John E. "Jay" Phelan Jr., president of North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago, spoke with the Companion about the Left Behind series.

Companion: What's your impression of the Left Behind books?

Jay Phelan: I leafed through a few of them, and started reading one of the children's books, and it made me so angry that I couldn't keep going. It touched on a lot of the chords of fear that I had as a child, and a lot of the sermons I heard as a young person. In one of the books, a boy comes in, and the rapture has occurred and his father is gone and all he sees is his pajamas and his hearing aid. That sort of thing that was held over a lot of us--you might wake up one morning and your mom and dad and your older brother will be gone and there you'll be, eight-years old, the only one, and they are going to come and brand you with 666. That kind of use of fear, I think, was done in a well-meaning way, but it was a negative thing and it was a terrible thing to do to a child.

Beyond all that, the eschatology is just wrong--it's just not right, it's just not there. For the last couple of years I have been going around to churches doing seminars on eschatology. People will ask me during my talks what I think about the rapture. Well, I say, the only problem with the rapture is that it's not in the Bible. There is only ever one [second] coming of Christ, there is no such thing in the New Testament as a secret rapture of the church--it's just not there. I have had some people startled when I said that, even here at the seminary. I tell students who have asked me about this, "Okay--you go back home, get your Bible out, and you find it." It's pretty easy to demonstrate that every reference to the return on Christ is one return and not any kind of split or divided [return].

Was the interest in seminars on eschatology based on the year 2000?

Yes, and it's a perennial topic of interest. And it's a worthy topic. I think that the neglect of the study of eschatology in the church is a serious mistake, and it's one of the reasons that stuff like Left Behind becomes so popular. People are hungry to have some information about what the Bible says about the future. And if you don't give them something good to eat, they'll eat junk food. And the "Left Behind" series are kind of the Twinkies and the Hostess Cupcakes of the theological world.

Do you think that the authors of Left Behind have good intentions?

You have got people who haven't thought through the morality of all this and what this all means. Also, the view of God that comes out of this is in some ways quite chilling. You know, the old "God snatches the airplane pilot out, and oh well, too bad about the passengers and the airplane crashes into a city." As a kid, it was [like a] comic book--but I wonder if people have seriously thought about the moral implications of that.

What about the non-fiction books about the rapture that continue to sell, even when the authors are wrong?

Being wrong has never been a problem for them--Hal Lindsey has often been wrong and yet he still continues to sell books. When I came to Kansas as a pastor in 1988, there was a pamphlet that came in the mail [called] "88 reasons why Christ will come in 1988." Obviously things didn't work out, so the next year we got a one on Christ [returning] in 1989. I suppose the guy has given up--I haven't seen another one being published.

There is always some kind of recalculation to make, there is always a way at looking at things differently. My problem goes to the whole way of looking at God. This implies almost a Diestic-view--that God set the world in motion and this plan is working in some sort of computerized means. It's going to happen no matter what, and there is nothing you can do about it--which is never the function of prophetic literature in the Bible.

The function of prophetic literature in the Bible is to encourage people to respond to God and repent. There is always the hope that there would be a change, something will be different, and the fearful predictions of judgment will not occur. But that's not the kind you get in this stuff.

The thing that I worry about is that, because of some of the crazy stuff that is out there, people will not take seriously what the Bible does say about God's intention for creation, and who and what God is about. It would be a terrible mistake to not take seriously or reflect on what the Kingdom of God is, and how that impacts the life of the church now, because the kingdom of God was the central message of Jesus. You can't ignore that. It is eschatological through and through and it had nothing to do with this stuff.

What do you think the church is missing out on?

I think what we miss out on specifically is an understanding of the role of the church in the world. The role of the church is not so much to transform the world, nor is it to wait around for the world to be damned. The role of the church is to be the presence of the kingdom. A place where people experience what the kingdom of God will be like when God completes whatever work he is doing with this creation. We are people, ideally, that are already living kingdom lives, already living eschatological lives--we are living lives that reflect what Isaiah talks about: the lion and the lamb lying down, the unity and the wholeness, the shalom that God promises. While we are waiting for God to complete his work, we are living out that kingdom reality.

