It's the 40th anniversary of the first Rapture (film)!

From Christianity Today:

It's been 40 years since the release of a film that wrecked havoc on the sleep of millions of souls in America and around the world, a film that combined religious themes with the chills of a horror film. No, not The Exorcist. But a year before that: Long before millions of readers were getting worried about being left behind, scores of viewers fretted about the ramifications of A Thief in the Night.

The film told the story of a young woman, Patty Myers (played by Patty Dunning), who wakes one morning to find that her husband has suddenly vanished, along with millions of other people throughout the world. The film brings to life the dispensational view of Matthew 24:36-44—one will be taken and one will be left—assuming the Rapture of believers takes place before seven years of tribulation … coming without warning, like a thief in the … well, you know. Patty faces the nightmare of a one-world totalitarian government that will usher in the coming of the Anti-Christ.

At the time, it was a radical new way of making a Christian film. There had been Christian movies before, particularly from Billy Graham's World Wide Pictures (usually about a troubled teen who considers smoking a cigarette before being converted at a Graham crusade). But Thief was different, using the conventions of science fiction and horror—everything from the "It's Only a Dream … or is it?" device (from every other episode of The Twilight Zone), to the paranoid "Are They With Me or Against Me?" questions (replace the Pod People of Invasion of the Body Snatchers with the Mark of the Beast people), to the End Credits with a Twist (The End??? from The Blob becomes The End Is Near). (Not coincidentally, Thief's executive producer, Russell Doughten Jr., worked on 1958's The Blob.) ...

Thief was a pioneer of the End Times genre; Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye have cited the film as an inspiration for their Left Behind series. Three Thief sequels were made (A Distant Thunder, Image of the Beast, and The Prodigal Planet) over the next decade.

Read the entire piece, titled "The Original 'Left Behind'". But was the movie, A Thief in the Night, the "original Left Behind" narrative? As far as cinematic apocalypses go, apparently so. (And I, as a young Fundamentalist, saw it at least three times; by the last viewing, I thought it was rather funny. Even embarrassing. Watch and judge for yourself.) But certainly not as a fictional narrative meant to describe, in one ham-fisted manner or another, the events in the Book of Revelation and other sections of "biblical prophecy"—at least as they have generally been interpreted by premillennial dispensationalists.

In fact, a "Rapture" novel titled Left Behind was published by Harvest House Publishers (right here in Eugene, Oregon) in July 1995, a few months prior to the first novel by LaHaye-Jenkins, which came out in September December 1995. It was penned by Peter and Patti Lalonde, who owned a movie production company, Cloud Ten Pictures, that produced the first two Left Behind movies in the late 1990s (the Lalondes and LaHaye later became entagled in some lawsuits over breach of contract and other fun stuff). It was as poorly written as the LaHaye-Jenkins' novel, but sold a few million copies less (by the way, if you want to learn how to write best-selling, badly written Rapture novels, see my handy—and free!—guide.)

The first Rapture novels appeared almost a hundred year ago, written by Sydney Watson, with titles including Scarlet and Purple (1913), The Mark of the Beast (1915) and In the Twinkling of an Eye (1918). Great fiction they were not, and that tradition of mediocrity has always remained, as demonstrated by the pedesterian (and hyper-evangelistic) 1950s novel, Raptured, by Ernest Angley.

Whatever other influences played a role in the hysterically bad writing found in the mega-selling Left Behind series, there is one book that stands out, but has never been mentioned, as far I know, by LaHaye or Jenkins. I discuss it in my book, Will Catholics Be "Left Behind"?, but I also wrote an essay about it, which I have flowed in below. What is notable, as I show, is how closely the books resemble each other in characters, plots, and gimmicks. Coincidence? You be the judge. Here goes:

Recycled Rapture | by Carl E. Olson (originally published in the Sept. 2001 issue of This Rock magazine)

Are you familiar with this End Times publishing success story? A "Bible prophecy expert" writes a gripping novel about Earth's final days, opening with the Rapture and an airplane flight and continuing on into the Tribulation period. It features a decent but initially unbelieving reporter, a grief-stricken husband whose wife has been raptured while he and his daughter have been "left behind," a corrupt Catholic leader who becomes the head of a one-world religion, and a charming but thoroughly evil global dictator who turns out to be the Antichrist. Published by Tyndale, it sells slowly at first but eventually becomes a bestseller. The Left Behind books by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins? Nope — guess again.

The apocalyptic novel is Salem Kirban's 666, originally published by Kirban in 1970, then published by Tyndale a few years later, and finally republished in 1998 by AMG Publishers. It was the first and perhaps the only Rapture novel of the 1970s and — according to its cover — sold over 500,000 copies in its first ten printings. Kirban's novel is based on the same sort of over-the-top dispensationalism popularized by Hal Lindsey (whose thirty-million-seller The Late Great Planet Earth also was published in 1970). It is poorly written, stereotypically anti-Catholic (discourses on the evils of Romanism are abundant), and sometimes unintentionally funny (the pope, one character lectures, is able to "beautify [sic] . . . saints"). Kirban, a former Vietnam War correspondent, went on to write a number of books on Bible prophecy and the End Times, including his own "reference Bible."

