Editing Left Behind (section)

==== 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".<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Ingersoll |first=Julie |author-link=Julie Ingersoll |date=2022 |title=America's Holy Trinity: How Conspiracism, Apocalypticism, and Persecution Narratives Set Us up for Crisis |url=https://www.pdcnet.org/jrv/content/jrv_2022_0010_0001_0073_0088 |journal=[[Journal of Religion and Violence]] |volume=10 |issue=1 |pages=81–82 |doi=10.5840/jrv202281698 |issn=2159-6808 |url-access=subscription}}</ref> 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".<ref name="Strombeck">{{Cite journal |last=Strombeck |first=Andrew |date=2006 |title=Invest in Jesus: Neoliberalism and the Left behind Novels |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4489261 |journal=[[Cultural Critique]] |issue=64 |pages= |issn=0882-4371}}</ref> [[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."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Gribben |first=Crawford |date=2007 |title=Review of Marks of the Beast: The Left behind Novels and the Struggle for Evangelical Identity |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40006389 |journal=[[Journal of the American Academy of Religion]] |volume=75 |issue=2 |pages=455–458 |doi=10.1093/jaarel/lfm020 |issn=0002-7189 |jstor=40006389 |url-access=subscription}}</ref> 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."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Buss |first=Doris |title=Globalizing Family Values: the Christian Right in International Politics |last2=Herman |first2=Didi |date=2003 |publisher=University of Minnesota Press |isbn=978-0-8166-9517-1 |location=Minneapolis, MN |chapter=Introduction}}</ref>