So is the Left Behind debate yet another example of the all-too-familiar standoff between secular types and traditional believers? Actually, for the last year, one of the people doing the most to debunk the worldview of LaHaye and others who believe in the Rapture (when Christians will be pulled up into heaven) and Tribulation (the seven years of supposed horrors that follow, during which the "Left Behind" series is set) has been a woman who labels herself a conservative theologian: Barbara R. Rossing, an associate professor of New Testament studies at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago.
"Today's Christian fixation on Armageddon and war is a sickness even while it may be thrilling and entertaining," Rossing said by phone, a few days after she preached on the theme of the Second Coming for the first Sunday in Advent.
Rossing, who has a doctorate from the Harvard Divinity School, says she wrote her latest book, "The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation," which came out earlier this year, because "more and more I was talking to Lutherans and evangelicals and even Catholics who had read the [Left Behind] novels and gotten the impression this was what the Bible teaches." In news stories on the Left Behind juggernaut, she has been quoted condemning the ethical implications of the "beam-me-up" aspect of Rapture theory, which she says "invites a selfish nonconcern for the world." But the heart of the book is Rossing's effort to go toe-to-toe with the Rapture theorists in Scriptural readings.
The Rapture theory itself is quite new, she argues -- one reason to be suspicious. It was largely invented around 1830 by a British evangelical named John Nelson Darby. One key proof-text, then as now, is Daniel 9:24-27, which speaks of "seventy weeks of years" between the time "the word went out to restore and build Jerusalem" and the second coming. Theologians disagree on when the clock should start for the countdown of those 490 years (70 times seven). After the 69th week, however, Daniel says a "prince" will come who "shall destroy the city and its sanctuary" through war and flood.
full story at:
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2004/12/05/the_rapture_debunked/
"Today's Christian fixation on Armageddon and war is a sickness even while it may be thrilling and entertaining," Rossing said by phone, a few days after she preached on the theme of the Second Coming for the first Sunday in Advent.
Rossing, who has a doctorate from the Harvard Divinity School, says she wrote her latest book, "The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation," which came out earlier this year, because "more and more I was talking to Lutherans and evangelicals and even Catholics who had read the [Left Behind] novels and gotten the impression this was what the Bible teaches." In news stories on the Left Behind juggernaut, she has been quoted condemning the ethical implications of the "beam-me-up" aspect of Rapture theory, which she says "invites a selfish nonconcern for the world." But the heart of the book is Rossing's effort to go toe-to-toe with the Rapture theorists in Scriptural readings.
The Rapture theory itself is quite new, she argues -- one reason to be suspicious. It was largely invented around 1830 by a British evangelical named John Nelson Darby. One key proof-text, then as now, is Daniel 9:24-27, which speaks of "seventy weeks of years" between the time "the word went out to restore and build Jerusalem" and the second coming. Theologians disagree on when the clock should start for the countdown of those 490 years (70 times seven). After the 69th week, however, Daniel says a "prince" will come who "shall destroy the city and its sanctuary" through war and flood.
full story at:
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2004/12/05/the_rapture_debunked/