movements are often built. The leadership of the Tribulation Force is male, white, and American; people of color serve as mere window dressing or local color. There is only one religion—Christianity—and there seems to be only one small band of (American) rebels willing to fight the evil that opposes it. That evil is led by the an Anti-Christ who is a seductive European liberal bent on undermining “traditional” American democracy seems scripted straight from right-wing talk radio.

Despite depicting the end of the world, the books have a comforting effect for middle-class evangelical and fundamentalist readers. Besides confirming conservative social and political beliefs, the series has a powerful voyeuristic element. Remember: the books are (ostensibly) written to be read by those who will already have been Raptured; thus the effect of peering back down from the heavens to see the suffering of all those who mocked one’s beliefs. That a preoccupation with such suffering might somehow be “unchristian” seems irrelevant: Left Behind is nothing short of a revenge fantasy, a founding work in the “literature of resentment,” a meta-physical embodiment of the old maxim that “he who laughs last, laughs best.” Whether consciously articulated or not, this is arguably the single greatest facto.

Premillenial Dispensationalism has moved some distance from the early Millerite prophecy charts, seemingly having acquired all the trappings of both Hollywood and Washington: a sleek, fast-paced product marketed to the lowest common denominator of fear, prejudice, and self-interest—perhaps both the ultimate product and embodiment of the times. That the “Rapture-ready” trumpet this as Christianity seems as regrettable as, say, a plane falling from the sky.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY:
LeftBehind.com
Christianity Today
Gershom Gorenberg, The American Prospect
TimLaHaye.com
JerryJenkins.com
Paul Boyer, When Time Shall Be No More
Gary North, “Left Behind Culturally”
Karen Armstrong, The Battle for God
RaptureReady.com
Hutson, “Bible Publisher Tyndale House faces boycott over game”
Musgrove, “Fire and Brimstone, Guns and Ammo”
Goldberg, “The Rapture Takes Manhattan”

Mark Powell is the author of the novels Prodigals and Blood Kin. He teaches in the English Department at Stetson University of DeLand, Florida.