I broke down and started reading the Left Behind series

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

Well, FTR this is one atheist who won’t be buying any of these UFO’s or “ball lightning” or the dog ate them all “explanations” if all the Protestant evangelical fundamentalist pre-millennialist Christians suddenly up and vanish. I will certainly regard any peace-loving statesman who suddenly looks like he’s about to institute World Peace after such an event with very deep suspicion.

Of course, I did have one thought–what if the number of Real Christians Who Will Be Raptured is a lot smaller than anyone thinks? What if those Heaven’s Gate guys were actually right?

And Thea–how about some anti-emetics to go with your fudge and Guinness? After all it would be a shame if you couldn’t even keep all that stuff down after reading all those Left Behind books for us…

42

Eve…do you have any idea how painful it is to laugh so hard that soda erupts through your nose?

43

I visited my parents over the holiday and didn’t have a book with me, so I picked up the first volume of my Dad’s set of LB books. I couldn’t even make it through the first chapter. Gag.

My dad is a retired minister and is forcing himself to read the books, even though he confessed to me that he thinks they’re awful. So, why is he reading them, you ask?

He is a police chaplain and often goes on patrol with the local cops. They’re all reading these things and constantly want to discuss them with him.

Does anyone else find this disquieting?

44

It is my belief that the authors of the Left Behind series are not Christians. They are not interested in proselytizing or fulfilling the Great Commission. They are merely capitalizing on the fear of the End Times and the resurgence of fundamentalist Protestant Christianity in this country, and furthermore, they are not doing this unawares, but with full knowledge of their actions.

My reasoning is simple: if they knew and researched interpretations of Revelation well enough to fictionalize an entire literal account of the Rapture, then I assume they knew Rev. well enough to know what it says right at the end of the book.

Now, this seems like a pretty clear warning to me. This might as well be a big neon sign to all believers saying, Don’t play around with this book. This is not a good area for experimentation. Now, let me hasten to say that I don’t care one way or the other. I’m an atheist. But for a true Christian, it seems that Revelation would be untouchable.

45

Ogre-

I agree wholeheartedly.

You have to remember, though, that most Protestant Christians believe that the Scriptures you cited apply to the entire Bible, yet insist on using versions of the Bible that have seven entire books, plus chapters of several others, edited out of them.

I think there is a school of Protestant thought that would find the LB books heretical, and the Catholic Church certainly would, but most fundamentalists would probably regard the LB series as a fairly accurate portrayal of the End Times.

Scary.

46

Thea Logica,

I’d be the last one in the world to argue that religion is consistent.

I was just thinking that for a fundamentalist literalist to write the series casts serious doubts on the sincerity of their faith…

47

OK, dug up the thread for an update.

I’m about halfway through Appollyon, the sixth book in the series. My reading rate is slowing as my aggravation increases.

OK, you start the series with millions of people disappearing into thin air. A bunch of people get saved, but mostly life goes on as normal. Brief mentions of staffing shortages resulting from the Rapture, but nothing in the storyline about the effects on the economy, availability of services.

One world government, one world currency, life goes on, nothing about the effect this on the economy, as far as inflation, and how it effects people. World War Three is fought, and over in a matter of days. The Antichrist wins.

Massive worldwide earthquake, a quarter of the world’s population is killed, massive worldwide hailstorm that destroys a third of the trees in the world, a “star”, actually a giant meteor called Wormwood explodes over the Earth, resulting in the poisoning of the world’s water supply, and most of the sixth book is taken up with the events surrounding a massive convention of believers in Jerusalem. WTF? “Hey, I just lost my home, my family, everything I own in an earthquake, all of my friends are dead, the roads and infrastructure have been destroyed. A third of the world’s water supply has been poisoned, and most of the plant life on the planet is kaput. I think I’ll hop a plane and go to the Jesus-fest in Jerusalem”

Basically, the books sort of mention that these catastrophic occurrences occur, but the story is still pretty much a very bad action/adventure series, with a lot, and I mean a lot of preaching woven (very badly) throughout the story line. Castrophe occurs, a bunch of people get saved, but life seems to carry on as normal. There doesn’t seem to be much in the books about how people are surviving after earthquakes, hail, water turning to blood, the earth’s water supply being poisoned. It’s all the heroes running around, rescuing one another, getting shot at, and preaching, with little sense of what life, or survival would be like in a post-apocalyptic world.

I don’t understand the continuing popularity of the series. You’d think that, outside of a very narrow niche market of fundies, people who read the books would tell their friends, “Don’t bother, they suck”, and the series would die for lack of interest.

Unless it’s all people like me reading them as a sort of sociological project.

Please send more fudge and Guiness.

48

Vegas has libraries?!?!?!?!??!!

:smiley:

49

certainly- and you can go 'double or nothing" for your fines. The slots ARE a bit noisy, tho. :smiley:
Umm, as a Celtic Christian- whose Church in a way is really fundamentalist (we accept only the Gospels as Gospel), but we also accept that many other faiths, even non-Christian ones- have some part of the “truth”- I REALLY want to see the looks on the faces of those Fundies who think Heaven is for them, and them only.

50

Gee, where I am, the books are the equivalant to the Family Circus. Nobody cares about them. Occassionally you see it on the racks at the “Family Bookstore,” but that’s that.

On the Pop Culture scale, Stephen Hawkings’ “Brief History of Time” is higher on the list.

