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Left Behind rapture

 
 
 
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Philos

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Hi,

We watched a disaster movie called 'Left Behind'. It was biblical and the disaster concerned was the end of days and rapture.

So, the events happened, the chosen were gone and the story played out amongst those left behind to face war, pestilence and all the horrors etc etc. A disaster movie with no survivors long term.

Of course, the old theology questions were rehashed in the script, with apparently decent and reasonable folks left in the unselected group for whatever reason. It gradually became clear to the various characters in the story that there was only one reason they were left behind, they didn't believe. Even a good living pastor of the church was left sitting in his pews because as he said “I went through the motions, read the words, but in my heart I didn't really believe.”

Question? Is this what Christianity comes down to?

I was brought up to understand that being Christian was about loving and respecting others, doing good works selflessly. But in this (fictional) script, loving and being good were not enough. Children were ripped away from their loving and caring parents, with the haunting image of just a pile of clothes in this world and the children gone. Among the survivors there were all kinds of evidence of empathy and caring for each other, common bonding in adversity, grief, perplexity…….

Another question. Which group would we want to belong to? The ones who 'believed' and saved their souls, or the ones who used their freewill to choose what they had believed to be their own path.

A true disaster movie it seems.

A.
 
"Question? Is this what Christianity comes down to?"

Nope, just some flavors boil down to that.

Barbara Rossing wrote a book going into the details, you can find the reference at the end of the article. The ELCA definitely doesn't embrace Rapture theology. Many Christians don't believe in hell, and many believe in near universalism for heaven....
https://www.livinglutheran.org/2013/06/end-times/
Similar fears about Jesus’ second coming have been instilled in young people more recently by the “Left Behind” novels, a fictional series set during the supposed seven-year period around Jesus’ coming in the so-called rapture.

The entire rapture notion is antithetical to traditional Christian theology. While proponents claim the rapture is based on a literal interpretation of the Bible, they employ a highly selective pick-and-choose literalism. This theology was invented less than 200 years ago, but it has gained prominence in American culture through televangelists and radio preachers. Rapture theology raises questions about the Bible’s view of prophecy, violence and even Middle East policy. This theology should be challenged and replaced with a more biblical understanding of Christian hope for the future of the world and of Jesus’ coming again.
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Philos said:
Hi,

We watched a disaster movie called 'Left Behind'. It was biblical and the disaster concerned was the end of days and rapture.

So, the events happened, the chosen were gone and the story played out amongst those left behind to face war, pestilence and all the horrors etc etc. A disaster movie with no survivors long term.

Of course, the old theology questions were rehashed in the script, with apparently decent and reasonable folks left in the unselected group for whatever reason. It gradually became clear to the various characters in the story that there was only one reason they were left behind, they didn't believe. Even a good living pastor of the church was left sitting in his pews because as he said “I went through the motions, read the words, but in my heart I didn't really believe.”

Question? Is this what Christianity comes down to?

I was brought up to understand that being Christian was about loving and respecting others, doing good works selflessly. But in this (fictional) script, loving and being good were not enough. Children were ripped away from their loving and caring parents, with the haunting image of just a pile of clothes in this world and the children gone. Among the survivors there were all kinds of evidence of empathy and caring for each other, common bonding in adversity, grief, perplexity…….

Another question. Which group would we want to belong to? The ones who 'believed' and saved their souls, or the ones who used their freewill to choose what they had believed to be their own path.

A true disaster movie it seems.

A.
Click to expand...

There's actually quite a lot of this kind of Christian fiction out there - I am something of a devotee of post-apocalyptic fiction and disaster movies and novels, and my Kindle pops these up in the 'Recommended for you" menu once in a while. I have a policy of buying such recommendations on kindle if they are dirt cheap, and many of these are sold as Kindle editions at 89c Australian, so I have read a few.

Some of them are quite entertaining, in the schlocky way that all disaster stories are; But the insight they give into the non-core beliefs of the Christian sects that produce them are worth the (very low) price of admission even when the stories themselves are not.

The central themes are just the same old dogmatic elements - in particular the one you identified, that claims that belief is the ONLY important thing, and that works are irrelevant. But there are a number of unsubtle social statements that keep cropping up that make me laugh out loud - in particular, the explicitly evil nature of cannabis, which seems to be crudely 'bolted on' to the rest of the rules. A love of the USA (but not the sinful bits) and in particular of guns, and of the US Military, is also a staple. These people LOVE to talk about freedom, but have a very idiosyncratic idea about what the word actually entails - it certainly does NOT imply that people should be allowed to do the things that they want to do. And they have the usual bizarro-world ideas about sex and marriage.

I suspect that the number of people involved is quite small; This stuff is outside the mainstream even amongst American Protestants. But these sects hold evangelism as a core principle, and the publishing of these books (and their distribution, even at a loss) seems to be very important to them. And to the people on this particular offshoot of the Protestant branch of Christianity, this really is what it all comes down to. They honestly believe that the end of the world is imminent, and that only those who genuinely believe in their particular brand of Christianity will not have to suffer when it happens.

I don't think they have sufficient imagination to grasp that their readers might laugh at them, rather than being converted.

And I sincerely hope that they don't ever gain enough influence to actually start a nuclear war, because I have no doubt whatsoever that they would do so if they could, in the fervent belief that it was not only the right thing to do, but the best possible thing that anyone could ever do. Just because they are few in number doesn't mean that their insanity is necessarily harmless.
 
