Many Christians do not know the technical name for the theology that is behind the Left Behind series of books. It is called dispensational theology or dispensationalism. While there are a couple of types of dispensationalism, here is a reasonable definition:
Dispensationalism is a Protestant evangelical tradition based on a biblical hermeneutic that sees a series of chronologically successive “dispensations” or periods in history in which God relates to human beings in different ways under different Biblical covenants. As a system, dispensationalism is rooted in the writings of John Nelson Darby and the Brethren Movement. The theology of dispensationalism consists of a distinctive eschatological “end times” perspective, as all dispensationalists hold to premillennialism and most hold to a pretribulation rapture. Dispensationalists believe that the nation of Israel is distinct from the Church, and that God will fulfill His promises to national Israel. These promises include the land promises, which in the future result in a millennial kingdom where Christ, upon His return, will rule the world from Jerusalem for a thousand years. In other areas of theology, dispensationalists hold to a wide range of beliefs within the evangelical and fundamentalist spectrum.
Now let me give you an overly simple summary of a couple of points in dispensationalism. Please realize that there are many parts of dispensational theology missing in these couple of points. But, these are the couple of points that led to the comic book I cited yesterday. (Do go to yesterday’s post or you will not fully understand this post.) First, dispensationalists believe that the millenium mentioned in Scripture is a literal time in history in which Our Lord Jesus Christ will be reigning on earth with his saints. It is at the end of that time that the really final battle will take place and then the Final Judgment. Second, they believe that prior to the millenium there will be a seven-year tribulation period and that the Church will be raptured (that is taken from Earth) during that tribulation. There are differences among dispensationalists about the exact timing of the rapture, but certainly no later than halfway through the tribulation.
The rapture itself will be a traumatic event upon Earth. Planes will be flying and if their pilot(s) are Christian, they will crash because of the suddenness of their being taken. There will be massive car crash pileups in all parts of the Earth. During the part of the tribulation in which the Church is not present is when the judgments of the Book of Revelation will fall upon the Earth. This will be an absolutely awful time in which plagues, famines, death, and war will whip the Earth. One third of the population of the world will die, for sure, maybe more. One third of the plants and animals will be destroyed. The ecological and human disaster will be massive. These are judgments sent directly by God upon those left upon the Earth.
The words of a Larry Norman song, I wish we’d all been ready express this dispensational reality. Let me quote just some of the verses:
Life was filled with guns and war
And all of us got trampled on the floor
I wish we’d all been ready
Children died the days grew cold
A piece of bread could buy a bag of gold
I wish we’d all been ready
There’s no time to change your mind
The Son has come and you’ve been left behind
A man and wife asleep in bed
She hears a noise and turns her head he’s gone
I wish we’d all been ready
Two men walking up a hill
One disappears and one’s left standing still
I wish we’d all been ready
There’s no time to change your mind
The Son has come and you’ve been left behind
Children died the days grew cold
A piece of bread could buy a bag of gold
I wish we’d all been ready
There’s no time to change your mind
The Son has come and you’ve been left behind
It is against this description of the end of the world that the comic books are reacting. And, perhaps you can imagine why. In many ways, dispensationalism has been presented with a distinct triumphalist tone. In the Left Behind books, not only are non-Christians left behind, but, suspiciously, any pastors that do not fully agree with a strict very conservative Evangelical theology. More than that, it has appeared to many that there is almost a discernible flavor of mocking present in some of the presentations of this theology. [Note: Yes, I am quite aware that this is a perception, but perceptions are powerful.] But, even stronger is the question of God’s character to which the secularists are reacting.
===MORE TO COME===
“There are differences among dispensationalists about the exact timing of the rapture, but certainly no later than halfway through the tribulation.”
