"Left behind" - Churches Rapture!

[horseshoe]

Just wondered what peoples take on this was. Im reading a book called Left Behind and it's prompted me to assess my faith!!! I'm intrigued at how specific the bible seems to be about this and although I have never taken much interest in religion I have always believed in a God. I'm thinking maybe I should take steps to begin learning and then I can make a decision on whether to accept christianity as my religion but i'm worried about how I can accept it fully without question!!!! I want to believe but I dont know how!!!!

errrmmm hard question to answer N3.

Only because this particular book does little to discuss God but more to set about proving the bible I suppose. It is written by a former pastor afterall which I am fully aware of.

The God I like to think of is in everything we see and feel and my relationship with him is a very personal one between me and him. I thank him daily for my life. I suppose that I haven't had much room for Jesus but the bible says know God through Jesus!!!

I guess all this book has done is made me think that maybe I need to know more in order to have a relationship with God!!! Is what i'm doing enough??? Is just living your life in a good way enough to ensure we get into heaven????

Horseshoe, I think that Jesus shows us how to be human more than just showing us how God is. I think the aim of humanity should be to live as he lived. It's not about trying to ensure we get to heaven, it's about bringing God's kingdom to the here and now - God's love, justice and compassion. I do believe in an afterlife but I don't think that should be our motivation in what we do. I'd check out the book I mentioned to find out more about Jesus - it's up to you if you decide he's the Son of God or not, but it shows how and why Jesus did the things he did. And read the Gospels, particularly Matthew, Mark and Luke - the rest of the NT is written by people with a particular christology and it's hard to strip that away. As for the books trying to prove the Bible, it's impossible - it's about faith, not proof. I hope you find what you are looking for and will remember you in my prayers.

Sleepyjess that's very kind. I haven't read Walsch's books - maybe I should! I gave up on my Anglican church partly because it was serving itself rather than God. I take our dds to a Baptist church sometimes so that they feel a part of a Christian family, the pastor knows what a wishy washy liberal I am and we are still made welcome! I know what you mean about suddenly remembering, but I am also finding that I have to unlearn whole ways of thinking and doing which is quite disconcerting. Worth it, though!

My book came this morning.. have just read first three chapters. Blimey, not very cheeful is it??!

So this is why you suddenly feel an urgent need to adopt Christianity, Horseshoe? Obviously I have not read much of the book yet but I am wondering about a few things... If ALL children/babies got taken, did Jesus really want children such as Thompson and Venebles (Jamie Bulger's Killers)..??

Had anyone who has read this book/series asked anyone on an Alpha course what they make of it??! It does not sound like the behaviour of the Jesus Christ I know of! I admit I have not given much thought to the Second Coming - and even less so since I embarked on a path that is I suppose, more spiritual than related to organised religion even though I go to an anglican church. I might ask the vicar what he thinks of these books.. I know they are novels, but I am quite surprised that they are co-written by a minister!

What did you actually make of the series MoM, apart from having enjoyed it?

SJ x

I really dislike these Left Behind books. I find some of the content theologically indefensible and quite offensive in parts.

Bit gripping though eh Roisin?? Even if very ing!!!

And I have just googled 'rapture'... which wasn't entirely a wise move I don't think...

horseshoe, I really sympathise with what you're feeling... I remember feeling that thing of 'I want to go deeper, but not sure how'. I am always very easily put off by people who are so gung-ho and sure of themselves that I feel like I can never be like them... I am always full of questions and constantly doubt things and have to work through my beliefs on those issues.

Anyway, if you're interesed, I have a few basic introductory books which I found helpful in the early days. I may even be able to dig up a few talks on 'eschatology' - what happens at the end of the world. It touches briefly on the left behind/rapture kind of ideas (and discredits them actually!) but is very interesting. The speaker is an ancient historian who is also Christian, so I like his kind of historical take on things. Anyway CAT me if you're interested. (That goes for anyone else who'd like these things, too.)

Sleepyjess - yes gripping in a way, but complete rubbish as well!

am late to the discussion, and don't normally wander onto this board, but thought it was worth adding that I have read the whole Left Behind series and don't consider them true, accurate, theologically defensible, or even very well written. They are gripping though!

