Re: [A-List] Re: COUP d' ETAT IN WASHINGTON

["Anyutka" <annewilliamson@xxxxxxx>]

Sabri:

Here's another excellent North essay on the rapture Christians.  He
addresses the parable of "the tares and the wheat," which is Christ's
response to your earlier question to me.  He also discusses Michael's
(and my) complaint of these people's materialism near the end of the
essay.

Anne

PS  I highly recommend Dr. North's book, "Rapture Fever", for the
truly interested.  Alas, the wait for it is nearly as long as the one
for Michael's book - which has yet to arrive in my mailbox.  The book
can be ordered at Amazon.

*************************************************

Left Behind Culturally
by Gary North

I have just previewed a videotape of a new movie, which will be released on
February 2: "Left Behind." The best I can say for it is this:

"Two thumbs off!" (See Judges 1:6.)

"Left Behind" is based on an astoundingly successful fundamentalist
publishing venture, a series of novels known collectively as Left Behind. At
last count, there were eight volumes in this series. This series has
generated sales totaling approximately a quarter of a billion dollars in
just five years. Big money. Big audience. Big hopes for a very small movie
producer.

The series is co-authored by Rev. Tim LaHaye, husband of Beverly LaHaye, who
runs the Christian activist organization, Concerned Women of America.

The series is premised on a theological assumption, namely, that Chapter 13
of the Gospel of Matthew must not be taken literally. This is the passage,
more than any other in the New Testament, that deals with the Kingdom of God
in history. It contains several of Jesus' parables, including the one that
deals with the wheat and the tares. This is the parable where the field
workers come to the field's owner and tell him that an enemy has seeded the
wheat field with tares - a worthless crop. Should they dig up the tares?

But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the
wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time
of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares,
and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn
(Matthew 13:29-30).
Jesus' disciples came to Him after the crowd had left, and asked what this
parable meant.

He answered and said unto them, He that soweth the good seed is the Son of
man; The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom;
but the tares are the children of the wicked one; The enemy that sowed them
is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the
angels. As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall
it be in the end of this world. The Son of man shall send forth his angels,
and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them
which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall
be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as
the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear
(Matthew 13:37-43).

Jesus was quite clear: there will be no corporate separation of sinners and
saints in history. Only at the end of time will the corporate separation
take place: sheep and goats, wheat and tares, saved and lost,
covenant-keepers and covenant-breakers. Until then, the separation remains
confessional and institutional, not physical and corporate.

Until 1830, the Christian church universally taught this doctrine of
temporal non-separation. In 1830, a tiny English Protestant sect known as
the Irvingites proclaimed a new doctrine. The church will escape the
prophesied future tribulation by being removed from history. The church will
be pulled into heaven at an event that is today referred to as "the
Rapture."

Two preliminary observations are in order. First, the word "rapture" does
not appear in either New Testament Greek or the King James Bible. Second,
with respect to the doctrine of the Great Tribulation, significant segments
of the church have understood this to refer to the Roman imperial army's
burning of the Temple and sacking of the city of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. (See
David Chilton's book, The Great Tribulation.)

The Irvingites' idea was immediately adopted by John Nelson Darby, a leader
of the small British sect known as the Plymouth Brethren. Darby brought this
doctrine to the United States. Decades later, in the 1880's, it finally
began to spread among American fundamentalists, especially those who were
upset by the appearance of what soon became known as the Social Gospel,
which identified the kingdom of God with the Progressive movement. The
Social Gospel's defenders secularized the older postmillennialism of the
Puritans and American Presbyterians, concluding that the interventionist
State will progressively manifest the political aspect of the kingdom of God
in history.

Fundamentalists rejected such a notion, but offered in its place the
Irving-Darby doctrine: the pre-tribulational, pre-millennial Rapture. The
Rapture will take place 1,007 years prior to the final judgment, seven years
prior to the bodily return of Jesus to set up an international Christian
bureaucracy to run the world. This thousand-year era will be known as the
millennial kingdom of God. Jesus will therefore return pre-millennially.

What was new in this premillennial outline was the doctrine that Christ will
remove the church from the world 3.5 years prior to the great tribulation
period, which will last for another 3.5 years. Seven years after the
Rapture, He will return to set up His earthly kingdom. Traditional
premillennialism, which has a long history, had previously taught that
Christ will return after the great tribulation of His church. There will be
no period in history where there is not continuity for His church.

So, Jesus will come secretly to rapture his church into heaven. Then the
antichrist will set up an international government to rule the world. Three
and a half years after the Rapture, the antichrist's army will surround
Jerusalem and kill (approximately) two-thirds of the Jews. (There are three
big statistical problems with this prophecy: New York City, West Los
Angeles, and Miami Beach.)

A major psychological reason why American fundamentalists support the State
of Israel is this: the doctrine of the pre-tribulation Rapture teaches that
the future persecution of the saints will be the persecution of Jews in
Israel, not Christians. Christians by then will have flown the coop. (I have
discussed this motivation in an earlier essay.)

"Left Behind" is based on Darby's Rapture doctrine. It identifies the bad
guys - central bankers and the United Nations (hard to argue with that!) -
and the good guys: irrelevant Christians, who depart from the film rather
early, leaving behind empty piles of clothing. This leaves only clueless
non-Christians to carry the dramatic weight of the movie. But without the
Soviet Union or Saddam Hussein, and with too many nations in the European
Union to fit the traditional fundamentalist prophecy of a ten-nation
alliance against Israel, the screenwriter was hard-pressed to squeeze much
drama out of it.