Actually, there are some post-trib premillennialists, but they number few. A good parody of the Left Behind series is a book by Nathan Wilson titled, Right Behind. A blogger friend of mine suggested that the DMV and FAA ask these questions in successive order before issuing a driver or pilot’s license: Have you ever had a seizure or sudden loss of consciousness? Do you expect to be raptured into the clouds at any given moment?
Couldn’t resist. đ
Over at Religion Dispatches, a comment by Jim Reed says:
“I would divide protestants into two groups, those who believe in rapture, and those who don’t. If a protestant was picked who didn’t believe in rapture, the rapture believers would probably think that person wasn’t really a Christian, and it might just make them more upset than picking another Catholic or Jew. If a rapture believer was picked, I would be upset and I would certainly want the entire concept of Christian zionism questioned in the hearings, and see how that candidate feels about our mideast wars of choice, and us encouraging Israel to extend their recent bombing of Lebanon until enough damage to the infrastructure was done. The questions could go on and on, probably also expanding into anti-science beliefs. If a person has religious beliefs that are dangerous to the world, and if that person’s professed religion has been acting on those beliefs, is that a valid topic for questioning in the hearings? Church and state was pretty much combined during the Bush administration, so the questions must now be asked.”
Dispensationalism is what you get when you (1) take every word of the Bible hyper-literally and (2) attempt to reconcile any and every apparent discrepancy while keeping the hyper-literalism.
I got burned BAD by Pre-Trib Rapture/Pin-the-Tail-on-The-Antichrist shtick back in the Seventies. (And it still fills my spam filter in the form of “Urgent Christian Political Action Newsletter/Manifesto”s.) I’m good for at least a two-hour rant on the subject, and my writing partner credits John Nelson Darby and Hal Lindsay with destroying Protestant Christianity in America.
Suffice it to say that Larry Norman’s song was written and sung as a tragic lament, NOT the cock’s crow of Triumph you hear today.
Get a copy of the Scofield Reference Bible… or give a read to the notes available online. It’s not the *bible* that is the source, but rather the commentary on the BIble. Far from “literal” the Dispensationalists have quite a surprising pattern of eisegesis (reading *into* scripture) as do every Christian denomination – except “us” of course đ
Commenting on scripture in the First Person – Exegesis
Second Person – Eisegesis
Third Person – Heresy
Yet to Dispies the meaning is obvious — Dispensationalism, dictated word-for-word by God just like the Koran.
And try to talk one of them out of it!! It does not do any good to try to point out the flaws in their argument. That just proves you are not really a Christian–after all the only Christians are the ones in .
ORTHODOX? Probably not Christian at all. Talk about the early church fathers and their teachings and they look at you like you are speaking Swahili. Church Councils? What dos that have to do with Christianity and who cares what they said back then anyway!?!
I have an aquaintance with whom I have had this talk more times than I would like to admit. He just shakes head and does his Rapture Rap and though he acknowledges that I am maybe a Christian, he thinks (and says) that I am tragically deficient in my beliefs. I might make it in or I might not. He isn’t sure, but is willing to let God make the judgement–just barely!!
I don’t recognize the God they are talking about when they start the–if you want to go to heaven, you have to be just like me or else you will be caught in the tribulation and suffer and suffer and wish you were dead and rue the day you didn’t agree with me. Somehow loving Jesus gets lost in the argument as does attempting to grow more Godlike and doing to the least of them and caring for the widows and the orphans. You have to say the right set of words and once you do, you have a punched ticket to heaven and will be swept up in the rapture. Nevermind the grandchildren you have in the car with you when you go!!
When I was just a wee baby Christian way back in the day, I ran into some of these folks and they scared me to death. I had nightmares for months about their rendition of what the earth would be like after the rapture and DO YOU KNOW–REALLY KNOW–YOU ARE SAVED??? I wasn’t in their church so they were not too sure.
Alix
I have an aquaintance with whom I have had this talk more times than I would like to admit. He just shakes head and does his Rapture Rap and though he acknowledges that I am maybe a Christian, he thinks (and says) that I am tragically deficient in my beliefs. I might make it in or I might not. He isnât sure, but is willing to let God make the judgementâjust barely!!
