Just got around to reading Left Behind by Tim LaHayne and Jerry B. Jenkins. I try and read most of the big bestsellers and anything described as a literary phenomenon. In 1998 it climbed to the top of the New York Times bestseller list with its three follow up books right behind it in positions two, three and four.
For those who don’t know, it’s a book based on the evangelical interpretation of some of craziest bits of the Bible, namely the prophesies of Revelations, Ezekiel and Isaiah. The premise being that just before the end of the world, God calls all the devout ‘real’ Christians up into heaven in an event called ‘The Rapture’. Those who don’t make the cut are ‘left behind’ on earth to fret and pout about this big cosmic snubbing like school girls failing to make the pep team. But that’s not the worst of their problems, while all the ‘real Christians’ are up in ‘heaven’, the devil is taking over the world like a supernatural Hypnotizing Batman villain and society is racked with famine, plague, war and earthquakes killing millions.
It’s basically a nasty self-serving Christian fantasy about the end of the world and how good they are and how badly they want everyone else to die in horrible ways or suffer terrible remorse for not being exactly like them. It’s vile propaganda wrapped up in a slick little Tom Clancy / Dan Brown paperback package.
Major religious power brokers in America, such as the late Jerry Falwell, have compared its importance to that of the Bible itself. Now I’ve no problem comparing works of fiction like the Bible with other works of fiction like this one but I’d have thought the ‘real’ Christians out there might perhaps be upset. But apparently not. They are lapping it up. This series has sold over 65 million copies and counting.
I got mine second hand from a Salvation Army store in Santa Cruz. Rather interestingly, for a book based on fear of the future and the end of the world, there was a business card tucked inside the pages from an Insurance Agency (nice idea BTW, Kari Frum, a big red-faced Alec Baldwin from Glengarry Glen Ross: ‘Always Be Closing’, to you).
Gays, abortion doctors, college educated atheists and common criminals are prominent amongst those ‘Left Behind’. Large quantities of those taken up are of course heroes and such; firemen, police officers, blameless children and the simple idiot folk who were mocked by the college educated for their childlike faith in Jesus.
They stop just short of giving devil horns to the Jews. Gays aren’t explicitly damned. The religious right uses code words against gays, stressing ‘Family Values’, wink wink. One interesting passage tells of an abortion doctor who is mad that business is down because all the little fetuses have been sucked up into heaven during the rapture. The doctor is portrayed as being impatient to start killing babies again because she’s got bills to pay.
You can disagree with the right to choose but I think you cross into the realms of being downright evil when you start portraying doctors and nurses as heartless killers concerned only with dollar bills. Especially when there are armed groups of people threatening and killing anyone who works at an abortion clinic or even a counseling centre. Such propaganda is on a par with the stuff the Nazi’s put out. Especially when a new healthcare system that would stop millions from dieing and going broke is being strangled on the floor of congress because Fox News is out their telling people abortions will be mandatory and we’ll all have to fund them with our taxes.
America, forget about Bin Laden, the clear and present danger is the religious cancer buried in your belly. With countless kids being home schooled and brought up to discount Evolution but believe in ‘The Rapture’ the nation is being slowly retarded back to the Stone Age.
By the end of the book the Jews are all being converted by two visiting Angels to the Wailing Wall called Eli and Moshe. Satan, brought to prominence by a shady cabal of world bankers, has charmed the United Nations into electing him king of the world by using impressive public speaking skills and is going run the show from a new capital city in Babylon. But fear not, for Christ will return and a small rag tag band of repentant Born Agains calling themselves the ‘Tribulation Gang’ are going to try and spread the word.
It would be funny if not for the existence of millions of people who believe this shit and really can’t wait for it to happen.
The sick little monkeys.
Of course the heaven they speak is not really mapped out. But we do know they think it’s a better place. Where everyone is happy and nobody suffers pain or disease or has to lock car doors. Whenever I ask a religious person about their vision of heaven they can’t really explain. It’s so much easier to picture a hell, to scare people Dante style. But in their heaven a person’s sense of self is maintained, forever. You will meet grandma and eat cookies. But Grandad might not be there because he was secretly gay/ an alcoholic / Jewish or some other faith.
In the book, the lucky ones get beamed up to heaven without their clothes. So initially, immediately following the rapture, there is a place where millions of Jesus freaks appear totally naked on top of millions of fetuses and other unborn children.
I think this is the book they should have written.
The sick little monkeys.
