March 2, 2023

By Bill Berkowitz

As of this morning, The Rapture Ready Index -- which could be seen as “a Dow Jones Industrial Average of end time activity, but,” according to its website, is “better if you viewed it as prophetic speedometer” -- reads 186. According to the Index, “Fasten your seat belts.” Since it’s all about The Rapture, I suppose the Left Behind Cinematic Universe will continue cranking out Left Behind movies and other products until the End Times is actually realized … and maybe even beyond!The latest Left Behind movie is called  Left Behind: Rise of the Antichrist, directed by and staring longtime Hollywood actor Kevin Sorbo. According to Amac (Association of Mature American Citizens), “Against all odds, Kevin Sorbo has succeeded in the entertainment industry, continuing to act and produce films that promote his devout faith, leaving Hollywood behind!”

At Religion Unplugged reviewer Jillian Cheney writes: The movie “has it all: boring action sequences, jokes about the COVID-19 vaccine, altar calls, a postscript message from former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, a joke about former President Barack Obama being the Antichrist, a painfully clunky script and even a Romanian politician who has a bland American accent”.

As a reminder, Cheney points out that at the heart of the Left Behind series is “a pretribulation, premillennial, dispensationalist theology, which means the following things”:

• The rapture, the event in which all Christians are called to heaven, happens before the seven-year tribulation.

• The 1,000-year reign of Jesus described in Revelation 20:1-6 will play out to the letter as it’s written, and that 1,000-year reign hasn’t started yet.

• Israel and Christians — both described in the Bible as God’s people — are two separate groups. Dispensationalist theology believes that Christians will be brought to heaven during the rapture, but Israel won’t; however, other rewards and restoration will be brought to Israel. 

According to Religion Dispatches Christopher Douglas, the movie “was released just last month in select theaters to an audience score of 97% at Rotten Tomatoes (though not a single critic appears to have reviewed it).”

The Left Behind series – its sequels and prequels -- is based on the best-selling apocalyptic novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. Their first book was published in 1995. The series  has thus far sold over 80 million copies.

The most recent Left Behind film was released in 2014 and starred Nicolas Cage. Douglas noted that this year’s adaptation – the sixth movie – “updates its topical currency with references to ‘fake news’ and ‘all souls matter,’ collapsing the post-Rapture future under the Antichrist administration and the pre-Rapture now of cultural warfare.”

Preceding this year’s entry, and Cage’s 2014 film, “were the 2000, 2002, and 2005 iterations with Kirk Cameron, and a sixth 2017 spinoff of the 40-volume adolescent series Left Behind: The Kids, featuring young people becoming Christians and facing the Tribulation,” Douglas reported.  

Film viewers are “gonna think that they’re watching something that is happening right now,” Mike Huckabee told Sorbo, to which Sorbo responded, “[they’re] gonna feel like the Rapture’s gotta be pretty close.”

Douglas: “The series’ premise is the rise of the Antichrist to ruler of the world: as head of the dreaded United Nations, the Antichrist’s earthly government challenges the will of God, but also usurps the proper authority that God’s chosen people — conservative White Christians in this supersessionist series — once did and still should have in America.

“The LBCU is as much a part of the conservative White Christian threat industry as it is of the Christian entertainment industry. Its cousins aren’t so much Christian romance novels or Christian pop music as they are Fox News, Breitbart, Newsmax, The Daily Caller, and so on. It reflects conservative white Christians’ sense that they’re being persecuted by secular, liberal elites, but it also energizes those feelings, producing them.”

Left Behind movies have not been big box office. According to  Dexterto’s Cameron Frew,  the first Left Behind movie was … gross[ed] just $27.4 million against a $16 million budget,” while “2000’s Left Behind: The Movie was touted as the ‘biggest and most ambitious Christian film ever made,’ made with a rather sizeable budget of $17.4 million. It grossed just $4.2 million.”

Featured on Amac’s Better for America program Kevin Sorbo talked about “one global government” and “one global currency.” He called the film “a political action thriller.” Sorbo added “I think in our woke culture right now, our cancel culture, I think there’s going to be a lot of pastors who will be left behind.” 

Despite Sorbo’s promise that people who watch the film will feel that “the Rapture’s gotta be pretty close,” there will likely be more pre-Rapture Left Behind movies to come. After all, the only thing that gonna stop them is The Rapture itself … and that …?