2. How We Left Behind Our “Left Behind” Theology

2

How We Left Behind Our “Left Behind” Theology

I n this chapter we will each share how we left behind our Left Behind theology. But before we do, let us note some consequences of Left Behind theology or, more precisely, of how some have misused Left Behind theology.

The Chinese Church

Earlier I (Craig) noted the suffering of Christians in Nigeria. This was not the first time I became aware of Christians suffering outside North America. I was at the headquarters of a major missions agency in the 1980s when news came about the Church in China. First the good news: It remained not only alive and well, but was now much stronger than it had been when the missionaries had been expelled from China.

Now the shocking bad news. This Western missions movement had brought many gifts to the Church, but they had also promoted the idea that the Church would escape the final period of tribulation. When the missionaries were expelled, local Christians believed that God had “raptured” these missionaries to heaven and left the local Christians to suffer the Great Tribulation by themselves. Happily, God then used them to evangelize their own people.

Now, after the worst period of suffering was subsiding, missionaries returned, to the astonishment of these local Christians. “You told us that we were not going to experience the Great Tribulation,” the local Christians accused. “We thought you had left us behind to endure this on our own. But God has used us. We do not need you here. We can do this task on our own now.” This was not the experience of all Christians in China, but it does illustrate how the idea of Christians escaping tribulation can leave us unready for sufferings we may genuinely face.

We should note that when we speak of Christians facing sufferings, we do not mean that God does not help us and sometimes deliver us. Both of us (Michael and Craig) have written extensively about healing and miracles. We have witnessed and experienced divine protection. Yet we also know brothers and sisters who have died for their testimony for Christ. Scripture declares that by faith many have shut lions’ mouths and escaped persecution, but in the same breath it praises others who were tortured and killed for their faith (see Hebrews 11:32–37).

In his early years of witness, Craig was more than once threatened, and Michael has sometimes had to speak with police protection even in the United States. Persecution is a daily reality for believers in Jesus in some parts of the world today. Open Doors, Voice of the Martyrs and other groups regularly report concrete examples of such suffering.

Indeed, readiness to suffer for Christ as needed is something that we should have resolved to be ready for the moment we committed our lives to the Lord. The same Lord Jesus who washed our feet and laid down His life for us also warned us quite plainly: “Whoever wants to be My disciple must . . . take up their cross and follow Me,” that is, to the site of execution (Matthew 10:38; 16:24; Mark 8:34 NIV , see also Luke 9:23; 14:27). “Whoever wants to preserve his or her life will lose it, but whoever loses his or her life for My sake and the Gospel’s will save it” eternally (see Matthew 16:25; Mark 8:35; Luke 9:24; John 12:25). Indeed, sometimes God will allow us to be stripped of things that do not matter eternally so we can learn to truly value what does.

Of course, we should not deliberately provoke suffering or seek it for ourselves; but we should not be surprised when it happens. “The world hates you,” Jesus warned (John 15:18–19). Not every passage in the Bible is that black-and-white, but in certain kinds of times, such as under Hitler’s Third Reich or when Diocletian burned Christian Bibles, dividing lines become clear and Jesus’ true followers must be prepared to exercise great courage.

How Michael Left Behind “Left Behind” Teaching

I came to faith in Jesus in 1971 as a sixteen-year-old, Jewish, heroin-shooting, LSD-using, long-haired, hippie rock drummer. This was at the height of what became known as the Jesus People Movement (or Jesus Revolution), but at that time, I had no idea any such movement existed. I just knew that Jesus was real, that God had transformed me and that I wanted to live the rest of my life for Him. I had become a new man.

The church that helped pray me into the Kingdom was a small, Italian Pentecostal assembly in Queens, New York, with perhaps one hundred people, max, on a Sunday morning. My two best friends (and fellow band members) had begun going there to spend time with two girls whom they liked, and the girls starting attending services because their dad had been praying for them and their uncle was the pastor. Soon enough, all of them were changed, so I went to pull them out. Enough with this nonsense , I thought.

