Rapture fiction and the evangelical crisis

Theology of conversion?

RAPTURE FICTION AND THE EVANGELICAL CRISIS
By Crawford Gribben
Evangelical Press. 144 pages. £7.95
ISBN 0 85234 610 5

To write (or read) a whole book on ‘rapture fiction’ strikes me as a little odd. If, however, you were thinking of writing one, then find something else to do because Crawford Gribben has done a perfectly good job already.

And if you are thinking of reading one then you need go no further than Rapture Fiction. Dr. Gribben is an accomplished scholar and has produced an accurate, careful, insightful, intelligent, well-documented, mature, balanced, gracious, calm, and well-reasoned book.

The author’s main contention is that we should be troubled by the Left Behind novels and by similar ‘rapture fiction’ less because they teach a defective view of the future, than because they exemplify and contribute to the dilution and distortion of full-blooded biblical Christianity. In particular, ‘this book concentrates on the novels’ theology of conversion, the church and the Christian life, and argues that their presentation of these ideas regularly represents something fundamentally different from biblical Christianity’ (p.10).

The first three chapters introduce the ‘rapture fiction phenomenon’, describe the development of dispensational theology and outline the rise and features of ‘rapture fiction’. Chapters Four and Five are the heart of the book: ‘Left Behind and the gospel’ and ‘Left Behind, the church and the Christian life’. In these chapters, Dr. Gribben shows that the Left Behind novels undermine God’s sovereignty; equate conversion with saying the Sinner’s Prayer and/or with getting baptised; misrepresent biblical teaching on human free will; offer false teaching on a ‘second chance’; have a greatly impoverished view of the church and are dismissive of the sacraments; undercut Christian social concern; put ‘subjectivity and intuition’ (p.92) in the place of the Bible when it comes to the Christian’s moral guidance; and claim undue certainty about disputed issues with regard to the future.

The sixth chapter, ‘The Bible and the future of humanity’, outlines and underlines the importance of the key biblical teachings about the return of Christ and the hope of a transformed universe. The last chapter, ‘Eschatology and evangelical revival’, describes firmly and carefully the way in which a biblical understanding of the gospel, the church, and the Christian life is properly eschatological. These chapters are balanced, clear, and helpful, as is the appendix which shows readers from a dispensational background that there are a number of truly evangelical alternatives to the eschatology of the Left Behind series.

The few defects in the book (which I have reviewed at greater length at http://tinyurl. com/zt83j) do not affect my conclusion: I enjoyed Rapture Fiction and I gladly recommend it to those who are interested in the Left Behind novels, those who know others interested in them, those who wish to understand dispensationalism a little better, or those who would like to explore this particular angle on the weakness of current evangelicalism.

David Field,
lecturer at Oak Hill College, London, and a member of Enfield Evangelical Free Church

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