The Left Behind series was featured on The Newshour with Jim Lehrer Monday night, and Nightline last night. With 71 percent of their readers from the South and Midwest, and just 6 percent from the Northeast, The Newshour said they've sold 66 million copies. Nightline said 40 million. Whichever, they sold a lot. The latest installment is number 24 on the NYTimes' paperback fiction list. I guess that's what merits all the attention; pandering to red staters has nothing to do with it.
The title refers to the sinners left behind when Jesus returns for the Saved. Tim LaHaye (I dig his Flash intro) and Jerry B. Jenkins wrote the apocalyptic prophecy series featuring an anti-Christ who heads the UN, his assistant the Pope, Jews converting to Christianity, and a conquering Jesus who wins a climactic battle in which thousands are slaughtered. It's made the authors rich. And what of the poor? From a May 24 Newsweek cover story:
How does [LaHaye] reconcile [his fat profits] with Jesus' injunction to sell all you have and give to the poor? "I can accomplish far more from my present lifestyle and the giving that I do to Christian work," he says. "If I just sold everything and gave it to the poor, I can't see where that would advance the Gospel as much as I'm doing." But wouldn't it advance the poor? "Well," he says, "you know how much I pay in taxes?"
Back in 1970 Hal Lindsey published a book titled, "The Late Great Planet Earth". Evangelical Christians everywhere became convinced that Jesus Christ would return and rapture the chosen ones before the arrival of the new millennium. The new millennium came rolling in and Hal Lindsey's prophecy was left unfulfilled. Interestingly enough the Scriptures say that "no one knows the day or the hour". Hal Lindsey's has taken his "prophetic knowledge" to a whole new level - religious fiction which I am sad to say can often be misconstrued as reality.
Of course I have gotten totally off point so let me try to get to it. It does give us feast for thought - would the poor be better off with some of Hal Lindsey's money? In my heart the gospel is not words but deeds - the gospel is the acts of love and perhaps one of those acts would be to actually give some of that big money to the poor. Of course there will always be poor among us - but perhaps they could be a little less poor.