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At 9:45 Rayford sat straight up in his bed. He had dozed in his clothes with the television droning, but something had caught his attention. He’d heard the word Chicago, maybe Chicago Tribune, and it roused him. He began changing to his pajamas as he listened. The newscaster was summarizing a major story out of the United States.
At 9:45, Tim LaHaye sat straight up in his bed. He had been sound asleep, dreaming of the roaring fans that awaited at the launch event of his new book, Left Behind: Tribulation Force. What had awoken him was a thought, a realization that cut through Morpheus’s spell. If he moved both of his point of view characters to the Middle East, there would be nobody in America to witness important plot points. His heart raced. Tim looked at his watch. A shadow of relief fell over his face. That’s right; he hadn’t finished writing the book yet. But relief changed to inspiration like the snap of a light switch. He knew. With the dexterity of a man one-tenth his age—yes, a seven-year-old boy!—he flung himself from his mattress, down the hall, arms windmilling, and at last he trampled into his office. He gripped the chair at his desk with both hands, hurled it aside. Why did he need a chair when he had genius? The typewriter keys seemed to tremble in the light of a flickering bulb. This was it: the solution. His fingers sprang to action. A clack-cla-clatter filled the house like a tap-dancing regiments parading through the narrow hallways. Before Tim knew it, the final TING! of the typewriter sounded, and his hands could rest. His eyes watered. Dare he gaze upon such a masterpiece at this distance? A scene. A scene that solved all his problems. The muse had spoken, and he had heard, and the world would never be the same. How was Rayford to know what he must, even across the sand and the ocean, half a world away? A news report. All Tim’s worries faded with the plugging of that plot hole. And he was happy.
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When Buck and Ben-Judah were within about fifteen feet of the fence, one of the witnesses held up a hand, and they stopped. He spoke, not at the top of his voice as Buck had always heard him before, but still in a sonorous tone. “We will approach and introduce ourselves,” he said. The two men walked slowly and stood just inside the iron bars. “Call me Eli,” he said. “And this is Moishe.”
Okay, so the rest of this scene is surprisingly good. LaHaye does a good job creating a mystical atmosphere, and the witnesses speak only by re-enacting a story from the New Testament. There are enough layers of separation between the two parties that you can feel the distance of the powers that sent them. Reading this is a lot like reading an interaction a Greek hero might have with an oracle. This might be the best scene in the series so far, and only goes to prove my point that we really should have had an eye in this subplot starting in book one.
Buck wanted to humble himself, to communicate to his Creator and his Savior how unworthy he felt, how grateful he was. “All I can do,” he whispered huskily into the night air, “is to give you all of me for as long as I have left. I will do what you want, go where you send me, obey you regardless.”
Rayford foresaw the day when he would have to leave Carpathia’s employ and become a fugitive, merely to survive and help other believers do the same.
That’s just how planning for retirement feels sometimes
Buck saw an American Secret Service agent making a beeline toward him. “Cameron Williams?” “Who’s asking?” “Secret Service, and you know it.
Buck looked forward to seeing the president again. It had been a few years since he had done the Newsmaker of the Year story on Fitzhugh, the year Fitz had been reelected and also the second time the man had won Global Weekly’s honor. Buck seemed to have hit it off with the president, who was a younger version of Lyndon Johnson. Fitzhugh had been just fifty-two when elected the first time and was now pushing fifty-nine. He was robust and youthful, an exuberant, earthy man. He used profanity liberally, and though Buck had never been in his presence when Fitz was angry, his outbursts were
...more
No wonder he got left behind; he swears liberally
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“That’s it!” the president said, slapping Buck’s knee hard enough to make it sting. “That’s what gets me too!” He swore. And then he swore again. Soon he was lacing every sentence with profanity.
If he doesn’t stop, Tim will never be able to finish this dialogue scene! It’ll just be an endless series of “He swore,” “He swore some more,” and “Swore swore swore swore.”
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What he wouldn’t give to expose Nicolae Carpathia as a lying murderer, the hypnotic Antichrist!
The Holy Land was the place to be right now.
The 144,000 would be Jews, 12,000 from each of the original twelve tribes,
Umm, aren’t 10 of those tribes “lost”? As in killed off or dispersed into the greater Middle East peoples beyond the recognition of a tribe.
with his trademark shy confidence,
Buck felt the clear presence of evil, and nausea nearly overtook him.
Damn you, Taco Bell!
But his view only mirrored that of most of the populace of the world. Unless one was a student of Bible prophecy and read between the lines, one would easily believe that Nicolae Carpathia was a gift from God at the most crucial moment in world history.
And the signers of this treaty—all except one—were ignorant of its consequences, unaware they had been party to an unholy alliance. A covenant had been struck. God’s chosen people, who planned to rebuild the temple and reinstitute the system of sacrifices until the coming of their Messiah, had signed a deal with the devil. Only two men on the dais knew this pact signaled the beginning of the end of time. One was maniacally hopeful; the other trembled at what was to come.
