A 90s best-selling book provides critical insight into today’s Christian Zionism
‘Left Behind’ reflected and created a culture that aspires to end civilization
A quick perusal of the internet, TV channels, newspapers, or even bathroom graffiti reveals a consistent narrative: college kids are generally upset about Israel’s ongoing genocide in Palestine. Well, not all college kids. Notably absent are any of the large Evangelical universities.
While some students on Christian campuses, like those at Baylor, have held small solidarity conferences for Palestine, their administrators have heavily censored what they are allowed to share. Going so far as to ban a “timeline of the history between Israel and Palestinians.” Even when the victims of Israel’s indiscriminate bombings are fellow Christians, Evangelicals seem unfazed. As demonstrated by the silence emanating from the majority of Evangelical colleges. The campuses that are making noise are doing so in support of Israel. Late last month, students at Liberty University gathered together to, as FOX News put it, “honor God and Israel”.
How is it that students who claim to adhere to the precepts of “love thy neighbor” and “turn the other cheek” are apparently more than happy to ignore war crimes and continued bloodshed?
Unsurprisingly to those of us who grew up Evangelical, the Christian support of Israel is directly tied to belief in the genocide to end all genocides, Armageddon. We even created an entire fanfiction anthology surrounding the massacre of millions by the hand of a loving god.
In my book Youth Group: Coming of Age in the Church of Christian Nationalism, I discuss said anthology, why so many Evangelicals give their undying support to Israel, and how being on the persecuting end of persecution is nothing new for them.
Few Dispensational precepts grip the Evangelical imagination or arouse their carnal appetites more than the belief that the world will end in fire and bloodshed. And that it will happen soon. A 2010 Pew survey found that 41 percent of Evangelicals believe the end times will occur before 2050. While not precisely standard fare at most Youth Group events, a spirit of greedy anticipation would take the room whenever the topic was broached. Terms like pre-trib, mid-trib, post-trib, the rapture, the mark of the beast, the Millennial Kingdom, the 70 weeks of Daniel, and of course the Whore of Babylon were passed around in lieu of Pokemon cards as a handful of high-minded teenagers would casually discuss the slaughter of all mankind by a loving God. Each one of us replete with sanctimonious glee as we sat contemplating a final “I told you so.”
A series of 16 books, many of which topped a 100k word count, were authored to both capitalize on and englut the apocalyptic bloodlust. The first book, Left Behind, was published in 1995 and within a few scant years was accepted by most Evangelicals as the Bible part deux. Written by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins and selling over 80 million copies, the Left Behind series managed to mate Evangelical’s martyr complex with strict biblical reconstructionism. The resulting Rosemary’s Baby maintained the New York Times Best Seller top spot for 7 weeks. No mean accomplishment for a book that was terribly reviewed and contains more than its fair share of truly toilsome dialog.
Mr Jenkins appears to have done the actual writing while the intellectual content was pried from Mr LaHaye’s imagination. The plot follows men like Rayford Steele and Buck Williams. Names seemingly snatched from the folds of a sparkling Chippendale’s man-thong. The protagonists are faced with a world turned upside down by the disappearance of all the true Christians. Pilots vacuumed to heaven mid-flight, doctors mid-surgery, and, presumably, dog walkers mid-dog walk. The rapture has called all the followers of Christ to heaven leaving their clothing, jewelry, fillings, and pacemakers in heaps on the spots where they last stood. The majority of Catholics are mentioned explicitly as having missed the call. Apparently, Martin Luther was on to something after all. But not to fear! Those having been Left Behind can still make their way into God’s good graces and find their way to heaven via a tedious, long-winded 16-book franchise.
