Oh good, something's actually happening finally

 Ok, so we're back with Book 3 in Tim LaHaye and Jerry B Jenkins's Left Behind series, Nicolae.

After two books of what mostly consisted of setting up Armageddon, we finally start getting payoffs as the Horsemen ride. Oh look, the United Nations (now Global Community) is using its 10% of all arms on Earth to bomb major cities! Oh look, Bruce is actually dead! 

Let's see, Carpathia, the Antichrist, has moved the GC to New Babylon somewhere in Iran. His new plane, flown by Rayford, has a special gadget that lets Rayford listen in to conversations in the back while he's flying. Buck winds up in Israel to sneak Tsion Ben-Judah out since two factions want him dead. Oh yes, and after the major story lines are resolved and Buck's magazine predicts the "Wrath of the Lamb" Earthquake when the 6th seal is broken, we get a world wide Earthquake that removes the global population down to roughly 75% of the population pre-Rapture. Ben-Judah is living in the fallout shelter under New Hope Baptist. Buck, who survived the quake in a Range Rover is trying to find Chloe and Ben-Judah in the wreckage. Hattie has more or less vanished, having spent most of the book being a strawman of why it's not OK to abort the Antichrist's baby. And Rayford is in the air with Carpathia when the quake hits, so he's fine. 

Ok, so, none of the major core characters dies until towards the end, and they all come back for the finale, so we're not worried about any of them at this point, nor are we particularly worried about them anyway, since they remain flat characters, acting as cyphers to relate the beliefs and arguments of the authors. 

Like I said, there's literally a few chapters devoted to arguments against abortion, that later get roped in to how abortion leads to Eugenics. There's the big reveal that Buck's personal nemesis is a lesbian, which gets thrown in with the whole "Fidelity in Marriage, chastity in singleness" argument that was viewed as a compromise in the 90's. (I'd say I wonder if that argument changed at all when Same Sex marriage became a thing, but I'm pretty sure legalizing marriage more or less threw off the veneer of that argument, revealing again the absolute repulsion certain people have towards non cishet relationships.)

Oh yes, we get more about how Militias, even prophesied to fail against the Antichrist, are a good thing, about how one should invest in gold, because one we get to one world currency, Christians will not be able to use it because it requires the Mark of the Beast... (Deeper you go down the hole, the more the commercials on Faux News make sense.) About the only argument they present that I halfway agree with once you separate it from the Abortion leads to Eugenics and thought control by a strong man, is the one they make about Free Speech as the GC creates the Morale Monitors (secret thought police, and I might add I think they're using the wrong word, since in context, it really should be Moral) to start silencing dissenting voices. Yeah, I tend to believe people should be allowed to speak their mind, and I frankly could give two shits about Evangelists praying me into hell. (I grew up in an era when Brother Jed would come preach on the Quad at Wright State, and the shit the Westboro Baptist did and still do.)I still fight with myself about how responsible one is for what actions one's words inspire. The problem here is that instead of actually exploring the argument, we instead get "The bad people are trying to silence the Christians!" because there is no gray area in these books. 

Honestly, while the writing is slowly getting less wooden, it doesn't change the fact that every character in here feels like they're marionettes dancing on strings while lipsyncing to a recorded message. 

As a side note, since it is October, I'm switching out of series reads to start having fun with one shot horror novels in my collection for a bit.

Why did I decide to reread this?

 OK, so we're continuing our really rather sad rereading of Tim LaHaye and Jerry B Jenkins' Left Behind series, now in volume two, Tribulation Force. 

So, we start off not long after the end of Book 1, where our core group of Rayford Steele, Chloe Steele, and Buck Williams formed the Tribulation Force under Pastor Bruce Barnes. The Antichrist is still up an running, but, even though the Rapture has happened and the two Witnesses are preaching at the Wailing Wall, the "Period of Tribulation" with its 7 year countdown to the Reappearing of Jesus has not yet started.

Which means by the end of book 2, the Lamb has yet to crack open the second seal. The first is supposedly the Antichrist, in this series Nicolae Carpathia. And he gets 18 months before the second seal gets broken after some kind of treaty with Israel. 

(Again, the authors are pulling a bunch of shit out of several books in two different canons. For the sake of accuracy, doing my best to present this from their viewpoint.) 

Anyway, Rayford gets offered a job flying Air Force One, and Buck gets offered a job working for Carpathia as a reporter. Neither wants it, wind up taking them anyway. (Given the story needs people on the inside that can keep us informed as to what Satan is doing, it's not like they had a choice in the matter, and indeed, they kind of violate their own rules later on in the series once the Mark of the Beast happens. If and when I get that far, we;ll return to that.)

Buck and Chloe get married. Rayford marries Amanda, someone who knew his wife. The UN consolidates under a 10 member security council, all global currency becomes the Dollar, and every country is expected to destroy its arm. Carpathia signs a treat with Israel, allowing them to rebuild the temple, but only after the Cincinnati Archbishop takes over as Pope and consolidates the world's religions into the new Enigma religion. Well, except the Christians who believe as our protagonists. Oh yeah, and it's revealed that Hattie, who Rayford nearly cheated on his wife with, is knocked up with Carpathia's baby. And we meet Ben-Tsion, the Orthodox Rabbi who tells everyone at the end he has found Jesus is the Messiah promised in the Torah.

