Hey guys! So, a whole sequence of destined events led me to what we're going to talk about today. My sister was visiting and she wanted to go to this place called Labyrinth to look at graphic novels. So we wandered Bloor and Labyrinth was closed so we went to BMV books while we were waiting for our friend, who was going to meet us and we were going to go to a pub. I was just kind of looking at random books and Lindsay went to find a Stephen King book. She couldn't find one so I went to help her and we we were both really tired so we sat on the ground in front of the K's and there were no Stephen King books but I found...
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LEFT BEHIND BOOK 1! I'm pretty excited. I've wanted to read it ever since I read a Chuck Klosterman essay on it and I feel like yesterday was a whole sequence of events that led to me find it. And it was only five bucks, so that was cool. Anyway. Left Behind is a book series about the Rapture and then a group of people who team up to kill the Antichrist. Awesome premise right? Well, from what I've heard, the execution is not that great. For further reading, I recommend: http://exharpazo.blogspot.com/2007/01/index-to-slactivists-left-behind.html
I can't remember the dude's name, but he talks about Left Behind. And I wanted to do Left Behind before I even found his blog, so yeah.
So Left Behind is a religious book, so I feel the need to say this: I consider myself Christian. I believe in God and the devil and all that. I'm not sure if I believe in the second coming and the rapture and everything, but I don't disbelieve it. I don't believe in forcing my beliefs on other people, and I feel fundies give everyone else a bad name. I also feel that God accepts everyone, even if you don't consider yourself Christian. My aim in doing Left Behind is not to make fun of religious beliefs (okay...maybe fundie religious beliefs) but to make fun of literary technique. So here we go.
CHAPTER 1
Anachronistic word/phrase: "Private necking session."
So we start off with pilot Frisky McPorn-name, um, I mean Rayford Steele, thinking about flight attendant Hattie Durham. He likes that she touches his arm when she walks past and that she admires him. Rayford is unhappy at home because his wife is now super-religious. So basically, he's lusting after this chick because she's hot and she admires him. Personality? What's that?
This part's creepy though:
They had spent time together, chatting for hours over drinks or dinner, sometimes with coworkers, sometimes not. He had not returned so much as one brush of a finger, but his eyes had held her gaze and he could only assume that his smile had made his point.
Someone had made the point that Rayford was emotionally manipulating Hattie. Does this whole thing not sound like a dick move? He knows Hattie likes him and he does nothing to return her affection, even though he likes her too. It seems like he's making her work for it, making her emotionally turmoiled so that he feels like he has power. He's also planning on putting a hand on her shoulder, hoping she'll take that to mean that he wants a relationship. Wtf? Who over the age of 15 does such a passive aggressive thing?
Rayford still feels guilty over a "private necking session" at a party 12 years before. NO ONE TALKS LIKE THIS.
Rayford thinks that the reason he is not as religious as his wife is that's he's smarter and more logical. Asshole. Also, to Rayford, wife becoming religious=he is now free to have an affair without guilt. Not seeing the logic there, Ray, but whatever. I'm not too sure who we're supposed to be sympathizing with here.
Enter Cameron "Buck" Williams. He's a world famous super special awesome journalist. One day he went to Israel, and then we have an infodump.
Wtf? So in this flashback or whatever, Buck is talking about interviewing this guy in Israel. This dude had made this special fertilizer that causes the desert to erupt into flowers. I don't know why this is relevant, and the passage goes on for a very long time. It's not pushing the story forward. We don't give a shit about flowers. Why is this here?
Imagine what the formula might do if modified to work on the vast tundra of Russia! Could regions bloom, though snow covered it most of the year?
Yeah, sure. Let's try using this weird-ass formula to make plants grow in a place where they haven't grown in like, ever. I'm sure that will have no effect whatsoever on the environment.
Wait. Wait. Is this in the future? I'm confused. Apparently the whole world uses three different currencies. Why is this relevant? I don't know. Anyway, for some reason, Russia gets mad and launches an attack on Israel. Luckily, Buck is on the scene to cover this amazing event!
To say the Israelis were caught off guard, Cameron Williams had written, would be like saying the Great Wall of China was long.
This is a world famous journalist, ladies and gentlemen. Also, none of that quote is italicized in the book when it definitely should be.
He felt no bravado, no uniqueness.
That comma should be a semicolon. And one can't feel the emotion of uniqueness. Bravado is an emotion. Uniqueness is not. I'm not even sure what the writers were getting at here. So Buck thinks he's going to die and then all of a sudden a firestorm takes out the Russian offense. Deus ex machina, ahoy.
Despite what you tell us, Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, Ethiopia is not a Middle Eastern country.