The first time I visited the church was in August 1971, and one of the girls who knew me from high school wrote down, “Antichrist comes to church.” That was how wicked a sinner I was, and that was how my ungodly reputation preceded me. (Editor’s note: Michael did not turn out to be the Antichrist in our book’s title.) By the end of the year, I was gloriously born again, set free from drugs and starting a brand new life. It was a life that involved deep devotion to the Lord and frequent church attendance.

Now, you must remember that I had never been in a church prior to these days. (Although my family was not deeply religious, I was bar mitzvahed at thirteen and had only attended synagogue before this.) So this church was my only connection to the Gospel, and what I heard from the pulpit I understood to be gospel truth. I had nothing against which to measure it.

On the positive side, the preaching was simple and centered on the Lord, so I learned the importance of having a solid prayer life, of devouring God’s Word and of reaching out to the lost. I also learned the importance of corporate gatherings, and as the church added a second location and more services, I ended up going to Sunday school, Sunday morning service, Sunday night service, Monday night prayer meeting, Tuesday night service, Wednesday night service and Friday night service, and sometimes doing evangelism on off days. I was all in!

On the negative side, the church was somewhat narrow in its focus. We were very suspicious of a lot of other Christian teaching, and we were encouraged not to read outside books the first year or two after being born again to make sure we stayed primarily in God’s Word. I am actually grateful for this emphasis as a new believer, since I did get immersed in Scripture. But you can see how there can be a downside, too, since we were not exposed to lots of good material that could be helpful in our walks with the Lord. We also assumed (wrongly so) that whatever was coming from the pulpit was as pure as snow. We were a special church, or so we thought.

I did notice that when the pastor taught a Sunday school class on the end times, studying Daniel and Revelation, he did use some additional textbooks, written by one particular author. Why not just use the Bible ?, I wondered. When I asked him, he explained that the author had incredible insight into the Scriptures and the great majority of what he wrote was right on target. So not only is our church special. This author is special, too . As for teaching on the end times, the theme was always in the air. Jesus is coming soon! Jesus is coming at any minute! You do not want to miss the Rapture! You do not want to be left behind!

But it was not only our church that was excited about the Lord’s imminent return. The bestselling Christian book was Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth , and it seemed as if everyone was reading it, even nonbelievers. In fact, many were coming to faith as a result of this remarkable book. Everything was lining up, the prophecies were being fulfilled, and the table was fully set for the Rapture to occur—at any moment. Not only had the nation of Israel been reborn, but a united Jerusalem was back in Jewish hands as the result of the miraculous Six-Day War in 1967, the evil Soviet Union was hell-bent on world domination and the younger generation was in complete rebellion, part of the end-time apostasy Jesus predicted. (Yes, this was the time of sex, drugs and rock and roll, of Woodstock and the Stonewall riots and of the massive generation gap.)

Soon enough, Jesus would whisk His people away—we would be snatched out, without a sound, disappearing without a trace—and then all hell would break loose on the earth. The Antichrist would arise and rule the world for seven dreadful years, which would be a period of unparalleled world suffering. This was the time of the Great Tribulation, lasting either the full seven years or just the last three-and-a-half years. (The first three-and-a-half years would then be the Tribulation; the last three-and-a-half years the Great Tribulation.) But thankfully we would be feasting with Jesus in heaven while millions were slaughtered on earth, only to return triumphantly with our King at His Second Coming.

All this was as sure as the Gospel that saved me—at least, that is what I came to understand. Of course, the pastor knew that there were different beliefs about the end times, but he was quite convinced that the pre-Tribulation Rapture was true, and because I so respected his views, I embraced it as well. We were also taught that when the Church was raptured out, the Holy Spirit would be taken from the earth, too, making it even more difficult for people to come to faith during the Tribulation. In addition, we were taught that, as followers of Jesus, if we were sinning when He came to catch us out, or if we had backslidden, we would miss the Rapture. That was one scary thought.

