"Mickey" Efird has taught a legion of seminarians and many more lay people. His passion for teaching comes through especially in his teaching about the Bible's apocalyptic books. He thinks there's real homiletical gold there, which is being robbed by those he calls "Darbyists," dispensationalists who follow the teaching of John Nelson Darby as propagated by Hal Lindsey and the Left Behind novels. Efird provides an accessible history of that movement and the beginnings of a biblical response. Study questions and his readable style make this book ideal for ministers or laypeople.

In the past 10 years, few books of any variety have shown the kind of popularity and stirred the kind of controversy that have surrounded the "Left Behind" series of apocalyptic novels. The series about the end times has been a pervasive influence in the churches and in culture. But what does the Bible really say about the end times? James M.. Efird, a note Presbyterian scholar of the Bible and apocalyptic literature, explores the scriptural texts to answer the many questions raised by the series and guides readers through and enlightening look at the peculiar history behind the books.

The "Left Behind" series by fundamentalist authors Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins has sold more than sixty-two million copies worldwide! That fact alone cries out for a book such as the one James Efird, Professor of Scripture at Duke University Divinity School, provides here. Writing for a lay audience, Efird gives the historical background to "dispensationalism" and to the original promoter of this type of interpretation, the Irishman James Nelson Darby, who was active at the end of the ninteenth century. The heart of the book is brief explanations of such key concepts as the rapture, the millennium, and the Antichrist, and an assessment of their alleged biblical justification. Although most Catholic audiences find this very unfamiliar and strange territory, the inroads of such fundamentalist perspective require that pastors and thoughtful laity be informed. This book will help.

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