A Muted Trumpet

The movie's first scene after the Rapture has taken place occurs on a
transatlantic air flight. A lady asks a stewardess if the stewardess can
look for her husband. "I think he's naked." She points to a pile of clothes
on the seat next to her. The lady is elderly. So, presumably, is her
husband. (This is a family film, after all.) But others on the plane are
also missing. Where are they? They're gone! On flights all over the skies,
they're gone. The rest of the people in the film have been . . . left
behind!

Nobody knows why. In the movie, it's a huge mystery, even a national
security issue. The movie spends the next thirty minutes with characters
wandering around saying, "Where did they go?"

The problem here, for both the screenwriter and fundamentalist theologians,
is the trumpet. We are told later in the movie that the New Testament says
this:

For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice
of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall
rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together
with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever
be with the Lord. (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17).

In another epistle, Paul wrote: "In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at
the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised
incorruptible, and we shall be changed" (I Corinthians 15:52). The trumpet
is prominent in both passages. This is because both passages refer to the
same event: the end of history (the real one, not Francis Fukuyama's) and
the final judgment.

So, why didn't anyone in the movie hear the trumpet? Because the movie is
about the secret Rapture. This is what fundamentalists call this
hypothetical future event: the secret Rapture. Every Christian on earth will
disappear in the twinkling of an eye, leaving behind piles of off-the-rack
suits, but nobody who is left behind will have heard the trumpet. They will
have trouble figuring out just what has happened.

I ask the screenwriter and the theologians: Where was that mighty trumpet
sound? When it comes to the next cataclysmic eschatological event of
history, I ask this: Louis Armstrong, where are you now that we need you?

Here's Not Looking at You, Kids

In the movie, the world goes on. All the Christians are gone, but airlines
still fly, power companies still operate, banks stay open, and the TV still
blares. The only things missing on-screen are Oprah and Montel interviewing
family members left behind, and Rosie O'Donnell arguing that this tragedy
would never have happened if there had been effective gun control laws.

The whole social system still works. The infrastructure is intact. ("When I
hear the word infrastructure, I reach for my gun." - Ruben Alvarado.) The
world has just lost the true - really, truly true - members of its largest
religion, and everything still runs just fine. No problem! I mean, even the
life insurance companies are still in business.

I suppose that Sunday morning TV programming of local preachers and
televangelists would be taped re-runs, but the movie leaves this an open
question. One of the characters left behind is a local fundamentalist
pastor, who is very, very chagrined.

I wish all this were a spoof, but it isn't. This movie faithfully represents
dramatically a central tenet of American fundamentalism: Christianity is
socially irrelevant.

In every field, Christians are today understood by fundamentalists as
offering nothing of real importance culturally. The world can get along just
fine without Christians. In education, science, technology, the professions,
and entertainment - above all, entertainment - Christians are assumed by
fundamentalists to be irrelevant or at least marginal, and necessarily so.
This is indicated by their view of the seven-year interval between the
Rapture and Christ's Second Coming to set up His bureaucratic earthly
kingdom. The absence of Christians will not be noticed after the Rapture
because they are barely noticed today.

The only evidence in the movie that the absence of Christians will make a
visible difference is in the number of auto accidents. Cars went out of
control when their drivers were issued the Great Summons from the sky. Yet
even here, the screenwriter does not have anyone say this. It is merely
implied by a street full of banged-up cars.

There are no airplane crashes on-screen. Why not? Is it because the
screenwriter assumed that Christians are not well-educated enough to be
pilots? Or is this movie a subtle ad for El Al Airlines?

Yes, I am being sarcastic, but for a reason. The doctrine of the
premillennial, pre-tribulation Rapture has gutted fundamentalism culturally
for well over a century. What Christian wants to pay the personal
sacrificial price that gaining influence requires, when he also expects the
church to be removed from the world in the very near future? After all, the
antichrist will inherit everything. Covenant-breakers will become the heirs
of the capital of covenant-keepers. Why sacrifice today to build up an
inheritance for God's enemies?

The Bible teaches that "a good man leaveth an inheritance to his children's
children: and the wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just" (Proverbs
13:22). The Rapture doctrine teaches that the wealth of the just is laid up
for the sinner. So, why spend a lifetime of above-average effort and
risk-taking in order to lay up an inheritance that will be confiscated by
the sinners left behind?

A radical present-orientation afflicts Protestant fundamentalists. In 1970,
Edward Banfield identified the primary origin of lower-class culture as its
present-orientation. (See the original edition of his book, The Unheavenly
City.) It is not a person's income but rather his time-perspective that best
identifies his class position. Fundamentalists, by this definition, are
lower class.

A person who has no faith in the long-term earthly future of his legacy is
unlike to save, work long hours to build a business, advance his education,
or do anything else that involves long-term sacrifice, other than foreign
missions. Ludwig von Mises argued that people with high time-preference (low
future-orientation) pay high interest rates to borrow money, and will not
save unless they are offered high interest rates by borrowers. Cultures that
are high time-preference societies experience low capital formation and
therefore low economic growth, he said. They are unwilling to pay for it.
They get what they pay for.

The result, artistically, is "Left Behind."

Conclusion

I end this essay with a Bible verse. It should be applied in more senses
than one.

For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the
battle? (I Corinthians 14:8)

Culturally, intellectually, and politically, American fundamentalists have
been left behind. They have done their best to leave behind nothing of
cultural value. They are committed theologically to cultural irrelevance, as
I have explained in Chapter 5 of my book, Rapture Fever. Culturally, they
have sounded an uncertain trumpet. They need a lot more Louis Armstrong,
figuratively speaking.



January 10, 2001

Gary North is the author of an eleven-volume series, An Economic Commentary
on the Bible. The latest volume is Cooperation and Dominion: An Economic
Commentary on Romans. The series can be downloaded free of charge at
www.freebooks.com.