Quotes Reflecting the Traditional Protestant Understanding of Bible Verses Discussed - throughout the 600 years from Wycliffe in the 1300's to Spurgeon in the 1800's:

Albert BARNES's understanding of these passages:
   2 Thessalonians 2:2 (in Introduction); Matthew 24:21; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-3; 2 Thessalonians 2:6-8; 2 Thessalonians 2:9-10; Jude 1:14-15; Revelation 1:1; Revelation 3:10; Revelation 11:3-5; Revelation 12:1-6; Revelation 13:1-3; Revelation 13:15

John CALVIN's understanding of these passages:
   Daniel 7:3; Daniel 7:8, 21, 25; Daniel 9:24-27; Daniel 11:36-45; Daniel 12:1; Matthew 7:21-23; Matthew 24:21; Matthew 24:29; Matthew 25:1-13; 2 Thessalonians 2:4; 2 Thessalonians 2:6-8; 1 John 2:18;

Jonathan EDWARDS's understanding of these passages:
   Daniel 7:8, 21, 25; 2 Thessalonians 2:4; Revelation 9:1-9; Revelation 9:16-19; Revelation 13:11-14

Matthew HENRY's understanding of these passages:
   Genesis 7:7-21; Genesis 19:15-16, 24; Daniel 7:8, 21, 25; Matthew 25:1-13; Titus 2:13; Jude 1:14-15; Revelation 13:1-3; Revelation 13:11-14; Revelation 13:16-17

John HUSS's understanding of these passages:
   1 John 2:18

Robert JAMIESON's understanding of these passages:
   Matthew 25:1-13

John KNOX's understanding of these passages:
   1 John 2:18

LONDON BAPTIST CONFESSION on these passages:
   2 Thessalonians 2:1-3; 1 John 2:18

Martin LUTHER's understanding of these passages:
   Daniel 9:24-27; Matthew 24:15-16; Matthew 24:34; 1 Corinthians 3:16-17; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-3; 2 Thessalonians 2:4 (about the temple); 2 Thessalonians 2:4 (about the 2 legs of antichrist); 1 John 2:18; Revelation 13:11-14; Revelation 13:15

Sir Isaac NEWTON's understanding of these passages:
   Daniel 7:8, 21, 25; Daniel 11:36-45; Revelation 9:1-9

John OWEN's understanding of these passages:
   2 Thessalonians 2:1-3

Charles SPURGEON's understanding of these passages:
   Matthew 25:1-13; 1 John 2:18 (on the pope); 1 John 2:18 (on the Inquisition); Revelation 17:3-9, 18    

William TYNDALE's understanding of these passages:
   1 John 2:18

John WESLEY's understanding of these passages:
   Matthew 24:1-8; Matthew 24:15-16; Matthew 24:45-51

Westminster Confession of Faith on these passages:
   2 Thessalonians 2:1-3

John WYCLIFFE's understanding of these passages:
   1 John 2:18

Preface

Shortly after putting faith in Jesus Christ, I began attending evangelical Christian churches—Baptist and Congregationalist—and that is where I first heard an exposition of the ‘left behind’ teaching. 

Of course, the blockbuster novel by that title had not yet been written, because it was early in 1982 that I got down on my knees in the privacy of our kitchen, confessed myself a sinner, and told God in prayer that I accepted his son Jesus as my Savior and wanted to follow Christ as my Lord. Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins didn’t publish Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth’s Last Days until 1995, but the end times beliefs expounded in that book were already commonly accepted in evangelical churches.  Everyone I knew seemed to believe there would be a seven-year tribulation period climaxing the last days of this wicked world.

Little did I know then that this was a new teaching that had swept through the Church only decades before! 

For years I never seriously took issue with this teaching, because it was held dearly, almost as an article of faith, by my fellow evangelicals.  But it was always somewhat of a mystery to me, since I hadn’t encountered it in my personal Bible reading.  Perhaps it was one of the deeper things that takes a lot of study to grasp, I told myself.  Or, perhaps my own thinking had been colored by thirteen years as a Jehovah’s Witness, during which time I had been indoctrinated with The Watchtower magazine’s eschatological views.  In any case, I blamed my inability to grasp the seven-year tribulation on my own failure to study in depth the teaching and the biblical arguments behind it.

As a Jehovah’s Witness I had been taught to believe that Jesus was the first angel God created, who was assigned to take on human flesh, to preach a message to mankind, to undergo a sacrificial death, and then to resume his role as the most prominent angel.  We were taught that he returned invisibly in 1914, and that he would lead God’s armies in the battle of Armageddon in 1975—a date that later had to be abandoned and explained away after the prediction proved false.  (See my books Jehovah’s Witnesses Answered Verse by Verse and Answering Jehovah’s Witnesses Subject by Subject.)  Having experienced intimately and first-hand the failure of such a false prophecy, I tended to be skeptical of prophetic speculation, even after I left the JWs and found sound Christian fellowship.  Rejoicing in my Savior, I was content to trust in God for the outworking of the Bible’s end times prophecies.  It wasn’t necessary for me to understand, only to trust and obey, since it was God who would bring these world-shaking events to pass as foretold in his inspired Word.

In the course of writing several more books on the Jehovah’s Witnesses, I was forced to research more deeply into their roots in the Adventist movement.  Prior to starting his own religion, Watch Tower founder Charles Taze Russell fellowshipped during the late 1860s and early 1870s with an Adventist sect that had Christ returning invisibly in 1874.  Adventism, in turn, sprang from the die-hard followers of William Miller, a Baptist layman who had captured the imagination of believers in many churches with his predictions that Christ would return in March of 1843, later revised to March of 1844, and finally to the autumn of that year.   A similar legacy of failed prophecy lay at the roots of Mormonism, I discovered when I teamed up with ex-Mormon John Farkas to research and write Mormons Answered Verse by Verse and other books on the history and errors of the Latter-day Saints.