Following the mainstream Dispensational belief, Left Behind posits the end times as following exact biblical formulas; prophesied events bring about the rapture, followed by the Great Tribulation. The tribulation consists of war, famine, pestilence, and death—typical apocalyptic horsemen stuff. Finally, after Jesus’ blood lust is quenched, the Millennial Kingdom is installed on Earth for 1000 years where Christ reigns supreme from his throne in Jerusalem. After 1000 years, God remembers he hasn’t delivered enough punishments and destroys the Earth with fire before his final judgment begins. Reject the “free gift” of salvation, or simply born in the wrong place at the wrong time? Eternal damnation. Confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that Jesus Christ is king? Eternal bliss in heaven.
The series can be viewed as little more than cathartic revenge porn. Offering the elicit hope that soon all those bearded intellectuals and evolution-peddling atheists will finally and violently come face to face with how very wrong they were the whole time. The ejaculative release of seeing several billion naysayers being burned alive for eternity was too much for many of us [Evangelical youths] to pass by.
The series soon exploded off the page and into film, comic books, and video games. If you have yet to experience one of these movies, please start with the Kirk Cameron rendition before moving on to the 2014 Nicolas Cage masterpiece. One does not drink a fine wine before cleansing the palate after all. The franchise offers plenty of guilt-free murder and gore. After a particularly graphic battle where “Men and women and soldiers and horses seemed to explode where they stood,” The Lamb of God surveys his work strolling through the carnage with “the hem of his robe turning red in the blood of the enemy.” I mean, if Jesus is doing the smiting, it can’t be wrong, right?
Keeping track of the good guys and bad guys in Left Behind gives you an eerily prophetic look into the Christian nationalist hivemind of today. Top of the list, are the United Nations, NATO, Europeans, Muslims, liberals, atheists, humanists, the media, and international bankers. He couldn’t be forthright and say George Soros and the Rothschilds. Perhaps even more telling, the good guys include American right-wing militias, some nice Jews, presumably none of which are bankers, and, of course, born-again Evangelicals.
As with glitter, herpes, and Coronavirus, Mr LaHaye refused to be contained. Death cult fanfiction was not his only contribution to the culture wars. Remember Mr Falwell and the Moral Majority from a few pages back? Yeah, Mr LaHaye was instrumental in its formation, and he sat on the three-person board of directors. He was also the founder of the secretive far-right Council for National Policy (CNP), whose membership includes senators, attorneys general, presidential cabinet members, televangelists, and billionaire war criminals. Unlike Falwell’s Moral Majority, which folded in the 80s, the CNP continues to meet three times a year in undisclosed locations and has its fingers in almost every level of government. To give you some idea of the power Mr LaHaye wielded; in 2000, presidential hopeful George W. Bush walked into a room with Mr LaHaye without the Evangelical vote and walked out with it entirely behind him.
Mr LaHaye died in 2016, but he had played an almost unparalleled role in pushing conspiratorial beliefs into mainstream Evangelicalism before his departure. A staunch believer in the Illuminati’s global dominance and the inherent villainy of the UN, LaHaye helped turn up Evangelical fear to 11. The idea that international liberal elites are determined to crush Christianity, destroy America, and erase Western civilization is now Evangelical orthodoxy. Left Behind was an addictive and not-so-subtle piece of propaganda that was mainlined to young Evangelicals across the country, myself included.
“The Bible tells us that Jesus will not return until every ear has heard and tongue confessed that Jesus Christ is Lord, and that’s one reason missions are so important,” intoned my 25-year-old youth pastor, his messianic bearded visage offset by his ever-present cargo shorts. Come to think of it, he bore a slight resemblance to a more saintly John Goodman via The Big Lebowski. Nine of us lounged in old sofas, soaking up the seriousness of our impending mission trip to Haiti. While Haiti had already seen its fair share of missionaries and was worse for it, our discussion that night concerned missions in a much broader sense. An air of solemn intensity burned in his eyes as he continued, “And he said unto them, ‘Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.’” He punctuated the passage with an extended silence.”
