T IS A QUIET FLIGHT TO LONDON. Lights are low, and most of the airplane’s occupants are asleep. Buck Williams is busy on his laptop, catching up with the latest political gossip. He is startled by an elderly woman in the window seat across the aisle.

“Honey, where are you?” she says to no one in particular.

“Ma’am, is everything OK?” Buck responds, looking up from a short nap.

“It’s my husband; he’s disappeared!”

Buck pauses in thought, then says, “You know what? I bet he just slipped off to the restroom while you were asleep.”

The woman asks, “Would you mind checking, please?”

“OK, sure.”

“A-a-and take this,” she says, handing Buck the man’s coat as he gets up out of his seat.

“Ma’am?” he asks, puzzled.

“I think he’s gone off naked . . .”

The camera then pans to the empty seat where the husband had been sitting. A shirt and sport coat lie against the back of the seat, with a pair of glasses askew near the bottom of the sport coat. All the clothes are fastened and in order, as if a person has just vanished from inside them.

In the movie Left Behind Buck Williams is a TV news anchor for the cable station GNN. His (aborted) night flight to London is disturbed by the disappearance of a number of passengers, including the woman’s husband. Buck arrives back in the U.S. to a world that’s very different from the one he knew on takeoff. Events on the plane turn out to be typical of hundreds of flights that night. In some cases the pilots disappear, and the planes crash. Road accidents occur all over the world as drivers vanish out of moving vehicles. Families are devastated as loved ones disappear from home. The world faces the specter of widespread hunger, as food supplies are locked up by greedy capitalists.

In the movie Buck investigates the situation and discovers that all the born-again Christians have been raptured secretly to heaven. The people who remain come under the heel of an attractive yet deceptive antichrist figure. The antichrist takes control of the political and economic reins of the world in service of his anti-religious agenda. The center of events in Left Behind is not the United States or Europe, but the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, where the antichrist plans to rebuild the Jewish Temple.

Something Called Dispensationalism
Bible students will immediately sense the influence of dispensationalism. This movement originated in the 1800s with John Nelson Darby. This perspective on the Bible has a number of features, including the division of human history into “dispensations,” a literalist reading of biblical prophecies, and the belief that nearly all of the book of Revelation addresses the last seven years of earth’s history. The aspect of dispensationalism that is most featured in the movie Left Behind is the idea of a secret rapture. According to Darby, there would be two returns of Jesus at the end, a secret coming to snatch up all Christian believers, and a visible coming seven years later.

This viewpoint first came to the attention of the wider American public through the writings of Hal Lindsey in the 1970s. Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, authors of the book on which the movie was based, have more recently used the genre of fiction to popularize the viewpoint, but without Lindsey’s date-setting aberrations. Thanks to the movie, people across America are talking about this scenario and wondering what the Bible actually has to say about it.

Some Positive Reactions
How should Christians in general and Adventists in particular relate to the appearance of Left Behind? While some Adventists may be inclined only to throw stones, the movie expresses the faith of millions of sincere, Bible-believing Christians. In spite of its many shortcomings, there are aspects of the movie that God could use to His glory.

One positive aspect of the movie is that it uplifts the Bible as the antidote to a media-manipulated reality. In the last days of earth’s history things will not be as they seem. The evidence of the eyes and ears will lead people to believe a lie. At such a time, the only safe course for followers of Jesus is an unwavering reliance on the Word of God over the evidence of the five senses. The movie uplifts the Bible as the ultimate truth—repeatedly and with emphasis. I agree.

The success of the movie could also encourage a trend toward more sensitive portrayals of Christian faith in Hollywood. For years Christians and Christian faith have been ignored in Hollywood movies, except for the occasional self-righteous bigot.

Adventists might be tempted to say “So what?” But the reality is that the godless perspective of Hollywood has a huge impact on society as a whole and an increasing impact on our own children and grandchildren. For Christian faith to have a fighting chance in today’s world, it cannot hurt to have some positive, sensitive portrayals of genuine faith in the public square.

