America and the End-Times Industry: False Theology and Major Profits

When I answered a phone call from one of our parish leaders Friday morning, I really did not expect a mental trip back in time.  However, what we talked about catapulted me right back to 2003-4 when I was involved in the Catholic End Times catechesis revival. Tomorrow night, I will revisit that in a talk at a local parish (replacing a speaker who canceled.)

The Left Behind series of adult and children's books and the low-budget movie with Keith Cameron were a problem for Catholics 10 years ago. I had gotten into writing and presenting on this topic because before that, when I had been a parish DRE, I had encountered a catechist  trying to teach 7th graders that there will be a "Rapture" and then discovered the Left Behind children's books were not only in the parish school library, but were being read in the 5th grade classroom.

Anti-Catholic, based on a false interpretation of Scripture... yes this stuff is a catechetical problem for Catholics.

As a result, I ended up assisting the Catholic Conference of Illinois with writing a statement on the Left Behind books and videos. That led to an article in the final issue of the USCCB Department of Education journal The Living Light, several local and regional presentations and two national interviews. After that, things quieted down for me, and for catechesis,

In preparing for tomorrow night, I found that Left Behind has been an integral part of an entire industry in America. Dating back to the 1970 publication of Hal Lindsey's The Late, Great Planet Earth, which sold 10 million copies, Americans have been eating up all things apocalyptic. LeftBehind.com boasts that they have now sold 63 million copies of their books.  When you think about it, not only has Hollywood cashed in on apocalyptic movies about the end times and the anti-Christ, but the History Channel has made a career out of presenting various scenarios for the apocalypse, most based on misreadings of the Book of Revelation.

Now, Hollywood is giving us a major actor to play the main character in a new "major motion picture."  And here we go again. 

It's been interesting to see where this has gone in the past 10 years.  I will probably post more on this topic over the next few weeks until we see the reception of the movie...

Here is my PowerPoint, posted on SlideShare.  Feel free to share this with parish leaders and catechists.

Here We Go Again: 2014 "Left Behind" Movie Remake Brings Major Misinterpretation of Scripture Back

Well, here we go - as Yogi Berra once said, it's "deja vu all over again."

This time, Hollywood is not stopping at second-string - Nicholas Cage - an "A-lister" headlines the cast of a new production of Left Behind, which is currently filming. Cage replaces Kirk Cameron, who starred in the mediocre 2000 film version of the best-selling book, in a remake that promises to be big-budget and higher quality. You can read a little of the history of the film and its direct-to-video sequels here .

All of this brings up the points I made years ago when the Left Behind book series for adults and the companion series for children were burning up the best-seller list and finding their way into Catholic parishes and schools.  Left Behind, based on a faulty interpretation of Scripture that presumes there will be a "Rapture" of the "good Christians" before the second coming of Christ, is not part of Catholic or mainline Protestant theology, and is both misleading and dangerous. It is also overtly anti-Catholic. Catholics, with a few exceptions, are simply left behind in this fictionalized Rapture scenario, created by conservative anti-Catholic evangelical authors Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins,  published by Tyndale House, Wheaton, IL.

Now that this film is coming out, we will see a resurgence in the popularity of the "Rapture" - and misunderstanding among the Catholic faithful. Most likely Tyndale House will respond with a new edition of the book and all of this will bring this back into the national conversation. Parish leaders and catechists need to do their homework about what the Church teaches about the end times so when this new movie is discussed, they are prepared to counter it with Catholic teaching.

If you want to know more about why this movie will be a catechetical problem, read the 2003 statement on Left Behind from the Illinois Catholic Conference. I was privileged to work with the CCI on this - and the statement, as far as I am concerned, still stands. Catholics should not see this movie unless parishes provide them with the tools to understand that this is not what Jesus Christ taught.

Rapture, Revisited

Wow - all the scuttlebutt on the blogs, Facebook and Twitter about 89-year-old Rev. Harold Camping's claim, based on some arcane numerology involving scripture,  that the Rapture ("Judgment Day") will occur on May 21 (tomorrow) has me reminiscing.  There was the Millennium thing - when many people thought it would happen at the stroke of midnight January 1, 2000.  Then, with the popularity of the Left Behind book series, there was a resurgence of interest between then and 2003. The thing that frightened me then was that so many Catholics were reading these books or absorbing the message that Scripture says a Rapture is part of the end-times scenario. 

After an experience with a catechist who was teaching kids that there was a "Rapture," I was privileged to "ghostwrite" the CCI (Catholic Conference of Illinois) "Statement on Left Behind Books and Videos" - and during the process came to the conclusion that better catechesis about what the Church really teaches about the End Times is part of the solution. The bishops agreed:  We, the Catholic Bishops of Illinois, call upon those responsible for faith formation to provide planned, coherent, and informed catechesis to all age groups about Church teachings on the end of the world, based on scripture and tradition.

While there has been some minor progress - at least one book and an article in a major national magazine was written in response to the statement -  I am afraid the information has not filtered down to the average Catholic. Still, it is heartening that most people are joking about tomorrow because they realize that Rev. Camping is a crackpot and that his private revelation, based on the numbers, predicting tomorrow's non-event is just one more in a series of dire predictions about the end of the world and is nonsense.

Tomorrow night, as I join other members of National Association of Catholic Media Professionals (NACMP) at their evening social before the NCCL annual conference in Atlanta, I will lift a glass with the others, celebrating the Rapture that wasn't.  We will not know the day nor the hour of Christ's coming.  It is a clear case of MYOB and don't worry about it. Jesus will come when he gets here. And he is only making the return trip once.