Very tolerant. More often (just like with Young Earth Creationism) it becomes “DIE, HERETIC!” and “HAVE FUN IN HELL! HAW! HAW! HAW!”
I donât recognize the God they are talking about when they start theâif you want to go to heaven, you have to be just like me or else you will be caught in the tribulation and suffer and suffer and wish you were dead and rue the day you didnât agree with me.
“For God so hated the world that He sent his only begotten Son to blow it up and cast everybody into Eternal Hell (except for His pet favorites whom He Raptures up to Heaven beforehand for a catered box seat).”
You have to say the right set of words and once you do, you have a punched ticket to heaven and will be swept up in the rapture.
“Say-the-Magic-Words” Salvation. Which must be recited word-for-word with the proper spell gestures and all. (Doesn’t say anything about material components.) And you know something else? The first half of their “Sinners’ Prayer” is a direct swipe of a Catholic Act of Contrition!
When I was just a wee baby Christian way back in the day, I ran into some of these folks and they scared me to death. I had nightmares for months about their rendition of what the earth would be like after the rapture and DO YOU KNOWâREALLY KNOWâYOU ARE SAVED??? I wasnât in their church so they were not too sure.
Even if you were in their church I don’t think it would have helped. At that point “Wretched Urgency” and “Soul-Winning” enters the picture: “ARE YOU SAVED? ARE YOU SURE? ARE YOU CERTAIN YOU’RE SURE? ARE YOU SURE YOU’RE CERTAIN YOU’RE SURE?” ad infinitum. In the heyday of Hal Lindsay, there was this art to breaking down the mark’s existing Assurance of Salvation so you could lead him in the Magic Words, Win His Soul, and put another notch on your Bible for brownie points with God. After having this done to you half a dozen times, you start to wonder if it’s all BS from the start.
Maybe that’s it. It’s not just Dispensationalism, it’s not just Pre-Trib Rapture, it’s not just Young Earth Creationism, it’s not just Wretched Urgency, it’s all one big package containing all of these that you find among today’s Evangelical Christians. I DO know from experience that once you’re sealed behind the four Thomas Kincade-decorated walls of Evangelical Christian Bizarro World, you have absolutely NO concept of any other form or kind of Christianity. It becomes a Closed System.
“===MORE TO COME===”
Yes. Please.
This whole thing has become a shadow-gospel, part of that Christian-Bizarro world that HUG has mentioned. Just to make sure I’m not the crazy one, I turn to Galatians chapter 1, where Paul says,
” 6I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospelâ 7 not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. 8But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. 9As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.”
Are dispensationalists deserting Christ, as in verse 6? Probably not. But they are distorting the gospel, as in verse 7, and adding way too much that the Bible just doesn’t say.
I too got burned by Hal Lindsey back in ’79. The Soviet Union had just invaded Afghanistan (Proof of Bible prophecy! The armies from the North are coming to invade!).
Now the USA is in Afghanistan. Lindsey no doubt has updated The Late Great Planet Earth.
Although HUG is partly correct about Darby and Lindsey “destroying Protestant Christianity in America”, I’m with Fr. Huw that Scofield’s Reference Bible is more the culprit. It has influenced generations of Christians in the last 100 years with its footnoted annotations, which I understand in the earlier versions were set in the same-sized type as the Bible text itself (will the real gospel please stand up?).
And now LaHaye and Jenkins are perpetuating it.
As Alix mentioned, some dispensationalists (not all, thank God) insist that we have to believe these end-times triblulation/rapture details to be saved. Not so. That’s another gospel, and any other gospel is heresy.
The sad part is that some of dispensational theology is good and useful. Understanding history in terms of distinct historical periods, or dispensations, can be helpful if we don’t go overboard with it. But too many of them do.