I interpreted them as kind of religious fantasy, definitely,as a former poster mentioned, more on a par with The Omen, or even the film Dogma, than with serious theology.

If the Bible is a writer's interpretation of the word of God, these books are at several removes from the Bible, and hence a long way from being acceptable-as-true-without-question.

In fact, the original poster mentions she's not sure how she could accept religion 'fully without question', and I think therein lies the rub.
God gave us brains and enquiring minds, and made us capable of questioning, so I think anyone who wants us to accept anything without exercising our God-given brains about it has got the wrong end of the stick.
Don't fall into the trap of being frightened into becoming a Christian 'because bad things will happen to you otherwise'. I'm very sure this is not how it works.

I feel lucky in that I was brought up in the Christian tradition - not because it's better than any other type of tradition, or none, but because it gave me a personal introduction to religion and the nature of God, which proved a valuable starting point when I came to formulate my own beliefs.

I'll stop rambling and précis my blabber so far.
I believe:

• The books are tosh
• No-one has the power to dictate your relationship with God - that's between you and him
• If you decide Christianity is a good way to get close to God, it's worth investigating
• If you decide you don't need organised religion or a denominational label to get close to God, don't feel compelled to subscribe to one

phew!

Very wise post Mrs Badger. And very eloquently put.

SJ x

I agree, sleepyjess, good post Mrs. Badger.

It worries me that the fact a minister has written these books might give them more weight. Anyone can call themselves a pastor, reverend or even bishop with no training, and go about spouting whatever crack-brained stuff they want to. Even within the CofE it depends very much on which theological college a priest was trained at as to their pov on certain things. I once had a discussion about the Creation and mentioned that I find the Gaia theory helpful in understanding how the created world works. A priest actually warned us not to have anything to do with Gaia as it was pagan! He'd never heard of James Lovelock or the fact that Gaia is a scientific theory like Darwinism because at theological college he'd been told it was 'dangerous' to look into it. So certain clergy are being trained to be superstitious and fearful rather than using reason and faith, and are passing this on to their congregations. No wonder those outside of Christianity think we're stuck in the dark ages spouting (as my humanist friend puts it) 'mumbo-jumbo'.

Yes I wish the CofE was more open to other ideas. I once got a stunned response from a group of women from my church when I said I was going to be Reiki attuned the next day. I use Reiki quite a lot (have a DH with a painful condtition) but have never mentioned in to the people from church again. I wish I had the guts to shout, 'Hey, there is more to God and All That Is that you think there is! Wake up!!' but that seems quite blasphemous even to me!! (Who doesn't really believe in blasphemy)

I think that's partly why I left the church, Sleepyjess, it has become so narrow, I particularly find it hard that the church has supressed the female imagery used to understand God and Jesus. The clergy seem so terrified of frightening the people in the pews that they will not rock the boat by introducing a different way of looking at things, but the whole of Jesus' teaching is about looking at things in a different way, and that is just as relevant today as 2000 years ago. It's deeply patronising - of course there will always be those for whom the 'right' way is a traditional understanding of Christianity and that's fine, but so many people find this excluding and exclusive.

I rather fear that Horshoe hasn't not read the "Left Behind" series as closely as she might.

Some quotes:
"Rayford Steele's mind was on a woman he had never touched. With his fully loaded 747 on autopilot above the Atlantic en route to a 6 A.M. landing at Heathrow"
Benny Hill didn't live in vane
A page from the book is to be found here:
www.leftbehind.com/channelbooks.asp?pageid=123&channelID=30

Maybe there is a Rapture real soon now.

But these book exploit poeple with low educations and high credulity.
It's Bible porn, indeed from above quote, the author has a lot of experience of the sexual end of the porn business.
Both types of porn have the same core structure,
impluasible levels of wish fulfilment, the injection of "useful" motives into the people one encounters, and the notion that someone actually cares about your fantasies.

Oh dear DominiC.. some of that went "whoooosh"! I fear I may be one of those people with low level educations of whom you speak.. (although am trying to rectify that!) The line you quote (have not looked at link yet) is the first line of the first book of the series.. and I certainly didn't think that the loaded 747 reference related to anything but Rayford's packed plane, despite his lustful thoughts!! Have YOU read the book(s) or just Googled for something about them?