What did this mean on a practical level? It meant that you should always live in readiness, since you never knew when Jesus was coming. On a personal level for me, I realized that if, God forbid, I missed the Rapture, then the Holy Spirit would be taken from me. And if the Holy Spirit was taken from me, then I would not be able to speak in tongues. So if I did something wrong (perhaps thinking a wrong thought or slipping up in some minor way), I would immediately say, “Lord, forgive me, in Jesus’ name.” Then, without wasting a second, I would pray in tongues. Thank God I didn’t miss the Rapture .

One time, in the fall of either 1972 or 1973, when it was time to set the clock back an hour, I forgot to do so, showing up on a Sunday morning one hour before Sunday school. For a moment, my heart skipped a beat. Where are all the cars? No one is here! Did I miss the Rapture? I quickly pieced things together, realizing what had happened, but this paints a picture of just how real this was to us.

To the church’s credit, the pastor never taught that we should be irresponsible, leaving our debts for the Antichrist, and many of us lived in great joy in the Lord rather than in oppressive fear. The feeling of Oh no! Did I miss the Rapture? was fleeting and rare. But we knew for sure that the time was short. The handwriting was all over the wall. In addition, there was a man in the church whose mother was very old at that time, perhaps in her eighties. (When you are sixteen, eighty is really old.) We were told that the Lord promised her she would not die until He returned, so how many more years could she live?

For me, these were exciting times to be alive, and I began to seek the Lord more earnestly by the day. By the time I had been saved for one year, I would spend at least six or seven hours alone with the Lord every day, praying at least three hours (including one hour straight in tongues), reading the Word at least two hours a day, and memorizing twenty verses a day, which I could do in one hour. (Note from Craig: Michael is much smarter than I am.) By the time I had been saved for two years, I had read the Bible cover to cover five times and memorized more than four thousand verses, and if you challenged anything I believed, I would mow you down with Scriptures in machine-gun style. (What I was lacking in compassion and wisdom, I more than made up for in zeal!)

One day a friend whom I had led to the Lord in high school asked me to explain the difference between the Rapture and the Second Coming, since he was a little confused by it, especially in Matthew 24. When we looked at the passage together (I had it memorized for the most part by then), I had to admit that I really did not know much about the subject. Somehow, the pastor and the elders in the faith had this down pat, but with all my reading of the Bible, I could not fully explain it. Yet I could explain virtually everything else I believed based on Scripture (to this day, I hold to all the fundamentals I held to then). Was that not odd?

I realized, then that I needed to do more studying, so I devoured books by famous dispensational authors such as John Walvoord, J. Dwight Pentecost, W. E. Blackstone and Clarence Larkin. (Larkin was also famous for his woodcut diagrams of the end times. Note that traditional dispensationalists are Christians who believe in a pre-Tribulational Rapture, among other distinctives.) But not only did I devour these writings, I fully embraced what they taught and became quite an expert in this theology, down to the last detail. And, as a zealous, still-very-young, strongheaded believer, to be an expert meant to be dogmatic. All other end-time beliefs were wrong (even though other fine Christians might hold to them); dispensationalism alone was right.

About two years later (about four years after I came to faith), a friend in the church gave me a book written by a man named Dave MacPherson, titled The Incredible Cover Up: Exposing the Origins of Rapture Theories , purporting to tell the true story of the pre-Trib Rapture. It was not, in fact, a biblical doctrine, the author claimed in this detective-like volume. It was the invention of some believers in Scotland in the 1800s who claimed to have received this by divine revelation. The whole thing was a hoax, MacPherson argued, not found in the Bible and not found in Church history. Could it be true?

Now by this time, I was studying in college and getting exposed to other Christian viewpoints, and I had come to realize that not everything I had been taught in my church was pure Gospel. And I had become familiar with the names of some of the top biblical scholars of the day, and one of those scholars affirmed the central thesis of MacPherson’s book. Perhaps there’s something to this after all , I thought to myself, as did my small circle of friends who read the book.

But even to think such a thought was traumatic for us. How could our beloved pastor be wrong? He prayed five hours a day and could quote the Bible left and right. And how could other men of God we knew be wrong?

