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Just started reading Dan Brown's biggest competitor, Tim Lahaye ("Left Behind"), since even some Protestant clergy feel he tweaks the facts to suit the story, as Brown has been thus accused. I just wanted to drop this little tidbit I found:
" - attended Bob Jones University in South Carolina. Bob Jones is a Fundamentalist school known for intense ( Read more... )
" - attended Bob Jones University in South Carolina. Bob Jones is a Fundamentalist school known for intense ( Read more... )
From premillennialists
Some premillennialists, while accepting many of the basic beliefs behind the series, describe problems with specific prophetical teachings in the Left Behind books. For instance, in The Mark, Chang Wong receives both the mark of the beast and the sealing of the Lord and he is later able to go to heaven, despite having the mark. In Desecration, the character's dual-marking was justified in the storyline. He was saved because he did not accept the mark of the beast; he was forced to receive it because he was involuntarily put to sleep and then given it. It was noted in one particular paragraph in the book Desecration, after hitting the "motherlode" as he called it, that Chang at one point attempted to mumble to his father that he was a "Believer" as he carried him into the room to receive his mark. This has led some readers[12] to wonder how a Christian can have the mark of the beast and still be saved[13].
Mainstream Christianity
Along with some other rapture fiction novels, the Left Behind series demonstrates a different understanding of the Gospel and the Christian life from that taught within the historic orthodoxy of evangelical Protestantism which denies the key eschatological beliefs underpinning the plotline[citation needed]. The books have not sold particularly well outside of the United States.[14] Dispensationalism remains a minority view among theologians.[15] For instance, amillennial and postmillennial Christians do not believe in the same timeline of the Second Coming as premillennialists, while preterist Christians do not interpret the Book of Revelation to predict future events at all. Brian McLaren of the Emergent Church compares the Left Behind series to The Da Vinci Code, and states, "What the Left Behind novels do, the way they twist scripture toward a certain theological and political end, I think [Dan] Brown is twisting scripture, just to other political ends."[16] John Dart, writing in Christian Century characterized the works as "beam me up theology".[15]
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