With the huge commercial success of the Left Behind novels, Christian eschatology (what the Bible says about last things and end-times) has asserted itself as an important topic to even secular commentators, as in a recent Time magazine cover story. Eschatology, however, is always an important topic to Christians, and good teacher and preacher that he is, Andrew Sandlin makes use of the Left Behind phenomenon [1] as a “teaching moment.” When he wrote this article for the Chalcedon Report, of January, 2001, Sandlin was director of the Chalcedon Foundation, a theological “think-tank” built around the work of the late R. J. Rushdoony, a laymen’s theologian who wrote scholarly defenses and explanations of the faith for the non-academic reader. Sandlin’s brief but meaty essay is a Bible-believing critique of the Rapture theory behind Left Behind, and a presentation of a more hopeful eschatology.

The article is particularly worth noting because of its context within the history of American evangelical Christianity. For that reason, one needs to consider that history along with Sandlin’s article.[2] How did the evangelical wing of Christianity come to be dominated by a pessimistic eschatology, which virtually says the world is “going to Hell” just before Christ’s Second Coming, with the Christians rescued in a Rapture just before a horrible time of Tribulation?[3] Christianity, after all, is generally a deeply optimistic faith, confident that salvation will occur in the world, because of a Power “not of this world.” Such was the majority Christian opinion until the late 1900s. During the middle of that century the novel theological claims of a former Anglican clergyman, J. N. Darby[4] spread among evangelicals in England. Then Darby’s ideas migrated to this country, notably through the work of C. I. Schofield, an associate in D. L. Moody’s revivalist ministry. Schofield, would later produce his famous annotated Bible to promote this viewpoint.

Schofield popularized the theological system now called premillennial dispensationalism. “Premillenial” refers to Christ’s Second Coming occuring before the golden age predicted in the Book of Revelation (the 1000 years of Rev. 20:4). “Dispensationalism” refers to Darby’s division of history into 6 or 7 “dispensations,” during each of which eras God’s ways of dealing with mankind were different. The “church age” dispensation, the period between the first and second Advents, was said to be a time which would end in earthly catastrophe and failure for the church, which could only hope to snatch souls from the fire by getting people to make decisions for Christ at revivals. Disturbing current events were used as proof that the end was near.

During that same troubled 19th Century, another theological import from the Old World arrived to ravage American Christianity as German “higher criticism” and the philosophy of the Enlightenment began taking over the seminaries of main-line churches. This movement became known as theological modernism. Its approach to theological study was to analyze the Bible in terms of modern learning, whereas classical Christianity sought to understand all knowledge in terms of the Bible.[5] Modernism progressively downplayed the authority of the Bible, in favor of the authority of human reason. By the early 20th Century, the Bible was assumed to be only a human book and its authors guilty of many errors. In the face of this intellectual onslaught, mainline Christianity salvaged something of its faith by emphasizing good works (the Social Gospel).[6]

Evangelicals viewed the rise of modernism with alarm, and mounted an intellectual counter-attack. In 1917, a multi-volume set of essays, The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth, was published. Edited by the popular evangelist R.A. Torrey, it included among its contributors the Anglican Bishops H. C. G. Moule and J. C. Ryle, and the redoubtable Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield, head of Princeton Theological Seminary. The Fundamentals marshaled a broad coalition of anti-modernist seminary professors and evangelical ministers. C. I. Schofield was one of the contributors.

That broad coalition of evangelists and intellectuals was held together by its common enemy, modernism, but was weakened by considerable disagreements among its members. In that situation, Schofield and the dispensationalists had an advantage over some of the other players; they boldly proclaimed that their teaching was based on total belief in what the Bible said, and that anyone who disagreed with them was on the side of doubt and unbelief. They provided a fighting position which attracted many who were looking for a place to stand, and by the middle of the 20th Century, premillennial dispensationalism had captured the Fundamentalist movement.[7]

The American religious scene, at least on matters of eschatology, was thus divided into two camps. On the one hand were the mainline modernists who did not believe the Bible and therefore did not take Biblical end-time prophecy seriously. On the other hand were the Fundamentalists who did believe the Bible and that the end of the world was near. The two opposing groups gladly accepted each other’s claim that these two choices were the only options. “Either you agree with us, or you will be just like them.” Alternative viewpoints were present, however, working like leven among non-fundamentalist, but theologically conservative Bible scholars.[8] A Bible-believing critique of dispensationalism was developing, which brings us back to Sandlin’s essay.