I too got burned by Hal Lindsey back in â79. The Soviet Union had just invaded Afghanistan (Proof of Bible prophecy! The armies from the North are coming to invade!).
Latecomer. I got burned the worst from ’73 to ’77 or so. Yom Kippur War, Comet Kohoutek, proto-EU’s tenth member nation, Rosh Hashanah ’75; didn’t stop having flashbacks like a ‘Nam vet until around the era of Ed Weisenhaunt in ’88. By the time I finally got my head duct-taped back together, I found I was Too Old. Who will restore the years those PMD locusts have eaten?
Ever run into the “Christians For Nuclear War” attitude? You can thank Lindsay’s “literal interpretation” of the plagues of Revelation as nuclear weapons effects for that. (Cue newscaster from The Simpsons — Pull Bible out from below desk and wave it around “IT’S ALL IN REVELATION!”)
Now the USA is in Afghanistan. Lindsey no doubt has updated The Late Great Planet Earth.
He updated it immediately after the Second Russian Revolution and end of the Cold War (remember Gog & Magog?) The prior editions (where he PROVED! from SCRIPTURE! that Gog & Magog WERE the USSR and “Gomer” the DDR) officially never existed. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia, Comrade, Not Eurasia.
Except when Oceania is at war with Eurasia. But we’ll destroy those tapes.
I missed out on the Yom Kippur part, and the comet; but I still remember the Common Market (proto-EU)’s tenth member, impending like doom upon the face of the earth. Something to do with the ten horns of the Beast. Greece, wasn’t it? And then The End would come? Except now the EU is up to, what, about forty?
I read 1984 about the same time as The Late Great Planet Earth and it was probably a good thing I did. I had recently gone from a Richard Nixon/Paul Harvey conservative to a reluctant liberal, thanks to a former girl friend’s mother. Then became a Christian believer in 1979, swallowed the end-times prophecies whole (along with the Bible and especially the verses pertinent to Lindsey’s umm… exegesis) and the next thing I knew I was married and headed back to college.
It was probably Gordon College that saved me from much more of Lindsey, and 1979 was my only year under the influence. My new wife (of now 30 years) wasn’t too impressed with all of that, and when I got to Gordon (to study Bible while majoring in Physics in order to prove that God exists–which turns out can’t be done, and certainly not by me, as I couldn’t do the calculus) I discovered that the end-times prophecies weren’t a factor. It wasn’t so much that anyone argued and said “NO!”; it was as if the idea didn’t exist. Nobody talked about it. The Bible professors didn’t include it in their syllabus. But somehow Pat Robertson got invited to speak, and he spoke about the Soviet invasion; and Gog and Magog; and about Andropov, the goon that succeeded Brezhnev; and the succession of events that were destined “to lead, ultimately, to the overthrow of Israel.” Aside from a contingent from a fundamentalist church nearby, nobody was very impressed. It was the lead balloon effect.
And so I was spared. Sorry about your lost years. Just don’t hold it against Jesus. He had nothing to do with it.
Sorry about your lost years. Just donât hold it against Jesus. He had nothing to do with it.
Oh, I don’t hold it against Jesus so much as against Jesus Fanboys.
Kind of like the “Jesus Is My Boyfriend/Edward Cullen” fangirl attitude I encountered during my disasters in a Christian Dating Service. That was due to fangirl celebrity crushes, just like you get among Twitards; I had the mental image of Christ doing a facepalm when witnessing this current version of Bridal Mysticism.
[Ever run into the âChristians For Nuclear Warâ attitude? You can thank Lindsayâs âliteral interpretationâ of the plagues of Revelation as nuclear weapons effects for that.]
I do remember something like that during the Reagan years. They were talking about the “challenges that await’ and how those challenges could even be beneficial. There was a book called “With Enough Shovels” too. It was an exposĂ© of some bonehead’s idea of survivability.
