1972–2011

American Apocalyptic Culture: Hal Lindsey, “Left Behind” and Harold Camping’s Failed Prediction (1972–2011)

The commonest form of Christian apocalypticism in the US is dispensationalism, going back to Darby: it reads the Bible as a code about the future and spreads through the mass media rather than church structures. It is marked by serial “ends of the world” (Hal Lindsey’s dates, the Left Behind franchise, Harold Camping’s prediction for 21 May 2011), the hunt for the Antichrist and suspicion of any unifying body. The assessments are Amy Johnson Frykholm’s.

Key points

• Frykholm: radio evangelist Harold Camping predicted the Rapture for 21 May 2011; “We Can Know!” billboards, radio in 48 countries; nothing happened. Camping then “serialized” the prediction: 21 May was only a “spiritual” apocalypse, the physical end would come on 21 October 2011; after that date he publicly apologized: God will end time in his own time, and he would set no more dates. Hal Lindsey (The Late Great Planet Earth, a 1970s bestseller) predicted dates for the end of the world: 1981, 1988, 2007, then added 2018. Left Behind (from 1995) grew from a trilogy into a franchise of 12 books, films and more; Walmart sold more copies than Christian bookstores. The film A Thief in the Night (1972) spread widely: the US Army donated projectors to churches and schools; rentals ran at 1,500 showings a month. Dispensationalists distrust any unifying body (UN, EU, WCC): the Antichrist is expected to rise as head of a world body. Until the mid-20th century Protestants saw the Antichrist in the pope; later the list grew: Hitler, Mussolini, Kissinger, Gorbachev, Hussein. Christian Zionism is tied to apocalypticism since the 17th century; John Hagee (CUFI) joins support for Israel with expectation of the end times. Expectation of the end drove missions: the gospel must reach every people before the end; in 1980–2005 believers in novels fight the Antichrist. The prophetic “lens” gives any event meaning; an interpreter who misreads the signs does not abandon the method but “studies harder”

People

• Harold Camping
• Hal Lindsey
• Tim LaHaye
• Jack Van Impe
• John Hagee
• John Nelson Darby

Place

United States; California

More on the doctrine

• New forms of millennialism: postmillennialism, premillenarianism, the Social Gospel (17th – early 20th century)