Right Behind

[Bobtheduck]

I agree that anyone coming to Christ should be doing so in the manner listed in the Bible. Believing in their heart and confessing with their mouth (Specifically to people other than God). That's the method that works up until judgement time, when everyone will be doing that regardless of whether they believed up until that point, and doing it at that point will not get them into heaven. So, yeah, if the bad doctrine is one that conflicts with that, then they're not really Christians, but any other bad doctrines are things that God just works out in us. We should grow, and weed out the bad stuff in context of submission to the bible, testing every spirit, and most importantly, in the context of Love. Anyone not growing in love has not fulfilled the first part of the requirement for salvation. We're not going to be perfect in Love, but we need to be growing in love. I must add, forward growth sometimes looks backwards to other people, so it is only God who can be the judge of that... I'm going off on every tangent I see, but I just want to make sure my statement is foolproof... That's rather "foolish" as there is no such thing as foolproof when it comes to a work of man or the mind of man.

Back to the book at hand,

LaHaye and Jenkins' best-selling apocalyptic fiction novel, Left Behind, is already so ridiculous that it's hard to make a parody of it, yet the conservative Christian author, Nathan Wilson, bravely sets forth to push it over the top. Tweaked versions of all the original characters work together in an absurd tangle of Evangelical goofiness struggling to make sense of the pathetically gnostic vision of the original story. You won't want to miss all body parts, cats, and youth pastors left behind, Buff Williamson's Ivy League deductions, Haddie the Whore of Babylon, or the climactic struggle with the Tulsa Antichrist in a Christian "book store." If you regret reading Left Behind, read Right Behind to ease that pain with laughter.

1. Absurd tale of evangelical goofiness. So, this book is made to insult my beliefs. The author himself says that.
2. Gnostic vision? I've at least seen the two movies, so explain to me how the books are in any way gnostic?

This is what I know of Gnostic beliefs:
1.The human body is corrupt and therefore Jesus did not come in the Flesh.
2. There is a chain of angels you have to use to get to the Father, and not merely Jesus... Jesus is just the "final gate" as it were.
3. Since the human body is corrupt automatically, and the spirit can't be corrupted by the physical, nothing they do in it can corrupt the spirit, so you can sin all you want. That may not be the belief of all Gnostics, but it was a primary tenant of the Gnostic belief.

Jesus directly spoke against the second one (Once in Jesus, you can bring you request DIRECTLY to God without going through a middle man, and Jesus is the only way to God), John the first, and every apostle and teacher in the Bible against the third. Now, Gnosticism was heavily based on Christianity as it was just a slight perversion of it. Therefore, it makes sense that many of their beliefs would be true. That being said, I don't see any of the bad beliefs of Gnosticism present in the story, nor did I see anything that fit what Tech said, about the Manachean viewpoint. I saw the proper gospel with some bad extrabiblical stuff thrown in.

To use this as a mockery of Evangelical Christianity is DEFINATELY wrong. That I got from the Author, not just the reviews.

[uc pseudonym]

Again: if this becomes an argument, it must be locked. We're trying to crack down on this.

If someone can respond and clarify, or perhaps provide a retraction/definition, that would be helpful.

[Technomancer]

1. Absurd tale of evangelical goofiness. So, this book is made to
insult my beliefs. The author himself says that.
2. Gnostic vision? I've at least seen the two movies, so explain to me
how the books are in any way gnostic?

This is what I know of Gnostic beliefs:
1.The human body is corrupt and therefore Jesus did not come in the
Flesh.
2. There is a chain of angels you have to use to get to the Father,
and not merely Jesus... Jesus is just the "final gate" as it were.
3. Since the human body is corrupt automatically, and the spirit can't
be corrupted by the physical, nothing they do in it can corrupt the
spirit, so you can sin all you want. That may not be the belief of all
Gnostics, but it was a primary tenant of the Gnostic belief.

Well not exactly. Gnosticism in a general sense arises from a
dualistic interpretation of the cosmos. Specifically, there is the
division between good and evil, and the division between matter and spirit. The gnostics then identified matter with evil, and the spirit
with good. What this ultimately boils down to is a radical rejection
of the world, seeing it as a kind of trap to be escaped from.

We see a similar sort of thing in the retreat from the world advocated by certain strands of Christianity. Worldly things and worldly knowledge are rejected precisely for being of the world and therefore of no moment. LaHaye's work, in addition to this seems coloured by Manichean tinges (itself a subset of gnosticism). The world is divided between good and evil. Those who do not believe as LaHaye does are de facto on the side of evil]per se[/i] did not fit within the gnostic philosophy of the spirit. This is not to say that it did not exist; the gnostics held that it arose from ignorance of man's true nature. Salvation for the gnostic was thus not liberation from sin, but from ignorance.

For further reading, I'd recommend Kurt Rudolph's book "Gnosis", which is perhaps THE seminal book on the subject. I'd also recommend Paul Thigpen's "The Rapture Trap", which provides an extensive critique of the theology underpinning the Left Behind series.

[uc pseudonym]

And that definition makes far more sense in this context.

About "The Rapture Trap..." does it cover pre-trib theology in general, or just the rapture itself?

[Technomancer]

The author does talk a lot about pre-tib theology (as well as s number of other millenial beliefs) in addition to the notion of the rapture itself. Although the book is written from a Catholic perspective, most of it still in line with what mainstream protestant churches teach(e.g. Anglican, United Church, Lutheran, etc).