Sandlin begins by noting the irony that the theology propounded in the Left Behind series is now in retreat at most evangelical seminaries, falling out of favor just as the Left Behind novels are spreading those ideas more widely than ever in popular culture. Sandlin counters with a Biblical argument that “Last Days” in the New Testament means the period between the first and second Advents of Christ on earth.[9] These days are “last” in that they are the final phase of Christ’s redeeming work. When He comes back, that work will all be completed with his destruction of death. (1 Cor. 15:24-26) Premillennial dispensationalists take “last” as meaning “nearly over,” or “near the end,” and they often say that the Last Days began with the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. On the contrary, Sandlin says the Last Days began at Pentecost.

One of Sandlin’s interesting Scriptural references is Matthew 13:24-32, the parable of the wheat and the tares, as a comment on the Last Days. Tares grow alongside the wheat, but the wheat fulfils its potential of a bountiful harvest. In the parable’s implied counsel to wait to see what develops, Sandlin sees an indication that, in his humanity, Jesus limited his divine omniscience about details of the Last Days. Thus, the parable’s intimation of uncertainty as to specifics, coupled with certainty of final victory, indicates the proper Christian attitude. The Rapture theorists set dates, while expecting earthly defeat, but Jesus said just before his Ascension: “It is not for you to know the times or seasons, which the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses….to the end of the earth.” (Acts 1:7-8)

This vision of assured victory, and the call to work to be part of it, lies at the heart of postmillennialism, the specific viewpoint to which Sandlin devotes the last third of his essay. Postmillennialism means that Christ will return after the 1000-year reign, not before it, as the premillennialists hold. The important point, however, is that postmillennialism is an eschatology of victory. Postmillennialists usually take the 1000 year reign as a symbolic reference to the Last Days as a whole, when Christ is ruling from Heaven, and his followers are progressively working out his saving grace on earth. Sandlin refers to Acts 2:23-36. Verses 34 & 35 read: “For David is not ascended into the heavens: but he himself saith, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, until I make thy foes thy footstool.”

The contrast between assurance-inducing postmillennialism and fear-inducing dispensationalism could not be more stark. The Left Behind novels look toward terrifying collapse on earth. Against that, Sandlin considers our earthly battles and struggles to be essentially “mopping up” operations, in which we are privileged to share in our Christ’s salvation of the world. In this view, our personal defeats are absorbed into overall victory, and our fears are balanced by a cosmic confidence. One can imagine that postmillennialism might become a common ground between the Bible-believing and Social Gospel wings of American Christianity.

Sandlin’s essay may be read online at www.chalcedon.edu/articles/0110/011008sandlin.php.

[1]“The Left Behind Phenomenon” is the title of an informative article by Gary Demar, in American Vision, March, 2001. (Eschatology is a major focus of Demar's writing ministry. He also writes on the place of religion in American public life. See his organization’s website at www.americanvision.org.)

[2]What follows is the reviewer’s opinion of that history and of the theological issues crucial to it. In the interest of brevity, broad generalizations, to which there are exceptions, are made. A recommended reference is The Incredible Schofield and His Book, by Joseph M. Canfield (Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 1988).

[3]Some dispensationalists believe that the Rapture will occur after the Tribulation, so that Christians will suffer and die along with the rest of the world in that time.

[4]Darby was a clergyman in the Church of Ireland, the Anglican church which the English established there. He resigned to promote his ideas and founded the denomination called the Plymouth Brethren.

[5]R. J. Rushdoony used this definition of modernism.

[6]The reviewer’s judgment of modernism is obvious in this broad-brush sketch. This is not to deny that many modernists had what they thought were the best interests of Christianity at heart.

[7]See “Fundamentalism and the Rise of Dispensational Theology,” in A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada, by Mark A. Noll (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1992) pp. 376-378.

[8]Rushdoony was one of those. See his Thy Kingdom Come (Fairfax, Virginia: Thoburn Press, 1978). Also, Oswald T. Allis and the Canadian lay-theologian Roderick Campbell contributed to this dissent.

[9]The timing of the Last Days is one of several key points of the Biblical critique of dispensationalism. Some others are (1) that “Israel,” in New Testament prophecy, refers to the Christian church universal, (2) that the Olivet Discourse (Matt. 24) refers to the Fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD, and (3) that Biblical prophecy is usually given in symbolic, not literal, terms.