Rapture, Revelation, and the End Times - Conscious Evolution TV

158robin-bobin Rapture, Revelation, and the End Timescausing a Muslim–Israeli war to begin. In April 1999 Israeli securityrounded up members of a Christian evangelical messianicgroup called Concerned Christians that had come to Jerusalem totake part in the events of the end times and, according to officialIsraeli reports, to commit mass suicide or perhaps to damage themosques on the Temple Mount. Members of the group subsequentlywere deported. Toward the latter months of 1999, Israelifear that premillennialist Christians might try to blow up themosques bordered on hysteria. Israeli security forces arrested anddeported dozens of Christians who resided in Jerusalem and werehoping to witness the second coming of Jesus, most of themharmless persons. 69 Likewise, the Israelis refused entrance to thecountry to “suspicious” Christians.Left Behind is an antithesis to the Israeli and American officialattitudes at the turn of the twenty-first century. In the LeftBehind series, Christian believers who expect the rapture andthe apocalyptic events to begin are the wise ones, taking theright steps toward the end times. Such figures as Irene Steele,Rayford Steele’s missing wife, a dedicated spouse and citizen,are the sane, moderate persons. Although nonbelieving friendsand family members, not to mention other members of society,do not take their theological views very seriously, they regrettheir attitude when the rapture takes place. The Israeli and eventhe American understanding of such events in 1999–2000 wassomewhat different: Those waiting too anxiously for the eventsof the end times to take place were dangerous and were understoodby the authorities to be less-than-reliable citizens.ConclusionThe novel Left Behind and its sequels come to promote the ideaof the imminent apocalypse and the need to accept Jesus beforethe rapture takes place. Israel nonetheless looms large in theseries, and the novel demonstrates the centrality of the Jewishpeople and Israel in the evangelical eschatological faith. Thebook points to the complex and ambivalent attitudes of theauthors and, by extension, of evangelical premillennialists inrobin-bobin