There was an episode of some TV show where a fraternity had filled several dozen inflatable sex dolls with helium, which of course, escaped and floated above the city. A woman saw them and assumed it was the Rapture. The mystery of the story was why she ran directly in the path of rush hour traffic.

For myself, I would just as soon be left behind with all the bad women. It eliminates all the guess work.
 
Bronzeage said:
. The mystery of the story was why she ran directly in the path of rush hour traffic.
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I can imagine that if I spent a significant amount of time predicting the Rapture, and pointing out why my friends and relatives and coworkers weren't going to be Raptured (Like one roommate i had who reached past my copy of the Necronomicon, my D&D spell books, my pagan holiday calendar and my Jefferson Bible to tap my copy of Playboy and sadly shake his head. THIS will keep me out of Heaven on The Day, he informed me), and the Rapture came, I'd probably want to be dead, too, if i hadn't been lifted up into the sky by the hand of Jesus Come Again.

I mean, can you imagine spending the Tribulation with all those people whose only joy in the face of the demons, the pestilence, the violence and the One World Government it to point out once more that you weren't raptured, either?
 
Keith&Co. said:
Bronzeage said:
. The mystery of the story was why she ran directly in the path of rush hour traffic.
Click to expand...
I can imagine that if I spent a significant amount of time predicting the Rapture, and pointing out why my friends and relatives and coworkers weren't going to be Raptured (Like one roommate i had who reached past my copy of the Necronomicon, my D&D spell books, my pagan holiday calendar and my Jefferson Bible to tap my copy of Playboy and sadly shake his head. THIS will keep me out of Heaven on The Day, he informed me), and the Rapture came, I'd probably want to be dead, too, if i hadn't been lifted up into the sky by the hand of Jesus Come Again.

I mean, can you imagine spending the Tribulation with all those people whose only joy in the face of the demons, the pestilence, the violence and the One World Government it to point out once more that you weren't raptured, either?
Click to expand...

It is written, "In Heaven, there is no beer. That's why we drink it all here."
 
If anyone were to actually speak to me in real life about the Rapture, I would open to the Book of Revelations, point out that the Rapture isn't in there, and then point out the part where it says that people who make up things and add them to the book are cursed.
 
Folks,

I blame Netflix for dumping all these old movies on us. Should have realised when my wife said, "Nicholas Cage looks a bit young!"

A.
 
Bronzeage said:
There was an episode of some TV show where a fraternity had filled several dozen inflatable sex dolls with helium, which of course, escaped and floated above the city. A woman saw them and assumed it was the Rapture. The mystery of the story was why she ran directly in the path of rush hour traffic. ...
Click to expand...
This story was actually an urban legend started by Elroy Willis on alt.atheism.
Elroy made-up fake news stories, like this, to make fun of some of the more persistent theists who posted on alt.atheism
 
Disaster flicks are a dime a dozen, maybe less. It's kind of fascinating that there are these religious nutjobs who take this stuff to the ultimate extreme.
 
James Brown said:
I follow Fred Clark's blog, an evangelical Christian who argues that the Left Behind series is the worst fiction published. He deftly skewers the novels and the movie.
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As a connoisseur of the genre, and reader of many self-published disaster novels that live up to their billing in more ways than one, I can assure you that the Left Behind series, while truly awful, is far from being the worst disaster fiction published, and even further from being the worst fiction in any genre.
 
The movie Airplane! is a spoof of a dead serious and utterly awful disaster movie called Airport. No one has ever heard of Airport
 
Bronzeage said:
There was an episode of some TV show where a fraternity had filled several dozen inflatable sex dolls with helium, which of course, escaped and floated above the city. A woman saw them and assumed it was the Rapture. The mystery of the story was why she ran directly in the path of rush hour traffic.

For myself, I would just as soon be left behind with all the bad women. It eliminates all the guess work.
Click to expand...

That was Six Feet Under.
 
Sarpedon said:
The movie Airplane! is a spoof of a dead serious and utterly awful disaster movie called Airport. No one has ever heard of Airport
Click to expand...

There were three sequels to Airport; each awful in its own way (they are named for the years in which they were released, so if you are looking for the original, a search for 'Airport: 1970' is the quickest way to find it).

Airport '70 was the archetype from which all disaster movies arose, and it is completely unfair to suggest that nobody's ever heard of it.

It's just that nobody ever wants to be reminded of it. ;)
 
Philos said:
James Brown said:
I follow Fred Clark's blog, an evangelical Christian who argues that the Left Behind series is the worst fiction published. He deftly skewers the novels and the movie.
Click to expand...

James,

If anyone doubts the provenance of the movie (haven't read the books), I recommend a look at Matthew 24. Its all in there.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew 24

A.
Click to expand...

The movie is one possible interpretation (and a dramatic one) of Matthew 24. Christian opinions vary wildly on this (and just about every other) subject. But the word "rapture" is not in the Bible; it is a later convention to describe some people's take on that passage.

The earlier beliefs were much more simple as described in I Thess 4:16-17. Paul's writings never have Jesus setting foot on earth - folks float up and meet him in the air. Of course Paul wasn't much on "round earth" geography, but that's another story.

The later writers (of the gospels) couldn't resist the temptation to give their hero-god credit for "calling" the Destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.
 
You make a good point. At no point in the pre-Gospel Epistles is the Second Coming of Christ mentioned. Jesus is always described as "coming", but never "coming back" or "returning."

That's exactly what we would expect to find if Jesus never came to Earth to begin with.
 
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