Everything about The Late Great Planet Earth totally explained
The Late, Great Planet Earth is the title of a best-selling 1970 book co-authored by
Hal Lindsey and
Carole C. Carlson, and first published by
Zondervan. The book was adapted in 1979 into a movie narrated by
Orson Welles. Originally ghost-written by Carlson, later printings credited her as co-author, and Lindsey and Carlson went on to write several sequels, including
Satan is Alive and Well on Planet Earth and
The 1980s: Countdown to Armageddon.
Premise and plot
The Late, Great Planet Earth (
LGPE) is a popular treatment of literalist,
premillennial,
dispensational Christian eschatology. As such, it compared alleged
end-times prophecies in the
Bible with then-current events in an attempt to broadly predict future scenarios leading to the "
rapture" of believers before the "
tribulation" and
Second Coming of
Christ to establish his thousand-year (for example millennial) Kingdom on Earth. Focusing on key passages in the books of
Daniel,
Ezekiel and
Revelation, Lindsey originally envisaged these climactic events playing out in the 1980s, which he interpreted as one generation from the foundation of modern
Israel in
1948, a pivotal event in most evangelical fundamentalist schools of eschatological thought. Cover art on the Bantam edition boldly suggested that the 1970s were the "era of the
Antichrist as foretold by
Moses and Jesus," and called the book "a penetrating look at incredible ancient prophecies involving this generation." Descriptions of alleged "fulfilled" prophecy were offered as proof of the infallibility of God's Word, and evidence that "unfulfilled" prophecies would soon find their denouement in God's plan for the planet. Like many previous books,
LGPE postulated an Antichrist ruling over a ten-member
European Economic Community (now the twenty-seven member
European Union) as a revival of the ancient
Roman Empire, and a
Soviet invasion of Israel, as well as an increase in the frequency of
famines,
wars and
earthquakes, as key events leading up to the end of the world. Finding little in the Bible that could represent the
United States, Lindsey suggested that the most powerful nation on earth would be virtually annihilated in an early stage of the end-times scenario.
Although Lindsey didn't claim to know the dates of future events with any certainty, he suggested that indicated that Jesus' return would be within "one generation" of the rebirth of the state of Israel, and the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple.
Lindsey asserted that "in the Bible" one generation is forty years. Some readers took this as an indication that the Tribulation or the Rapture would occur no later than 1988. In his 1980 work
The 1980s: Countdown to Armageddon, which was essentially an updated version of
LGPE, Lindsey predicted that "the decade of the 1980s could very well be the last decade of history as we know it."
Place in popular culture
Although preceded by hundreds of similar Christian prophecy titles,
Late, Great Planet Earth broke new ground with its popular treatment of a complex subject and its breezy style. Such books often enjoyed high sales volume in the Christian market, but were typically overlooked in mainstream reviews and the wider popular culture.
LGPE was the first such book to be picked up by a secular publisher (Bantam, 1973) and break through to megaseller status. It was the "nonfiction" bestseller of the 1970s with over 9 million copies sold by 1978. Always remaining in print, despite some increasingly dated content, 28 million copies had sold by 1990. The sequel
The 1980s: Countdown to Armageddon, also published by Bantam, was on the
New York Times bestseller list for over twenty weeks. With its unprecedented popularity
LGPE set the stage for both greater awareness of
end times scenarios in the last decades of the 20th century, and the growth industry in Christian popular eschatological works such as
Tim LaHaye's
Left Behind series of novels.
Further Information
Get more info on 'The Late Great Planet Earth'.
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