by Jennifer Youngsun Ryu, Summer Minister

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

It is one of the most popular fiction series of all time, with each of its twelve titles making the New York Times bestseller list. Then it spawned dozens of related products:  board games, clothing, collectables, calendars, and toys.  And now—“Left Behind,” the movie is coming this October to one of 200,000 churches near you, bypassing the traditional distribution system that would have reached a paltry 5,000 commercial theaters.

Co-authors Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins have sold more than 62 million copies of the Left Behind books.  The subject of these books is the end times: the Rapture and the Second Coming of Jesus.  The account is based on one particular interpretation of the Book of Revelation in the Christian Bible.  This interpretation is quite modern.  It originated with a group of conservative Christians in the early 19^th century who disagreed with the rise of rationalism and liberalism in the American Protestant denominations. 

Can you guess who was on the other side of this debate, pushing for a more rational approach to reading the bible?  And can you guess who was arguing that God would never destroy the world and banish its people to eternal fire?  Yep, the Universalists and the Unitarians.

The name of the new conservative movement was Fundamentalism, and at its core was the belief that the second coming of Jesus was imminent, and that the Book of Revelation, as well as other books of the bible, read literally, contain veiled messages that would predict the final unfolding of human history.

According to fundamentalists, these messages reveal that human history can be divided into seven periods, starting with Adam and Eve.  Many people believe that we are presently in the sixth age, which is marked by moral decline and vast numbers of unbelievers. 

Any day now, a cataclysmic event called the Rapture will occur, during which all true Christian believers will suddenly be taken up.  These true believers will meet Jesus in heaven where they will wait together for seven years.  Meanwhile, the non-believers will remain on earth, suffering through a Great Tribulation, and living under the rule of the antichrist in a system of one-world government.

At the end of those seven years, Jesus will return to earth with his army of faithful believers to battle the antichrist in a holy war called Armageddon.  After winning the battle, Jesus will restore the earth to full health, and will reign over the kingdom—with Jerusalem as its capital—for the next 1000 years.  This will be the seventh and final era of human history.  At the end of those 1000 years, the Last Judgment will take place, sending individual people to either heaven or hell for eternity.  The Last Judgment will be the final event in human history.

Most progressive and liberal religious folks have chosen to leave behind Left Behind.  Having seen this kind of “end-times” fervor before, they are ignoring the hype.  The last time we saw this kind of frenzy for end-times literature was in the 1970s, with Hal Lindsey’s book, the Late, Great Planet Earth. 

It seems that believers in every generation want to match up apocalyptic symbols and images with prevailing geo-political events, each naming the anti-Christ of their time.  We heard such predictions when “Y2K” was a millennial buzzword. A surprising number of people believed that the world would end with the turning of the calendar on January 1, 2000.  The attacks on the World Trade Center Towers and the Pentagon building prompted people to think again about the end times.  And today, with the war in Iraq continuing, it seems, without end, and a war on terrorism that has made the world feel less safe, this end-times fascination has spread beyond the fundamentalist Christian base. 

A Time/CNN poll reveals that 59% of Americans believe that the biblical prophecies of the end times will come true.  And one-third say they are paying more attention to how the news relates to end-time prophecies. (Time Magazine article: The Bible & the Apocalypse, July 1, 2002)

Capitalizing on that imagination, the “Left Behind” movie, entitled “World at War,” is being promoted as an “End-Times Political Thriller.”  In the movie, the world is controlled by a self-proclaimed Messiah (also called the Antichrist) and his One World Government.”

Now, if we were just talking about a few people interpreting the bible in ways that we think are a bit strange, that wouldn’t be so troubling.  But this particular reading of the Book of Revelation is gaining a widespread following. 

And it does exactly what I believe the 2^nd century author of the ancient text was trying to warn against:  choosing empire over God.  We cannot sit by and just watch this spectacle.  Too much is at stake.  For too many years, we, Unitarian Universalists, have walked away from our Judeo-Christian heritage.  We left behind the language with which to counter the destructive messages of the Fundamentalist Christians.  For too many years, we have refused to engage them, as our Unitarian and Universalist ancestors once did.  If we continue to remain silent, the fundamentalist vision may become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

What exactly are the destructive messages promoted by the “Left Behind” books and the Fundamentalist end-timers?

I’ll highlight three:

One: We are good, anyone who opposes us is Evil.

Princeton University Professor Elaine Pagels, explains that when a society has a simplistic “good vs. evil” world view, “every conflict between us and them turns into a moral conflict, so we’re God’s people, they are Satan’s people.”   We can do anything to them, without ethical restraint.  All tactics are fair when fighting the devil.

Two:  War is necessary.

If you’ve ever tried to read the Book of Revelation, you know that it is full of violent images—plagues and bloody warfare.  In a few minutes I’ll come back to why the 2^nd century author felt it was rhetorically necessary.

But first, we need to notice how today’s fundamentalists have co-opted these images to support the use of war to conquer anything that opposes their form of Christianity.  In a passage from one of the Left Behind books, the main character looked out over a field of blood-stained snow—and as burning hail fell all around him, “a sense of peace flooded his soul.”

Three:  The world will soon be destroyed, so there is no need to take care of it.  

