To date, the movie has been seen by perhaps more than 50 million people worldwide others estimate as high as 300 million. It has influenced a generation of Christians reared in the 1970s and ’80s. The film was released in 1972 and marks its 40th anniversary this year. If you have seen it, the setting was likely a church basement, a church camp, or some other quasi-authoritative space where the film’s sermonizing might have been accompanied by an earnest youth pastor worried for your soul. Here’s Frykholm on A Thief in the Night at 40:Ī Thief in the Night is a cult classic, where the word “cult” has more than one resonance. (Specifically, their splicing and twisting of several disparate verses in the Bible had them convinced the world had only a single “generation” after 1948.) They were absolutely certain, back when they made this movie, that the world was going to end long before 40 years had gone by. But it must be particularly strange for the filmmakers themselves. It’s jarring to realize this movie is 40 years old - another reminder that I’m getting older myself.
She knows this world, having immersed herself in PMD prophecy-mania while writing Rapture Culture: Left Behind in Evangelical America, which takes an empathetic and generous look at some of the tens of millions of fans of the World’s Worst Books. I’m a bit too brain-fried and bone-weary at the end of a long week to spend time today with the likes of Rayford Steele and Buck Williams, so instead let’s revisit this related classic with Frykholm. The full movie of A Thief in the Night is also on YouTube.) (Here’s Larry Norman’s version of the song.