If you grew up in the evangelical/fundamentalist world of the 70s, 80s, or 90s, and lived with a somewhat constant fear of being “left-behind” and missing the “rapture,” you can probably thank Hal Lindsey for that existential dread and anxiety.
Mr. Lindsey, God rest his soul, has left (the one and only true rapture) this “late, great, planet earth,” and now finds himself enraptured as he beholds glory.
I do not wish to speak ill of the dead. I’m confident Mr. Lindsey loved the Lord, as best he understood such and wanted to serve God. I believe he cared about the Bible and what it contained. I believe he cared about the souls of others. I believe he cared about truth and being faithful to Christian teaching/theology, as best he understood it.
I pray he wasn’t one to kick his dog and was hopefully a decent person to others. I don’t know what to make of his four marriages (you would have to ask the first three), but I sure never heard about those growing up in evangelical circles. As it became one, then two, and so on, those must have been well kept secrets lest one lose book revenues/sales (Of course, that was then; now, after Trump, none of that would matter—his book sales would probably triple). I’m reminded that many evangelicals didn’t learn until after the “painter of light’s” (Thomas Kinkade) death, that he was an alcoholic whose life hardly matched his kitschy and syrupy paintings.
Again, I will not speak ill of the man. I trust he tried to serve God to the best of his ability and it’s all any of us can ask and all any of us can hope to do. If he showed some love and kindness in this world, if he brought anyone (for the right reasons) closer to the Lord, then, well done. Well done.
I will speak ill, however, of his eschatology. I believe he was sincere. He was just, in my view, sincerely wrong. I believe his end-times views were very destructive and harmful. I believe they damaged many a Christian, many a church, damaged our culture and politics, and continue to do so. The fact his books and views helped spawn the Left Behind series, alone, is enough to deserve mounds and mounds of scorn.
Besides leaving millions of people with a fear and anxiety that was neither deserved nor derived from anything well-founded in Christian history nor theology, his views, in my opinion, had two very powerful destructive impacts.
First, his views undermined the creation mandate to care for the earth like a gardener cares for their garden. If we, the “elect” are going to be whisked away at any moment and then the earth is soon thereafter to be destroyed, what’s the point of taking care of it now? It wasn’t evangelical/fundamentalist Christians who were at the forefront of getting people to not litter, or getting factories to not dump their waste into rivers and streams. They weren’t the ones talking about the importance of clean air and water. They weren’t the ones sounding the alarm on the environmental costs of oil drilling, carbon waste, and a warming climate.
Why is that? One would think that the Christian tradition would be the environmental movement—that they would be the “green” movement. Amazingly, in fact, they have often been the very opposite. They have often sided with those forces making up the worst polluters. How? Why?
Well, because of end-times’ views that basically describe the earth as a lost cause—something to be used before it’s burned up in judgment. It’s as if we are renting the earth—and we all know how a few renters sometimes treat their dwelling—a place they don’t own. Somehow these Christians forget the Lord’s prayer: “Your Kingdom come…your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven…”
The Kingdom is coming here—to earth. God’s will is going to be done here as in heaven. Heaven isn’t going to be destroyed or burned up. The coming of the Kingdom may consume, as if by fire, all that is not from love, but that hardly means the earth is destroyed. It means, rather, the earth is purified, redeemed, and renewed.
Second, his views produced generations of speculators and conspiracy theorists. What does this bit of news mean and does that event mean the Lord’s coming is at hand? I remember being the member of a Conservative Baptist Church (the actual name of the denomination—not just a designation of particular philosophical/theological bent), whose pastor was obsessed with the book of Revelation and end-times teaching or eschatology. There were timelines on walls and rows of books on the end-times or commentaries on Revelation. There were bible studies and sermon series on a regular basis focused entirely around the subject of the end-times.
You know what we never talked about? The poor. The hungry. Those without clean water. Wealth inequality. Justice. We were too busy looking up for the second coming to look down or around at those the world had already left behind. And too often our only interest in culture or politics was in relation to what it meant as to the timeline for the return of Jesus and the rapture. Unless it tied in there, we didn’t care much.
Many newspaper headlines, evening news broadcasts, and social media news items, were read and interpreted through this end-times understanding (dispensationalist premillennialism). Instead of a new Israeli combat helicopter just being a new helicopter, it was really (for those with insight) what was foretold in Revelation of war vehicles described as scorpion like. Nothing was as it appeared, but was secretly (to those on the inside—us) this other thing that made sense in relation to our end-times schematic. This led to constant speculation about current events and a focus away from people and their current needs.
Additionally, this constant speculation opened the door for a tendency and bent toward believing conspiracy theories–in general. If one already believes there are shadowy, secret, and nefarious forces at work to bring about the end of the world, then one has plenty of fertile soil in which to work. As a Christian, I certainly believe in a spiritual world. There is more than we can see, hear, taste, touch, or smell. The Bible speaks of “principalities and powers” and angelic beings. However, none of those beliefs allow me to leave my reason, rationality, logic, intelligence, or a reasonable request for evidence at the door.
For too many Christians who followed people like Lindsey, however, those beliefs did allow them to leave much of that at the door.
And we now live in the aftermath. Much of Trump’s support and political success has only been possible because a significant portion of his base believe in or are sympathetic to a myriad of conspiracy theories. This includes a large portion of white, male, evangelicals. We live in the aftermath in other areas of life too, not just the political, though they all intersect.
For instance, many evangelicals who are skeptical or suspicious of vaccines or climate change, if you track their reasoning down, are so because of misinformation, outright lies, or some conspiracy theory they believe or a combination thereof. Not only is this terribly disappointing, it’s dangerous. People are dead because of this nonsense.
Those are just two areas where I think Lindsey’s influence and teaching have had negative impacts. There are other areas too but I have a limited amount of time and space.
If one reads the most common and authoritative Christians creeds, the Apostles’ and the Nicene, we are told what our eschatology is—we are told what it is the Christian church has believed about the end-times since the earliest centuries:
“…he will come to judge the living and the dead.”
“He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end.”
We are not told the “when” of that coming and therefore it’s not important. It’s not the point. The point is: “He will come again…” God will.
When people ask me what I believe as a Christian, I cite the Apostles’ and the Nicene creeds. I don’t go beyond those with much confidence. I have opinions and can speculate about other areas and how I think the creeds (or the Bible) speak to other concerns and questions, but I try to do so with great caution and the caveat we are talking now about my opinions or what the Christian traditions have generally taught over the centuries.
I wish Mr. Lindsey would have done the same. For now, I wish him God speed to his eternal rest and pray his family is comforted. I also pray his end-times beliefs and influence will diminish over time and one day be thought of as a weird, dangerous, and disappointing departure from Christian orthodoxy.
Please check out my book.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In