Most of the reviews I've have read of this particular volume written by people who aren't of the same mindset as the authors focus on the severe misogyny in the treatment of Hattie. Which is very true, but ignores the rather nasty Anti-Catholic and Antisemitic strains that also ooze out of the pages in places. Probably a bit of Anti-Islamic stuff as well, but so far the only real mentions of the other Abrahamic faith center of the moving of the Dome of the Rock to New Babylon since the rock matters more than the place, bits about planting a cemetery in front of the gate so that the messiah can't walk into it, and a lone Muslim being burned by the Witnesses. I seem to recall later on that a group of Armed Muslims help the Tribulation Force and are beset by Angels telling them to accept Jesus, but that's several books down the road. And frankly, given the new religion as of yet is not fully organized, we haven't hit the eye rolling commentary on anything that ain't Crispy Christian. 

And lest we forget, I should also mention the rather startling endorsement of Militia groups to resist the NWO, even if they're fated to be defeated by the Antichrist. Or the fact Pastor Bruce is at one point setting up a worldwide network of Xenos style home churches....

I mean, honestly, the wooden writing is bad enough without the other bad ideas getting thrown in here. I find myself again wondering about who they thought the target audience was, as the majority of people most likely to read the series would be taken up in the Rapture should such a thing occur, I kind of doubt the rather confrontational style of Evangelism within would particularly motivate a non believer, and I seem to recall their placement of the Rapture is controversial in their own circles. (Ever want fun, go read through some of the wiki articles on pre and post millennial rapture. It really is proof Unverified Personal Gnosis isn't just a pagan/wiccan thing.) I know they probably made bank on this series, given it hit the bestseller lists, and the back has adverts for the YA series as well as videos you can order for the sinner who get left behind...

I mean, the sunken cost fallacy means I'll likely finish this reread, but wow, is it painful.

And the Guf was empty

 For reason I still can't quite fathom, I decided to at least attempt to reread Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins' Left Behind series, which unsurprisingly starts with Left Behind. (As a note, I read the series back when I first moved to Columbus in 2001, found the entire thing [mostly] at a used book sale, and decided to grab it, since it cost roughly $2.) Well, gee, let's start unpacking this.

We open with Rayford, Pan Continental pilot, flying New York to London. He's contemplating putting the moves on his lead flight attendant, Hattie. Well, problem being quite a few people on the plane vanish into thin air, leaving their clothing, implants, fillings, etc behind. One the flight also is Buck, reporter wunderkind for a weekly news magazine. Buck had been in Israel a few months earlier and watched as Russia bombed it, but through a miracle, no damage was done. 

So, Rayford finds his wife and son have vanished, but his daughter in San Jose is still there. Buck goes to Chicago, then does manage to get to London, where one of his sources blows up in a car bomb.

Rayford reaches out to the church his wife attended, and learns that this was The RAPTURE, and he missed being taken to heaven by Jesus, and must now become a Christian to make it to heaven 7 years hence after the world more of less gets destroyed. He works on bringing daughter Chloe into the fold, Hattie and Buck as well. In the mean time, a rising political star out of Romania ascends to the presidency of his country, then takes over the United Nations by the end of this book. That would be Nicolae Carpathia. By the end, Buck, Rayford, and Chloe join Pastor Bruce in forming the Tribulation Force, trying to survive the upcoming seven years of Tribulation. Hattie has become Nicolae's personal assistant. 

Now then. Anyone who's read this objectively will testify that the prose is horrible. That becomes fairly obvious after a chapter or two. The dialogue is stilted, and the world seems to recover from the disappearances a heck of a lot more quickly that one would imagine. Depending on how one reads The Book of Revelation, the Antichrist is the first seal broken, so his appearance isn't a great surprise. (I always through it was War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death, but some translations lump War and Pestilence into one horseman. Neither here nor there. Given the series needs a villain, Carpathia steps up fairly easily.) We also get the "Two Witnesses" (Eli and Moshe) quite a bit earlier than the book this is supposedly coming out of places them. Here, they show up about 2/3 of the way through book one. In Revelation, they show up in Chapter 11 after the 6th trumpet. Again, not my concern. I'm not a biblical scholar by any means. Then again, as I understand it, the entire Rapture scenario isn't actually in Revelation, and instead comes from Paul's letters, and given there are entire non fiction books dedicated to arguing when exactly in the end of the world its supposed to happen, I can only roll my eyes and think of the scene in Life of Brian when everyone picks up his holy relics to make everyone else worship. Or the whole thing about how Carpathia resembles an original Roman, blond and blue eyed. (Sweetie, that's Northern Europe.) Or the complete lack of poor people or people of color in this. Or the random conversation between Hattie and Rayford about how Abortion doctors need pregnant women to stay in business. (Seems the babbies and embryos and fetuses all got taken up with the children.) 

I mean, when I originally read this series, I was looking for insight into how certain segments of society I was interacting with thought. 20 some years on, after listening to dog whistles being blown through megaphones for several years, yeah. There are several in here, like ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT, ONE WORLD CURRENCY, PEOPLE WITH MONEY AND INFLUENCE DESTROYING EVERYTHING (ok, that last one is kind of true, but here, it's more George Soros is working for the Antichrist than Elon Musk is flooding a platform he bought with racism and fascism.)

I just can't wait to get into the later books again, where we get condescension to any belief that isn't either Orthodox Judaism that will accept Jesus by the final book  or Crispy Christianity, or some Dante-esque moments where people they don't agree with are shown to have failed to be good Christians and are therefore being Tribulated. Wee.