By Cecile S. Holmes
Tim LaHaye believes it is yet to come. Hank Hanegraaff thinks some of it may have already happened during Christianity's first century. Their ongoing debate over the proper understanding of the fearsome prophecies in the biblical Book of Revelation is fueling interest in the end times at a moment when wars and disasters already have many people terrified.
And while Armageddon may be bad for life itself, it's proven good for the publishing industry.
Hanegraaff's and LaHaye's takes on Revelation couldn't be more different, but that's not hurting sales for either book. LaHaye's blockbuster Left Behind 12-book fiction series has sold 42 million copies. Hanegraaff's newer novel The Last Disciple is the first of a proposed four-part series and is doing well.
It's about much more than selling books, however, scholars say. The high-stakes publishing battle between the two men comes on the heels of the millennial fervor surrounding the year 2000, and feeds a stream of fear rippling just below the surface of public consciousness. The war in Iraq, the South Asia tsunami and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 are understood by some people to foreshadow the beginning of the end.
“The new millennium and 9/11 have undoubtedly helped to stoke today's wildly popular speculation about the end times,” said Michael Guillen, a scientist, former ABC-TV science editor and author of Can a Smart Person Believe in God? “But-irony of ironies-science, too, has played a crucial role,” providing a threatening array of possibilities from global warming to nuclear warfare.
Like impatient children who can't wait to open gifts, Guillen said adults similarly can't wait to know the future. “In this respect, Christians are only human. They're just as eager as the average pagan to know what's going to become of us and our oh-so-troubled world,” he said.
A 2003 Pew poll showed that 44 percent of Americans believe Israel is literally the promised land given by God to the Jews, and 36 percent believe the modern state of Israel is a “fulfillment of the biblical prophecy about the second coming of Jesus,” he notes.
When it comes to the Bible, whether people interpret it literally or figuratively often depends on the specific prophecy, he said. Either way, prophecy sells in the world of Christian publishing.
Both books were released by respected religious publisher Tyndale House. Ron Beers, the company's senior vice president and publisher, stressed that Tyndale encourages “spirited debate” over the opposing viewpoints.
Each book “presents a very different interpretation,” Beers said. “Both of these viewpoints are strongly supported by a large number of evangelical scholars.”
In the Left Behind series, co-authored by LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, the end of the world is yet to come. The books follow a generally apocalyptic interpretation of Revelation beginning with the Rapture, in which millions of believers are snatched up to heaven, and continuing through the seven-year Tribulation marked by the rule of the Antichrist. Jesus Christ returns at the end of that period and triumphs in the battle of Armageddon.
Hanegraaff's book-co-authored with writer Sigmund Brouwer-unfolds in first-century Jerusalem. The city begins to confront chaos prophesied by Christ as the beginning of the last days. Uncertainty grows as an evil adversary tries to find the disciple John's letter (the book of Revelation) in order to destroy it and those with a copy.
The book contends that Revelation may actually describe how early Christians were persecuted under the brutal Nero in the first century.
To Hanegraaff, Revelation was written before the destruction of the Jerusalem temple to encourage persecuted Christians. He says the “end-time model presented in Left Behind is hermeneutically false in that it attributes powers to the beast that belong only to God, but it is historically false because it places the beast in the 21st century.”
To LaHaye, The Last Disciple promotes a “flawed theory,” one which he has criticized in media interviews. A pastor and author, he perhaps was best known for his conservative politics before fiction brought him fame. He believes deeply in his view of the Bible.
“Everyone wants to know about the future and there's a lot of discussion, but only the Bible gives concrete answers,” LaHaye said last year in an interview. “What people don't realize is that 28 percent of the Bible was prophetic at the time it was written. There are over 1,000 prophecies in the Bible, half of which have already been fulfilled.”
Hanegraaff, president of the Christian Research Institute and host of CRI's popular daily radio show the Bible Answer Man, minces no words describing how his views differ.
“Fiction is a great truth-convening medium,” he says. “As Left Behind has become the vehicle for indoctrinating millions of believers into an end-time theology invented in the 19th century, so we intend The Last Disciple series to bring a biblical balance to the debate over which end-times perspective corresponds to reality.”
Christian prophecy writing historically emphasized natural disasters and wars as “signs of the times,” or indicators of God's attitude on the road to the millennium, says Michael Barkum, a Syracuse University political science professor who has written extensively about apocalyptic, millennial and end-times fears.
By the late 19th century, the “signs of the times” view weakened as science rendered natural phenomena understandable and sometimes predictable, he says. But the more traditional outlook never totally disappeared.
Millennialists are adaptable and capable of incorporating contemporary events into their religious understanding, Barkum said. Though LaHaye and Hanegraaff pen fiction, readers understand these particular books to be scripturally based, he says. As a result, such books are seen, in part, as expositions of an inerrant Bible.
Religion News Service
Cecile Holmes is an assistant professor of journalism at the University of South Carolina.