Could the popular ‘left behind’ teachings be equally erroneous, I wondered?  Certainly they were nothing like Mormonism with its polygamy and its plurality of gods; nor did they carry with them the heresy of the Jehovah’s Witnesses who lower Christ from Creator to mere creature.  Unlike these cultic movements hovering on the fringes of Christianity, the Left Behind books elevate the authority of Scripture and proclaim salvation through faith in Christ alone.  Their greatest popularity is found within Bible-believing churches.  Yet, the same could be said for the following of William Miller, himself a Baptist.  His followers hailed from mainline Christian churches.  But their trust in Miller’s interpretations of the Bible’s end times prophecies led to what historians have dubbed the “Great Disappointment.” 

Eventually, my research led me farther back, beyond these nineteenth century American religious movements, to the roots of modern Protestant thinking in the Reformation and the isolated back-to-the-Bible movements that preceded it.  Here were believers who treasured their relationship with Christ more than life itself.  Untold numbers were tortured to death, holding fast to their Lord.  Many were burned at the stake.  The truths in Scripture were more than mere Sunday morning entertainment for these humble yet courageous students of the Word.  What did they say about a rapture that would leave unbelievers behind with a second chance to accept Christ during a seven-year tribulation?  They never heard of such a thing.  The great Reformers Martin Luther and John Calvin both wrote extensively on the topic of the Antichrist,  but the “man of sin” (2 Thess. 2:3) they described bore no resemblance whatsoever to the Nicolae Carpathia character of the Left Behind novels.

The Reformation saints who staked their very lives on the motto “Scripture Alone” saw in that precious Word of God neither a seven-year tribulation, nor a Carpathia-like world ruler presiding over it.  What did they see?  A very clear fulfillment of prophecy that fits the history of their times as well as today’s headlines.  The verse-by-verse discussion in this book will seek to be informed by the understanding of the Reformers.

Ultimately there were four factors weighing heavily on my heart that forced me to research and develop this manuscript:

First, a large portion of the population today assumes that Left Behind accurately presents what the Bible itself says.  It does not.

Second, many Christians have come to believe that Left Behind represents the traditional beliefs of Protestant churches.  It does not. 

Third, those who accept the teachings of Left Behind find themselves looking for future events that would fit the fictional pattern.  They believe that God’s prophetic clock stopped, and won’t start again until the Rapture.  As a result, they miss the fulfillment of Bible prophecy in recent history and in today’s headlines.  This hinders their ability to follow Jesus’ command to “be always on the watch.”  (Luke 21:36)

Finally, millions who read Left Behind are sitting on the fence of unbelief—both secular readers and half-hearted church attenders.  Like the novel’s nominally Christian commercial pilot Rayford Steele and assistant pastor Bruce Barnes, they go through the motions at church, but they don’t truly trust in Christ or obey Him.  Authors LaHaye and Jenkins show characters like this receiving a seven-year long “second chance” after Christ raptures believers.  In the Gospels, however, Jesus warned over and over again that we should watch for his return to avoid severe punishment at that time.  Do Jesus’ parables—the wheat and the tares, the sheep and the goats, the ten talents, the wise and foolish virgins—offer a second chance for those surprised by the Master’s return?  If not, then Left Behind contradicts the clear teaching of Christ.  Readers who are thus misled into postponing their decision for Christ could face an eternity without Him.

Our God is indeed the God of the second chance.  Christ came to redeem sinners.  Life usually affords each of us a second chance—in fact, many opportunities—to put our trust in Jesus Christ as our Savior and to obey him as our Lord.  While still a teenager I rejected belief in God, and proclaimed myself an atheist for a number of years, but He had mercy on me and did not take that as my final decision.  My grandmother was ninety-six years old when she finally read the Gospels and embraced Christ; I can only imagine how many chances she passed up before that.  However, Scripture tells us that God’s forbearance does not go on forever.  Does the Bible teach that unbelievers will be ‘left behind’ for a seven-year-long second chance when Christ comes to take his faithful followers to heaven?  That is the question this book will examine verse by verse.

Acknowledgements

The thoughts presented in this book are not new.  Preachers and Bible readers have debated these issues over the centuries.  I have simply attempted to arrange the traditional Protestant understanding in a verse by verse format to refute the misuse of Scripture in the Left Behind series.  In addition to the quotes actually featured, every page could also be heavily footnoted, but that would favor the scholar rather than the average reader for whom this volume is intended.

My gratitude goes out to prolific author Rev. Dr. Francis Nigel Lee, Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology at Queensland Presbyterian Theological Seminary, for his heavily footnoted book John’s Revelation Unveiled, for his articles “Calvin on Islam” and “Luther on Islam and the Papacy,” and for his kindness in responding to my questions via e-mail; also to my good friend Rev. Dr. Ronald Larson, long-time head of Baptist General Conference world missions and past president of Christian Medical Fellowship, for the resources he lent me from his personal library, especially his handwritten study notes.

I wish to express special appreciation to Rev. Joseph L. Haynes, pastor of Hague Gospel Church in Hague, Saskatchewan, Canada.  Besides providing the extensive resources on his web sites Historicism.com and LastDays.ca, which I found very helpful while researching the material for this book, he also took the time to review early stages of the manuscript, offering insightful comments, corrections and contributions. 

Of course, the opinions expressed in this book are my own, and whatever errors remain are my responsibility.