What you have in [Left Behind] is a kind of a lifeboat mentality;grab as many people into the lifeboat because the ship is sinking, rather than inviting people into the kingdom that is already here in the life of the church, in anticipation of what that final destiny will be.

The other thing I tell people in my seminars is that the hope of the New Testament is a thoroughly earthly hope. The idea that in the end we are all going to be floating in heaven with angel wings and harps is a cultural notion;it has nothing to do with what you find in the Bible. You get to the end of the book of Revelation, and there is a new heaven and a new earth. In fact, the New Jerusalem comes down to earth. We don't end up in heaven--heaven ends up here, if you will.

How would you interpret the role of apocalyptic literature in the Bible?

If you look at the book of Daniel--Daniel's message is for those Jews struggling with the oppression of Antiochus Epiphanes in 165 BC. Those images and ideas are picked up and reinvigorated by Jesus in the Olivet discourse and by John in the book of Revelation. But the prophetic messages of the Bible, the apocalyptic messages of the Bible for that matter--are always written for people in the midst of the struggle they are having then. At one level it is perfectly appropriate for people to pick up those messages and those images and say that God can intervene on our behalf and restore us now.

There's a wonderful passage, which I think is very theologically important in the book of Daniel--the story of the three young men in the fiery furnace. They say to King Nebuchadnezzer, "Our God is able to deliver us out of your hand--but even if he doesn't, we are not going to bow down and worship this great idol that you have built." I think that is the prophetic message of people who are under oppression and suffering--those Jews in 165 BC can say to Antiochus, "Our God is able to deliver us out of your hand--but even if he doesn't, we are not going to make offerings to Greek gods, or eat swine's flesh, or stop circumcising our children." Or the early Christians can say to the Romans, "Our God is able to deliver us out of your hands, but even if he doesn't, we are not going to put any incense on to the altar of Caesar's genius. That's just not going to happen." Some of those people were martyred, some of them died, but there was a deliverance. And what that prophetic message continues to say is that our God is able to deliver us out of your hand, whoever you are, but even if he doesn't, we are not going to do whatever the particular culture is asking us to do. And I think that is a very powerful message for people to hang on to.

The writers of Left Behind, and others who write about the rapture, seem to have deep love of the Scriptures, something that many of us seem to be missing.

That's another unfortunate part of this. The people that study [the rapture] do have a deep love of the Scriptures, and do have a deep desire to understand and apply the word of God. The people I grew up with and went to church with were very knowledgeable about the biblical text--they spent a lot of time on what they called "rightly dividing the word of truth." I have a profound respect and appreciation for what that meant. And I appreciate and think that it is right that they struggle to find ways to apply the Scripture in the contemporary world. That is absolutely correct, that's what you should do.

The problem comes in when people don't know much about history, and don't have much of a perspective beyond what happened twenty years ago or at most 100 years ago. When you begin to read some of this stuff, and you find out that this has been going on forever, maybe it tempers your understanding a bit.

What I have always said is that this approach to things, this dispensationalism, is not simply a set of prophetic views, it's a hermeneutic. It's a tool or a set of lenses way for looking at the text as a whole. The only problem is when people don't know they are looking at the Scripture with a set of lenses. They think that they are looking at it unaided by any kind of perspective on the text. And that's just not true. The only way you can ever get the rapture is by looking at the text through a heavy set of lenses that frankly distort it--you have to come with a number of substantial theological assumptions. People who believe [in dispensationalism] would say, "No, no, I am just reading the Bible, just what it says." And they are not. They are coming at it with theological assumptions. And that's not wrong. That's fine. But if you don't know that you are doing that, if you don't take a step back, then you can't be a very critical of your own assumptions. That's part of being a thoughtful reader of any text, being able to be critical of your own assumptions.