As a way to kick off the end of the world with a bang, the Rapture is right up there with zombies, killer robots, alien invasions and natural disasters. But no story — or, really, brand — has capitalized on the Rapture more successfully than “Left Behind,” the massively popular franchise about the coming of the Antichrist. And nothing has captured conservative American evangelicalism at the turn of the century as well, either.
This belief about the timeline of events at the end of the world has deep roots in American religion. In the 18th century, American Puritan minister and Harvard President Increase Mather and his son Cotton spoke of a Rapture of the faithful before a period of tribulation. Their views and similar ones were crystallized and popularized in 1827 by John Nelson Darby, one of the original members of the Plymouth Brethren denomination and the father of modern dispensationalism, a view of history espoused by some Christians which, among other things, holds that the Jewish people have not been replaced by the Church as God’s people and views the modern state of Israel as the biblical Israel, awaiting the fulfillment of all of the Old Testament’s promises before the end of days.
Read Full Article »