And do you really think we are headed for a Rapture? I keep looking at groups of people I know and making my own judgements on who'd be left behind! (The vast majority of 'em... so at least I'd have company!! :))

I read about 1/4 of that book before it's abject silliness got the better of me. That's a hell of an achievement. I've read a lot of SciFi, so my tolerance for silliness is far higher than most.

As for "The Rapture", I don't know. If you assume a not very bright God with enormous power, grappling with his personal "anger issues", it's quite possible.

But if you do the maths that are used by banks for managing risk, you get some interesting results.

For instance, the implied probability of a complete collapse in society seems to be (about) 200 to 1 in any given year.
We do know of many large scale geophysical events just waiting to happen. Yellowstone park is a giant supervolcano, when it goes off (not if) amlost every animal in N.America dies, and the temperature of the Earth will drop close to Ice age levels.
We find many things like this.
Also there is the Moon...
Covered in meteor impacts craters. It's a vastly smaller target than Earth, weaker gravity etc.
In the two century window, we will run out of fossil fuel, and quite possibly find out what happens when you stop dumping carbon into the air.
Also many countries are observing the difference between what happened to Iraq (which didn't have large scale weapons), and N.Korea which does.

Currently there's less than a dozen nuclear powers. But there are 50-60 countries who can get nuclear weapons pretty much at a whim.
That's not a happy thought.

Population dynamics don't make it to the BBC, but there's interesting and hard to call stuff going on here. The classical model that most people get taught is of exponential increase, followed by very bad things.
Quite the reverse may well be happening, there's good evidence that we are near the peak now and that depopulation is already under way.

And do you really think we are headed for a Rapture? I keep looking at groups of people I know and making my own judgements on who'd be left behind! (The vast majority of 'em... so at least I'd have company!! )

golly, DC, thinks for linking to that first chapter - I'd forgotten just how badly written they were.
Love the description of them as 'Bible porn' - that's spot on.

I don't think we're in for a Rapture at all - something like that is just too petty for any decent God to bother with. Free will isn't free will if you're scared into 'believing' by the disappearance of your wife.

I do remember having a fascinating conversation with a church youth leader when I was about 12 about how we'd recognise the Second Coming if it happened in our lifetimes, and whether the chap claiming to be the Messiah wouldn't be deemed a nutter and end up in an asylum.
She couldn't give me a good answer beyond 'Well, we'd just know', and I went away assuming that it'd be like something like the Vogons addressing Earth at the beginning of Hitchiker's, which would be interesting...

i sometimes think that all the apocalyptic stuff in Revelations is just a possible premonition of the evils we have created for ourselves [Capitalism and greed escalating to the point where we destroy ourselves and the planet completely, through a nuclear war or other means.] I haven't read any of this Left Behind stuff but it sounds a bit like Blade Runner where all the poor people/rejects were left on a suffocatingly polluted planet. But as for being what Christ wants [is that the idea behind it?] that's a bit perverted.
Totally agree with nearly three's posts on the matter.

OMG NO .. put the book down and move away

I was the member of a US based site (support site for chronic illness) and there was an ongoing thread about the Left Behind series

I actually bought a copy of one of them

it is pure mindless drivel .. it is NOT deep .. it is the kind of crap you would pick up at an airport to read on a beach only with a quasi-religious bent

PLEASE PLEASE PUT THE BOOK DOWN AND MOVE AWAY

LOL Twiglett... I agree that I should.. and I hate that it's playing on my mind even if not that seriously).. but I think I will just read to the end first...

DC I totally agree about large-scale geophysical events waiting to happen. Have you read The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight by Thom Hartman? After reading books like this (and others) I personally am in no doubt about the dire situation we have put this planet into. Despite that fact that our mass consumption of fossil fuels has caused them to nearly run out and an ever increasing global warming problem, I (not that I am anyone admittedly) feel really that our biggest worry is the risk of an environmental 'flip' caused by the melting polar ice caps and the changes in the gulf stream. As far as I can make out this could cause a scenario like in the film 'Day After Tomorrow', literally overnight as in the film. There is an excerpt about it (from Thom Hartman's book) \link{http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0130-11.htm\here}.