For this book’s focus I must credit Eleanor (“Bootsie”) Ashley, a cranberry-farming grandmother whose theology comes directly from the many Bibles she's worn out through her lifetime.  When she saw the complex arguments I was assembling against Left Behind, she exclaimed with rock-solid confidence, “There's no second chance when Christ comes back.  There's no second chance.”  From that point onward, I realized this teaching of a “second chance” was Left Behind’s critical departure from Scripture and the main point to be refuted in this book.

And I truly thank my wife Penni for her help, prayer support and encouragement throughout this project, and for her active involvement in developing the manuscript.

Introduction

Do you expect Jesus Christ to return suddenly and invisibly, taking millions of Christian believers back to heaven with him, and leaving the rest of mankind to face a seven-year-long Tribulation presided over by an evil man called the Antichrist?  Do you believe this Tribulation period will afford a ‘second chance’ for half-hearted churchgoers and for unbelievers who had rejected Christ prior to this? 

If you came to that belief in recent years, the chances are that you or your religious instructors were influenced by the Left Behind series.  Most likely you are unaware that this was not the teaching of Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Knox, Roger Williams and John Wesley—the founders of the Lutheran, Calvinist, Presbyterian, Baptist and Methodist traditions.  Nor is it what Protestants in general believed for hundreds of years, from before the Reformation until the early twentieth century.  Christian classics will be quoted throughout this book to establish traditional Protestant teaching, but first let’s look more closely at Left Behind.

In 1995 California pastor Tim LaHaye and prolific writer Jerry B. Jenkins produced Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth’s Last Days.  The book’s popularity soared, and it quickly gained a place on the New York Times Best Sellers list.  It is still popular as I write these words in 2007, “the year the Left Behind series comes to an end” with release of the final volume in the series, according to the promotional web site at LeftBehind.com.

The first novel was soon followed by a sequel, Tribulation Force: The Continuing Drama of Those Left Behind.  Next came Nicolae: The Rise of Antichrist.  After that, the series continued to unfold its gripping end-times story:  Soul Harvest: The World Takes Sides (No. 4), Apollyon: The Destroyer Is Unleashed (No. 5), Assassins: Assignment: Jerusalem, Target: Antichrist (No. 6), The Indwelling: The Beast Takes Possession (No. 7), The Mark: The Beast Rules the World (No. 8), Desecration: Antichrist Takes the Throne (No. 9), The Remnant: On the Brink of Armageddon (No. 10), Armageddon: The Cosmic Battle of the Ages (No. 11) and Glorious Appearing: The End of Days (No. 12).  And then the series concluded (as of this writing) in April 2007 with Kingdom Come: The Final Victory (No. 13). 

In October 2004, the publisher announced there would also be three prequels.  The first of these, The Rising: Antichrist Is Born–Before They Were Left Behind, was released in March 2005 and was set decades before the original Left Behind novel.   Then followed  The Regime: Evil Advances and The Rapture: In the Twinkling of an Eye.

At last count more than forty-five million volumes have been sold in the series, plus another ten million in the Left Behind Kids Series, and ten million more related items.  There are additional volumes in a Military Series, a Political Series, a complete illustrated Graphic Novels Series, more than a dozen apologetic works in the Nonfiction Series, daily devotional volumes, audio tapes, videos, CD-ROMs, calendars, greeting cards, and so on.  Simple arithmetic reveals this to be a billion dollar industry.  (Multiply sixty-five million items times $15.00 each, and the result is roughly $1 billion.)  No wonder Left Behind has had such widespread impact on the beliefs of so many people!

Are readers guilty of mistaking the authors’ intentions and acting presumptuously when they take these fiction stories seriously and allow the novels to mold their thinking on biblical matters?  No, this is what the authors intended.  A “note from Dr. Tim LaHaye” at the end of the last novel in the series says, “Jerry and I felt uniquely led of God to take on this challenging task of presenting what we believe is the truth of end times prophecy in fiction form.  Our prayer was that it would take admittedly complex and often confusing elements of Scripture and help them come to life in your eyes.  . . . we believe what we have portrayed here will happen someday.”  (Kingdom Come: The Final Victory, pages 355-356)

In many churches the Left Behind view of the end times is accepted as a virtual extension of the Gospel.  To question its theology is to question orthodoxy itself.  Many Christians appear unaware that opposing views exist at all within the Church among sincere Bible believers.  Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins have been heralded as “The New Prophets of Revelation” on the cover of Newsweek magazine (May 24, 2004).  So, is there anyone in the Christian community who has the stature to challenge their teaching on the end times? 

I would nominate Martin Luther and John Calvin.  These giants of the Protestant Reformation taught quite differently concerning the Tribulation and the Antichrist.  As will be shown in the discussion of Daniel 9:24-27 below, a key passage of central importance that Luther and Calvin applied to Jesus Christ, is turned around in Left Behind to apply to the Antichrist, instead—a dramatic reversal that changes its entire meaning. Moreover, the Reformers saw the Antichrist rising from the ashes of the Roman Empire and ruling much of the world in which they lived—a two-horned Antichrist that continues to rule today and to influence the lives of billions worldwide.  If Luther and Calvin are correct, the Left Behind series actually helps the present Antichrist by concealing his identity and telling readers to look for someone else in the future, someone like their Nicolae Carpathia character.

Others who side with Calvin and Luther against the Left Behind view include William Tyndale (English Bible translator), Jonathan Edwards (Congregationalist missionary in colonial America), Roger Williams (the first Baptist pastor in America), John Knox (early Scottish Presbyterian), John Wesley (Methodist founding father), John Huss (martyred by the Inquisition) and John Wycliffe (Bible translator).  All of these respected teachers will be quoted repeatedly in the pages below to establish the traditional Protestant view, which was taught in evangelical churches until a mere hundred years ago.  Must the teachings of all these Christian leaders be rejected and tossed aside, in order to make room for the contrary teachings of Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins? 

