Three Things To Consider Before Inviting Your Friend To See Left Behind

  The new Left Behind movie  opened recently in cinemas around the world.  As someone who got “onboard” the Left Behind evangelistic bandwagon 14 years ago when the original version with Kirk Cameron came out, I offer three things to consider before getting evangelistically excited about the new Left Behind.
   Take it as the voice of experience…
Left Behind Theology is Bad Theology
   News Flash: The Rapture -- Tribulation -- Anti-Christ theology of the Left Behind series is only about 200 years old, not 2000!
   Theologians are still pondering how the musings and theories of 19th century Plymouth Brethren minister John Nelson Darby became the eschatological underpinning of millions of evangelical and charismatic Christians.
But it did…I was one of them.
   Darby’s theology (later propagated through Biblical translations like Scofield’s Reference Bible)  fostered an escapist attitude among the church that focused the Bride’s attention on escaping the earth rather than renewing it.
   Fast forward 200 years to when many Christians increasingly cast themselves in the role of persecuted victim, a theology where Jesus comes back and proclaims we were “right” after all and proceeds to kill everyone else has a certain attractiveness.
   The problem is Jesus is not like that.  Jesus ha ...