But perhaps even more important, a movie like this will cause many to think about God and to study the Bible, perhaps for the first time. I would encourage Adventists not to trash the movie too fast in conversations with others. For some secular people, watching this movie may be their one and only shot at a genuine openness to Christian experience. When Christians express cynicism about other Christians to a secular person, it only reinforces the sense that all versions of Christian faith are irrelevant to real life. While the thesis of the movie is problematic, it may have a marvelous preevangelistic effect in the lives of many people.

The Painful Reality
I wish I could end on this positive note, but I cannot. There are serious problems with the message of the movie and its underlying theology.

I believe that the most important thing that was “left behind” was the message and intention of the writers of the Bible. Whole books could be written, and have been written, detailing the ways in which Left Behind theology deviates from the biblical perspective. I will need to limit myself here to a few basic observations about the things that were featured in the film.

1. Textual Gymnastics
Always beware when people jump from text to text in the Bible. In the movie what little Bible is actually mentioned is in the form of strings of texts without any inherent connection. The problem is that you can put Bible texts together to prove anything you want to prove. Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and even some Seventh-day Adventists have built compelling theologies on strings of texts whose primary relationship was a system in the interpreter’s mind rather than the ideas expressed by the biblical writers themselves. When the compelling impulse for Bible study is to support your existing beliefs, it isn’t hard to see what you want to see in the Bible.

The safest approach to the Bible is to ground your understanding on the clear texts and on the broad reading of whole Bible books. The clear texts of Scripture point you to grand central themes of the biblical message. These provide a safeguard against the strange ideas all of us can come up with when examining texts that are more ambiguous. Similarly, when you read biblical books from beginning to end, the biblical author is in control of the order and flow of the material. When the biblical author is allowed to lead you naturally from one idea to the next, your exposure to the Bible is much less likely to be controlled by pet ideas from your own background. Let’s apply the broad reading/clear text approach to the “biblical” teachings of the movie.

2. The Secret Rapture
I challenge anyone to read the entire Bible from end to end and find a single text that clearly teaches that there will be two distinct comings of Jesus—a secret one such as the one portrayed in the movie, followed by a public, visible one that will be seen by all. Do the reading with an open mind and with attention to the purpose of each biblical book. If you do this, you will find that there is only one text in the Bible that even remotely teaches two distinct comings of Christ: 2 Thes-salonians 2:8, 9. Please indulge me for using my own translation in order to expose the force of the original language.

“And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will slay by the breath of His mouth and put an end to by the brightness of His coming, whose coming is according to the working of Satan . . .”

Hold it right there! Whose coming is according to the working of Satan? The two uses of the word coming are almost side by side in the original; they are clearly in some kind of relationship.

“Whose coming is according to the working of Satan in all kinds of miracles, signs and lying wonders.” So the “whose” in verse 9 must refer back to the revelation of the lawless one in verse 8. What we have here is a counterfeit of the true coming of Jesus! Which will be first, the coming of the lawless one or the coming of Jesus? Since the lawless one will be destroyed by the brightness of Jesus’ coming (verse 8), the counterfeit comes before the true. Please do not miss this point! There is only one text in the Bible that talks about two separate comings of Jesus, and in that one text the first of these comings is a counterfeit! Since the concept of end-time counterfeit is a major feature of the movie, let’s take a closer look at how the story stacks up against the clear teaching of the Bible.

3. The Nature of the End-Time Deception
When you read through the New Testament carefully you will find that there are four passages that address the issue of the end-time deception, one of which we have already examined briefly. They are Revelation 13:12-14, Revelation 16:13-16, 2 Thessalonians 2:8-12, and Matthew 24:23-27. In each of these four texts you will find the same basic language and scenario: signs and wonders are used to deceive the people of the world, and there is a representation of an antichrist. Interestingly enough, not one of these texts is mentioned in the movie, even though it claims to portray this very end-time deception.

In the movie the deceptive antichrist is a political figure who is hostile to Christian faith and seeks to gain his ends through economic and political means. The deception of the antichrist is a hypnosis in which people do not see what is actually going on. Only true Christians see what is actually happening. This is very different from the biblical picture of the antichrist and of the end-time deception found in the four clearest passages. Unlike the coldhearted political calculations of Nicolae Carpathia (the antichrist of the movie), the antichrist of the Bible will be a spiritual leader more than a political or economic figure.