Of course, LaHaye and Jenkins did not originate the view of the end times that they portray in their fiction books.  They have merely taken the lead in spreading and popularizing this viewpoint.  Where, then, did the “left behind” teachings come from?  Not surprisingly, they originated in one of the nineteenth century religious movements.  Around the time when Joseph Smith was writing the Book of Mormon, and William Miller was laying the early foundations of the Adventist movement, preacher John Nelson Darby began developing the theology of dispensationalism. 

Born in England in 1800, Darby graduated from Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, and took up Christian ministry.  He helped form a small fellowship in Dublin that eventually branched out to Plymouth, England and came to be called “Plymouth Brethren.”  It was to this group that Darby proclaimed the seven-year tribulation concept as part of his overall teaching of dispensationalism—the theory that God’s dealings with mankind are defined by a series of fixed time periods or dispensations spanning the whole of human history.  The seven-year tribulation is merely one of many such time periods that are marked out on dispensationalist time charts.  

Darby spent a couple decades modifying and refining dispensations to fully develop the theory of dispensationalism.  At first the teaching was confined to the Plymouth Brethren, but it was soon picked up by others.  By the late 1800s major Protestant seminaries were coming under its influence, and dispensational timelines and tables were being published by a number of  groups.  I first encountered such charts myself in The Divine Plan of the Ages, the first volume of the Millennial Dawn/Studies in the Scriptures series by Charles Taze Russell, founder of the Watch Tower Society, the parent organization of the modern Jehovah’s Witnesses.  

But dispensationalism did not widely influence the thinking of Christian lay people until it was popularized through the Scofield Reference Bible.  According to researcher Richard R. Reiter, Congregationalist pastor Cyrus I. Scofield came into a financial relationship with “some wealthy Plymouth Brethren.”  They enabled him and other pretribulationists to start the Sea Cliff Bible Conference in 1901 on Long Island, New York.  (Three Views on the Rapture: Pre-, Mid-, or Post-Tribulation by Gleason L. Archer, Jr., Paul D. Feinberg, Douglas J. Moo, and Richard R. Reiter [Zondervan, 1996])  Less than a decade later Scofield incorporated Darby’s ideas in the notes of his study Bible published in 1909.  This gave Darby’s teachings leverage to color the way many Bible readers understood Scripture. 

Considerable controversy surrounds the question of where Darby got his new ideas.  Some researchers claim he borrowed them from the sermons and writings of controversial contemporary pastor Edward Irving.  Others, that he learned his concept of the Rapture from another contemporary, Margaret MacDonald, a young woman who claimed to have seen a vision of the end times. 

Many writers have traced these interpretations back to the writings of the Counter-Reformation.  When the early Reformers began pointing to the pope of Rome as the Antichrist, the Roman Catholic Church launched a campaign to defend the papacy.   In 1590 Jesuit priest Francisco Ribera (1537-1591) published a commentary on Revelation titled In Sacrum Beati Ioannis Apostoli, & Evangelistiae Apocalypsin Commentarji, in which he taught that there would be a future end-times Antichrist.  Another Jesuit priest, Manuel De Lacunza, later wrote La Venida del Mesias en Gloria y Magestad in Spanish under a Jewish pen name, Juan Josafa Ben-Ezra.  It was published in a number of places during the early 1800s.  This book countered the Protestant identification of the Antichrist with the papacy by arguing that there would be future antichrists instead.  Darby’s contemporary pastor Edward Irving translated Lacunza’s book into English, added his own lengthy preface, and had it published in London in 1827 as Preliminary Discourse to the Work of Ben Ezra entitled the Coming of Messiah in Glory and Majesty.  Did Darby actually derive his teachings from these sources?  The matter is open to debate.

Supporters see foregleams of Darby’s teachings in the writings of early Church penman Irenaeus and his disciple Hippolytus, who reigned as bishop of Rome from 200 to 235 A.D., but there is no clear evidence connecting Darby with these sources.  In fact, the advocates of a variety of other end times interpretations point to other early Church writers to support their views as well.  The problem is that those associated with the early Church during the centuries following the Apostles held a variety of views, just like Christians today.  After quoting many of them, one researcher spoke of “the variety and complexity of patristic views concerning the Antichrist.”  (“Antichrist in the Early Church” by William C. Weinrich in the April/July 1985 issue of Concordia Theological Quarterly)  So, the writings of the “Early Church Fathers” can be used to support a variety of interpretations.  The writings that truly count are those found in the Holy Scriptures.  And it is to these that this book appeals in its verse by verse discussion.

Whatever the case may be as to John Nelson Darby’s sources, the notes he inspired in the 1909 Scofield Reference Bible gave the pre-tribulation rapture theory widespread circulation among Bible readers.  A host of Bible teachers, pastors and non-fiction writers kept the theory alive during most of the twentieth century. Then, more than a generation after Scofield, the novel Left Behind by LaHaye and Jenkins spread the teaching among readers of popular fiction.

Some knowingly set aside the teachings of Luther, Calvin and the other Reformers, to accept this new teaching.  Pastor Chuck Smith of Calvary Chapel writes, “The story goes that in a meeting in England a woman began to exhort the Church through the gift of prophecy, and she said that the Lord was going to take His Church out and save it from the wrath to come. We’re told that men like Darby and Scofield then began to popularize this view.  . . . Why would the Lord reveal it to Luther, Calvin, or any of the Reformation Church leaders? They weren’t living in the age when the Church was to be taken out.”  (From an article titled “The Tribulation and the Church” by Chuck Smith at http://www3.calvarychapel.com/library/smith-chuck/books/ttatc.htm)  So, this supporter of Left Behind theology supports Margaret MacDonald’s claimed new revelation, over and above the wisdom of the Reformation.

