My Hope for "Left Behind"
For whatever reason, I came across the movie trailer for the new Left Behind movie staring Nicolas Cage about three times yesterday on the internet. As a post-millennialist I had to stop myself from throwing up on every occasion. That being said I have high hopes for this new rendition of Tim Lahaye's classic!
My hope is that as thousands of Christians invariably flock to movie theaters around the nation to watch this abomination they will find themselves questioning the merits of dispensational premillennialism. Perhaps some of these Christians will turn to their Bibles and begin to question why every single book of the New Testament seems to be written to a first century audience yet for some reason they think Revelation is written to a 21st century audience. Maybe they'll even turn to the first chapter of Revelation and read phrases like "things that must soon take place" & "to the churches in Asia" and they might actually take these phrases "literally" like so many dispys claim to do.
Perhaps I'm hoping for too much but then again, as a post-millennialist I ascribe to an eschatology of hope.
For those of you who haven't seen the abomination yet here you go:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uskSBJsCf38
Please note how much it pains me to post this on my own blog. In order to over compensate I am going to shamelessly plug two books that offer a better understanding of what the Bible teaches about eschatology. They are both introductory so I think anyone interested in a broad approach would benefit from them:
http://www.amazon.com/Heaven-Misplaced-Christs-Kingdom-Earth/dp/1591280834
This is short book gives a very brief introduction to post-millennial eschatology. In his usual manner Wilson ably disrupts many assumptions about eschatology in a fun but hard hitting way.
http://www.amazon.com/Paradise-Restored-Biblical-Theology-Dominion/dp/0915815656/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=1-1&qid=1407416279
I just finished this one yesterday actually, (the late) Chilton offers a very good introduction to Biblical prophecy as a whole and specifically as it pertains to Biblical eschatology. Chilton does a fine job at answering objects by positively putting forth the post-millennial perspective.
This was a bit of a rant but I felt like I had no choice!
Michael