“Beam me up, SCOTTY!”

That stands as an iconic line from a TV movie series that we all know.

“Before those empty clothes hit the ground”

That from a narrator, gives us a cringe line that stands out in one of the Left Behind movies, Rise of the Antichrist (2023) directed by and starring Kevin Sorbo.

At 30,000 feet, Captain Ray (Sorbo) turns to the co-pilot, only to see his crumpled uniform lying on the right seat. And half the passengers have disappeared.

Later in the movie, Ray’s daughter goes to the cemetery with a shovel and digs up her grandmother’s coffin. Looking for confirmation of her growing belief in the Rapture, she opens the coffin to find only a nice dress and a cross necklace.

A narrator opens the movie with these lines:

“With God, all things are possible.” Matthew 19:26…now, for the first time, I know it’s true. You see, , six months ago, something impossible happened down there. In one instant of time, millions of people just disappeared without a trace. POOF. Gone…

Sorbo’s movie gives us clean entertainment with a clear intent to evangelize non-believers. The movie ends with Captain Ray (Sorbo), his daughter, and a pastor barely escaping the antichrist thugs who are trying to kill them. As Sorbo circles his single engine plane over the city, they ‘bomb’ the streets with Christian tracts explaining the “Rapture.”

The movie tells us that “there were plenty of warnings [about the Rapture]…but there were plenty of closed minds, and we all know that a closed mind is not an easy thing to open…those people just vanish into thin air…most people still had no interest in the fact that all of it was written down thousands of years ago in that dusty old book…”

In a video left behind by his wife’s pastor, Captain Ray Steel (Kevin Sorbo) hears the message that “false teachers” did not believe. And Ray had also failed to believe. His wife, “Irene had told him what would happen, and it did.”

The movie focuses on the extra-biblical teaching of the “Rapture,” NOT on Christ’s death on the cross and the Resurrection and His Second Coming. The movie message “trust the Bible” leads to this question by Chloe, Ray’s daughter (whose mom and brother had disappeared): “What about all those people who claim the Rapture is not in the Bible?”

The movie gives us an immediate answer: “First Thessalonians Four.”

But as any honest New Testament scholar will tell us, 1^st Thessalonians 4 gives its readers assurance about the parousia, the Second Coming of Christ. Verse 13 gives us the key context, the concern of some in Thessalonica that fellow Christians who had already died might be at some disadvantage when Christ returned. Verse 15 references the Parousia, the Second Coming.

As Prof. N. T. Wright wrote, “the rapture is an American obsession.” And the Left Behinders seem oblivious to the hard fact that the overwhelming majority of their fellow members of the Body of Christ, believe only the New Testament’s teaching about the Second Coming, not the extra-biblical Rapture teaching. That Rapture belief is confined mostly to a segment of American Evangelicals, and those to whom they sent missionaries with their Schofield Bibles [like those in the Corrie Ten Boom Quote Below] . But standard Evangelical reference works and commentaries do not teach that. See such noted New Testament scholars as F. F. Bruce, I. Howard Marshall, Leon Morris, etc.

The ‘Rapture’ business is a billion dollar industry which had sold over 60 million copies, by 2016, of just the Left Behind fiction series of books. And every popular Rapture teacher has his own books for sale. Think Hal Lindsey, back in the big beginning of this business. And then we see the list of many movies, including this one with Kevin Sorbo, and another with Nicholas Cage. The advertising budget is BIG. (Take that you New Testament scholars!).

The thrilling plot of “Rise of the Anitchrist” pushes the world towards “the great re-set,” a one world government, and a single electronic currency with all the trimmings. Terrified people and families watch murders and suicides all around them as they grapple with the disappearance of friends or loved ones in this world where the salt and light all went “poof” and vanished.

In the film we are told that the Rapture is “Jesus taking his church [true believers] to heaven to protect them.” [Never mind believers come lately like Kevin Sorbo and his daughter.]

This is a key point of the Left Behind teaching, [ “God did not appoint us to wrath”–1 Thessalonians 5:9a, ripped from CONTEXT] and its greatest irony. God will not leave those true, seasoned Christians here to go through the Great Tribulation, but He will leave these NEW Christians who are converted after the Rapture, during the tribulation, to do so, all by themselves!

Corrie Ten Boom noted: “There are some among us teaching there will be no tribulation, that the Christians will be able to escape all this….

“In China, the Christians were told, ‘Don’t worry, before the tribulation comes you will be translated — raptured.’ Then came a terrible persecution. Millions of Christians were tortured to death. Later I heard a Bishop from China say, sadly,

‘We have failed. We should have made the people strong for persecution rather than telling them Jesus would come first. Tell the people how to be strong in times of persecution, how to stand when the tribulation comes — to stand and not faint.’”

Paul, the Parousia & his Epistles

READ the Exposition of the texts in the LINKS above. Put behind you the cardinal sins of sloth and hubris. BE a true disciple, a learner.(LINK) “diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.
–-2 Timothy 2:15