Untitled - Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary - WELS

Kevin Lomax: [raging] Lose I don't lose! I win! I win! I'm a lawyer! That's my job,
that's what I do!
John Milton: I rest my case.
John Milton: Your vanity is justified, Kevin. Your seed is the key to a new future. Your
son is gonna sit at the head of all tables, my boy. He's gonna set this whole thing free.
Kevin Lomax: You want a child
John Milton: I want a family.
Kevin Lomax: The Anti-Christ
John Milton: [laughing] Whatever… Here is an instance in which, "You're going to
mate with your sister...and create the Antichrist." 6
Left Behind is a series of 16 best-selling novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins
dealing with a dispensationalist premillennial viewpoint of the end of the world.
Based on dispensationalist interpretation of prophecies in the Biblical books of
Revelation, Daniel, Isaiah and Ezekiel, Left Behind tells the story of the end times, in
which true believers in Christ have been "raptured," (i.e., taken instantly to heaven)
leaving the world shattered and chaotic. As people scramble for answers, a relatively
unknown Romanian politician named Nicolae Jetty Carpathia rises to become secretarygeneral
of the United Nations, promising to restore peace and stability to all nations.
What most of the world does not realize is that Carpathia is actually the Antichrist
foretold from the Bible. 7
Obviously this subject is an interesting one for media to address. The imagery is a
compelling draw in modern society. The topic allows freedom of interpretation. In the media
the incarnate Antichrist can be spawned by Satan himself. This Antichrist will bend the rules of
nature, make holy water boil, cause mysterious “accidents,” and will be accompanied by demons
that terrorize and kill. Kim Riddlebarger comments on this topic:
The biblical writers do indeed foretell of Antichrist, but the images found in Scripture are
markedly different from those of either The Omen or the Left Behind novels. The fact
that end-times speculation and sensationalism has trumped sound biblical exegesis is
surely the reason this is the case. Too often people don’t know what’s in their Bibles but
can recount in great detail the plot of the most recent Christian novel. Christians are
6 The Devil’s Advocate, 17 January 2012 Online. Available:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Devil's_Advocate. (Date accessed: 28 February 2012.)
7 Left Behind, 24 February 2012 Online. Available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_behind; Internet.
(Date accessed: 28 February 2012.)
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