What ‘Left Behind’ Left Behind

   Produced by Stoney Lake Entertainment, with Hollywood actor Nicolas Cage playing the lead role, a rebooted ‘Left Behind’ movie opened October 7 in theaters. Though fiction, Left Behind’s underlying theology is considered to be true by millions of evangelical Christians. According to Left Behind co-author Tim LaHaye and countless others, the Bible itself predicts this future scenario: rapture first, then ‘seven years of tribulation’ for those left behind, then the visible return of Jesus Christ. 
   “There’s one major problem,” counters Bible expert, television producer, and author of 30+ books, Steve Wohlberg. “A careful study of each New Testament text used to support the rapture theory, taken in context, teaches only one return of Jesus Christ at the very end of the age, not a silent coming followed seven years later by a visible one.” 
   See for yourself. The immediate context of “one shall be taken, and the other left” (Matthew 24:40) clearly points to the visible return of Jesus Christ with myriads of holy angels, not the mysterious vanishing of Christians worldwide (see verses 27, 30, 31, 35-39). Christians are then changed “in the twinkling of an eye” (1 Corinthians 15:52) “at the last trumpet,” not seven years before it. Believers are then &ldqu ...