Left Behind novels – you either love or hate them. But you can’t argue with the American obsession over them — 62 million copies sold since 1985. Authors Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins have a nearly-permanent spot on the New York Times, USA Today and Amazon.com best-selling lists. It’s possible that the novels have even influenced President George W. Bush’s foreign policy in the Middle East. Scottish history professor Crawford Gribben examines their influence and theology in his book Rapture Fiction and the Evangelical Crisis. (Evangelical Press 2006). If art mimics culture, rapture fiction reveals what Christians really think. Sadly, the novels show us Christians are confused about the gospel of Jesus Christ. “Modern evangelicalism has entered a time of serious crisis,” Gribben writes. And Gribben is no slacker. A fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Gribben has taught at Trinity College, Dublin, University of Manchester, University of Lausanne and Westminster College, Cambridge. What he writes carries a lot of weight.
Most of the Left Behind novels take place in a so-called tribulation period following a secret rapture that removes one-third of the world’s population, including all unborn and pre-teenage children and the pope. Why are the books so popular? Newsweek offers this reason: “As the world gets increasingly scary, with much of the trouble centered in the Mideast—just where you’d expect from reading the Book of Revelation—even secular Americans sometimes wonder (or at least wonder if they ought to start wondering) whether there might not be something to this End Times stuff. After September 11, 2001, there was such a run on the latest "Left Behind" volume, "Desecration," that it became the best-selling novel of the year. And it’s no coincidence that the books are a favorite with American soldiers in Iraq.” (The New Prophets of Revelation, Newsweek, May 24, 2004.)
But what do Americans learn about the gospel when they pick up one of the novels? In Apocalypse Dawn by Mel Odom (2003), Delroy, a Navy chaplain, is left behind in the rapture because he was only a pretty good Christian. “I didn’t believe with the strength and the faith and the conviction I was supposed to,” Delroy says. The book’s emphasis is consistently on faith’s strength, rather than faith’s object, Jesus Christ, our righteousness. Gribben also has these concerns with the bad theology in the Left Behind series:
1. The novels offer a low view of God and his sovereignty. Here’s a shocking quote from Apocalypse Dawn: “Eons Ago, God the Father conceded control of Earth’s weather to Satan himself, the prince and power of the air… and no doubt God at times intervened against such actions by the evil one because of the fervent prayers of his people.” Gribben responds: “This undermining of divine sovereignty makes the series’ presentation of the gospel extremely problematic.” If Satan controls the world, God has no ability to intervene in anyone’s state of spiritual death. Sadly, the novels portray God as a “careless monarch who had devolved responsibility for his world to a powerful and vindictive enemy.”
2. The novels misguide readers by frequent use of the Sinner’s Prayer. “It convinces people they are Christians when too often they are not,” Gribben writes. “The Sinner’s Prayer provides an unstable and uncertain foundation for assurance and raises more difficulties than it solves.” The danger is that the prayer — rather than Jesus Christ – becomes the object of the sinner’s hope. We’re saved by faith, not by reciting a prayer.
4. The novels present second-chance theology, the idea that man can repent and believe by his own free will during the tribulation period. This departs from the belief of the father of Dispensationalism, John Nelson Darby, that man is fallen and must be changed by God, who enables him to repent and believe. Gribben devotes an entire chapter to the history of Darby and his eschatology.
5. The novels present a theology of an age of accountability. But Romans 5:12 teaches otherwise. If children under the age of 12 are saved, it is because God has applied to them the benefits of his Son’s death.
6. The novels present an unhealthy model of the church and its ordinances by elevating the individual above the collective church life. Communion is never celebrated in the novels and baptism isn’t introduced until the end of the series, and then it’s made to look as if it’s part of salvation.
Despite Crawford Gribben’s academic response to the watering down of the gospel in the Left Behind series, don’t expect WalMart or Costco to pull the fast-selling books off the shelf. After all, LaHaye and Jenkins join the ranks of John Grisham, Tom Clancey and JK Rowling for having first printings of 2 million copies or more, according to an article in USA Today February 28, 2005. That translates to a lot of dollars! But at the same time, don’t let the nation’s obsession with these novels stop you from delighting in the joyful hope of Jesus Christ’s soon return. Gribben concludes:
Jesus Christ is returning, and he will not be disappointed. In the midst of the darkness of ecclesiastical decay, the returning merchant discovers a “pearl of great price,” which he sells everything to possess (Matt. 13:45-46). The pearl is the church; the merchant the Savior; and the call for reformation is clear.”