Multiple books in the series have been on the
New York Times Bestseller List. Starting in 2000, Books 7 and 8 reached number one on the list followed by book 10, which debuted at number one. In 2016, several books in the series were
bestsellers and 65 million copies were sold in various languages.
Critical response Evangelical shift and views on non-Christians In 1999, journalist
Adam Davidson placed the series in the context of a shift in evangelical views over the last several decades on non-believers. He argues that evangelicals went from "[not yet knowing] who they were in the American public sphere" in the 1960s and early 1970s to a "major shift in evangelical thought which allowed for political and social activism" by the late 1990s, more negative and divisive. Evangelicals, Davidson states, had previously been more separatist, with little interest in attempting to create large-scale religious, moral, and political change. He uses the 1972 Christian end-times film
A Thief in the Night as an example of this former approach, with its compassionate view towards unbelievers: "This is a portrait of regular people who don't know what to do and happen to make the wrong choice". In contrast,
Left Behind, he contends, has a contemptuous and triumphant view of non-Christians and their suffering in the end times that he sees as symptomatic of a larger change in
evangelicalism. While writing that the series fulfills the norms of mass-market fiction, magazine writer
Michelle Goldberg also characterized the books as an attack on
Judaism and
liberal secularism, and suggested that the near-future "
end times" in which the books are set seem to reflect the actual worldview of millions of Americans, including many prominent
conservative leaders.
Anti-Catholicism The books are written from an evangelical Protestant viewpoint. and that the new pope establishes a false religion. While the fictional
Pope, John XXIV, was raptured, he is described as "promoting Lutheran reform", and it is implied that he was raptured for this reason. His successor, Pope
Peter II, becomes
Pontifex Maximus of Enigma Babylon One World Faith, an amalgam of all remaining world faiths and religions.
Catholic Answers describes the series as anti-Catholic. The co-author of the book, Jerry B. Jenkins, as well as LaHaye, stated that their books are not anti-Catholic and that they have many faithful Catholic readers and friends. According to LaHaye, "the books don't suggest any particular
theology, but try to introduce people to a more
personal relationship with Jesus". Additionally, Paul Nuechterlein accused the authors of re-sacralizing violence, adding that "we human beings are the ones who put our faith in superior firepower. But in the
Left Behind novels, the darkness of that human, satanic violence is once again attributed to God".
Time said "the nuclear frights of, say,
Tom Clancy's
The Sum of All Fears wouldn't fill a chapter in the
Left Behind series. (Large chunks of several U.S. cities have been bombed to smithereens by page 110 of Book 3.)" David Carlson, a Professor of Religious Studies and a member of the
Greek Orthodox Church, wrote that the theology underpinning the
Left Behind series promotes a "skewed view of the Christian faith that welcomes war and disaster, while dismissing peace efforts in the Middle East and elsewhere—all in the name of Christ". B. D. Forbes "locates the series in the context of a well-established tradition of American popular culture...that presents the good-evil struggle as 'evil [coming] from the outside' with 'the solution [as] the destruction of the evil-doers".
Relationship to believed prophetic events Several scholars comment on the series' setting in time and relationship to perceived real, future events: religious studies scholar
Mark Juergensmeyer argues that the
Left Behind books are seen as fictional representations of future events, drawing a connection between the future violence portrayed in the books and "the violence in imagined worlds in the here-and now". Similarly, Andrew Strombeck additionally links the books to Derrida's "spectral time": "neither the future nor the present but a kind of ghostly future that haunts the present".
Glenn Shuck also contends that
Left Behind "does not...describe an other-worldly dystopia: it provides the shock-value of uncanny recognition of the present in a different form." Doris Buss and Didi Herman write, "While there is clearly some element of drama and 'play' to the 'Left Behind' opus...the series remains, at its core, a statement of how the authors and many other conservative Christians believe this world will end and a new one begin. In their detail, the 'Left Behind' 'novels' are indistinguishable from many works of ostensible 'nonfiction' penned by other [Christian right] writers."
Apocalypticism, conspiratorialism, and militias The series' focus on apocalypticism, totalitarian conspiracies, and militias has been noted by writers including
Gershom Gorenberg,
Michael Joseph Gross, and Andrew Strombeck. They note themes such as fear of
one-world government (in the form of the United Nations led by the Antichrist), global religion, and global currency – fought against by militias "structurally equivalent to Christians". University of Notre Dame religion scholar Jason Springs regards the series' apocalypticism as one aspect that would later feed into the evangelical adoption of
QAnon. Laurie Goodstein, writing in 1998 for
The New York Times, placed what she called the "
Left Behind phenomenon" in the
calendrical context of the approaching year 2000. Goodstein noted a 'proliferation' of similarly apocalyptic texts appearing at that time, by authors such as
Jim Bakker and
John Hagee. Goodstein cited the opinion of University of Wisconsin historian Paul Boyer, who described such authors as "cashing in on the public preoccupation with the year 2000".
American Century and American exceptionalism Marisa Ronan places the series in the context of the
American Century and
American exceptionalism, "proving at the fin-de-siècle that not only was the twentieth century American, it was Christian". Ronan notes that American evangelicals are portrayed as taking center stage in the apocalypse, fighting a spiritual battle against the UN's successor – headed by the Antichrist – which in part seeks to usurp the superpower status of the United States.
End-times theology and premillennial dispensationalism Along with some other rapture fiction novels, the
Left Behind series demonstrates a specific interpretation of the Gospel and the Christian life, one with which many have taken issue theologically. The books have not sold particularly well outside of the United States.
Dispensationalism remains a minority view among theologians. For instance,
amillennial and
postmillennial Christians do not believe in the same timeline of the Second Coming as
premillennialists, while
preterist Christians interpret the Book of Revelation as events that have already been fulfilled in the 1st century.
Brian McLaren of the
Emergent Church compares the
Left Behind series to
The Da Vinci Code, and states, "What the
Left Behind novels do, the way they twist scripture toward a certain theological and political end, I think Dan Brown|[Dan] Brown is twisting scripture, just to other political ends." John Dart, writing in
Christian Century, characterized the works as "
beam me up theology." However, those views are not universally shared. Other reviewers have called the series "almost laughably tedious" and "fatuous and boring." == Related series ==