Found it. Thank God for Google:
“Dig a hole, cover it with a couple of doors & then throw three feet of dirt on top… It’s the dirt that does it… if there are enough shovels to go around, everybody’s going to make it.”
â T.K. Jones, Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Strategic & Theater Nuclear Forces, 1981
Actually, the “door with three feet of dirt over it” IS a viable field-expedient shelter; there’s probably a military manual about it somewhere. It’s the glib “if there are enough shovels to go around…” line that stinks.
And according to the Christians for Nuclear War types, it wouldn’t matter anyway; “This World Is Not My Home, I’m Just Passin’ Thru” and God would Rapture them away just as the first ICBM warheads would be cutting atmo over their targets. “What, Me Worry?”
I remember when the first shots in Gulf War I were fired under Bush I. The secular talk radio shows were flooded with calls from dispsensational Christians who were declaring this to be the beginning of the end, and how it all was prophesied in the bible. Saddam Hussein was the new Nebuchadnezzar, etc. Then the SCUD’s hit Israel and it really opened up.
As for theology, one of the largest factors in dispensationalism that affects politics is their dividing of God’s people through history. Israel as an ancient nation under God (and their descendents which are assumed to be modern day Jews) is separated from believing Gentiles, sometimes for all eternity depending on how classical and radical the dispensationalism. Largely, they see OT promises to Israel aimed at modern day geo-political Israel rather than to the people of God – the “true” Jews. So, eschatology and politics are intertwined as a result of systematic theology.
Saddam Hussein was the new Nebuchadnezzar, etc. Then the SCUDâs hit Israel and it really opened up.
Baba Saddam actually DID style himself as The New Nebuchadnezzar. Too bad he never read the Jewish tradition of the original Nebuchadnezzar (in Daniel) all the way through — how Neb’s own ego drove him insane, crawling on all fours and slurping like an animal for years.
As for theology, one of the largest factors in dispensationalism that affects politics is their dividing of Godâs people through history.
And when you factor in Left Behind Fever, there’s this phenomenon called “Christian Zionism”, though “Anti-Semitic Zionism” might be a better description, to wit: The Jews Are In The Land, Fulfilling End Time Prophecy. Therefore, Anything the Israelis do is God’s Will, and God Will Punish All Who Don’t Back Them 1000%. But Ye Ende Is Nighye, and then God Gets To Destroy Them In The Great Tribulation for being so stiffnecked — all, that is, who don’t Accept Christ (TM).
They don’t care about Jews (or Arabs, for that matter) as people. Only as pieces to move about on their End Time Prophecy gameboard. Red Shirts at best, Orcs at worst.
One of the interesting (and very sad) parts of Dispensationalism is the argument over where the Church really finally begins. One version of Dispensationalism is a “late Acts” version that declares that the promises to the Church do not really start until late in the Book of Acts. Everything before that has to do with Israel. In fact, the ultra-dispensationalist would fully agree with the radical liberal in that they would both say that the Church is a product of Saint Paul’s ministry and that what Saint Paul founded (directed by the Holy Spirit) was different than what the Jewish apostles were doing before the end of the previous dispensation.
“Dispensationalists distinguish Israel from the church and so look for a point in history at which God’s redemptive program changed from the one form of administration to the other. The most common dispensationalism finds the beginning of the church in Acts 2 with the Spirit’s coming at Pentecost. From the standpoint of Acts 2 dispensationalism two other views seem extreme, or “ultra.” According to Acts 13 dispensationalism the church began when Paul started his mission to Jews and Gentiles (Acts 13:2). According to Acts 28 dispensationalism the church began toward the end of Paul’s ministry with his reference to Israel’s rejection of the kingdom of God and the sending of God’s salvation to the Gentiles (Acts 28:26-28).”
So if the Church is distinct from Israel, is there any room for the concept of the wild olive branch being grafted into the tree?
There are some mental gymnastics that are done with that concept.