Footnotes for "Thank God It's Doomsday" (originally aired May 8, 2005)
Homer gets obsessed with the Rapture as depicted in a movie, "Left Below" (obviously inspired by the popular "Left Behind" book series), and predicts the end of the world.
- The End of the World, the Rapture. Many Christians believe that the end of the world we know is coming sometime in the near future, based on statements in the Bible that Jesus Christ will return and will have a thousand-year reign of peace. However, many of those Christians who have this belief differ as to the timing between Jesus's return and the golden age of peace, including whether there will be a "rapture" of the faithful before Jesus's final return.
Premillenialists believe that the world is sinful and will worsen, and that Christ will eventually return to usher in a golden age. Postmillenialists, on the other hand, believe that Christ will return once humans themselves make enough progress to defeat evil and usher in the golden age themselves.
As for the Rapture, in recent decades, premillenialists such as Hal Lindsey and the authors of the "Left Behind" series have also argued that Christ will return twice: first to take the faithful to heaven in what some call the "rapture" so that the faithful can avoid the catastrophes to follow, and second to usher in the golden age. The Bible does not include any statements explicitly setting out such a scenario, though some have found evidence for this by reading some parts of the New Testament, including 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17, which holds that "the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout … and the dead in Christ shall rise first : Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord."
Others have criticized the Rapture concept. For example, the Illinois Conference of Bishops (on-line here) has said that the Rapture concept "is not supported in Scripture" and has criticized the Left Behind series as "a vehicle for anti-Catholic sentiments" and for "reinforce[ing] an unhealthy and immature belief in a harshly judgmental God whose mercy we earn by good behavior."
- The Book of Revelation. The last book of the New Testament, the Book of Revelation describes a vision seen by a Christian named John (possibly the same apostle credited with one of the gospels) while on the island of Patmos. In the vision, God opens seven scrolls, which are accompanied by disasters, trumpets are sounded, and beasts and other signs are depicted.
There are different ways of reading this book. Perhaps the most common way of interpreting the book is to see it as referring to the time period in which the book was written, probably towards the end of the first century A.D. when Christianity was new and when Christians were persecuted by the Roman Empire. Others see it as referring to humanity's struggles at all times.
Others see the book as making predictions about future events, noting that Revelation's first line indicates that its purpose "is to show [Jesus Christ's] servants what must happen soon." For example, author Hal Lindsey tried interpreting Revelation and other parts of the Bible to make predictions about a coming Russian invasion of Israel, among other things, with his 1970 book The Late Great Planet Earth, which was the best-selling U.S. nonfiction book of the 1970s.
Sources: L. Michael White, Understanding the Book of Revelation (available via PBS's Frontline here). Florence Morgan Gillman, A Catholic Reading of the Book of Revelation, The Living Light (Department of Education, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops) (Winter 2003) (on-line as a PDF here). John Philip McMurdo, Revelation (Westminster Pelican Commentary) (Westminster Press, 1979). Daniel Wojcik, The End of the World as We Know It: Faith, Fatalism and Apocalypse in America (New York University Press, 1997). Hal Lindsey with C.C. Carlson, The Late Great Planet Earth (Zondervan, 1970). Catholic Conference of Illinois, Statement on Left Behind Books and Videos (on-line here). The New American Bible's translation of the Book of Revelation is on-line via the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops here.
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