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Jesus
is Coming... Tomorrow:
Millions
of Christians think the end times are imminent this year, as they
were in 2006, and 2005, and 2004, and… you get the idea..
“OK Jessica,” the man with the
microphone says, “you said you think you’re a good
person who would go to Heaven, so I’m going to ask you some
questions to see if you’ll get there, K?”
Jessica grins vacantly back at the man and nervously
fidgets with her sunglasses. “OK,” she says.
“OK, have you ever told a lie?” Yes.
“What do you call someone who tells lies?” A liar.
“Have you ever stolen something?” No. “Should
I believe you since you just told me you were a liar?”
“Yes, you can believe me,” she says,
the grin still there, but fading fast.
“Jesus said if you ever look with lust,
you commit adultery in your heart. Have you ever looked with lust?”
the man asks, his cockney British accent delivering the question
with speed.
Gulp. “Yes,” Jessica mumbles, her
smile vanished as she spends the rest of the YouTube video, “Are
you a liar at heart?” nervously nodding while being told
she should repent all her evil sins immediately because if the
Rapture were to happen that day, she’d be dammed to eternal
torment and torture in Hell.
Below the video is a string of comments, most
by the video uploader, the webmaster of RaptureAlert.com. His
profile proudly proclaims himself to be Michael G. Mickey, 43,
a born-again Christian who believes in a literal interpretation
of the bible.
“I believe there is sufficient evidence
around us to indicate that the world, at least as we presently
know it, is near its end and the return of Jesus Christ is at
hand, perhaps at the very door,” Mickey writes.
While that may be worth a strong cocktail, it’s
certainly nothing new. People have been foretelling the return
of Jesus and the coming of Armageddon as described in the Book
of Revelation since almost the moment Jesus left in the first
place.
But such fundamentalist thinking is far from fringe
these days. In December 2006, a year-end poll conducted by the
Associated Press and AOL found that 25 percent of Americans said
they believe that Jesus would return in 2007. If we’re to
believe the poll is an accurate representation of the United States
population, that’s a quarter of the country, or 75 million
people.
“You people are seriously disturbed,”
howled blogger Cenk Uygur on The Huffington Post. “You think
a magic man is going to appear out of the sky and grant you eternal
bliss. If the man's name was anything other than Jesus, that belief
would get you locked up as a psychotic.”
Well, maybe not locked up anymore, but possibly
some strange glances. Perhaps a sounder statistic comes from a
2006 survey for the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. They
found 79 percent of American Christians believe in the second
coming, and 20 percent believe it will happen in their lifetime.
Why the resurgence of belief in the proverbial
End Times? Bible verses in several books predict a “regathering”
of Jews in their homeland before the final days. The holy land
will see the Temple rebuilt and suffer a series of wars before
Armageddon. Minus the Temple, any of that sound familiar?
In this climate thrive two authors who have spun
an epic yarn — fictional, of course — that gets right
into the nitty-gritty of the Rapture and the Tribulation said
to follow.
About his return, Jesus himself said, "No
one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven,
nor the Son, but only the Father" (Matthew 24:36). But for
many of the millions of readers of the wildly popular “Left
Behind” novel series, that could be anytime as long as it’s
not when they are reading one of the 16 novels, watching the film
adaptations or playing the high-caliber shoot-'em-up videogame,
“Left Behind: Eternal Forces.”
Jerry B. Jenkins and Tim LaHaye's thriller-meets-theology
saga has charted numbers that no Christian writings have ever
before — besides the Bible itself. The first four books
simultaneously held the one, two, three and four slots on the
New York Times bestseller list in 1998 despite the fact the list
does not take Christian retailers into account.
"In my mind, in a way, we are sales people
for the Gospel,” said Jenkins in an interview.
And LaHaye is no basement dweller. He was on the
original board of directors for the Moral Majority and an organizer
for the Council for National Policy, which ABC called "the
most powerful conservative organization in America you've never
heard of." The guy’s got status.