Rather than look to supposed new revelation, the Reformers lifted high the standard of Scripture Alone.  Luther and Calvin lived in the 1500s and Margaret MacDonald in the 1800s.  Was she living “in the age when the Church was to be taken out” more so than they?  Nearly two hundred years have passed since she spoke.  Moreover, isn’t Scripture the standard by which any claimed new revelation would have to be judged?

In any case, it is clear that “dispensationalism is not a part of the historic faith of the church,” the conclusion reached by Clarence B. Bass, Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at Bethel Theological Seminary, in his book Backgrounds to Dispensationalism: Its Historical Genesis and Ecclesiastical Implications.  (page 155)  It is a relatively new teaching.

A lot of good is accomplished when a Christian book makes its way onto The New York Times best-sellers list.  The general public is reminded, once again, of the Gospel message and its relevance to the modern world.  But William Miller’s prophecies concerning 1843 and 1844 likewise drew public attention to the expected return of Christ, only to culminate in public scorn and ridicule when those years came and went.    That prophetic stirring was more than just a theological error within Bible-believing churches; it also resulted in personal disaster for untold numbers of believers.   In 1843 “seventeen persons were admitted to the Lunatic Asylum in Worcester, Mass., who had become deranged in consequence of the expectation that the Lord Jesus was about to appear,” according to Albert Barnes in his Notes on the New Testament, 2 Thess. 2:2.   The message of Left Behind can’t fail in that sense, of course, because no precise dates are set for the events in the story.  But what if the Reformers were correct, rather than Darby and Scofield?  What if, as Luther and Calvin indicated, the Antichrist is already ruling, and the ‘left behind’ interpretation keeps people from recognizing him?  What if the return of Christ and the rapture are accompanied immediately by the pouring out of God’s wrath on this wicked world—without giving those who reject Christ the seven-year-long ‘second chance’ promised by Left Behind?

Ultimately, the matter revolves around faithfulness to Scripture.  How does the end-times vision of Left Behind stack up against the Word of God?  The aim of this book is to make that comparison verse by verse.

Schools of Thought on Prophecy

The reader has a right to know, up front, the viewpoint presented in this book.

Christian writers typically hold membership in churches or denominations that officially espouse a particular system of belief.  Their church’s Statement of Faith may spell out a view of end times prophecy or, if it is silent on these matters, there may still be a viewpoint that is nearly universal or at least prevalent among the members.  The books penned by these men generally reflect their affiliation.  In my own case, however, my religious affiliation has long been with churches where Left Behind theology prevails, but my personal Bible reading and research will no longer allow me to go along with that teaching.

Among Bible-believing Christians there are several well-defined schools of thought on end times prophecy.  

The preterist view interprets most ‘end times’ passages in Scripture as applying to events in the first century.  Preterists see Jesus’ predictions in Matthew chapter 24 as foretelling the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple in 70 A.D., and John’s Revelation as fulfilled during the reign of the Roman Empire—with little or no future application.   

The idealist or spiritual view sees almost no chronological fulfillment of prophecy in historical or future events, but rather interprets the prophecies as pictorial of the timeless struggle of good-versus-evil.  This view is more popular in liberal churches and among some seminary professors who have grown dissatisfied with the Left Behind interpretations. Although some proponents of this school of thought expect Christ to return physically to Earth at the time of the Last Judgment, the idealist approach is to draw principles from prophecy to apply in our every-day lives, rather than to look for God’s dramatic intervention in the course of history. 

The dispensational futurist view is that most of the events predicted by Jesus in the Gospels and foretold in the book of Revelation will occur in the future, primarily during a seven-year tribulation period ruled over by the Antichrist.  This is the Left Behind view that prevails in evangelical churches today. 

The historicist view sees the fulfillment of prophecy throughout the course of history, with some events occurring in the first century, some up to and including the present time, and others in the future.  The historicist view prevailed in Protestant churches from the time of the Reformation until it gradually declined in popularity during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s.

Dispensational futurism supplanted historicism among evangelicals when the Scofield Reference Bible popularized John Nelson Darby’s theory, which divided earth’s history into a series of dispensations and consigned the apocalyptic prophecies to a future seven-year tribulation period.  The Left Behind series further popularized this view by fictionalizing it for mass readership.

Within preterism, idealism, futurism and historicism there are, as might be expected, a number of variations with respect to many details—some quite significant.  Preterists war among themselves, for example, with Partial Preterists accusing Full Preterists of heresy for teaching that even Christ’s final Coming and the resurrection of the righteous and the unrighteous have already occurred.  There are both dispensational and non-dispensational futurists, although the latter form a tiny minority.  Historicism, because it looks for prophetic fulfillment throughout the span of human history, affords the greatest range of differences.  Unlike preterists who focus on one century, and dispensationalists who focus on seven years, historicists have a much wider range of events to choose from when looking for prophetic fulfillments, since they take the whole of human history into consideration.

In this book I turn to the traditional Protestant understanding of Scripture to offer verse-by-verse responses to the popular new dispensationalist teaching that swept over the churches during the past century.  Since the traditional Protestant view is historicist,  LEFT BEHIND Answered Verse by Verse would be classified as historicist in its approach. 

Some readers may be intimidated by the many complex theories in the field of eschatology—the study of end times prophecy—so I should address here the concerns of those who feel they may be ‘getting in over their head.’  Folks who have come to faith in Christ by reading the Bible alone do not need this book, or any other book on the end times.  The divine Author of the Holy Scriptures did not fall so far short of getting his message across, that an explanatory supplement would be required.  Nor did he write the Bible for a hierarchy of experts to read, and then in turn present its message to the common man.  God’s Word comes across loud and clear to the farmer, fisherman or housewife who reads it after a hard day’s work.  And the passages that speak of the return of Christ are no exception.  Just as with my earlier works Jehovah’s Witnesses Answered Verse by Verse and Mormons Answered Verse by Verse, the need for this book arises due to the popularity of certain of teachings that have been imposed upon the Bible from outside—teachings that purport to clarify Scripture, but that actually distort its message.  In the case of Left Behind the distortion is not as extreme as in the teachings addressed by my other books, but it is a subtle twisting of what the Bible says about Christ’s return, a twisting that could prove deadly for some, and that needs to be answered verse by verse.

