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So says Dr Barbara Rossing, an ordained Lutheran minister who teaches New Testament at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago. Her 2004 book The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation was providentially released at the same time as the 12th book of the Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. Dr Rossing's book, as its title suggests, argues that the Left Behind series has no biblical or theological basis. She doesn't mince words in her interview in the latest issue of The Wittenburg Door.
The first sentence of my book is, "The rapture is a racket," and I think it's important for your readers to know that the whole rapture is a fiction. It was invented by British preacher John Nelson Darby in the 1830s as part of his system of biblical interpretation called dispensationalism.
The interviewer later mentions that Martin Luther didn't think Revelation should be in the New Testament canon. Dr Rossing says that's true, but . . .
That was the first time Luther read the book of Revelation, but by the second, only some five years later, he figured out that it's a great book for trashing your opponents. And that's what many people do today. They figure out that Revelation's beasts, locusts and mutant animals are their opponents, whether it's the Catholic Church as it was for Luther, or Saddam Hussein or Ronald Reagan, or whomever you love to hate.
The Apocalyse, as it is called by non-Protestant Christians, is certainly most politically oriented book in the New Testament, and perhaps in the whole Bible. It is also one of the more difficult books for us to understand because of John's strange and sometimes horrifying images. George Caird's commentary is the most illuminating that I have read because it shows how John's language echoes that of the Old Testament prophets. John has taken prophecies directed against Babylon and other pagan empires and re-applied them, with appropriate extensions and visionary insights, against Rome.
via Verum Serum.