The stories tell of millions of God-fearing Christians
being whisked to heaven, leaving clothes, shoes and jewelry behind
with the rest of the population, to face the seven years of Tribulation,
the rise of the Antichrist, and the war to end all wars before
the return of Jesus Christ. The scenario culminates in a “Glorious
Appearing” in which Jesus, astride a great white horse,
casts the Antichrist, Lucifer and a great number of non-believers
into a lake of fire.
LaHaye has said in interviews that the bestselling
numbers reflect a sizeable American belief in a literal interpretation
of the Bible. Moderate Christians, many of whom feel very uncomfortable
with their fundamentalist brethren, have no bestselling literature
to compete.
"They are just liberal socialists, really,
and they don't believe the Bible," LaHaye said. "What
they probably will come up with is a plausible explanation from
their liberal standpoint to satisfy their adherents that are reading
our series and like it.”
Jenkins and LaHaye aren’t shy about passing
off their saga as more than fiction either, posting this on their
website: "The pre-millennialist theology found in the Left
Behind Series is the prominent view among evangelical Christians,
including their leading seminaries.”
The base theology of Rapture theory is called
Dispensationalism, an interpretive framework for understanding
the Bible in which history is divided into specific periods according
to how God is said to have dealt with humanity.
Barbara Rossing thinks that’s a bunch of
crap. A Lutheran minister and teacher at the Lutheran School of
Theology in Chicago, Rossing penned the 2004 book, "The Rapture
Exposed," where she calls Rapture theology unbiblical and
blatant pandering to American fear over globalization, Iraq, and
global climate change.
"The rapture is a racket," she told
Reuters. "We (moderate Christians) were asleep at the switch
for too long, and fundamentalists rushed in to speak to this vacuum.
Now we've got to reclaim it.”
But evangelical Christians do not have a monopoly
on Armageddon. In fact, there is an entire philosophic theology
devoted to end of the world study called Eschatology. The Mayan
calendar ends in 2012 and has all kinds of people spooked. According
to the Jewish Talmudic calendar, the Earth will only last 6,000
years from the creation of Adam. By this calculation, the end
of days will occur at or before 2240.
Followers of the Bahá'í Faith have
their version, as do the Rastafarians, Jehovah’s Witnesses,
Mormons, and Seventh-Day Adventists. Most religions do. It’s
the bookend to their particular story. The details change bit,
but the plot structure is essentially the same: Jesus, God, Allah,
etc., comes back and fights with a Satan figure for control of
the Earth, a battle the good guys — of course — eventually
win.
So what? No biggie, except Rapture and Armageddon
believers make up some of the most militant anti-environmentalists
and biggest consumers out there. Why worry about consuming natural
resources when it’s all ending soon anyway?
“Why care about global climate change when
you and yours will be rescued in the Rapture?” asked esteemed
journalist Bill Moyers in a 2004 speech at Harvard.
Moyers was spotlighting
Rapture adherents — who make up a sizeable majority of the
so-called Religious Right — as a sort of sticky goo that
clogs up the wheels of environmental progress in the halls of
Congress. An entire voting bloc that sits home anticipating a
deus ex machina.
“And why care about converting from oil
to solar when the same God who performed the miracle of the loaves
and fishes can whip up a few billion barrels of light crude with
a word?" Moyers continued.
Given the fact that much of this gets drilled
into young Christian heads at places like Vacation Bible Schools,
Sunday school, and religious themed summer camps, combating Rapture
theory with sensible logic seems an uphill battle. For this reason,
religion from a secular academic perspective is being touted by
some as a must learn for kids in public schools. But who vets
the teachers? It goes on and on.
In the meantime,
the next time you see a bumper sticker that reads “In Case
of Rapture, this car will be Unmanned,” feel free to ask
if you can have their vehicle after they’re gone.
By
Garret Ellison
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