Narrator takes a sudden break into omniscience that we haven’t seen before. That’s not necessarily bad, but it does remove any hint of nuance in terms of the reliability of our protagonists’ reading of events. I guess this is supposed the provide a dramatic feel, like the camera zooming back to encompass a moment more fully. But does it work that well, or is it just cheesy?
At the famed Wall, the two witnesses wailed the truth. At the tops of their voices, the sound carrying to the far reaches of the Temple Mount and beyond, they called out the news: “Thus begins the last terrible week of the Lord!” The seven-year “week” had begun. The Tribulation.
Dun dun dunnnnnnnnn! (We’ve been light on these in book two)
He placed the call, only to get a housekeeper who said that the rabbi had left twenty minutes before. Buck slammed his hand on the dresser. What a privilege he would miss, just because he had walked back to the hotel instead of taking a cab!
If only he had arranged the travel logistics better! Tsk tsk.
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As Tsion joined in the laughter, the waiter brought an unsliced loaf of warm bread, butter, a wheel of cheese, a mayonnaise-like sauce, a bowl of green apples, and fresh cucumbers. “If you will allow me?” Ben-Judah pointed to the plate. “Please.” The rabbi sliced the warm bread in huge sections, slathered them with butter and the sauce, applied slices of the cucumber and cheese, then put apple slices on the side and slid a plate in front of Buck.
Tsion *sliced* the apples?! This sounds like a solid 3-4 minutes of prep while Buck and all of the waiters just watch and do nothing.
Buck held his hands apart as if open to any question.
And Buck was off and running with the story of his own spiritual journey. He wasn’t finished until the rabbi was out of makeup and sitting nervously in the green room. “Did I go on too long?” Buck asked.
Wow, we didn’t even get a glimpse of the cab ride from the restaurant to here. That’s how you know LaHaye is excited.
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“No, Buck,” the rabbi said, deep emotion in his voice.
Nondescript emotion is the best kind of emotion. Sometimes it gets too intense, and I have to pull someone aside and say,”I FEEL so much right now. Don’t you?” And they say, “Yes. I feel emotion too!”
“As you are a man of prayer, would you pray that I will say what God wants me to say?” Buck raised a fist of encouragement to his new friend and nodded.
This is the most anime thing I’ve ever read in a book.
Chaim Rosenzweig said, “Frankly, as a nonreligious Jew, I think Nicolae fulfills more of the prophecies than Jesus did.” Rayford recoiled. What blasphemy!
We consulted a mathematician and asked him to calculate the probability of even 20 of the 109 prophecies being fulfilled in one man. He came up with odds of one in one quadrillion, one hundred and twenty-five trillion!”
How would you even come up with individual statistics for each prophecy?
“Jesus Christ is the Messiah!” the rabbi concluded. “There can be no other option. I had come to this answer but was afraid to act on it, and I was almost too late. Jesus came to rapture his church, to take them with him to heaven as he said he would. I was not among them, because I wavered. But I have since received him as my Savior. He is coming back in seven years! Be ready!”
Well color me surprised. I thought for sure this subplot existed just to give us a Jew's-lost-their-way lesson, and to strengthen Carpathia's stranglehold on power. That's one of the fun things of broken plot structures: they tend to be hard to predict.
Tsion Ben-Judah, whose wife embraced him tearfully and then sat with her children in another room, sobbing loudly. “I support you, Tsion,” she called out. “But our lives are ruined!”
“Yes, this is Rabbi Ben-Judah.” “This is Eli. I spoke to you last night.”
Elijah of the Old Testament knows how to work a phone?
CHAPTER 18 Eighteen months later
Sudden time jump. This should be good.
In truth, it would have been a snappy-looking and only slightly formal and pompous uniform, had it not been such a stark reminder that he was working for the devil.
This is just all new to him, Dad. He’s never been in love before.” “And you have?” “I thought I had been, until Buck. We’ve talked about the future and everything. He just hasn’t popped the question.”
On the one hand, I'm glad we didn't have to sit through the first 18 months of this relationship
“Bruce is hardly alone. The church is bigger than it’s ever been, and the underground shelter won’t be much of a secret for long. It must be bigger than the sanctuary.”
Already there was pressure from the Global Community North American government outpost in Washington, D.C., to convert all churches into official branches of what was now called Enigma Babylon One World Faith. The one-world religion was headed by the new Pope Peter, formerly Peter Mathews of the United States. He had ushered in what he called “a new era of tolerance and unity” among the major religions. The biggest enemy of Enigma Babylon, which had taken over the Vatican as its headquarters, were the millions of people who believed that Jesus was the only way to God.
At least a book's worth of developments (and silly names) happened between chapters
Do not wonder why so few of the 144,000 Jewish evangelists are from Israel! Israel remains largely unbelieving and will soon suffer for it!”
Okay, so we still got this in
Eli and Moishe had angered everyone, including the visiting Carpathia, the day of the celebration of the reopening of the temple. For the first time they had preached other than at the Wailing Wall or at a huge stadium.
"Look, we do two types of venues, and that's it. It's either this wall, a football field, or no deal. Absolutely no coffee shops, lecture halls, or concert halls. Go big or go home, that's what this flaming bush once told me."
