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This Tuesday the grand finale to Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins' best-selling Left Behind novels went on sale at bookstores across the nation. Glorious Appearing tells the tale of Jesus' return to crush the Anti-Christ and inaugurate his millennial reign. It's a finish filled with plenty of drama to top off a series that's engrossed millions of readers—the first 11 novels have sold more than 40 million copies, leading LaHaye and Jenkins to edge out John Grisham as the most popular novelists in America.

Just what's driving this literary phenomenon? The way LaHaye tells it, Left Behind taps into growing anxiety over global political and religious instability. "The fact that we're seeing some of those things happen right now must be a wake-up call to some people to say, 'Hey, we may be closer than we think.'" On the official Left Behind website, LaHaye notes, "The true account of the Rapture and the subsequent seven year Tribulation period—as described so graphically in the Book of Revelation—has to be the greatest story in the two thousand years since Christ ascended to His Father."

LaHaye's language reminds me of the hype that called Mel Gibson's Passion the greatest Christian outreach opportunity in two millennia. But LaHaye hardly has a monopoly on interpreting the Book of Revelation. A brief overview of Christian end-time schemas from Christian History's Issue 61: The End. A History of the Second Coming should prove the point.

A Perplexing Apocalypse
The Revelation of John has bred a plethora of end-time interpretations. For example, first-century Papias (c. 60-120) believed that Christ's resurrection had already inaugurated the new millennium, while Justin Martyr (c.100-c.165) believed that the church would reign with Christ after his second coming (a view typically referred to as pre-millennialism). Justin admitted that "many who belong to the pure and pious faith, and are true Christians, think otherwise." As Roman authorities increased their persecution of the church, Christians like third-century Hippolytus began making end-time predictions—Hippolytus expected Christ to establish his millennial reign in 496. Other Christians, like Alexandria's foremost theologian Origen, preferred to interpret Revelation allegorically, rejecting detailed schemas altogether. (For a more in-depth discussion of this, see Dana Netherton's "Taking the Long View.")

The great fourth-century theologian Augustine did the most when it came to forming the Church's "official" interpretation of Revelation (see David Wright's "Millennium Today"). Augustine believed that the thousand years in Revelation 20 began not at some future date but with Christ's birth in Bethlehem. To those who would counter that evil has no place in the millennium, Augustine said the Devil is "not permitted to exert his whole power of temptation, either by force or by guile to seduce people." Yet Augustine's was no political millennium—during his lifetime, Rome fell to barbarian invasions and Augustine got busy distinguishing the kingdom of God from the kingdom of men. His "amillennial" interpretation would rule as Church orthodoxy on through the Middle Ages.

The Reformers mostly accepted Augustine's position, though Luther came to believe that the pope had set himself up as the Anti-Christ. For centuries, the heirs of the magisterial or "mainstream" Reformation generally refrained from constructing end-time schemas or speculating on when Christ would return. But in the eighteenth century, a new interpretation of Revelation arose. As a first-hand witness to the Great Awakening, theologian Jonathan Edwards yearned for the fulfillment of Christ's Great Commission—and envisioned a millennium brought about "by the preaching of the gospel, and the use of the ordinary means of grace." In this way, Christ's kingdom "shall be gradually brought to pass."

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March (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48