The Left Behind Complete Set, Series 1-12

by Tim LaHaye

“You ready for some fun?” “I thought you’d never ask! I haven’t had any real fun for ages.” “You’re gonna risk your life and break the law,” Buck said. “Is that all? I’ve been there before.”

Ken Ritz is still one of the best characters

“He’s afraid to hurt that squad car, isn’t he?” Buck said. “Do not be so sure,” Tsion said. “I’m sure.” Buck slammed on the brakes, making Tsion slide forward and cry out. Buck heard the screeching tires behind him and saw the squad car lurch off the right side of the road and down into loose gravel. Buck punched the accelerator. The bus stalled. As he tried to start it he saw the squad car, still in the gravel, coming up along his right side. The engine kicked in, and Buck popped the clutch.

I don’t think we’re gonna have time to go through customs there. I need to know how to get to your plane. You need to be cleared, engines running, door open, and stairs down.” “This is gonna be fun!” Ritz said. “You have no idea,” Buck said. The pilot quickly told Buck the layout of the airstrip and the terminal and precisely where he was. “We’re within about ten minutes of you,” Buck said. “If I can keep this thing rolling, I’ll try to get as close to the runway and your plane as possible. What am I gonna run into?”

Nothing like discussing travel logistics mid-car-chase

“Have you heard the phrase ‘playing chicken’?” Buck asked. “No,” Tsion said, “but it is becoming clear to me. Are you going to challenge them?” “Don’t you agree they have more to lose than we do?” “I do. I am hanging on. Do what you have to do!” Buck pressed the accelerator to the floor. The heat gauge was pressed to the maximum and quivering. Steam billowed from the engine.

“I have got it!” Tsion said. Buck peeked in the rearview mirror as Tsion climbed out from under a seat, tossed the cigarette lighter into the bucket, and scrambled to the front. The back of the bus burst into flames. “Hang on!” Buck shouted, pulling hard to the left and slamming on the brakes. The bus whirled so fast it nearly tipped over. The back smashed into the stockade of cars, and the back door burst open, flaming gasoline splashing everywhere.

I’ve played enough GTA to know that Buck has earned at least four stars with this maneuver

When they reached the steps, Buck grabbed Tsion by the belt in the back and threw him aboard.

I love this image of Buck hurling a 43-year-old Jewish man up a flight of stairs and into an airplane.

As Buck dived into the plane, a bullet ripped through the bottom of the heel of his right boot. Pain shot through the side of his foot as he yanked the door shut, Ritz already rolling.

I bet it hurts almost as much as Rayford’s knees do

Buck slowly took off his right boot and held it up so Tsion could see the trajectory of the bullet. A clean hole had been blasted from the sole to the ankle. Buck took off a bloody sock. “Would you look at that?” he said, smiling. “I won’t even need stitches. Just a nick there.” Tsion used Ken Ritz’s first-aid kit to treat Buck’s foot and found an Ace bandage for his own ankle.

I’m so confused, so it sounds like the bullet shot through Buck’s entire foot, but then he says it won’t even need stitches. So, did it just graze the bottom of his entire foot? For once, I could use some more info from LaHaye.

Verna isn’t even staying with us anymore. She has moved in with friends.” “That could be a problem,” Buck said. “I may have made myself vulnerable to the worst possible person in my profession.”

Loretta soon trundled off to bed, expressing her delight in offering hospitality as her service to the Lord.

You do you, trundles and all

Buck, Chloe, and Tsion limped into the living room, followed by a chuckling Amanda.

Such a creepy image. Very Misery-esque.

Amanda and Buck each moved to put a hand on Tsion’s shoulders, and with the three of them touching him, they all prayed as he wept.

I think Tsion accounts for 1/3 of the characters crying so far

Two hours later, Buck and Chloe lay in bed, unable to sleep.

I swear to God, if they start talking about cookies

“But why would she do that?” Buck said. “We’ve never liked each other. We’ve been at each other’s throats. The only reason we traded favors the other night was that World War III made our skirmishes look petty.” “Your skirmishes were petty,” Chloe said.

Preach, Chloe!

and she even confessed that she knew she was no journalist compared to you.”

Ugh. I can't really call this character assassination, since Verna was so 1-D. But it still sucks to have a female character admit weakness compared to a man.

“The question, Chloe, is whether you extracted from her any promises of my protection.” “She wanted to trade favors. Probably wanted some sort of a promotion or raise. I told her you would never work that way, and she said she figured that. I asked if she would promise me that she would at least not say anything to anyone until after she had talked to you. And then, are you ready for this? I made her promise to come to Bruce’s memorial service Sunday.” “And she’s coming?” “She said she would. I told her she’d better be there early. It’ll be packed.”

“She claims she’s been in church only about a dozen times in her life, for weddings and funerals and such. Her father was a self-styled atheist, and her mother apparently had been raised in some sort of a strict denomination that she turned her back on as an adult. Verna says the idea of attending church was never discussed in her home.” “And she was never curious? Never searched for any deeper meaning in life?” “No. In fact, she admitted she’s been a pretty cynical and miserable person for years. She thought it made her the perfect journalist.”

How is one a "self-styled" athiest? Surely that just makes you an athiest. It's not like he made up a new label for himself.

Buck said. “I was as cynical and negative as any, but hopefully there was a balance of humor and personability there.” “Oh yeah, that’s you all right,” Chloe teased. “That’s why I’m still tempted to have a child with you, even now.”

Married people, is this how your conversations work?

Rayford missed Amanda. In many ways, they still seemed strangers,

I mean, she's had like ten lines in the book, and contributed nada to the plot. Definitely a stranger to the audience. Amanda is more useless than Jennifer in Back to the Future II, and Jennifer spent most of that movie unconscious.

On the other hand, Rayford felt guilty that in many ways he was closer to Amanda already than he had ever been to Irene.

I just realized that an awkward meeting between Amanda and Irene is inevitable in the final book. I can't wait to see how that goes down!

To Rayford, Amanda was a gift from God. He recalled not even having liked her at first. A handsome, wealthy woman slightly older than he, she was so nervous upon first meeting him that she gave the impression of being a jabberer. She didn’t let him or Chloe get a word in, but kept correcting herself, answering her own questions, and rambling.

Amanda had seemed to catch the essence of Irene’s heart and soul. The way she described her, Rayford and Chloe might have thought she had known her for years.

Too many shes and hers with three possible people each one could be referring to

Having lost her family in the Rapture, she was suddenly a lonely, needy woman.

Even Chloe eventually had to admit that Amanda did not come off as a flirt to anyone. She quickly became known around New Hope as a servant. That was her spiritual gift. She busied herself about the work of the church. She would cook, clean, drive, teach, greet, serve on boards and committees, whatever was necessary. A full-time professional woman, her spare time was spent in church life.

Okay, I can't tell if "full-time professional woman" means a full-time professional and a woman, or that she's so good at womaning (serving) that it's her full-time profession.

Everything he had read, studied, and learned under Bruce Barnes’s tutelage had convinced him and the other members of the Tribulation Force, as well as the congregation at New Hope, that Carpathia himself was the Antichrist.

WE KNOW!

Someday, according to Bruce’s teaching, to merely have the right to buy and sell, citizens of the Global Community would have to take the “mark of the beast.” No one knew yet exactly what form this would take, but the Bible indicated it would be a mark on the forehead or on the hand. There would be no faking. The mark would somehow be specifically detectable. Those who took the mark could never repent of it. They would be lost forever. Those who did not take the mark would have to live in hiding, their lives worth nothing to the Global Community.

Something that's always bugged me about a literal interpretation of the mark of the beast: it's an unforgivable sin. That seems antithetical to Christianity. Like, Christ's death was able to wash away sins of murderers, rapists, theives, dictators, and multilevel marketers, but it isn't powerful enough for (or God is unwilling to forgive) someone who gets a stamp on the wrist to buy groceries. And when you think of all the grief and fear this passage has caused, you'd think this specific interpretation would recieve more criticism.

how long could Rayford justify in his own mind that the benefits of being able to eavesdrop and spy on Carpathia outweighed his own culpability in abetting the work of the evil one?

The newspaper carried the stories out of Israel, how the rabbi who had so shocked his own nation and culture and religion and people—not to mention the rest of the world—with his conclusions about the messiahship of Jesus, had suddenly gone mad. Rayford knew the truth, of course, and looked forward with great anticipation to meeting this brave saint.

Note to the editor: did you fall asleep? How did this paragraph not get scrapped?

The juxtaposition between the easy, daily, routine life of a jumbo-jet pilot—the Rayford Steele he was a scant two years ago—and the international political pinball he felt like today was almost more than his mind could assimilate.

We know. That's what the last couple pages were about, in detail.

six stair steps down:

Stair steps == steps

Bruce had shown him, the day of the weddings, how to open that seemingly locked door.

Seemingly

Bruce had spared no expense.

That worked so well in Jurassic Park

Now, Buck wondered, what did Bruce do about connections? Buck crawled along the carpet and looked behind a sleeper sofa. There was a bank of wireless routers that had to lead somewhere. He traced the wiring up the wall and tried to spot where it would come out in the hallway. He turned off the lights, closed the circuit-breaker door, closed the metal door, jogged up the steps, and slid the brick door shut. In a dark corner of the hallway he shined the flashlight and saw the section of conduit that led from the floor up through the ceiling. He moved back into the fellowship hall and looked out the window. From the lights in the parking lot, he could make out that the conduit went outside at the ceiling level and snaked its way up toward the steeple. Bruce had told Buck that the reconditioned steeple had been the one vestige of the old church, the original building that had been torn down thirty years before. In the old days it actually had bells that beckoned people to church. The bells were still there, but the ropes that had once extended through a trapdoor to a spot where one of the ushers could ring them from the foyer had been cut. The steeple was now just decorative. Or was it? Buck lugged a stepladder from a utility room up into the foyer and pushed open the trapdoor. He hoisted himself above the ceiling and found a wrought-iron ladder that led into the belfry. He climbed up near the old bells, which were covered with cobwebs and dust and soot. When he reached the se...

We get this whole adventure that could have been cut down to "Bruce had installed a satellite on the church steeple, so they could get network connection inside the bunker." O, Editor, Where Art Though? Also, good to know that even life in a bunker will not save us from news info dumps.

Bruce’s installing that crazy mini-satellite dish made him think of a verse he once heard or read about shouting the good news from the housetop. Matthew 10:27-28 said, “Whatever I tell you in the dark, speak in the light; and what you hear in the ear, preach on the housetops. And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” Wasn’t it just like Bruce to take the Bible literally?

As he drove the few blocks, he was struck by the difference between the two vehicles he had driven within the last twenty-four hours. This, a six-figure Range Rover with everything but a kitchen sink, and that probably still-smoldering bus he had “bought” from a man who might soon be a martyr.

With a little technology, the Tribulation Force and its newest member, Tsion Ben-Judah, would soon be proclaiming the gospel from a hidden location and sending it via satellite and the Internet to just about anybody in the world who wanted to hear it, and to many who didn’t.

Across the aisle from him, the beautiful and stylish Hattie Durham slept. Her long blonde hair was in a bun, and she had made a mess of her mascara trying to wipe away her tears. She had wept off and on almost the entire flight. Through two meals, a movie, and a snack, she had unburdened herself to Rayford.

Most troubling to Rayford was Hattie’s turmoil over her pregnancy. He wished she would refer to what she was carrying as a child. But it was a pregnancy to her, an unwanted pregnancy. It may not have been at the beginning, but now, given her state of mind, she did not want to give birth to Nicolae Carpathia’s child. She didn’t refer to it as a child or even a baby. Rayford had the difficult task of trying to plead his case without being too obvious. He had asked her, “Hattie, what do you think your options are?” “I know there are only three, Rayford. Every woman has to consider these three options when she’s pregnant.” Not every woman, Rayford thought. Hattie had continued: “I can carry it to term and keep it, which I don’t want to do. I can put it up for adoption, but I’m not sure I want to endure the entire pregnancy and birth process. And, of course, I can terminate the pregnancy.” “What does that mean exactly?” “What do you mean ‘what does that mean?’” Hattie had said. “Terminate the pregnancy means terminate the pregnancy.” “You mean have an abortion?” Hattie had stared at him like he was an imbecile. “Yes! What did you think I meant?”