Tim LaHaye also has a Prophecy Study Bible, recently published also by AMG Publishers. Publishing a "reference" or "prophecy study" Bible in the mold of Cyrus I. Scofield's influential Reference Bible is apparently a sign that an author has reached expert status in the lucrative and increasingly competitive world of biblical prophecy — or, more precisely, of interpreting what the Bible supposedly states about the future. There is plenty of jockeying for position at the top of the Rapture literary heap, as a visit to your local Christian bookstore will confirm.

Which brings us back to the plot of LaHaye's and Jenkins' Left Behind story (now eight books in length and heading for a total of twelve) and Kirban's 666. They are remarkably similar, as this comparison shows:

1. Left Behind features a non-believing reporter as a central character; 666 features a non-believing reporter as the main character.

2. Left Behind begins with a scene on an airplane flight where a main character (a pilot) is when the Rapture occurs; 666 begins with a scene on an airplane flight, where a main character (a reporter) is when the Rapture occurs.

3. Left Behind has a main character (the airplane pilot) whose wife is a Christian and is raptured along with his son while he and his daughter are "left behind"; 666 has a main character (the reporter) whose wife is a Christian and is raptured, along with two of his children, while he and one of his daughters are "left behind."

4. In the Left Behind series, the pilot's daughter becomes pregnant, and her baby is in danger due to the Antichrist's persecution; in 666 the reporter's daughter becomes pregnant, and her baby is in danger due to the Antichrist's persecution.

5. Left Behind's airplane pilot begins reading the Bible (crying over it in his bedroom) and later discovers 1 Corinthian 15:52-53; the main character of 666 reads the Bible (crying over it in his bedroom) and immediately comes across the same passage.

6. The Left Behind series features an American cardinal who becomes the head of a one-world apostate church; 666 features "Brother Bartholomew," a Catholic leader who becomes the head of a one-world apostate church.

7. Both books are filled with characters who do little but fly around the globe, reading the Bible and applying it to the events around them. Many of these characters have access to high places, especially the Antichrist and his inner circle.

8. Tyndale Press published Left Behind (1995); Tyndale Press published 666 (1973).

These similarities are noteworthy for a couple of reasons. The first has to do with LaHaye's claim of originality for his series of books. In an interview in the March 28, 2000 issue of the Assembly of God magazine Pentecostal Evangel (www.ag.org/pentecostal-evangel/articles/conversations/4490_LaHaye.cfm), he insists that "Left Behind is the first fictional portrayal of events that are true to the literal interpretation of Bible prophecy. It was written for anyone who loves gripping fiction featuring believable characters, a dynamic plot that also weaves prophetic events in a fascinating story" (emphasis added). He also says, "While I was on an airplane flight in the 1980s, I got the idea for a novel about the Rapture. The idea percolated for years."

Not only did Kirban beat LaHaye by a quarter-century to the distinction of writing such a "first fictional portrayal" of a Bible-prophecy view of the End Times, it appears that LaHaye's Left Behind isn't even the first Rapture novel published with that title. In July 1995 Harvest House Publishers, a prominent Fundamentalist publishing house located in Eugene, Oregon, released husband-and-wife team Peter and Patti Lalonde's End-Time novel Left Behind. The first edition of the LaHaye/Jenkins' novel was released in November December 1995.

The publisher's blurb describes the Lalondes' book as "a revealing and intriguing look at the time on Earth between the Rapture and Christ's second coming. Designed to be a witnessing tool as well as informative reading, this book answers questions those who have not received Christ will have after the Rapture." While its cover notes that there are "over 200,000" copies in print, the sales of the Lalondes' book were eventually dwarfed by those of the LaHaye/Jenkins' work of the same name. Ironically, the names of Lalonde and LaHaye would become linked when LaHaye and Jenkins sold the movie rights to their books to Peter Lalonde's movie production company, Cloud Ten Pictures. (LaHaye has since sued Cloud Ten Pictures in an attempt to regain the movie rights.) Left Behind: The Movie was released on video in November 2000, and in February of this year it had a short-lived theatrical release.

LaHaye has been in the Bible prophecy business for over thirty years. I find it difficult to believe he had no knowledge of the books by Kirban and the Lalondes. While recycling might be good for the environment, it isn't very appealing when it comes to literature. Needless to say, most readers who accept as gospel truth the End-Time scenarios found in Left Behind have no idea that many of LaHaye's and Jenkins' major plot elements and characters can be found in a book written over thirty years ago.

Beginning in the 1830s with John Nelson Darby (the father of the Rapture), dispensationalists like William Blackstone, Scofield, Dwight L. Moody, Lewis Sperry Chafer, Charles Ryrie, Lindsey, and Kirban have been claiming that the Rapture will occur in their lifetimes or within "this generation" (Lindsey's favorite phrase). However, if readers learned a bit of the history of the Rapture, they might not be so prone to fall for it in all its various forms — especially as recycled, warmed-up, Left Behind leftovers.

While "Bible prophecy "experts" like LaHaye continue to miss the mark about the future, the Left Behind books have, in a way, fulfilled the words of Scripture in Ecclesiastes 1:9: "What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun."