My comment – of course this does not deny that when Jesus returns, we will be lifted up in the air and changed! (St Paul said this) That's the only real rapture that will happen!

Code: ZE03062425
Date: 2003-06-24

Illinois Bishops' Statement on “Left Behind” Books and Videos

“Theology of the End Times in Conflict With Catholic Teachings”

CHICAGO, JUNE 24, 2003 (Zenit.org).- The Catholic Conference of Illinois is taking on the Rapture.

The Rapture, according to many fundamentalist and evangelical Protestants, is the fast-approaching secret and silent disappearance of Christians from the earth before a time of tribulation. The notion has soared in popularity with the “Left Behind” novels, which have sold tens of millions of copies. Recently the Catholic conference issued this statement on the phenomenon.

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Statement on Left Behind Books and Videos

When Jesus told us to be alert and ready for his return, he also warned there would be false prophets. One of the most attractively marketed recent false “prophets” has been the Left Behind series, published by Tyndale House Press in Wheaton, Illinois. Since 1995, the series by Mr. Tim LaHaye and Mr. Jerry B. Jenkins has been a tool for active promotion of a fundamentalist theology of the end times in conflict with Catholic teachings. More than that, the series has been a vehicle for anti-Catholic sentiments by the way Catholics are characterized and treated in the plot line.

Promoted nationally in grocery checkout aisles, discount outlets and bookstores, over the Internet and even through book sale fundraisers in Catholic schools, these novels are now in the tenth installment of the adult series and the twenty-fourth volume of the children's version. There are also two videos, (produced by Cloud Ten Productions) a board game, and other marketed items. These materials, about fictionalized end-times, popularize a common fundamentalist belief in a time of tribulation after the “rapture” (when the “good people” are secretly taken up overnight to Heaven) and before the Second Coming of Christ. This belief is not supported in Scripture.

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