I’m speaking as a Christian, a former minister, and a Bible student of 33 years, and I can say that “Left Behind” theology, besides being, at best, a dubious take on the Scriptures, has been the most dangerous way of thinking our country has ever known.
Since its inception in the mid-1800s — no, Christians didn’t believe this way for most of the Church’s history — it has led to phenomenal and sickening destruction of the natural world, fomented violence, and shackled the movement of the Holy Spirit in this world more than any other theology claiming to be “Christian.” And while I have friends who believe in a pre-tribulation, pre-millennial, dispensationalist eschatology (the religious study of the Last Days), and I wouldn’t separate from them over this, none of them would countenance the rape and suffocation of the Earth because of their theology.
Those in power in an economy of unfettered capitalism, however, see it as an open door to the extraction of unlimited riches from a finite world.
Jesus wept.