First Portrait
The antichrist figure of Revelation 13 is a beast that comes up out of the sea (Rev. 13:1-5). In many ways this beast is a clear counterfeit of the life, death, and ministry of Jesus Christ.¹ The Christ counterfeit is most obvious in verse 3: “And one of his heads was, as it were, slaughtered to death” (paraphrase). There are many Greek words for death, dying, and killing. This is not one of the most common. And what is interesting is that the very same Greek word is found in verse 8, “the Lamb that was slaughtered from the foundation of the world” (paraphrase).

Some Taken, Others Left What does it mean? “Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left” (Matt. 24:40, 41, NIV; cf. Luke 17:34, 35). Commenting on the above passage, The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary makes the following statement: “Shall be taken. Gr. paralambano, meaning literally, ‘to take to oneself,’ used in the papyri of receiving to oneself articles that belong to him. Paralambano is used in ch. 17:1 of Jesus taking to Himself Peter, James, and John, and with them ascending the mount of transfiguration. In Col. 4:17 it is used of a Christian minister’s receiving the gospel commission. In John 14:3 paralambano is used of Jesus receiving to Himself the waiting disciples. By contrast, ‘took’ in Matt. 24:39 is from airo, ‘to carry off,’ ‘to remove.’ The ‘one’ of v. 40 is ‘taken’ by the angels as they ‘gather’ the ‘elect’ (see on v. 31). . . . “What Jesus meant by being ‘taken’ and by being ‘left’ is made clear by the context. Those who are left are the evil servants, who instead of continuing in their normal pursuits after a supposed secret rapture, are cut asunder and assigned their portion with the hypocrites (vs. 48-51)” (vol. 5, p. 504). I agree with these conclusions and would add the following: In Matthew 24:40, 41 “left” [aphięmi] must mean one of two things: those “left” are either abandoned to their fate or spared for salvation. The first meaning is a natural one in the New Testament and ancient Greek usage. The mugged man in the good Samaritan story is abandoned half dead in the wilderness (Luke 10:30—aphentes). Jesus refuses to abandon his disciples as orphans (John 14:18—aphęsô). And in the nearby context of Matthew 23 Jesus abandons the temple to its future destruction (Matt. 23:36-38—aphietai). Although there is much to dispute about in these texts, two things are absolutely clear: (a) the texts about taken and left groups are referring to two opposite destinies for humanity, one positive and the other negative; (b) the negative group does not remain alive on earth, but is destroyed. On these two points the texts are clear. The secret rapture theory is not biblical.

There is an unmistakable parallel between the description of the sea beast in verse 3 and the description of Jesus (the Lamb) in verse 8. “And the wound of his death was healed” (verse 3, paraphrase). In the final crisis of earth’s history there is an entity whose very character is based on a parody of the death and resurrection of Jesus. The end-time deception has a Christian face!²

This comes to a head in Revela-tion 13:13 and 14, where a beast from the earth brings fire down from heaven—and performs other signs—in order to deceive the world to follow the first beast, the antichrist of this text.

Second Portrait
The second end-time deception text is Revelation 16:13 and 14. The dragon, beast, and false prophet here are the same characters as the dragon, the sea beast, and the land beast of Rev-elation 13. They send out three frogs to deceive the world by means of the signs that they do. So this text is on the same subject and uses the same language as Revelation 13. What is interesting for our purposes is that these three frogs are the “spirits of demons” (Rev. 16:14, NIV). They are the evil angelic counterparts to the three angels who give God’s message in Revelation 14:6-12. So there are two worldwide messages in the last days, one representing the true gospel, the other a counterfeit of that gospel. The end-time deception has a Christian face!

The climax of this deception is associated with a place called in Hebrew “Har-magedon.” I have argued elsewhere that this phrase is a reference to the showdown between Elijah and the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel.³ There Elijah brought fire down from heaven to earth in order to prove to the onlookers that Yahweh was the true God and not Baal. Revelation 16 tells us that the Mount Carmel experience will be replayed at the end. Once more there will be a showdown between the true God and the false. Once more fire will come down from heaven to settle the issue. But one thing will change this time. The fire will fall on the wrong altar (Rev. 13:13, 14)! In the end-time deception the eyes and ears will deceive. The five senses will tell us that the truth is false and that the false is true.

Our only hope will be our trust that the Word of God is true, no matter what our eyes see or our ears hear. This will become even clearer in the last end-time deception text, Matthew 24:23-27.

Portraits Three and Four
A surface reading of the text makes it clear that Matthew 24:23-27 uses the same language and is on the same theme as the other three end-time deception texts. In Matthew 24, as in 2 Thessalonians 2, the end-time deception is a secret return of “Jesus”! The key to unmasking this deception is to know that it will not be universally visible like the true coming of Jesus. “If anyone tells you, ‘Hey, he’s in the desert,’ don’t go out, or ‘Hey, he’s in some secret place,’ don’t believe it, for as lightning comes out of the east and shines even to the west so will the coming of the son of man be” (Matt. 24:26, paraphrase). The end-time deception is a counterfeit of Jesus. The end-time deception has a Christian face!

The tragic thing is that for believers in the rapture concept of Left Behind the very deceptive events portrayed in Matthew 24:23-26 will seem to be evidence that their reading of the Bible was correct (as was the case in the movie). Many sincere people will be convinced by events that Jesus has somehow already returned to earth. But that return will be a deception. How will you know? Matthew 24:25: “Behold, I have told you ahead of time” (paraphrase). The end-time deception will betray all trust in the five senses. The only safety for the people of God will be to trust in the broad message of Scripture that they have known and studied in advance. The end-time equivalent of Mount Carmel will prove the opposite of the truth. Truth and reality will be in contradiction.

It is, therefore, my fear that this movie could be part of the greatest setup in human history (totally contrary to the conscious and sincere intention of its producers). If Satan were to pull off some sort of rapture, people would be conditioned by the movie’s scenario to believe that the Christian reaction to world events is the only safe place, when in fact the true antichrist will not be a latter-day Hitler, but will seem to be the very person of Christ Himself! The antchrist will seem to be the savior of the world, and the Christian’s only hope. The final deception will have a Christian face.

The main problem with the movie Left Behind is that the Bible is the main thing that was left behind.

Fortunately, there is good news in the midst of the Bible’s description of the end-time deception. The original language of 2 Thessalonians 2:10 explains why people get deceived in the last days. It is not because they were hypnotized by the antichrist. “They perish because they did not receive the love of the truth” (paraphrase). The text explains that those who are deceived at the end refuse to receive the love of the truth. And that’s good news. When you receive God’s gift of love for the truth, when you have a wholehearted desire to know God and to do His will, you can know that the deception at the end will have no power over you.

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¹ For a more detailed look at the Christ counterfeit of the sea beast, read my book, What the Bible Says About the End-Time (Hagerstown, Md.: Review and Herald Pub. Assn., 1994), pp. 109-119. See also William Johnsson, “The Saints’ End-Time Victory Over the Forces of Evil,” Symposium on Revelation–Book II, Daniel and Revelation Committee Series, ed. Frank B. Holbrook (Silver Spring, Md.: Biblical Research Institute, 1992), vol. 7, pp. 21, 22.
² In this brief exposition I don’t have space to elaborate on the whole history and activity of the entity represented by this sea beast. Please see my more detailed account in Jon Paulien, “Eschatology and Adventist Self-Understanding,” in Lutherans and Adventists in Conversation: Report and Papers Presented, 1994-1998, edited by Sven G. Oppegaard and B. B. Beach (Silver Spring, Md.: General Conference of SDAs, and Geneva: The Lutheran World Federation, 2000), pp. 237-253. In Adventist thinking the antichrist of Revelation 13 has been more of a collective entity, while the antichrist of 2 Thessalonians 2 and Matthew 24 seems more personal, an end-time satanic impersonation of Christ. I agree with this distinction but cannot elaborate in the limits of this article. My purpose here is to show how the clear pictures of the biblical story counteract some of the claims of the movie.
³ Jon Paulien, “Armageddon,” The Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992), vol. 1, pp. 394, 395; cf. also Paulien, What the Bible Says About the End-Time, pp. 114, 115.

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Jon Paulien is professor of New Testament Interpretation at the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary.