Tag: Left Behind

Should Left Behind be left behind?

Is the modern series a good guide to Revelation? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

“I wonder what I will write about for the blog.”

Then my mother calls.

“I’m going to be attending a series at my church on the book of Revelation and the pastor wants us to discuss if the Left Behind novels are a good guide to the book. What do you think?”

I think I know what I’m writing about.

You know my eschatology here. I am an orthodox Preterist. (The link uses an older title as I call myself an orthodox Preterist, but the meaning still stands.) That being said, I would hope even most premillennials and dispensationalists in general would ditch Left Behind, and considering how many years it has been since I have heard about it, that could be happening.

You know how many video games, movies, and TV shows are being done now for “modern audiences”? (Yes. I watch the Critical Drinker. How could you tell?) They’re an imaginary group of people that don’t buy anything but all businesses are rushing to please. I am not at all saying Left Behind is woke as it clearly is not, but it does come with the idea that the book of Revelation was written for modern audiences.

This is something I find puzzling. If this crowd assumes we are not going to be here for the events of the book, why are they written? To satisfy curiosity? For those who are left behind? Do they have any relevance up until that time?

It is my contention that the book largely describes first-century events but does so in apocalyptic language. This language used cosmic imagery in order to depict political happenings in the world.  I will use a few examples to show how this works. Consider this from 2 Samuel 22 where David describes being caught in a situation where death was certain.

7 In my distress I called upon the Lord;
to my God I called.
From his temple he heard my voice,
and my cry came to his ears.

8 Then the earth reeled and rocked;
the foundations of the heavens trembled
and reeled because he was angry.
9 Smoke went up from his nostrils
and devouring fire from his mouth;
glowing coals flamed forth from him.
10 He bowed the heavens and came down;
thick darkness was under his feet.
11 He rode on a cherub and flew;
he was seen upon the wings of the wind.
12 He made darkness around him a canopy,
thick clouds, a gathering of water.
13 Out of the brightness before him
coals of fire flamed forth.
14 The Lord thundered from heaven;
the Most High uttered his voice.
15 He sent out arrows and scattered them,
lightning and routed them.
16 Then the channels of the sea were seen;
the foundations of the world were laid bare
at the rebuke of the Lord,
at the blast of the breath of his nostrils.

Wow! What an amazing event! David needed help and YHWH Himself came down from Heaven riding on the backs of Gabriel and Michael and began shooting arrows and the whole foundations of the world were laid bare when YHWH blew His nose.

Bet you don’t remember that incident in the life of David!

Of course you don’t, because it didn’t happen that way. David is using poetic license definitely. YHWH never literally did this nor does David think He did or expect you to think He did.

Or look at Luke 3 talking about the ministry of John the Baptist:

“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord;
make his paths straight.
5 Every valley shall be filled,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
and the crooked shall be made straight,
and the rough ways made smooth,
6 and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’ ”

Where my parents live in Tennessee, mountains are within range easily. You can see them. I guess this Scripture hasn’t been fulfilled. Even in Luke, we know about the Mount of Transfiguration and the Mount of Olives. Did this not happen?

Or is this apocalyptic imagery?

It certainly is, and this is the kind of language all throughout Revelation. If you read it in a literal sense, you miss what the author is truly trying to tell us. Let us consider a passage like Revelation 12 with a giant multi-headed dragon sweeping stars from the sky.

Now literally, if there was a dragon that big, considering stars are light-years away, this is going to be one mammoth dragon and if one of those hits us, game over. Or, you could consider it as a telling of the Christmas story. Jesus is born and the devil tries to kill Him immediately through the actions of Herod.

One fact about Revelation is that it assumes you have a  thorough knowledge of the Old Testament. Go look through and see how many times the Old Testament is quoted. Hardly ever. Go look and see how many allusions you find and they’re everywhere. From the description of Jesus in Revelation 1, to the temple and heavenly city at the end of the book. All of this assumes you will be familiar with the Old Testament. Too many modern readers are not.

Next, it makes the text be all about us. The Scriptures include plenty about us, to be sure, but the text is all about God revealed in Christ. Our tendency is to think that we are that generation, which has not been thought by any generation in history. Well, unless you count all of them.

We also spend way too much time speculating on who the “Antichrist” is. (By the way, the word antichrist doesn’t show up once in Revelation.) It would be far better for us if we spent more time focusing on who the Christ is. I actually encourage people to read Revelation whatever your perspective and ignore eschatology except for in one area and read the book to address this. “Who does this book say Jesus is?”

I am thankful that more and more, I encounter less and less of this kind of mindset. I tried going through the Left Behind books, but I just couldn’t. I was listening on audio and I stopped at the end of one book and never really cared to get into the rest of it. It’s not even because it was bad eschatology. I have enjoyed several books where I disagreed with the worldview behind them. The books are just boring as literature and not worth reading.

Leave behind Left Behind.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

 

Book Plunge: End Times Bible Prophecy. It’s Not What They Told You.

What do I think of Brian Godawa’s book published by Embedded Pictures Publishing? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Brian Godawa writes as someone who is a reluctant Orthodox Preterist. He writes about growing up in a futurist mindset and then when he first encountered the view that he’s currently defending of Orthodox Preterism, he was shocked. That has to be heresy! It has to be liberals not taking the Bible literally! It’s undermining the faith delivered once and for all to the saints!

His experience is not unusual. I remember being stunned the first time I heard about the Preterist viewpoint. How could anyone think this? I remember reading in an old study Bible about different views of Revelation and how some think it depicts events that happened in the first century and thinking “Wow. Some people really believed that all this stuff happened?” Of course, it was my mindset that was in the reading of “All this stuff must be fulfilled in a wooden literalistic sense.” It never occurred to me that the problem could be my viewpoint.

Like Brian, I had cracks show up in my thinking that were hard to answer. What about the statement of “This generation will not pass away?” I also started seeing that some ideas behind the view of the rapture were extremely difficult to hold. These were paths I did not want to take, but the evidence was too strong to avoid not taking those paths.

Abandoning the idea of the rapture was extremely hard, and yet I wasn’t done. As I met preterists, I started realizing that I was wrong about what they believed. It wasn’t the case that everything had happened in 70 A.D. I had just never really taken the time to look like I should have. It was a group discussion led by two preterists that got me to see what my problem was.

Brian’s book begins with his own story and then goes to hermeneutics. I think this is an excellent way to begin as Brian shows a different way to read Scripture that still strives to be faithful to the test and is not “liberal” or “denying Inerrancy.” Hermeneutics is one of the first areas of questions I have for futurists nowadays. It is asking them that even if their conclusion differs, and I’m thankful it does, how is their hermeneutic any different from the one that produced the four blood moons of John Hagee?

He then goes step by step through the Olivet Discourse. Brian is gentle and understands regularly how his readers could balk at this thinking. He takes a few diversions to look at questions like the antichrist and such. All the while, Brian wants to take someone’s hand and slowly walk them through this territory that could be unfamiliar to them.

Still, he has produced a convincing work. A few times I was reading and thinking “Brian. You could have a much better argument if you would include XYZ.” I would find a few paragraphs later that Brian does indeed know about XYZ and says something about it. Brian is also not at all dogmatic in what he says.

It’s also helpful that he has a part in here about the idea of Neohymenaeanism, whereby everything was said to take place in 70 A.D. No doubt, more could be said here, but he does refer to another work on this topic. He wants people to still know that Jesus will return and there will be a bodily resurrection.

Brian’s book is an excellent guide for someone wanting the ins and outs of this whole area. He also has a novel that can go with it called Tyrant: Rise of the Beast. I have not read it yet, but it is supposed to be a novel form of what he is talking about in his book if you prefer that way instead.

I recommend that anyone interested in the truth about “Bible prophecy” check out Brian’s book.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

 

Book Plunge: Jesus, The Temple, and the Coming Son of Man

What do I think of Robert Stein’s book? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

There are many secondary debates in Christianity that I just don’t care for at all. I have no desire to touch a debate on Calvinism with a ten-foot pole for instance. Eschatology, however, is an exception. I’m not sure why that is, but I just happen to really enjoy eschatology. It could be in our culture if we live in America, we grow up in a culture that has what Gary Demar calls “End Times Madness” and we have to find our place in it.

When I started my journey, I was a pre-trib, pre-mill dispensationalist. I was a full supporter of the rapture and just couldn’t see why people couldn’t see that in the Bible. Now I’m pretty much opposite. I have reached the conclusion where I am an orthodox Preterist and wonder how it is that anyone can see a rapture in the Bible.

That’s one reason I was curious to see a book such as Robert Stein’s on Jesus and the Olivet Discourse, that is Mark 13. What was his view on the little apocalypse that Jesus gives in this chapter? Would he match up with my Preterist understanding or would he challenge it or would he fall somewhere in between?

Right off, any reader who is thinking he will affirm a view that is more in line with Left Behind will be sadly disappointed. In fact, that position is largely argued against in the footnotes. There really aren’t many people in the scholarly world, even those who are Christians, who take such a position any more. It’s largely also an American phenomenon.

I happened to agree with many of Stein’s viewpoints and interestingly, he places them in the context of historical Jesus studies not only showing what he thinks that they mean, but showing also how they fit in with the quest for the historical Jesus, which largely sought to remove much of the eschatology from Jesus or else totally redefine it with something that would fit in more with an Enlightenment point of view.

I also liked that he did say much of the discourse has to apply to 1st century Judea. It would not make sense otherwise and it would only apply to those who were living in Judea. There is no general command for all Christians to flee to the mountains. There is only the command to do so when you are in Jerusalem and you see what you will know as the abomination that causes desolation. (To which, his candidate for that is entirely plausible.)

I did disagree on some points. For instance, when it comes to the coming of the Son of Man, I do see that as a coming that is heavenly. It is the sign that Jesus has been vindicated. I base this largely on Daniel 7 where Jesus approaches the Ancient of Days. If He is doing that, then it is clear that He is going up. He is not coming down.

I also would have liked to have seen a bit more on the passage that no man knows the day or hour but only the Father. It would have been good to have seen how this would reflect the high Christology that Stein says is in Mark, especially when it says that the Son of Man will send forth His angels. (note the use of His.) This is indeed something the church would not have made up as it would be embarrassing, but how are Christians to understand it?

The book does have several helpful references in it including pointing out the hyperbole that is often used and the constant comparison to Old Testament language. If we are to understand Jesus, we must understand him in the cultural matrix He spoke in, which included a culture that was saturated with the Old Testament and the thinking of Second Temple Judaism. Much of our misunderstanding in eschatology comes because we do not make this distinction.

The points that I disagree with are not primary to eschatological understanding and overall, I agree with the bulk of Stein’s approach. I also find it interesting that he chooses Mark to focus on since so much of even the early church just didn’t seem to care too much for Mark. It’s good there is a scholar who does really appreciate this Gospel and wants to bring out all the gems we might have missed.

Therefore, if you want a good look at the eschatology of Jesus with some historical Jesus studies thrown in, I think this is one you should add to your library.

In Christ,

Nick Peters