My church belonged to the Christian Missionary Alliance, which prides itself on the number of missionaries sent worldwide, and evangelizing was a central component of our Youth Group. Sitting there surrounded by close friends and discussing such weighty topics as the eternal souls of the heathen and the return of the Messiah, I remember being giddy with the magnitude of our endeavor. Not only were we enthusiastically working to bring on the end of the world, we were operating under a heavenly mandate to do so.
Most people do find a titillating joy in contemplating the end of days. Apocalyptic fiction and end-of-the-world movies have always enjoyed a large fanbase, but actively striving for Armageddon remains the domain of Bond villains and religious fundamentalists.
Buying up hours of late-night airtime on cable networks, the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews urges Evangelicals to open their wallets and pay for Jews to move to Israel. I first watched one of these infomercials back around 2004 and thought it a splendid idea. See, I had been swept up in the burgeoning tide of Christian Zionism. Today, the movement boasts millions of adherents, with the most powerful group being Christians United for Israel (CUFI), containing over 8 million members. The brainchild of televangelist John Hagee and the omnipresent Jerry Falwell, CUFI makes a name for itself by pushing ultra-right-wing Zionism on the international level.
At first glance, a Jewish/Hagee alliance may seem an odd marriage. After all, Hagee is on the record as claiming that Hitler’s bloodline consisted entirely of “accursed, genocidally murderous half-breed Jews.” However, upon further inspection, the confusion dissipates. It’s that LaHaye death cult all over again. Underlying all other Christian Zionist motives are two beliefs. The first one was encapsulated by Vice President Mike Pence at the CUFI conference in 2019: “We stand with Israel because we cherish that ancient promise that those who bless her will be blessed.” Mr Pence is referring to Numbers 24:9: “Whoever blesses Israel will be blessed, and whoever curses Israel will be cursed.” It is hard to stress how strongly Evangelicals buy into this. My father counts it as the primary reason Trump got his vote in the 2020 election. The second belief is that every Jew (or at least a good portion of ’em?) must return to Israel before the second coming of Christ. Hence all the efforts by otherwise indifferent Evangelicals to help the chosen people find their way back to the promised land.
Christianity has never existed without a focus on the end times. That’s kind of its thing. What hasn’t always been its thing is a self-pitying demand for reactionary politics. Understanding the path Christianity took from a religion firmly rooted in radical pacifism and selflessness to trumpeting individualism, nationalism, capitalism, and colonialism is complex, to say the least. No matter how meandering the journey may have been, I believe there to be a point in history where that complex journey took its tightest bend in that direction.
On October 27, 312 CE, the Roman emperor Constantine had a vision of the cross with the words “in this sign, conquer” written in the sky above it. The next day, he had his troops paint the sign upon their shields before engaging in battle with his political rival Maxentius. Constantine killed Maxentius and went on to establish himself as the sole ruler of Rome. Constantine made Christianity a tool of the state, and the religion went from persecuted to persecutors. It has maintained that position to this day with only a few hiccups.”
One such hiccup was liberation theology, as popularized in the 1960s. Latin American bishops attempted to revive the Gospels with their focus on pacifism, community, and taking care of the poor. Liberation theology has been routinely stamped down by the policies and actions of the United States. Administration after administration and their Evangelical supporters actively pursued its eradication. When liberation theology’s policy of “preferential treatment for the poor” began to spread across Latin America, the USA responded with out and out terrorism.
The CIA instigated a coup in Brazil, setting up a fascist dictator after too many Brazilian politicians picked up the call of liberation. In the 1980s America trained Salvadoran special forces with the specific task of ridding the country of pesky Jesuits who refused to back down from their religious convictions. Needless to say, it was not a bloodless effort. The liberation movement was seriously stalled when soldiers, fresh out of training at Fort Bragg, stormed José Simeón Cañas Central American University and executed six Jesuit priests who were the movement’s leading intellectuals.
Let’s just hope that if Jesus does make a reappearance on Earth, he keeps his mouth shut about equality, justice, and the poor.
Excerpt From:
Youth Group Coming of age in the church of Christian nationalism
By: Lance Aksamit
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