I had once asked the pastor’s wife how we got such pure doctrine. She explained to me that her husband got it from her father, the founder of the church. I then asked her—in almost reverential awe—where her father got such pure doctrine. She responded, “He got it from the elders.” And where, I asked, did the elders get such sound teaching? “They got it straight from the Lord,” she answered. How thankful I was to be in such a special church!

In truth, I am thankful that God saved me there, since those precious people prayed me into the Kingdom and put up with my folly in those early days. And they did direct me to radical devotion to the Lord and to prioritizing what mattered most. But I also came to realize that, when it came to eschatology, the study of the end times, the founders of this little Italian Pentecostal church got some of their doctrine from the Bible and some of it from men like Clarence Larkin. It was hardly pure revelation from above.

Now, MacPherson’s book promised much but did not fully deliver, making me wonder if what he was saying was true. But reading it reminded me of the question I had asked myself two years earlier: Why was it that, after reading the Bible day and night for two years, also memorizing thousands of verses, I could back up everything I believed with Scripture, but when it came to the Second Coming, I had to read other books? Why did I not just get this from the Word?

So once again I immersed myself in the subject, reading some books that argued for a post-Trib Rapture, along with books that held to very different end-time schemes. Most of all, I dug into the Word with fresh eyes, trying to read the Scriptures as if I had no preconceived ideas (not so easily done). I asked myself, Does the Bible distinguish between a secret Rapture, immediately before the Tribulation, and a visible Second Coming, at the end of the Tribulation? What do the relevant texts say? What does the Greek vocabulary say?

It did not take long to conclude that there was no such thing as a pre-Trib Rapture. The case was settled for me. I still lived with expectation, wanting to see the Lord return in my lifetime. (That remains my hope today, as a grandfather in my sixties.) I still thought we were living in the last days. (Scripturally speaking, from the time of Jesus’ ministry until today, we have been in the period called the last days.) And I continued to attend the same church, the pastor simply asking that I not teach my views publicly, since that would be confusing for the flock. (I readily agreed and appreciated his attitude.)

From that time until now, I have not divided with others over this issue, recognizing that some of the finest Christians on the planet believe in a pre-Trib Rapture. It is not even a subject that comes up a lot in my circles, to the point that I cannot even tell you what some of my closest ministry colleagues believe about a pre-Trib Rapture. We have ministered side by side with passion and commitment and urgency, also preaching about the Lord’s return, but we have never had the need to say to each other, “So what, exactly, do you believe about this?” We have united on the main themes and not divided over the subplots.

Interestingly, it never once dawned on me that I should be afraid of the Tribulation (assuming it refers to a defined, future, seven-year period) or afraid of the Antichrist. I was convinced that God could protect us while His wrath was poured out and that His Spirit in us was more than enough to help us overcome. After all, if we could overcome Satan in Jesus’ name, we had no reason to fear the Antichrist. That remains my attitude today, although I am quite sober about what it means to be a follower of Jesus in this world, and I have personally washed the feet of a martyr’s widow (literally) and wept by the graveside of a spiritual son who was assassinated for his faith.

Others, however, are terrified by the prospect of enduring the Tribulation (“You mean, we won’t be raptured before it?”), while still others remain confused as to exactly what the Bible says. And since I have been asked this question repeatedly over the years, I thought that now was as good a time as any to team up with my esteemed colleague Craig and explain why (1) we do not believe in a pre-Trib Rapture, and (2) we are not afraid of the Antichrist (and why you should not be afraid, either).

We hope you will be positively impacted as you read, and we encourage you to ask God to help you follow His truth, as revealed in His Word. If you agree with our conclusions, wonderful. If you differ but you remain devoted to the same Lord that we serve, we embrace you as our brother or our sister, and we will not divide from you over this issue.

Shall we pursue God’s truth together?

How Craig Left Behind “Left Behind” Teaching

I was converted from a background in atheism, so the little children in Sunday school knew more about the Bible than I did. At the beginning, therefore, I assumed that I should accept whatever my new church taught me, although some ideas were very hard for me to swallow. I dutifully learned the church’s teachings and all the verses that were used to back up those teachings.

At the same time, however, I was also reading the Bible myself. Eventually, to catch up with kids in Sunday school, I started reading forty chapters of the Bible a day, which allowed me to read through the New Testament once a week or through the Bible once a month. (Note from Michael: Craig is much smarter than me.) This is not by any means the only way to study the Bible, but what it did for me at that time was that it forced me to go beyond memorizing verses; I now had to see how these verses were part of larger contexts. They often belonged to a larger argument or story.

I quickly realized that none of the verses used to support the Left Behind idea actually said that in context. To this day, when someone asks me to suggest a book or two in defense of my position, I either tell them, “the Bible,” or, “Get a book that argues for the pre-Tribulation position and look up all the verses in context. By the time you are done, you will not be impressed with pre-Tribulationalism anymore.” Of course there are other helpful post-Tribulational books, including the present one, we hope.

But I believe that everyone could really answer the biblical question for themselves if they would try their best to simply set aside what they have been taught and to read the Bible honestly, asking themselves this question: “If I had not been taught either way, would I recognize a distinction between the Rapture and the Second Coming?” I do have very intelligent friends who do not see it this way, but I really believe that it is that simple—a simple matter of reading the texts in their context.

My pastor did not agree with me, but he was a very gracious and humble man; for him it was not a major issue. It was different for a guest evangelist visiting the church; some of his ministry focused on end-time teachings. He graciously spent an afternoon with me at the church, trying to show me why I was wrong. Each time he would quote a verse, however, we would look it up in context, and none of the verses actually supported his argument. Finally, exasperated, he silenced me. “You’ve just been a Christian for one or two years. But this view is held by all men of God—Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart and others. Who do you think you are to challenge them?”

I had to admit that he was right. I had already been beaten for my faith, but who was I to stand up to all these great men of God? (Apart from what you may think of the examples of the men of God that he cited, Jim Bakker has since changed his view.) So I determined to accept the pre-Tribulational teaching even though I could not honestly see it in Scripture; maybe someday it would make sense to me.

One day, however, I was visiting another church; Chuck Schumacker was the young pastor. He started his message by announcing, “Today I’m going to talk about the Rapture and the Tribulation.”

Oh no , I thought. Here we go again .

“But what I’m going to say today is probably different from what most of you have heard. You see, the teaching that the Church would be raptured before the Tribulation did not start until 1830. No men or women of God before that time believed in it—the early Church fathers, Luther, Calvin, Wesley or others. Leading figures today who have suffered for their faith—such as Corrie ten Boom or Brother Andrew—speak against it as a false teaching.”

I was astonished. The pre-Tribulational Rapture view was not the view of all men of God. I liked what Pastor Chuck said, but I determined to find out once and for all for myself. The next time through the New Testament, I took copious notes. My starting question was: If I had not been taught about this subject either way, would I ever guess on my own that Jesus was coming before the Tribulation? Or would I simply assume that He is coming once, at the end of this age? I quickly had my answer; the Bible seemed crystal clear.

From then on I determined that I would never accept something just because my church said that it was true. I would go back and study everything in Scripture for myself, to see what the Bible really said. To make the task more manageable, I started with one doctrine at a time and happily found that, for the most part, my church had inherited sound teaching from earlier centuries of Christian thought. Nevertheless, this was a turning point in how I read the Bible.

After this, I attended a pre-Tribulational Bible college. Looking back, I must say that my teachers were fair and patient; they did not mark me down for my views. (Some of them privately did not hold the official position, but even those who did hold it did not punish me for my challenges.) Some fellow students, however, insisted that my views would make me miss the Rapture, and they would tease that they would send me a postcard from heaven. I did not enjoy the teasing at the time (though we were all at a teasing age). Still, I figured that if I anticipated suffering more serious persecution for my faith I should be able to endure a bit of teasing for my views in the meantime.

