The Late, Great Planet Earth

The Late, Great Planet Earth

Author	Hal Lindsey Carole C. Carlson
Publisher	Zondervan
Publication date	1970
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)

The Late, Great Planet Earth is the title of a best-selling 1970 book by Hal Lindsey with Carole C. Carlson, and first published by Zondervan. The book was adapted by Rolf Forsberg and Robert Amram in 1976 into a movie narrated by Orson Welles and released by Pacific International Enterprises. It was originally ghost-written by Carlson, whom later printings credited as co-author. Lindsey and Carlson went on to write several sequels, including Satan is Alive and Well on Planet Earth and The 1980s: Countdown to Armageddon.

The Late, Great Planet Earth is a treatment of literalist, premillennial, dispensational eschatology. As such, it compared end-time 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 (i.e. millennial) Kingdom on Earth. Focusing on key passages in the books of Daniel, Ezekiel and Revelation, Lindsey originally suggested the possibility that these climactic events might play out in the 1980s, which he interpreted as one generation from the foundation of modern Israel in 1948, a pivotal event in some conservative evangelical 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.