I was fascinated to learn that New Testament scholar Barbara Rossing was first drawn to studying the book of Revelation because of her interest in environmental issues. Many of us are not much interested in apocalyptic literature, especially not as represented by the Left Behind novels. And yet we have a potential apocalypse on our hands in the form of the environmental crisis.
In her 2004 book The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation (Westview), Barbara R. Rossing challenged notions about the rapture and the end-times destruction of the earth that are popular in evangelical Christian circles and are elaborated in the Left Behind series of novels. She has since had a number of opportunities to engage in public discussions on end-times theology and the interpretation of Revelation. A professor of New Testament at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, Rossing did her Ph.D. work on Revelation and ecology.