Re what you said about a 'not very bright God'.. well, personally I have a strong belief in God, and The Rapture scenario does not make sense to me in any respect (which I do hope is not just wishful thinking :)) I was brought up within the anglican c of e church and yet nobody talks of the Rapture.. although they do speak constantly, of course, of the return of Jesus. I have always felt this to be in very vague terms though.. and it never crossed my mind until reading this book that the Second Coming could be anything as horrific as is described in Left Behind. And I don't know if it is 'explained' later in the book.. or a subsequent book.. by why did Jesus take 'his own' back to him, bodies and all??! Who goes to heaven with their earthly body? I can't imagine them needing it really!

I admit (as I have rambled earlier in the thread) that my beliefs have gone somewhat further than Christianity in the last few years.. and perhaps this is where my disquiet over this book is stemming from (not that I was ever a devout enough Christian not to be left behind I fear!).. but God as All That Is (and us as part of that.. so part of God) seems to make such sense to me.. Christianity, in my mind, even fits into all of that - although perhaps people at my church would disagree somewhat!

I think I might do an Alpha course actually.. and try to make myself ask the questions I want to ask (as the Alpha blurb insists you can). It's funny.. I was walking up the high street this morning pondering this when a Salvation Army man thrust a bucket at me, so I point a coin in and he gave me a load of Alpha info (although I already have it from my church).. and THEN I walked into Specsavers and they were playing 'What If God Was One Of Us...'.. lol'..

SJ x

Re what you said about a 'not very bright God'.. well, personally I have a strong belief in God, and The Rapture scenario does not make sense to me in any respect

Robert Heinlein wrote of men being unable to think of Gods that were superior to them, hence most were stupid, spoiled and petulant.

Evangelical Christianity is unique amongst the major religions. All the others, even "mainstream" Christianity have some element of trying to understand God, his works etc. ECs don't do "understanding". Christianity is variable like this, most of the large sects have large amounts of obscurantism, Catholics for instance spent centuries trying to stop the unwashed plebs getting a Bible in a language they could actually read. But at least some Christians were supposed to be thinking. My last employer was owned by a family of ECs, and everyone else in the firm but me got pamphlets, and "invitations". My favourite is the book that said "you don't want to worry about all those long words in the Bible, they're just there to scare you".
The ECs actually thought I was some sort of hard line Christian, and thus kept well away from the topic. They could not have been more wrong :)

This is why we see ECs fighting against science, as one Christian American Vice President put it "facts are a kind of pollution", because they distract people from the truth.

That is the core difference between religion and science. Scientists know that they don't know and thus are trying to find the truth which requires you to change your mind. People who get caught up in organised religions are required to believe that they have found the truth, and thus resist any attempt to change their minds.

I do see people who use Christianity et al as a source of ideas to try and answer various questions. Their logic may be summed up as "I find that I believe x,y,x, so that makes me a Christian".
This is very much smarter than people who say "I am a Christian, therefore I believe x,y,z"
Actually the second "logic" is I believe a root cause of much race/religous based strife.

i agree with your last paragraph DC.
Re 'Scientists know that they don't know and thus are trying to find the truth which requires you to change your mind.' I think that can apply to spirituality as well, although of course the process of discovery is inclusive of subjective experiences [meditation, prayer, conversation] as well as an 'objective' analysis of the world around us.

I agree about spirituality, in my view it applies to anything. Either you are someone who believes in God/Evolution/Marxism/Strings because you feel that it's your ticket to membership of a group, or it's because you've thought about it.

It's the old problem of religion vs God. Our evolution seems to have included a sustained period where everyone believing the same stuff was good for the survival of the group. Our biology is full of such anti-survival fossils that are now actively dangerous. We crave salt fat and sugar because surviving food shortages was more important than avoiding heart problems.

In a gang of a few dozen, cohesion dominates the utility of trying something different. Thus we observe the failure of societies involving millions of people whose internal diverstiy is too low.
"Failure" in this context basically means being trashed by more advanced diverse cultures.

Thus evolution tells us many things that many people, not just religious ones don't like to hear.
Some people see evoluton itself as a form of morality, and part of the reason American Christians have this problem with it is the rise of the "evolution in action" view of many scientifically trained people. Ironically the first failed culture of which we know was in what we now call Iraq. They so screwed their ecosystem that what seems to have been man's first city went titsup and was abandoned.

