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09/22/2004:

"The Rapture racket"

by Bill Berkowitz
“The rapture is a racket,” writes Barbara R. Rossing in the first sentence of her recently published book The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation (Westview Press, 2004). Rossing, a New Testament scholar and an associate professor at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, maintains that the Rapture is a fraud of monumental proportions, as well as a disturbing way to instill fear in people.

“Whether prescribing a violent script for Israel or survivalism in the United States, this theology distorts God's vision for the world,” Rossing writes. “In place of healing, the Rapture proclaims escape. In place of Jesus' blessing of peacemaking, the Rapture voyeuristically glorifies violence and war. [...] This theology is not biblical. We are not Raptured off the earth, nor is God. No, God has come to live in the world through Jesus. God created the world, God loves the world, and God will never leave the world behind!”

What if the Book of Revelation doesn’t spell doom and gloom? What if it doesn’t mandate the death, destruction and annihilation of all but true believers? What will Rapture-mongers do?

The Rev. Tim LaHaye and his co-author Jerry Jenkins are as responsible as anyone for taking The Rapture mainstream. Their Left Behind series of apocalyptic novels, published by Tyndale House, have sold nearly 60 million copies and for several years have been regular staples on the fiction best seller lists across the country. The final volume in the 12-volume series, Glorious Appearing, was released this spring and it quickly found its way onto the best seller lists.

The Rev. LaHaye -- a longtime, high-profile religious right political leader who co-founded The Moral Majority with Rev. Jerry Falwell in 1979 -- does the novels’ imagining, while Jenkins, the author of more than 100 books including Out of the Blue with former Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Orel Hershiser and Just As I Am, the Rev. Billy Graham's memoir, does the writing.

Their message is a variation of President Bush’s “Either you’re with us, or you’re with them” war against terrorism mantra: Either you accept Jesus Christ as your savior or, the Rev. LaHaye told CNN’s Larry King, you will be left behind.

Full Article: workingforchange.com