{"id":71030,"date":"2025-07-25T16:22:26","date_gmt":"2025-07-25T20:22:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=71030"},"modified":"2025-07-25T16:22:26","modified_gmt":"2025-07-25T20:22:26","slug":"lbcf-whats-on-second","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2025\/07\/25\/lbcf-whats-on-second\/","title":{"rendered":"LBCF: What’s on second?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

(A Left Behind re-run from May of 2006.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Left Behind,<\/i> pp. 211-213<\/b><\/p>\n

Rayford Steele, we\u2019re told, attended the New Hope Village Church only a few times after his wife Irene starting going there. If the Rev. Vernon Billings\u2019 In-Case-of-Rapture video is at all like the sermons Billings preached, then I understand why Rayford never went back. Billings is pedantic and condescending, even when he doesn\u2019t seem to know what he\u2019s talking about. He\u2019s almost Limbaughian.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Bible says that men\u2019s hearts will fail them for fear,\u201d Billings says. \u201cThat means to me that there will be heart attacks due to shock \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>That\u2019s an odd bit in part because, according to LaHaye & Jenkins\u2019 description of events in the previous 200 pages, it didn\u2019t happen that way. Much of what Billings predicts has not been mentioned or described earlier in the book:<\/p>\n

Depending on when you\u2019re viewing this tape, you may have already found that martial law is in effect in many places, emergency measures trying to keep evil elements from looting and fighting over the spoils of what is left. Governments will tumble and there will be international disorder.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Those all seem like reasonably predictable consequences of the mass disappearance of every child on the planet. But again, none of this has happened in the novel. No martial law. Little mention of looting or rioting. No international disorder or tumbling of governments. The only country that has changed regimes since the mass disappearances is Romania, but this was as the result of an orderly election \u2014 an election that was neither delayed nor disrupted by the mass disappearances two days<\/i> before.<\/p>\n

Yet it seems that L&J want us to read Billings\u2019 surprisingly inaccurate predictions as unerringly accurate. The sense one gets from this passage is that the authors are using Billings to rewrite the account of the previous 200 pages, to fill in or even change<\/i> the details of events we\u2019ve already read about. It\u2019s a bit like listening to someone botch the telling of a long joke, when they realize halfway through that they\u2019ve left out essential details and they start backtracking and correcting themselves: \u201cSo the priest says to the duck \u2014 oh, wait, he\u2019s not a priest, he\u2019s a rabbi, and he\u2019s got the duck on his head, see, did I mention the duck? And the rabbi says, no, wait, the duck<\/i> says \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

This rewriting is a welcome change, since the international disorder and chaos that Billings describes sounds more interesting than the novel we\u2019ve been reading up to this point. But the fact that it is a change undercuts the other apparent intended effect of Billings\u2019 video, which is to be so eerily accurate in its account of what Rayford has seen happening that he is compelled to accept its truth.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s more from Billings:<\/p>\n

You may wonder why this has happened. Some believe this is the judgment of God on an ungodly world. Actually, that is to come later. Strange as this may sound to you, this is God\u2019s final effort to get the attention of every person who has ignored or rejected him. He is allowing now a vast period of trial and tribulation to come to you who remain. He has removed his church from a corrupt world that seeks its own way, its own pleasures, its own ends.<\/p>\n

I believe God\u2019s purpose in this is to allow those who remain to take stock of themselves and leave their frantic search for pleasure and self-fulfillment, and turn to the Bible for truth and to Christ for salvation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is theology of a sort that we don\u2019t usually get from Tim LaHaye. LaHaye, and his spokesman, the Rev. Billings, are usually so preoccupied with treating the Bible as God\u2019s Day Planner that they never engage in questions of \u201cwhy this has happened\u201d or of \u201cGod\u2019s purpose in this.\u201d But here, briefly, we get a glimpse of LaHaye\/Billings theory of why.<\/i><\/p>\n

The Great Tribulation, according to this theory, is a kind of living Purgatory.<\/p>\n

LaHaye, of course, does not believe in Purgatory. It is, after all, an extrabiblical innovation now abandoned even by those parts of the church that once accepted the idea. The case for Purgatory was based on a handful of fairly opaque, symbol-heavy passages of Scripture which were magnified through the prism of a complex interpretive scheme that imposed its own cosmology and chronology. It is, in other words, very much like the case for premillennial dispensationalism. Except the case for Purgatory was probably stronger.<\/p>\n