Oh, yay. LaHaye wants to talk about abortion again. Much like sexual assault, abortion is a topic you should only touch if you're prepared to give it the time, weight, and nuance it deserves. Let's observe, as Tim LaHaye does none of the above.

“It is the easiest option, Rayford. Think about it. Obviously, the worst scenario would be to let a pregnancy run its entire course, go through all that discomfort, then go through the pain of labor. And then what if I got all those maternal instincts everybody talks about? Besides nine months of living in the pits, I’d go through all that stuff delivering somebody else’s child. Then I’d have to give it up, which would just make everything worse.” “You just called it a child there,” Rayford had said. “Hmm?” “You had been referring to this as your pregnancy. But once you deliver it, then it’s a child?” “Well, it will be someone’s child. I hope not mine.”

She was not a dumb woman.

First time you've expressed that thought, Rayford

I hope you don’t think that I think abortion is an easy decision, even though it’s the best and simplest solution.”

Almost a hint of nuance, but I feel like Tim is really gunning for the selfish angle

Rayford had nodded. He understood all too well. He had to remind himself that she was not a believer. She would not be thinking about the good of anyone but herself. Why should she?

Go read a book, Rayford! Or watch The Good Place, and report back. No, it is not impossible to construct a selfless morality in the absence of religion.

You already have maternal feelings, or you wouldn’t be in such turmoil about this. My question is, who’s looking out for that child’s best interest? Let’s say a wrong has been done. Let’s say it was immoral for you to live with Nicolae Carpathia outside of marriage. Let’s say this pregnancy, this child, was produced from an immoral union. Let’s go farther. Let’s say that those people are right who consider Nicolae Carpathia the Antichrist. I’ll even buy the argument that perhaps you regret the idea of having a child at all and would not be the best mother for it. I don’t think you can shirk responsibility for it the way a rape or incest victim might be justified in doing. “But even in those cases, the solution isn’t to kill the innocent party, is it? Something is wrong, really wrong, and so people defend their right to choose. What they choose, of course, is not just the end of a pregnancy, not just an abortion, it’s the death of a person. But which person? One of the people who made a mistake? One of the people who committed a rape or incest? Or one of the people who got pregnant out of wedlock? No, the solution is always to kill the most innocent party of all.” Rayford had gone too far, and he had known it.

I’m not interested in engaging with these ideas in this forum other than to say that the ethics of abortion are complex and interesting, and LaHaye is welcome to write a book exploring all the moral grey areas and policy applications he desires. But what I want to point out is that that isn’t what he did here. Instead of writing a book about abortion, he wrote a couple of pages where his characters become talking heads for his own beliefs, then moved on. And it’s kind of a shame, because a story about a woman bearing the child of the antichrist deciding whether to have that child aborted is a golden idea for a slow-paced, narrow-scoped fantasy novel. Sci fi and fantasy is a great place to explore murky areas of real-world moral and social dilemmas. But if you’re going to go there, you have to commit *cough* Parable of the Sower *cough* “All You Zombies” *cough* Left Hand of Darkness *cough.*

With that, she had wrenched fully away from him and had buried her face in her hands and wept.

He believed it, and he was convinced it was God’s view. It made sense to him. But he also knew she could reject it out of hand simply because he was a man. How could he understand? No one was suggesting what he could or could not do with his own body. He had wanted to tell her he understood that, but again, what if that unborn child was a female? Who was standing up for the rights of that woman’s body?

Tim LaHaye is definitely butthurt about being dismissed with this line of argument

“Rayford, I know you mean well. But you drive me nuts sometimes. I should be glad nothing ever really developed between us.”

Rayford and Amanda walked hand-in-hand, then arm-in-arm, then arms around each other’s waist, all the way to the escalators that led down to baggage claim.

Something on a TV monitor had caught her eye. “Ray,” she said, “come look at this.”

renowned cardiovascular surgeon Samuel Kline of Norway.”

“This guy is in Carpathia’s back pocket. I’ve seen him around. He says whatever Saint Nick wants him to say.”