Even though I’m sure everyone is already having a fantastic Ash Wednesday, this will surely brighten the day for those who are not! Everybody’s favorite movie star – yes, I am talking of the Nicolas Cage – is set to star in a mainstream remake of everybody’s favorite movie – Left Behind!
Seriously, who decided to give this the green light!? I can only imagine the reasoning behind it is that there are lots of American evangelicals who will pay top dollar to see this book made into a movie again, despite the fact that the book series and the original movie adaption (starring Kirk Cameron) were terrible and worthless. The theology underlying the Left Behind nonsense is beyond atrocious. For those unaware of how it started, the pre-tribulation rapture idea is found in nascent form in the early twentieth-century (due to Margaret McDonal and Edward Irving), and was then developed by John Nelson Darby into the dispensationalist pre-tribulationism that we (unfortunately) find running rampant in some corners of Christianity today. How on earth is this nonsense so popular amongst American evangelicals? I mean, it has no historical pedigree in the church and is entirely devoid of biblical basis! Wait, I think I just answered my own question.
*Possible spoiler alert*
I have it on good authority that the plot in this remake is going to have Nicolas Cage discover that on the back of the Declaration of Independence is the original copy of the Gospel of Mark! Furthermore, at the end of the tribulation, when Jesus and company return, they will issue forth out of the heavens from just above Mount Rushmore.
Also, here is the first pic of this wonderful remake…
“I mean, it has no historical pedigree in the church and is entirely devoid of biblical basis! Wait, I think I just answered my own question.”
My understanding is that the Darby’s dispensationalist pre-tribulationism caught on because it was represented in the Scofield Reference Bible, which was the first study bible with footnotes published a little more than a century ago. The Scofield Reference Bible was very popular and widely circulated in American evangelical circles. Unfortunately, many people back then uncritically accepted the theology represented in the footnotes, hence the initial proliferation of Darby’s theology. The theology was left unchallenged long enough to become deeply embedded in the budding American evangelical tradition, and so it has been with us ever since.
In a way, it’s no less silly for evangelicals to cling to their Darbyism than it is for the RCC to continue to affirm such things as transubstantiation. Once something has passed into tradition, it can be very difficult to change.
Yup, the Scofield Reference Bible popularized Darby’s pre-trib dispensationalism.
[Amen, diglot. What's below was seen on the web and blasts Left Behind-ism off the map!]
Pretrib Rapture Pride
by Bruce Rockwell
Pretrib rapture promoters like Thomas Ice give the impression they know more than the early Church Fathers, the Reformers, the greatest Greek New Testament scholars including those who produced the KJV Bible, the founders of their favorite Bible schools, and even their own mentors!
Ice’s mentor, Dallas Sem. president John Walvoord, couldn’t find anyone holding to pretrib before 1830 – and Walvoord called John Darby and his Brethren followers “the early pretribulationists” (RQ, pp. 160-62). Ice belittles Walvoord and claims that several pre-1830 persons, including “Pseudo-Ephraem” and a “Rev. Morgan Edwards,” taught a pretrib rapture. Even though the first one viewed Antichrist’s arrival as the only “imminent” event, Ice (and Grant Jeffrey) audaciously claim he expected an “imminent” pretrib rapture! And Ice (and John Bray) have covered up Edwards’ historicism which made a pretrib rapture impossible! Google historian Dave MacPherson’s “Deceiving and Being Deceived” for documentation on these and similar historical distortions.
The same pretrib defenders, when combing ancient books, deviously read “pretrib” into phrases like “before Armageddon,” “before the final conflagration,” and “escape all these things”!
BTW, the KJV translators’ other writings found in London’s famed British Library (where MacPherson has researched) don’t have even a hint of pretrib rapturism. Is it possible that Ice etc. have found pretrib “proof” in the KJV that its translators never found?
Pretrib merchandisers like Ice claim that nothing is better pretrib proof than Rev. 3:10. They also cover up “Famous Rapture Watchers” (on Google) which shows how the greatest Greek NT scholars of all time interpreted it.
Pretrib didn’t flourish in America much before the 1909 Scofield Bible which has pretribby “explanatory notes” in its margins. Not seen in the margins was jailed forger Scofield’s criminal record throughout his life that David Lutzweiler has documented in his recent book “The Praise of Folly” which is available online.
Biola University’s doctrinal statement says Christ’s return is “premillennial” and “before the Tribulation.” Although universities stand for “academic freedom,” Biola has added these narrow, restrictive phrases – non-essentials the founders purposely didn’t include in their original doctrinal statement when Biola was just a small Bible institute! And other Christian schools have also belittled their founders.
Ice, BTW, has a “Ph.D” issued by a tiny Texas school that wasn’t authorized to issue degrees! Ice now says that he’s working on another “Ph.D” via the University of Wales in Britain. For light on the degrees of Ice’s scholarliness, Google “Bogus degree scandal prompts calls to wind up University of Wales,” “Thomas Ice (Bloopers),” “be careful in polemics – Peripatetic Learning,” and “Walvoord Melts Ice.” Also Google “Thomas Ice (Hired Gun)” – featured by media luminary Joe Ortiz on his Jan. 30, 2013 “End Times Passover” blog.
Other fascinating Google articles include “The Unoriginal John Darby,” “X-raying Margaret,” “Edward Irving in Unnerving,” “Pretrib Rapture Politics,” “Pretrib Rapture Secrets,” “Pretrib Rapture Dishonesty,” “Pretrib Hypocrisy,” “Pretrib Rapture Secrecy,” and “Roots of Warlike Christian Zionism” – most from the author of “The Rapture Plot,” the most accurate documentation on pretrib rapture history.
Can anyone guess who the last proud pretrib rapture holdout will be?