Back to Ray. Hattie's flipping out because people have disappeared, leaving their clothes behind.
"Should I turn on the cabin lights?"
"No," he whispered. "The less people know right now, the better."
The FEWER people who know, Rayford. Dammit. Also, I'm pretty sure it won't take people long to figure out that A SHITLOAD OF PEOPLE ARE MISSING. Hattie's hysterical, reminiscent of that chick from Night of the Living Dead that my theatre HATED. Rayford's a big strong man, so he stays calm. Strangely, though, he immediately knows that these people have been taken in the Rapture. That's not the first conclusion I would come to.
CHAPTER 2
HA HA HA HA HA. This old lady asks Buck (who is also on the plane) to go check if her husband is in the bathroom and take a blanket because he's naked and he's really religious so he'll be embarrassed. I don't know what my reaction would be if some old lady was like, "Go find my husband and cover him up because he's naked. He'll be embarrassed." The lady doesn't even seem to find it strange that he has no clothes.
"I was hoping it was something on the plane. Some gas, some malfunction."
Yeah, because I'm sure GAS caused people to disappear. Someone else suggested spontaneous combustion, which is just as moronic.
Buck does something strange with the phone. He hacks into it to get a message to his boss, but the message might be in Morse code or some shit? I really don't know what's going on.
Buck calls the flight attendant "Beautiful Hattie." Really? What? Who does that?
This book is kind of amateurish, and it's kind of like Dan Brown-lite, if you can get lighter than Dan Brown. So far, no redonk fundie philosophy, so that's good I guess. We'll see tomorrow.
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PRETRIB RAPTURE – HIDDEN FACTS !
How can the “rapture” be “imminent”? Acts 3:21 says that Jesus “must” stay in heaven (He is now there with the Father) “until the times of restitution of all things” which includes, says Scofield, “the restoration of the theocracy under David’s Son” which obviously can’t begin before or during Antichrist’s reign. Since Jesus must personally participate in the rapture, and since He can’t even leave heaven before the tribulation ends, the rapture therefore cannot take place before the end of the trib! Paul explains the “times and the seasons” (I Thess. 5:1) of the catching up (I Thess. 4:17) as the “day of the Lord” (5:2) (which FOLLOWS the posttrib sun/moon darkening – Matt. 24:29; Acts 2:20) WHEN “sudden destruction” (5:3) of the wicked occurs! (If the wicked are destroyed before or during the trib, who would be left alive to serve the Antichrist?) Paul also ties the change-into-immortality “rapture” (I Cor. 15:52) to the posttrib end of “death” (15:54)! (Will death be ended before or during the trib?) If anyone wonders how long pretrib rapturism has been taught, he or she can Google “Pretrib Rapture Diehards.” Many are unaware that before 1830 all Christians had always viewed I Thess. 4’s “catching up” as an integral part of the final second coming to earth. In 1830 it was stretched forward and turned into a separate coming of Christ. To further strengthen their novel view, which the mass of evangelical scholars rejected throughout the 1800s, pretrib teachers in the early 1900s began to stretch forward the “day of the Lord” (what Darby and Scofield never dared to do) and hook it up with their already-stretched-forward “rapture.” Many leading evangelical scholars still weren’t convinced of pretrib, so pretrib teachers then began teaching that the “falling away” of II Thess. 2:3 is really a pretrib rapture (the same as saying that the “rapture” in 2:3 must happen before the “rapture” ["gathering"] in 2:1 can happen – the height of desperation!). Other Google articles throwing light on long-covered-up facts about the 178-year-old pretrib rapture view include “Famous Rapture Watchers,” “X-Raying Margaret,” “Revisers of Pretrib Rapture History,” “Thomas Ice (Bloopers),” “Wily Jeffrey,” “The Rapture Index (Mad Theology),” “America’s Pretrib Rapture Traffickers,” “Roots of (Warlike) Christian Zionism,” “Scholars Weigh My Research,” “Pretrib Hypocrisy,” “Pretrib Rapture Desperados” and “Deceiving and Being Deceived” – all by the author of the bestselling book “The Rapture Plot” which is available at Armageddon Books online. Just my two cents’ worth.
Holy shit. Did you read that guy's message ^^^ ??? Haha. I didn't.
-h.
HA HA HA dude ha ha ha. I am so sorry you read this book. You are gonna REGRET IT. Read 'em all, just to get ahead of Fred Clark's revision at http://slacktivist.typepad.com/ ... and uhm... yeah anyway I'll keep reading if you keep posting, but you may just want to go ahead and burn the book. Gets worse with each page. But Hattie is pretty flippin amazing by the end of the series cuz readers get so damn fed up with everyone else. :D
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