What ‘Left Behind’ teaches

The central teaching of the Left Behind series is that Christ returns twice, and that this gives those who reject Christ before the Rapture a ‘second chance.’ 

The novels show Christ returning first invisibly to rapture the Church to heaven, then seven years later to destroy the wicked and to take “Tribulation saints” to heaven.  The volume Nicolae: The Rise of Antichrist summarizes this teaching from the post-Rapture perspective as “belief in the one true God, that Jesus is his Son, that he came back, and that he’s coming back again.”  (p. 380)  In their nonfiction work Are We Living in the End Times? authors LaHaye and Jenkins describe Christ’s return as “two totally different events.  One is a select coming for His church, a great source of comfort for those involved; the other is a public appearance when every eye shall see Him, a great source of regret and mourning for those whose Day of Judgment has come.  . . . Seven years would allow time for all these things and the Tribulation to take place.”  (p. 103)

Second Chance is the title of one of the novels in the children’s series Left Behind: The Kids.  And in their nonfiction book Are We Living in the End Times, LaHaye and Jenkins state specifically that the seven-year interval grants this second chance to those “left behind after the Rapture” because they had “rejected God’s offer of salvation.”  (page 158) 

Verse-by-verse Answers—Old Testament

The reader may be tempted to skip past this discussion of Old Testament verses, to get the last word on prophecy from the New Testament.  This book is designed to allow that.  However, a word of caution is in order. 

The Old Testament is key to understanding the New, especially in matters of prophecy.  The "beasts" of Revelation cannot be identified correctly by a reader unfamiliar with the beasts Daniel saw in his visions.  Jesus' sermon on the end times and his Second Coming rested heavily on the assumption that his listeners already knew what Moses wrote about the future of the Jewish people and what Daniel wrote about the “abomination of desolation.”  (Matt. 24:15 KJV) 

Trying to understand the New Testament's end times prophecies without first examining what the Old Testament said on the same matters can lead only to misinterpretations and confusion. 

Genesis 7:7-21

And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons’ wives with him, into the ark, because of the waters of the flood. ...and the Lord shut him in. …And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man.  (KJV)

The fate of those left behind when Noah and his family took refuge in the Ark is very significant to end times theology, because Jesus said the end of this world would be the same:  “And as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man.  They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all.”  (Luke 17:26-27 KJV)  Those left behind were destroyed.

Bible commentator Matthew Henry (1662 – 1714) understood there was no ‘second chance’ for that wicked world.  He wrote, “the shutting of this door set up a partition wall between him [Noah] and all the world besides. God shut the door, 1. To secure him, and keep him safe in the ark. The door must be shut very close, lest the waters should break in and sink the ark, and very fast, lest any without should break it down. ... To exclude all others, and keep them for ever out.” (Matthew Henry’s Commentary)  There was no second chance for those left behind when God shut the door.  They were kept out “for ever.”

Similar to the pre-deluge society Noah had lived in, today’s world has abandoned the righteousness of God to follow every wicked way.  “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.  And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.  And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth…”  (Gen. 6:5-7 KJV)  As God looks down upon our modern society with its movie star sex goddesses, its high rate of promiscuity and divorce, its criminal and military violence, and its denial of his creatorship in favor of the theory of evolution, it must similarly grieve him at his heart.  Will the Creator again assert his sovereign right to wipe clean his creation?

Jesus leaves no doubt:  “As it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man.”  (Luke 17:26 KJV)  He will again take his people to safety, and will destroy those left behind.  Just as there was no seven-year reprieve for those left behind when the Ark floated above the flood waters, so there will be none for those left when Christians are taken to be with the Lord at the end of this world.

Genesis 19:15-16, 24

And when the morning arose, then the angels hastened Lot…and they brought him forth and set him outside of the city.  …Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven; and he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities.  (KJV)

What happened to those who were left behind when holy angels led righteous Lot and his family out of Sodom?  Everyone left behind was killed.

This prefigured what will happen to those left behind when Christ raptures the Church.  Jesus said, “Also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built; but the same day that Lot went out of Sodom, it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all.  Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed.”  (Luke 17:28-30 KJV) 

Was there a seven-year delay after the angels took Lot to safety?  No, Lot was taken out of the city and “the same day” all of those left behind were killed.

Writing in the early 1700s, Matthew Henry again got the point.  Commenting on Luke 17:28-30, he wrote:

“. . . they continued in their security and sensuality, till the threatened judgment came. Until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and Lot went out of Sodom, nothing said or done to them served to alarm or awaken them. Note, Though the stupidity of sinners in a sinful way is as strange as it is without excuse, yet we are not to think it strange, for it is not without example. It is the old way that wicked men have trodden, that have gone slumbering to hell, as if their damnation slumbered while they did.  . . .That they were surprised with the ruin which they would not fear, and were swallowed up in it, to their unspeakable horror and amazement. …In like manner, when Jesus Christ shall come to judge the world, at the end of time, sinners will be found in the same secure and careless posture, altogether regardless of the judgment approaching, which will therefore come upon them as a snare.”  (Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible)

Matthew Henry did not expect the disobedient to get a ‘second chance’ at Christ’s return.