Billings next offers his prediction of the events of the second half of the book, and here he proves much more accurate. Perhaps a bit too accurate, as his account of the rise of the Antichrist serves as almost the Cliff Notes version of the rest of the book. Homiletics professors teach preachers in training to \u201cTell them what you\u2019re going to tell them. Tell them. Then tell them what you told them.\u201d Good advice for a sermon, but bad advice for a novel, especially one more or less structured as a thriller.<\/p>\n

Apart from its place in the novel, though, this next bit from the Rev. Billings is rather important. For PMD Christians \u2014 and there are tens of millions of them in America \u2014 the rise of the Antichrist is not simply fiction, but a real<\/i> and imminent event. Billings here offers a useful distillation of what it is precisely they anticipate, await, hope for and fear:<\/p>\n

Scripture indicates that there will be a great lie, announced with the help of the media and perpetrated by a self-styled world leader. \u2026<\/p>\n

Let me warn you personally to beware of such a leader of humanity who may emerge from Europe. He will turn out to be a great deceiver who will step forward with signs and wonders that will be so impressive that many will believe he is of God. He will gain a great following among those who are left, and many will believe he is a miracle worker.<\/p>\n

The deceiver will promise strength and peace and security, but the Bible says he will speak out against the Most High and will wear down the saints of the Most High. That\u2019s why I warn you to beware now of a new leader with great charisma trying to take over the world during this terrible time of chaos and confusion. This person is known in the Bible as Antichrist. He will make many promises, but he will not keep them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There\u2019s an ongoing intramural dispute among PMDs divided into two camps: pre-Tribulationists<\/i> and post-Tribulationists.<\/i> LaHaye is pre-trib, meaning he believes the church will be \u201craptured\u201d before the seven-year Tribulation and before the rise of the Antichrist, which is how it plays out in Left Behind.<\/i> The post-tribbers would point out that it doesn\u2019t make sense to talk about the Antichrist wearing down \u201cthe saints\u201d if the saints have all already gone marching in. LaHaye would counter by saying there will be new<\/i> saints saved during the purgatorial Tribulation, folks like Rayford, Bruce and Chloe.<\/p>\n

I really don\u2019t care who wins that little argument because I think both factions are heterodox and a bit goofy. I do, however, care about that little swipe at \u201cthe media\u201d tucked in there because, A) you can\u2019t have democracy or a free people without a free press; and B) I\u2019m part<\/i> of \u201cthe media\u201d and I take this stuff personally.<\/p>\n

So allow me to explain where that bit about \u201cthe media\u201d comes from. It comes from Revelation 13, verses 14 and 15.<\/p>\n

John\u2019s Apocalypse here is describing the second beast, who comes out of the earth and is not to be confused with the first beast, who comes out of the sea. The first<\/i> beast, you\u2019ll recall, had 10 horns and seven heads and \u201cresembled a leopard, but had feet like those of a bear and a mouth like that of a lion.\u201d The second<\/i> beast \u201chad two horns like a lamb but he spoke like a dragon.\u201d That\u2019s a<\/i> dragon, not the<\/i> dragon, the one kicked out of heaven in the previous chapter who gave the first beast his power, his throne and his authority.<\/p>\n

(If you read Revelation 13 out loud, very fast, it begins to sound like an Abbot & Costello routine on acid \u2014 \u201cSo is the Antichrist the first or second beast?\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d \u201cThird beast.<\/i>\u201c)<\/p>\n

Anyway, here is where the media comes in:<\/p>\n

Because of the signs he [second beast] was given power to do on behalf of the first beast, he deceived the inhabitants of the earth. He ordered them to set up an image in honor of the [first] beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived. He was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that it could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Did you catch that? An \u201cimage\u201d that could \u201cspeak.\u201d This passage is interpreted by LaHaye and his PMD adherents as \u2014 and really, I\u2019m not kidding here \u2014 a clear reference to television news or \u201cthe media.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thus, since \u201cthe media\u201d is destined to be a servant of the Antichrist, it shouldn\u2019t be trusted and good Christians shouldn\u2019t read the newspaper but instead should rely only on Christian radio (and maybe Fox News) to find out what\u2019s really<\/i> going on in the world.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“So is the Antichrist the first or second beast?”
\n“I don’t know.”
\n“Third beast.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":69785,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nLBCF: What's on second?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\""So is the Antichrist the first or second beast?" "I don't know." 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71030\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}