All the theologians, scripture scholars, bishops, saints and reformers were incapable of interpreting God's word....until....
...John Nelson Darby came along. He broke off from the Plymouth Brethren over theological disputes. Founder of the Exclusive Brethren sect, Darby invented pre-tribulation rapture theology in 1830 that was totally foreign to all of Christianity.
His theory was further popularized in the United States in the early 20th century by the wide circulation of the Scofield Reference Bible. The footnotes were made doctrine by American dispensationists.
...fast forward to 1970...
The biggest-selling work of non-fiction (other than the Bible) since 1970 is dispensationalist Hal Lindsey’s
The Late Great Planet Earth (Bantam, 1970), which sold more than
40 million copies and established the blueprint for a number of other popular, self-described “Bible prophecy” experts (including Tim LaHaye, creator and coauthor of the
Left Behind series)
LaHaye’s first work of “Bible prophecy” was
The Beginning of the End (Tyndale, 1972), essentially a carbon copy of Lindsey’s mega-seller. In the years that followed, Lindsey and LaHaye, along with authors such as Salem Kirban, David Wilkinson, Dave Hunt, Grant Jeffrey, John Walvoord, and others, produced a string of best-selling books warning of the rapidly approaching pretribulation Rapture, the Antichrist, and the tribulation.
One message of LaHaye’s that comes across clearly in books such as
Are We Living in the End Times?,
Rapture Under Attack, and
Revelation Unveiled is that the Catholic Church is apostate, Catholicism is “Babylonian mysticism” and an “idolatrous religion,” and Catholics worship Mary, knowing little about the real Jesus Christ. It’s difficult to overstate
the dislike — even hatred — LaHaye has for the Catholic Church or to exaggerate the
ridiculous character of his attacks. He condemns the use of candles in Catholic churches, insists there’s hardly any difference between Hinduism and Catholicism, and emphatically declares that the Catholic Church killed at least 40 million people during the “dark ages.”
When I asked LaHaye, via e-mail, why he never refers to Catholic sources or official documents in his writings, he replied:
Because I think that for centuries the Catholic Church has presented church history in a manner protective of “Mother church.” . . . I have seen more concern on the part of your church for Hindus, Buddhists, and other pagan religions than they do [sic] for those who love Jesus Christ as He is presented in the Bible and are committed to making Him known to the lost so they will not be Left Behind.
In other words, the Catholic Church is simply wrong and doesn’t deserve a fair hearing. LaHaye has not only revealed himself to be
an anti-Catholic polemicist but a theologian with a seriously skewed view of God’s salvific work. In a newspaper interview, LaHaye said, “We’ve [himself and Jenkins] created a series of books about the greatest cosmic event that will happen in the history of the world.” What is that “greatest cosmic event”? The Incarnation? The Cross? The Resurrection?
No, the Rapture — a modern, man-made belief based on a distorted Christology and an anemic ecclesiology.
Discover Catholic teachings on the Rapture. Pre, Mid, or Post? Find clarity on the 'end times'. Here's what the Church teaches about the apocalypse."
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It's ironic; all this talk about "end time persecution" and/or "great tribulation" while guys like Lahaye inflict it on Catholics.