The End-times school of thought breeds a culture of resignation and disengagement with the world’s needs.   As one 19^th century fundamentalist said, “I believe from scripture that the ruin is without remedy.”   (John Darby, father of pre-millennial dispensationalism).

If people expect only the progress of evil, they will not work for social justice.  If people expect only the destruction of the planet, they will not care about the environment.  If people hope only for their impending departure, they will not hope for, or work for the well-being of their neighbors.

On top of these destructive messages, there is another disturbing trend: our political leaders are now using end-times language to justify war, and to support the spread of American empire. 

Last year, 200 Christians Ethicists issued a statement printed in newspapers nationwide denouncing the irresponsible use of religious rhetoric to support the policies of empire.  They proclaimed, “a ‘theology of war,’ emanating from the highest circles of American government is seeping into our churches.  The roles of God, church and nation are confused by talk of an ‘American mission’ and ‘divine appointment’ to ‘rid the world of evil.’”

It is time for us to claim our heritage as people who will not let an irresponsible reading of the Bible go unchallenged.  It is time for us to retrieve Revelation.

John Buehrens, past president of our denominational association, the UUA, recently wrote a book called Understanding the Bible.   In it, he reminds us that the Bible still speaks to liberal religious people because it “reveals the human experience of the holy, of enduring truth and wisdom lying behind the veil of ancient texts.” 

The Book of Revelation does not predict the future.  It only describes what was happening to the early Christian church in 2^nd century Asia Minor, and reveals the thinking of the author, most likely a man named John. 

A passionate follower of Jesus, John was exiled to the island of Patmos in the Aegean Sea for preaching the Christian message.  Had he been alive during his grandfathers’ day, during the time of Nero, he probably would have been thrown to the lions.  But this was the 2^nd century, when the Roman Empire was ruled by the so-called “five good emperors.”  Even so, it was illegal and dangerous to practice Christianity.

Seven Christian churches operated quietly in the land that is now Western Turkey, which was then part of the vast Roman Empire.  The economy was booming and for those Christians, life was pretty comfortable.  John watched them become attached to the bounties of the Roman Empire.   He watched them become deaf to the cries of enslaved people.  He watched them grow complacent about the poor, who lost their land when they could not pay the Emperor’s exorbitant taxes.  He watched them move away from the essential teachings of Jesus and toward worship of the Emperor himself.

Where Jesus taught non-violence, Rome taught war; where Jesus taught egalitarianism, Rome taught class stratification; where Jesus taught the gifts of the spirit, Rome taught the spoils of conquest.

Witnessing the people’s complacency about the empire’s economic exploitation, pretentiousness, and violent practices, John became angry and frustrated.  The people were so wrapped up in their comfort that he knew he would have to do something extraordinary to get their attention.

That’s why he wrote an apocalypse.

An apocalypse is a literary genre, one used by Jews and early Christians.  It is a Greek word that means, “an unfolding of things not previously known.”  Given the persecution suffered by these two communities, it is understandable that the messages to resist the existing power structure would be hidden in mysterious-sounding verses.  John used the apocalypse because he knew his audience.  They would not have been shaken out of their complacency by a simple letter or poem.  He described frightening and fantastic images to chastise and alarm his audience.

John wanted them to choose: He wanted them to choose God over the Emperor, a life of service to the afflicted over a life of material comfort, a life of spirit over a life of possessions, passion for peace over lust for war.

I know this church isn’t as complacent as those seven churches in Asia Minor.    You have already heard the wake-up call, but we live in a larger community that is still asleep to the terrible cost of empire.

The Book of Revelation speaks to those concerns.  We can still gain wisdom and assurance from the struggles of those early Christian Churches.  The similarities between the Roman Empire and today’s American-economic-empire show that the problems of concentrated power and greed are as much with us today as they were 2000 years ago.  Just as the Roman Empire pushed its vision of one-world under a divine Caesar, the American economic empire pushes its vision of one-world under globalization.

We retrieve Revelation to find that humans have a long history of wanting to repose their faith in material things.  We retrieve Revelation to remember that those material things will never fulfill our deepest longings or make us whole.  We retrieve Revelation to help our neighbors who want to know where they can put their faith.

Only half of the Left Behind readership is fundamentalist Christian.  Some are not even Christians.  They are people who are looking for greater meaning for their lives. 

They feel isolated and marginalized and the last thing they want is to be “left behind.”

For them we must hold a place at the table—a place where they can rest their faith in the goodness of the human connection, in the worthiness of their own humanity, and, if they choose, in a God who loves the world, who would never destroy it, who would never leave them behind.

PRAYER

Let us pray…

Turning and turning,

we fly further and further away from the center of our own hearts.

At times we cannot hear the falconer calling us back to the center,

back to the truth

back to each other.

May we heed the call

to come full circle

to what we have always known,

that we are related to each other

to each creature

to each particle of the universe.

and to the ground of all being.

 Amen.

Resources                                                                                                                   

“Unveiling Empire” by Wes Howard Brook & Anthony Gwyther, Orbis, 1999

“Up Against Caesar” by John Dart, February 8, 2005 issue of Christian Century

Understanding the Bible by John Buehrens, Beacon Press, 2003

Newspaper ad by 200 Christian Ethicists in www.sojo.net/action/alerts/confessing_christ.pdf