After referring to Sodom and Gomorrah and saying, “even thus shall it be,” Jesus went on to describe the Rapture:  “two women shall be grinding together; the one shall be taken, and the other left.  Two men shall be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left.”  How will it be at the Rapture?  “As it was in the days of Lot,” Jesus declared.  (Luke 17:30-36, 28 KJV)

Everyone knows the sin of Sodom.  Our word “sodomy” comes straight from that city’s name.  When Lot entertained visitors in his home, two angels sent by God, “Sodomites young and old from all over the city…surrounded the house and shouted to Lot, ‘Bring out those men to us so we can rape them.’”  Prior to that the Bible reported that “the people of Sodom and Gomorrah are utterly evil, and that everything they do is wicked.”  (Gen. 19:4-5, 18:20 Living Bible)

Like Sodom and Gomorrah, our modern society has become pervaded with homosexual perversion.  It is difficult to visit a movie theater, turn on a television set, or read a newspaper without encountering it.  Elementary school textbooks feature “families” with two fathers or two mothers instead of the traditional married couple.  Practicing homosexuals serve as clergy in countless churches.  There is public debate over whether or not to sanctify “gay marriage,” but the practice of homosexuality is already protected nearly everywhere by antidiscrimination legislation.  Politicians jostle each other to march in Gay Pride parades.  God, however, does discriminate.

Has this world yet reached the point where Sodom and Gomorrah have been recreated worldwide?  When that stage is reached, it is difficult to imagine that the God who brought destruction on those ancient cities will simply turn his head and allow it to go on this time.  When he does step in again to put a stop to the sin of Sodom, Jesus assures us it will be much the same as the first time.  People who belong to Christ will be taken, and those who are left behind will be killed.  Will the destruction come seven years later, as the authors of the Left Behind novels would have us believe?  Jesus said, “the same day that Lot went out of Sodom, it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all.  Even thus shall it be…”  (Luke 17:29-30 KJV)

Isaiah 11:11-12

Then it will happen on that day that the Lord will again recover the second time with His hand the remnant of His people, who will remain, from Assyria, Egypt, Pathros, Cush, Elam, Shinar, Hamath, and from the islands of the sea. And He will lift up a standard for the nations and assemble the banished ones of Israel, and will gather the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.  (NASB)

The restoration of the Jewish people to the Promised Land is an amazing fulfillment of prophecy that should convince even the most skeptical that the Bible is a divinely inspired book of true prophecy.  As Jesus foretold during the Roman occupation, “And they shall fall by the edge of the sword and be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.” (Luke 21:24 KJV)  And as Isaiah and other Old Testament writers foretold, they would later be restored to their ancient homeland.  This actually happened in 1948, with the re-establishment of the state of Israel, nearly two thousand years after Jesus spoke and some 2500 years after the Hebrew prophets foretold this event.  Who could deny God’s hand in such a seemingly impossible fulfillment?  Supporters of Left Behind theology! 

Yes, they deny that Isaiah’s words above have yet been fulfilled.  They expect the fulfillment will occur when the Jews will again be scattered worldwide and will again be restored to the land of Israel, and they use Isaiah’s words above (“the second time”) to justify this teaching.  In The Truth Behind Left Behind (with Introduction by Left Behind author Tim LaHaye) authors Mark Hitchcock and Thomas Ice postulate “Two End-Time Regatherings” and declare that “during the Tribulation period, the Jewish people will be scattered over the face of the earth for the final time.” To ‘prove’ this they present charts and tables to contrast what they see as “The Present (First) Regathering” and “The Permanent (Second) Regathering” (pages 61-64).

Charts and tables are needed to argue for such a theory, because people left alone to read their Bibles would never come to this conclusion.  In fact, the argument is so complex that even its proponents get confused and trip themselves up while presenting it.  For example, Hitchcock and Ice declare “MODERN ISRAEL IS A WORK OF GOD” in an all-caps heading on page 58 of their book, and then contradict that statement five pages later in a chart labeling “the present (first) regathering” as “Man’s work (secular)” as opposed to “the permanent (second) regathering” which is “God’s work (spiritual).”  (page 63)

Actually, there is no need for such convoluted reasoning to explain why Isaiah would speak above concerning Israel being gathered a “second time.”  During the Babylonian captivity in Old Testament times Jews were to be found scattered across that ancient empire, which ruled much of the known world at that time.  When the Medo-Persian rulers who conquered Babylon later sent the Jews back to the Promised Land, this was the first time they were regathered; the modern return that culminated in restoration of the nation of Israel in 1948 was the second time.

Was the 1948 return just “man’s work,” not God’s?  Was it a product of political Zionism, rather than God’s intervention?  Well, to secular observers in ancient Medo-Persia who witnessed the decrees of king Cyrus and emperor Artaxerxes on behalf of the Jews, the actions of those rulers may have appeared political, but the Scriptures make it clear that God’s hand was in the matter.  Similarly today, Jewish Zionism may have been a political movement, but the modern restoration of the state of Israel after two thousand years could only have been accomplished through divine intervention.

Rejecting this obvious fulfillment of prophecy, and looking instead for another end-times restoration, smacks of the same kind of reasoning that leads unbelieving Jews to reject Christ and look for another Messiah.

Yes, God does “recover the second time with His hand the remnant of His people” as Isaiah says.  The first time was five hundred years before Christ, and the second time is marked by the modern restoration of Israel in 1948.  There is no biblical basis for expecting ‘two end-time regatherings’ as Left Behind teaches, with Israel to be scattered again and gathered again during a seven-year tribulation.

