The Results of Fundamentalist Preoccupation with Eschatology

A series of sixteen Christian fiction books (as of this writing), often called “The Left Behind Series” were written by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, who have espoused an eschatological  belief that was unfamiliar to Christianity until the mid 1800s. With this mix of Biblical truth and fiction there has arisen a great amount of focus and confusion about truly biblical eschatology. The books are dangerous because people see the fiction as theology and not as fiction

Thus, this fiction theology has replaced the historically accepted eschatology which predicts the singular coming of Christ (the “perousia”), to judge the living and the dead, with two comings of Christ, first in a secret “calling up” of Christian believers into heaven, and then a second coming a thousand years later to judge the living and the dead and to cast Satan into hell. I Thessalonians 4:15-17 is seen to be a description of the preliminary or “rapture” event (the word Is nowhere in the Bible) compared to the secondary perousia return described in Matthew 24:29-31. Both texts describe a return of Jesus in clouds of glory with angelic activity, trumpets, heavenly signs, and a gathering of the saints, but Fundamentalists and many Evangelicals believe these to be two separate events.

The thousand year period is called “the millennium,” which before the mid-1800’s metaphorically only represented an indeterminant but significant amount of time, but has now been literally interpreted as exactly 1000 years. It is supposedly a time when Satan, posing as the antichrist (antithesis of Jesus Christ), rules the world as a one-world ruler who brings peace, and eventually degrades into an evil world dictator.

Fundamentalists often hold to these cunningly devised tales with such vehemence that if one does not agree with them, they are often shunned or branded as “probably not Christian.”  Whereas, historically the church has held the tenets of the Apostles Creed as the central or basic “list” of unifying beliefs, Fundamentalists, and many Evangelicals, often do not ascribe to the Creed, and often hold beliefs about eschatology, modes of baptism, speaking in “tongues” and other tenets as important as belief unto salvation in order to be truly Christian.  Such beliefs divide and do not unify the Church. Many Fundamentalist and Evangelicals deny their inherent exclusivism in their theology, but not in their practice

Along with this relatively new eschatology that can border on heresy comes a strong defense of the nation of modern Israel. This belief is based on the Bibilcal promise to Abraham by God when He said. “I will bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you.” in the book of Genesis. Rather than recognizing modern day Israel as a totally secular society, very different from the Old Testament Israel, Fundamentalists see the nation as still having the blessing of God more than any other nation in that region or the world, and thus justify America’s strong support of that nation’s politics and policies toward its neighbors and those people with whom it shares common geography.  This justification and support of Israel is clearly blind to the atrocities, apartheid and ethnic cleansing by that democracy against minorities within its borders.