Gee, am I really that far out of touch with the Bible Belt.

51

hey thea, when your done sacrificing yourself on the left behind series, try the christ clone series. it has just 3 books in the series. i’d be interested in hearing what you think of them.

52

Thea, thanks for the update. I’d been wondering just yesterday how you were getting on with them.

53

Question for those who have read the books, since I haven’t and have no desire to:

So, what’s the deal, everyone happened to have their backs turned at just the right moment? No one saw one of the “saved” vanish right before their eyes?

54

Actually, Max, people do apparently see the “saved” vanish. There is a description in the first book of a videotape taken by an expectant father as his wife is being wheeled into the delivery room of her stomach suddenly going flat (infants and young children, being innocent, are raptured along with the “saved”), and the placenta being delivered, sans baby. A nurse in the background also disappears, and her clothes sort of collapse to the floor.

Of course, there are the requisite car accidents as “saved” people disappear from behind the wheels of their automobiles.

And a scene from a soccer field in Indonesia, game being played apparently between the teams of two Christian schools, where both teams, along with most of the spectators, vanish. A lone player remaining on the field, realizing that the Rapture has just occurred and he has been left behind (oy) commits suicide on the spot. All captured on camera and played on the evening news.

55

I have read all of the LB books (so far), and am on the waiting list for “The Mark” at my library.

All of them could be cut by at least 30% without harming continuity (as well as making them more readable). Does anyone else get the feeling they are padding shamelessly to stretch the series out over as many volumes as possible?

Don’t know how to judge their theology. I keep getting the feeling there is a well-developed theory of eschatology behind them, and they are addressing disputed points about what will happen and when, but I am not familiar enough with Southern Baptist theology to know what the points are.

To give some perspective, I have also read some Harry Potter to see what the excitement was about. Still not clear on that, so maybe my tastes are way outside the mainstream.

For anyone who has read it, is “The Mark” any different from the rest of the series? Does it show any sign of wrapping the whole thing up? I heard there were going to be 10 volumes. If the pace doesn’t pick up soon, it will be more like 25.

And I cannot imagine how they will handle the actual Second Coming.

Is there any really good Christian fiction out there? I love C.S.Lewis’ Space Trilogy and Narnia (finishing reading “The Last Battle” to my kids); I have read Bunyon’s “Pilgrim’s Progress”, and I really liked one scene in Paretti’s “Piercing the Darkness”, but I would welcome any suggestions for good Christian fiction, preferably written in the last thirty years or so.

Regards,
Shodan

56

Yep, I think they are padding the story. If I remember, there were only supposed to be 7 to start with, and now that’s up to 12. I pretty much wish they would get it over and done with.

**

Nope, The Mark shows no signs of speeding things toward the end. It does show a slight return to the (for lack of a more accurate word) excitement of the first books, but it still has a good deal of the rehashing that occurs in the other books.

57

Funny, I had never heard about Left Behind until yesterday, at this place What’s “the great LBMB invasion” ? and now I see it here.

I’ll agree with Sterling North, it must be a Bible Belt thing. I’ve never seen the books.

58

I guess that link was too long and it broke up. Try this, and then bigred What’s the great LBMB invasion ?

59

Lsura and Shodan-

They are most decidedly padding the story. A lot of what’s in the books is repetitive and redundant. I’ve seen instances where a page and a half is spent reiterating something that happened in a previous book, when it would have taken only a few sentences to refresh the reader, or bring someone who “came in in the middle” of the series, up to speed, then they spend a couple of paragraphs later in the book, just in case you picked it up and started reading in the middle. They’ll even spend a page restating something that just happened earlier in the book.

I think the series would have worked a lot better it it had been a “Survival in the End Times” story, where the main characters are scraping along trying to get by after the catastrophic events, and eventually drift into the Antichrist’s circle as they work toward putting a stop to his evil. Instead, they are almost instantaneously, should I say, miraculously? placed high up (his personal pilot, publisher of a Global Community news magazine, live-in girlfriend), which puts them in a position to easily get insider information. It took the Antichrist almost four books to figure out that some of his closest confidants were “Tribulation Saints”, and they didn’t lose their jobs until well into the fifth book (which is the one I’m currently reading. I had stated I was in the middle of the sixth book. Apparently one of the effects the LB series has on the reader is an impairment of some of the higher mental functions, such as the ability to count past four. I’m sort of taking a break and reading the actual Bible, and some genuine works of Biblical scholarship, end-times unrelated).

Also, Shodan, the books are fairly true to a “pre-tribulation rapture” theology that seems predominant among Pentacostal protestants. I probably know more about this sort of eschatology than a Catholic girl really ought to. I used to watch a lot of “Christian” television, and occasionally turn on TBN if I’m having a hard time getting to sleep…

60

I was almost entirely sure I wasn’t going to read them. I kept saying “not interested.” & I heard about them one too many times in bible study & read about them one too many times on this board…

and now I’m on page 181 of this truly awful book. I could put this down right now & walk away - no problems whatsoever. Its bad. It is very, very bad. At times, laughingly horrid, but that’s only the occasional phrase. Usually it only descends far enough to be really annoying.

But I want to be able to say “I read it.” So that when I say “It’s not a good book” I have endured the actual experience, and am not judging something unfairly.

I should have listened… but no, now I’m stuck…