Jeremiah 30:7  

Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob's trouble; but he shall be saved out of it.  (KJV)

Quoting from and commenting on their own novel, LaHaye and Jenkins say, “‘the last forty-two months of this seven years of tribulation . . .  That last half of the seven years is called the Great Tribulation.’ . . . Jeremiah the prophet had called it ‘the time of Jacob's trouble.’”  (Are We Living in the End Times?, pages 145-146)  The Left Behind novels portray the last half of their fictional tribulation period as a time when the Antichrist persecutes the Jews. Interestingly, the authors go on in their next sentence to say that the impact on the Jews would be “far worse” than “the Holocaust of Adolph Hitler in the twentieth century.” (p. 146)  It is hard to imagine anything worse than the Holocaust in which six million Jews were systematically slaughtered.  Must we look to the future for “the time of Jacob’s trouble”?  Jeremiah's description so aptly fits the Holocaust itself, that there is no need to look elsewhere for the fulfillment.

The message of Jeremiah chapter 30 starts out with this proclamation:  "The days are coming,' declares the LORD , 'when I will bring my people Israel and Judah back from captivity and restore them to the land I gave their forefathers to possess,' says the LORD."  (vs. 3 NIV)  History undeniably records that the modern state of Israel was established in 1948.  Did Jeremiah speak of Jacob's time of trouble occurring before that (as in the case of the Holocaust) or after that (as in the case of Left Behind’s future tribulation)?  Verses 7 and 8 indicate that the Jews would face a terrible time of trouble, then be rescued out of it, and thereafter be free from foreign domination:  “How awful that day will be! None will be like it. It will be a time of trouble for Jacob, but he will be saved out of it. ‘In that day,’ declares the LORD Almighty, ‘I will break the yoke off their necks and will tear off their bonds; no longer will foreigners enslave them.’” (NIV)  So, Jeremiah showed the ‘time of trouble’ coming before the restoration of Israel.

Did the Lord give Jeremiah a preview of the events of 1941 through 1948?  Was the prophet writing of the demonic attempt to exterminate the Jewish people, followed by their return to the Promised Land, with the establishment of a strong national government of their own?  Perhaps. Or does “the time of Jacob’s trouble” predict an era instead of a day?  Does it point to the scattering of the Jews during most of the past two thousand years as the ‘time of trouble’?  Again, perhaps.  The Lord will make all things clear in His time. 

Whatever the case, ‘Jacob’s time of trouble’ can be used to support Left Behind’s seven-year tribulation theory only by wresting it out of context.  It occurs before the restoration of the Jews to the Promised Land, not afterwards.  And it is Jacob’s time of trouble, not a tribulation on the whole world.

Ezekiel 38:3-16

Thus saith the Lord:  Behold I am against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal … in latter years thou shalt come into the land that is brought back from the sword, and is gathered out of many peoples, against the mountains of Israel … And thou shalt come from thy place out of the north parts, thou, and many peoples with thee, all of them riding upon horses, a great company, and a mighty army; And thou shalt come up against my people of Israel, like a cloud to cover the land; it shall be in the latter days…  (KJV)

The original Left Behind novel, volume 1 of the series, begins soon after a strange war has taken place.  The characters reminisce how Russia launched a massive air attack against Israel, only to have all of its planes mysteriously destroyed.  The implication is that this is the attack by Gog, "prince of Rosh" according to many translations of Ezekiel 38:3.  However, the connection between Rosh and Russia is dubious, even though the two sound alike in English.  The Hebrew word rosh occurs 598 times in Scripture, according to Strong’s Concordance, and none of those occurrences refer to a people or nation; rather, it is a common noun meaning head, chief, top, beginning or something similar, depending on the context.

Although The New Scofield Reference Bible (1967 edition) says chief prince in the main text and prince of Rosh only in a marginal note,  the footnote says, “The reference is to the powers in the north of Europe, headed by Russia. … The entire prophecy belongs to the yet future day of the Lord.”

Ezekiel said Gog would attack a future restored state of Israel in the distant future, a land "whose people were gathered from many nations to the mountains of Israel, which had long been desolate." (38:8 NIV)  This description could fit the modern state of Israel, populated by Jews who returned to the Promised Land from Europe and the Americas, and even from Russia itself.

The prophet adds that Gog would have allies.  “Persia, Cush and Put will be with them, all with shields and helmets, also Gomer with all its troops, and Beth Togarmah from the far north with all its troops—the many nations with you.”  (38:5-6 NIV)  So, the attackers would include Iran (Persia) and “many” other nations.  The Apostle John's Apocalypse  uses similar language to refer to all the nations—“the nations in the four corners of the earth—Gog and Magog.” (Revelation 20:8)

Throughout the years of the Cold War it was the Soviet Union (primarily Russia) that took the lead in attacking Israel in the United Nations, along with the Arab states.  Huge majorities passed countless General Assembly resolutions condemning the Jewish state.  Why didn't the U.N. take military action against Israel on the scale of the Korean conflict?  America's veto in the Security Council precluded such an attack.

However, the nations surrounding the restored modern state of Israel—its immediate neighbors—did attack more than once over the years.  In 1948, after Israel declared its independence, it was invaded by the armies of Egypt, Syria, Transjordan (later Jordan), Lebanon, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Local Palestinian Arab forces also fought the Jews.  In 1967 the forces of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq massed on Israel’s borders in obvious preparation for a massive attack, but Israel struck first preemptively in what came to be called the Six Day War.  In the War of Attrition (1969-70) Israel’s neighbors precipitated frequent clashes along the borders and the 1967 cease-fire lines, with additional guerilla action inside Israel itself.  In the Yom Kippur War (or Ramadan War from the Arab perspective) of 1973, the forces of Egypt, Syria and Iraq again attacked the Jewish state.

Although initially backing Israel during the 1948 war and the truce that followed, the early 1950s saw the Soviet Union switch to supporting the Arab states. Russia played a major role in the later multi-national attacks against Israel. 

The Russians reportedly supplied much of the sophisticat