So, after a lengthy (almost two year) hiatus, I have resumed my reading of the Left Behind series so y’all won’t have to. See, I had just gotten “The Mark” at deep discount in hardcover, and I really don’t like paying hardcover price for most books, so I wanted to wait for the next one to come out in paperback, then there were job problems, no money to buy books and I like to own rather than borrow my reading material- fortunately, if in good condition, the LB series fetches a good price at use book stores.
Anyhoo, just got done reading “Desecration.” Nicolae Carpathia (a/k/a The Antichrist) has officially made the transition from interesting, suave, debonair evil world leader to cartoon villian. And the subtle jabs at the Catholic Church continue, as expected.
Carpathia early on in the book rides a pig down the Via Dolorosa, skipping a few stations of the cross because he “knows for a fact” that Jesus never stopped there. This is an obvious statement on the authors’ part that “if it ain’t recorded in the Bible, it didn’t happen”. Since a few of the stations are “only” handed down through tradition, they are not legit. Later, Carpathia slaughters the pig as a sacrifice to himself, just after committing a murder, in the Holy of Holies in the newly rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem.
On a more positive note, after seeing a vision of the Archangel Michael, (whose guest appearance I particularly resent, him being my patron saint and all) Hattie Durham, the most annoying character in the series, publicly calls Carpathia a blasphemer and is toasted on the spot by World Religion Leader Guy Leon Fortunato, who has powers, but only in the presence of the Antichrist.
Chaim Rosenswieg gathers her ashes into an urn for later proper scattering, then leads all the believing Jews out of Jerusalem, Moses style, to a place of safety. He gives another little swipe at the Catholic faith when he says “We don’t worship the relics of saints, but I’m going to scatter these later”. OK, that was severely paraphrased, but it still lends credence to the misconception that Catholics pray to the body parts of our revered and departed saints.
Later, Carpathial’s army, sent to exterminate the believers, is swallowed up by the earth. Yay, God.
Of course, the series’ innate sexixm crops up. Women are still consigned to extremely peripheral roles, and when they do get anything important to do, they bollix it up, endangering the entire Tribulation Force. Chloe Steele Williams, daughter of main character and Trib Force honcho Rayford Steele and wife of Buck Williams (doncha just love the action hero names?) is the head of the international co-op that believers use to trade goods and services, thus staying out of the Global Communitie’s financial system, but there is no detail given on how she put it together. It just says she did. Clearly the co-op exists solely so the authors can say, “See, we put women in important roles”, but there is nothing about the co-op, the problems encountered in acquiring said goods and services- anything really major the Trib Force needs is acquired by the men. And in the meantime, Chloe whines incessantly that she never gets to go on any of the really cool missions, never mind that she has a co-op to run, a baby to take care of, and oh, yeah, she has put the entire Trib Force in danger by going out at night to investigate a mysterious light in the supposedly nuked city of Chicago. Which leads her to another small group of believers.
Of course, the writing is still overwrought, with far too many adjectives (you could probably shorten the series by at least one book just by taking out the unnecessary adjectives), lots of exclamation points where a period would suffice, and the characters talk like characters in a preachy, poorly written “Christian” novel instead of like actual people.
Anyhoo, that’s my update. I plan on reading “The Remnant” next week.