Yet I quickly began to learn that nearly all of the mainstream Bible-honoring scholars I respected at that time—such as F. F. Bruce, D. A. Carson, Robert Gundry, William Lane, George Eldon Ladd, I. Howard Marshall, Leon Morris, Robert Mounce, J. Barton Payne, Herman Ridderbos and Merrill Tenney—were post-Trib. So was the main Pentecostal scholar I knew about, Gordon Fee. Not all held precisely the same perspective on what the Tribulation was—that is, whether it remained wholly future or also encompassed the sufferings of the Church through history. But regarding the Rapture and Second Coming, these scholars had read the Bible the same way I had, and this observation opened me up to appreciating biblical scholarship. That was another needed turning point for my own journey toward becoming a biblical scholar.

Yet I found the dialogue with my peers frustrating at times. One time in the cafeteria I was explaining to a fellow student, probably overzealously (considering it was breakfast), how the Bible disproved the pre-Tribulational position. At the end of our discussion, she concluded with a confession that went something like this: “You have shown me that the Bible refutes the pre-Tribulational position. But I was raised pre-Trib, and I will probably always be pre-Trib.” I think that she later did change her view, but at the time it frustrated me that someone would honor church teaching above the Bible. So much the more when one of the church’s primary teachings was that the Bible was the final authority for doctrine! Such experiences further fueled my passion to call the Church back to the Scriptures—not only on this issue but also on the teaching of the Bible in general.

That is an irony: Today some will appeal to denominational traditions to insist that Jesus must return before the Tribulation, yet those same denominations insist that Scripture is paramount. If the post-Tribulational case is stronger than the pre-Tribulational one, then denominational traditions should be revised accordingly. The tradition of pre-Tribulationalism formed under the influence of certain theological beliefs in the 1800s; in recent decades, the belief has been reinforced by novels and films on a popular level, but with astonishingly little solid biblical scholarship behind it. (This observation is not intended to deny that there are genuine biblical scholars in these traditions, some of whom are our good friends, but merely to explain that inductive study of Scripture does not naturally lead to a pre-Tribulational conclusion.)

Speaking Out

While working on my John commentary, I felt led to propose to Zondervan a work about Revelation. The feeling persisted, but I wanted to finish my John commentary before moving on to anything else. Further, I was not sure whom to contact at Zondervan, since at that time I had never written for them before. A few months later, an editor from Zondervan called and asked if I would write the Revelation commentary in their NIV APPLICATION COMMENTARY series. He knew that I wrote commentaries, but he had no way of knowing that I had thousands of index cards full of research data ready for such a project, nor did he have any way of knowing my interest in Revelation in particular. I am sometimes slow to catch hints, even from the Lord, but this one seemed fairly obvious. That book, however, is written as a commentary meant to serve the Church more widely, so although I wrote it as a post-Tribulationalist, I also wrote it in such a way that, in terms of application, it would be useful to Christians whether or not they share my views on that topic.

In a different way, my more recent Chosen book with my wife, Impossible Love , implies a time of coming hardship, although not necessarily the final one. The book narrates times when I sensed in prayer that such times lay ahead. It mentions my wife Médine’s youthful experience of doubting that she would ever experience the suffering faced by Ethiopian refugees, and then her later experience of being a refugee herself for eighteen months. The implied subtext is thus that hard times may come even to those who do not expect them. Throughout, though, the book emphasizes God’s faithfulness in the midst of that suffering. Although it does not specify anything about a future Tribulation, part of the book’s purpose is to help prepare us for whatever sufferings lie ahead—by reminding us that we may suffer and that, no matter what, God will be faithful to those who love Him.

Conclusion

It is certainly possible to be pre-Tribulational and still be ready to face persecution and suffering until the final Tribulation comes. Yet because many Christians on a popular level use the hope of a pre-Tribulational Rapture to evade the idea that they will have to suffer persecution or their nation’s judgment, we felt that in this book we would need to address that issue head on. Christians have suffered persecution all through the course of this age. No one becomes exempt from such suffering simply by virtue of being a Christian. Indeed, Scripture teaches the opposite: “Whoever wants to live in a godly way in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Timothy 3:12).

↑ Back to top