On October 3, theaters across the country will be lowering their screens for the much talked about reboot of â??Left Behind,â? a film installment based upon the popular book series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins and a remake of the previous film by the same name. It's been the â??year of the Christian movieâ? with films like â??God's Not Dead,â? â??Heaven is For Real,â? and â??Son of God.â? (I would include â??Noahâ? but that was apparently condemned as heresy by the masses.) So, a reboot of â??Left Behindâ? â?? especially one with a bigger budget and a bigger name (Nicolas Cage) â?? is not really unexpected, though it most certainly will draw the same sort of crowds as the other three movies and will find itself well within the likes of the church crowd.
Unfortunately, however, while â??Left Behindâ? may prove itself to be a mediocre box office success, it represents a severe misinterpretation of what the Bible actually says about the topic. To put it bluntly, and perhaps to the chagrin of some readers, the idea of a â??raptureâ? is simply not biblically based (and that's where I've lost a third of you!) It represents, instead, a theology based on escapism and in the process does damage to what the Bible really does say about â??the last days.
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