Should We Leave Behind “Left Behind”?

                                                                                                                                    8/2014

Sharon: I still don’t really get Revelation…JON!!!!!!!!!!

Jon: 

                                          Should We Leave Behind “Left Behind”?

Upon watching a trailer for the upcoming movie release, “Left Behind,” I am once again given occasion to reflect upon the end times.  Many people are fascinated with the end times and the book of Revelation, as shown by the immense popularity of the “Left Behind” book series.  The book of Revelation makes for exciting reading, great speculation, the subject of many a youth group Bible study (youth always want to study Revelation), and now, another occasion for Nicolas Cage to watch stuff blow up.

                Spoiler alert!!!!  The book, “Left Behind” by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins tells the story of the Rapture, in which those who are believers in Christ vanish, leaving everything (including their clothes) behind.  As a side note, I seriously considered laying clothes out on the streets of the town where I lived on the day recently predicted by Harold Camping as “the end of the world,” but decided against it.  Those who are “left behind” then are faced with a period known as the Great Tribulation, in which God unleashes His fury upon the earth in ways described in the book of Revelation, and in which those who come to know Christ after the Rapture face tremendous persecution.  If the upcoming movie is similar to the previous release of a movie by that title, starring Kirk Cameron, then it will have the same general idea as the book.

                Is this what the book of Revelation is all about?  Are we to look at Revelation and try to figure out how everything described in it is going to unfold in the future?  Should we place the Left Behind series in close proximity on our shelves to the Bibles, only separated from Scripture by Oswald Chambers and a couple of Francis Chan books? 

                One major problem with putting a lot of stock in the “Left Behind” interpretation of Revelation is that a lot of people (including a lot of really smart people) have a different interpretation of Revelation.  And other people have a different interpretation of Revelation from that.  And others have a different interpretation from that.  And so on.  Some tend toward one extreme (a completely literal understanding of everything in Revelation).  Others tend toward the other extreme (everything in Revelation is metaphorical or even mythical).  And everything in between.  Revelation is not an easily understood book.

                So, what do I think of Revelation?  As someone who has spent much time in academic Biblical studies, and will continue to do so, I am very interested in understanding the cultural context of the book of Revelation, the various interpretations posed by scholars, the nuances of the original Greek language and so forth.  However, for the purpose of this blog I pose this simple question: what if we focused more on what we do know than on what we do not know?  We can spend a lot of time speculating on what is meant by all the various symbols and events we read about in Revelation.  We can also get pretty fired up about other peoples’ interpretations of these symbols and events.   

                So, here’s what I think I know for sure about Revelation:

1)      God wins!

Ultimately, God will defeat His enemies and the enemies of His people.  The devil and his minions are going to get a supreme butt-whooping!  For those first reading of hearing the book of Revelation, this message was probably applied largely to the defeat of the Roman Empire.  But I think we can safely extend the context to say simply that God is going to defeat evil in the end.  Hallelujah!

2)      Live ready! 

One thing the “Left Behind” series conveys (largely through fear) is the need to be ready.  But I don’t think the need for readiness is merely the result of being afraid to miss out on the Rapture.  The fact of the matter is, we should all be ready in the sense that none of us is guaranteed to live through the next day (or even hour!).  If we all knew the appointed time of our death, then we would tend to think that it wouldn’t really matter how we live our lives, as long as we turn to God in the final stages of our life.  But that’s not the way it works; rather, we don’t know when that time will come for us, so we need to live our lives in complete devotion to God and seek to follow Christ all the days of our lives.  Additionally, we can allow God to use us for the glory of His kingdom with our time here on earth.  Getting back to the end times, regardless of how it will all play out in the end, we need to ready in the same sense that we should always be ready.  Jesus commands this sort of readiness (Matthew 24-25) for His followers, and Revelation again calls us to the already-present need to be ready.  Whether we die or Jesus comes back first, will we be found faithful? 

3)      His children will join Him!  

The result of whatever events unfold in the end times, the children of God will have a happy ending.  Aside from Revelation, there are ample Scripture passages that speak of the inheritance awaiting those who have been adopted as the children of God (Romans 8:15-17; Ephesians 1:7-14; Philippians 3:20-4:1, just to name a few).  Whether we will float up to the sky to join Jesus, vanish out of thin air, participate in some epic-Lord-of-the-Rings-like battle with the forces of evil, experience death, or any other possibility, we can be confident that the hope of eternity in God’s presence lies before us.  And we will join the multitudes in worship of our Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer, and Finisher!      

                This is not to say that I think it pointless to study the book of Revelation, and I imagine that I will continue to do a great deal of study in Revelation myself.  However, as we do, and as various discussions emerge as a result of the latest “Left Behind” movie, perhaps these few points can give us a place to start (or a place to finish, haha, get it…finish…Bible pun!).    

                                                          ~Jon Bryant