I know what you mean about evangelicals not taking a critical look at theology, but rather than this being because they would prefer to adhere to a 'simple faith' it seems that all to often it is because they think they know exactly how God thinks and acts already, by taking the Bible at face value (even when it contradicts itself - usually people pick the parts that agree with their own prejudices.) So you have evangelicals quite happily announcing that God hates gay people (or gay activity) or that women should be subservant to their husbands because that is God's ordering of the world. You even come across evangelical priests telling grieving relatives that their loved ones aren't in heaven because they did not believe all the right things. And of course the same things happens within the fundamentalist Catholic church (including Anglo-Catholicism).

I find such certainty quite frightening, but also baffling. When Steve Chalke questioned the doctrine of the Atonement (he called it 'cosmic child abuse') Joel Edwards (chair of the Evangelical Alliance) demanded that he repent publically of his views. Apart from trying to control someones thoughts being out of the dark ages (or Stalinist Russia) I can't understand why anyone finds the Atonement beautiful or worth believing in. I think its a prime example of the type of thing a human-created god would do - because we are (by and large) incapable of unconditional forgiveness, we find it near impossible concieve of a God who is. Thus our own need for revenge and 'justice' allows us to think that God would torture his own son to satisfy his. No wonder so many people are put off Christianity! I once mentioned on a website that I don't believe in the Atonement and really got a load of grief for it - it was quite strange how threatened people were by the idea it might not be true. Jesus died for us because he wanted to show us how to live, and that rocked too many boats - and still does. Ghandi once said that the world would be a much better place 'if only Christians were more like their Christ'. Which reminds me, I've even heard an evangelical say that if Hitler 'accepted Christ' in his bunker then he is in heaven, but Ghandi isn't, because he remained a Hindu.

It seems to me that anyone who claims to know about God, to be able to say with certainty that he/she is this or that, has to be wrong, because God cannot be known. (I think Paul Tillich, or maybe it was Bonhoeffer, made this point.) So it becomes even more important to try to understand what God isn't. I come from a liberal background but even then I found myself trying to fit square pegs into round holes - I ended up with a kind of pic'n'mix' approach to what I would and wouldn't subscribe to according to my own sensibilities - so I guess you could say that I was making god in my own woolly liberal image!It's not so much the science that disproves things like the Virgin Birth that made me stop believing, but the overwhelming evidence that the Gospel writers twisted the truth (or made things up) in order to prove their own points. Because even mainstream Anglicanism has its creeds to which you have to believe (at least publically) in order to be in the club, I was on the verge of losing my faith - it was only personal experience of having God in my life that stopped it. Now my faith is stronger than ever, but that's despite the mainstream churches, not because of them.

In his book, Borg points out that when he is teaching, Jesus uses expressions like 'So what do you think?' or 'Judge for yourselves' rather than 'this is what you must believe.' It's so sad that the churches that claim to follow him do the opposite.

Interesting post again nearlythree. Steve Chalke came to my church a couple of months ago and spoke to a congregation made up of several churches in my town. I had never heard of him at the time but thought he was great.. think he is a Methodist isn't he? His books were on sale afterwards and I dithered for ages over them but was too broke to buy one at the time.

I remember thinking that his views sounded too liberal even for the CofE which is why I liked him such a lot I think. Maybe they aren't so set in their ways in the Algiccan CofE after all or perhaps things are changing?

Steve Chalke is a Baptist, he founded a charity for the homeless and has now started a new movement to help people to find new ways of being Christian, and also Parenttalk, which is a parenting organisation. He's most definitely an evangelical, which I think is really positive - it's good to see that evangelicals can also be liberal and open-minded. Having said that, if he seemed radical by the standards at your church then where you worship must be quite conservative! I can recommend his books highly.

I wish I shared your optimism re the CofE, but it needs such radical reform, not just theologically but in terms of how it is run. Having seen from the inside how it works, I've come to the conclusion that however well-meaning people are it serves itself, not God. I don't suppose it helps that I live in a rural area where the church manages to be some 30 yrs behind the rest of society!