Left Behind

Message / Question Do you believe that people will be "left behind". Is it right to scare people into believing in Jesus? Does it make a difference what reason you come to Christ?

Response

I’d love to have a few pages to answer this question!

The “left behind” idea has probably been made most “famous” by Tom LaHaye’s book and film series of the same named. The key biblical passage that he uses is Mat 24 where it speaks of 2 working in a field and 2 working at a mill and in each case one is taken and one “left behind”. LaHaye says that this is “the rapture” of the church, with the ones taken being caught up to be with The Lord and the others left behind to face a Godless “tribulation” period. The problem is that in Mat 24 it speaks of “the coming of the Son of man” (i.e. Christ’s return) being like the days of Noah. In those days they were doing life normally (eating, marrying etc) and the flood came and took “them all away”. So who did the flood take away? Clearly, it was the “they” who were doing all those things mentioned, ‘they” were taken and who was left behind? Noah and co on the ark! The good were left, the “badies” were taken in judgment. The Bible is its own best interpreter, so we should ask if that’s consistent with other passages? In Mat 13 there’s a similar illustration involving wheat and tares. The workers offered to weed out the tares, but the master said to leave them until the harvest (representing the end of the age), at which time the master would tell his servants to “first, gather together the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them” – so the question is who is taken and who is left? The tares (the “badies”) are taken to be burned and the wheat (the “goodies”) are left behind. So in both cases, the ones taken were taken to judgment and it was the “good” who were left behind – quite the opposite of LaHaye’s idea. That’s over simplifying the whole idea, but it is fair to say that the LaHaye model does not match the end time theology (“eschatology”) of most biblical scholars through the ages.

You ask if it’s right to “scare” people into becoming Christians. Let’s face facts, heaven AND hell are real places and the prospect of hell is pretty scary. If making people aware that hell is the destiny of those who refuse to believe in / accept Christ, scares them and that scary prospect helps them to turn to Christ then so be it. It’s presenting truth and sometimes truth is scary. I’d rather see a person “scared” into heaven that left in ignorance that leads them to hell! The reason that individual come to Christ will vary greatly – I’m too happy that they come to Christ than to get too uptight about what it was that prompted them to make the decision!