The Left Behind Complete Set, Series 1-12

by Tim LaHaye

Chloe hobbled over.

“I know this all has to be true,” she managed. “If I needed more convincing, I’d have to be the biggest skeptic in history.”

Chloe brushed Hattie’s hair away from her forehead and tucked the bangs up. “She’s really hot, Buck.”

"I know, Chloe. Your dad totes wanted to bang her. Oh, you didn't mean like that…"

Hattie seemed to be sleeping, but Buck was worried. What a waste if they somehow lost her when she was this close to a decision for Christ.

I'm still confused, what is Hattie dying from?

Tears slid down Hattie’s cheeks, and her eyes closed. “Just let me die,” she said.

If Hattie dies weeping, at least she'll be going out in-character

Buck got some soup down her. “You want Jesus, don’t you?” he whispered, his lips near her ear.

Why you gotta make it more creepy, Buck?

Rayford could only dread what he and Mac were about to see. Everything in that plane, from equipment to carry-on luggage, seats and seat backs, tray tables, phones, and even passengers, would be in one massive heap at the front. An impact violent enough to snap landing gear from a plane would immediately break the neck of any passenger. The seats would have ripped from the floor and accordioned atop each other, passengers stacked upon each other like cordwood. Everything attached would have broken loose and been forced to the front.

“Do I have to tell him everything I’ve done?” Hattie breathed. “He already knows,” Chloe said. “If it makes you feel better to tell him, then tell him.” “I don’t want to say it out loud,” Hattie said. “It’s more than affairs with men. It’s even more than wanting an abortion!”

What would top the last one in the authors' estimation?

“Her temperature is higher than you reported just a few hours ago. She’ll be delirious soon. I need to find whatever is causing the fever.” “How bad is it?” “I’m not optimistic.”

Rayford wondered about the wisdom of swimming through hundreds of corpses, especially with an open wound. Well, he figured, whatever might contaminate him had already done so.

Rayford, if you die, we'll be stuck with only Buck for the rest of the series. For our sake, take better care of yourself!

It had been the rear seat for the flight attendant. She was still strapped in, hands balled into fists, eyes open, long hair floating free.

He shined his light through the mass of tangled seats and trash. Everyone had been strapped in. Every seat appeared occupied. No one could have suffered long.

Rayford couldn’t blame him, but he couldn’t quit. He knew beyond doubt that the search would put him at ease about Amanda. He had to go through this grisly ordeal for his own peace of mind.

Mac shook his head slowly as if disgusted.

Tsion showed them that Carpathia had become his computer competition.

Hattie's dying, meanwhile Tsion is starting a flame war with the antichrist

“Look what I put in response to that,” Ben-Judah said. Buck peered at the screen. Tsion had written, “Potentate Carpathia: I gratefully accept your offer of personal protection and congratulate you that this makes you an instrument of the one true, living God. He has promised to seal and protect his own during this season when we are commissioned to preach his gospel to the world. We are grateful that he has apparently chosen you as our protector and wonder how you feel about it. In the name of Jesus Christ, the Messiah and our Lord and Savior, Rabbi Tsion Ben-Judah, in exile.”

Got em

“You haven’t met my father-in-law or Amanda yet, Floyd, but Rayford doesn’t believe Amanda got on that plane. We don’t know that she did.” “But if she wasn’t on that plane and didn’t go with Hattie, where is she? Hundreds of thousands died in the earthquake. Realistically, don’t you think you would have heard from her by now if she had survived?”

“I took a blood sample. I’m going to check it for food poisoning. I’m worried that my colleagues in Denver might have poisoned her in advance of the projected hit. I asked her what she had eaten out there, and she caught on to what I suspected. She shuddered and appeared petrified. I helped her lie down. She grabbed my shirt and pulled me close. She said, ‘If Nicolae had me poisoned, I’ll be his second victim.’ I asked what she meant. She said, ‘Bruce Barnes. Nicolae had him poisoned overseas. He made it all the way back to the States before he was hospitalized. Everyone thinks he died in the bombing, and maybe he did. But if he wasn’t dead already, he would have died even if the hospital had never been bombed. And I knew all about it. I’ve never told anyone.’” Buck was shaken.

I feel like this isn't a big reveal

“It wouldn’t bring him back,” Buck said. “But just knowing gives me a reason. . . .” “A reason?” “An excuse, anyway. To murder Nicolae Carpathia.”

Buck went really fast from horrified at killing someone on accident to "let's murder someone"

Rayford expected to feel awful searching corpses, but deep foreboding overwhelmed him. What a macabre business! Victims were bloated, horribly disfigured, hands in fists, arms floating. Their hair waved with the motion of the water. Most eyes and mouths were open, faces black, red, or purple.

He gently nudged them aside and directed his beam to the next passenger. She was salt-and-pepper-haired. Her eyes were open, her expression blank. The neck and face were discolored and swollen, but her arms did not rise as the others. She had apparently grabbed her laptop computer case and hooked its strap in the crook of her arm. Entwining her fingers, she had died with her hands pressed between her knees, the computer bag secure at her side. Rayford recognized the earrings, the necklace, the jacket. He wanted to die. He could not take his eyes from hers. The irises had lost all color, and her image was one he would fight to forget.

Well color me surprised that they actually killed Amanda

He was tempted to suck in enough water to flood his lungs and reunite him with his beloved.

Both of them

Rayford had lost the will to live. When they broke the surface, he spit out his regulator and with it the sobs gushed out. He cried a fierce, primal wail that pierced the night and reflected the agonizing loneliness of his soul.

Almost as though his soul was… harvested

Rayford continued to bawl, the sound of his despair frightening even himself. But he could not stop.

With his head and face bare, Rayford’s cries turned to moans.

He could not face five more years without Amanda.

I, on the other hand, will not miss Amanda, since she never did anything in any of the scenes she was in.

As if in slow motion, Rayford felt cool air on his face as he dropped headfirst into the water. He heard Mac swear and shout, “Oh, no you don’t!”

Frodo/Sam vibes

He moved not a finger, hoping the Tigris would envelop him forever. But somehow he could not will himself to gulp in the water that would kill him. He felt the shock and heard Mac splash past him. Mac’s hands brushed him as he slid past feet first. Rayford couldn’t muster the energy to resist. From deep in his heart came sympathy for Mac, who didn’t deserve this. It wasn’t fair to make him work so hard.

“I have no answers for you right now, Ray. Just hear me. To die in this river tonight, you’re going to have to take me with you. You got that?”

He even did the "I'm coming with you" thing like Sam

Rayford nodded miserably.

Me starting each chapter

But as they watched, the sky lit up. But it wasn’t lightning. The hailstones, at least half of them, were in flames! “Oh, dear ones!” Tsion said. “You know what this is, do you not? Let us pull Hattie’s bed away from the window just in case! The angel of the first Trumpet Judgment is throwing hail and fire to the earth.”

“Tell me the truth, Mac. Did you check her forehead for the sign?” Mac pursed his lips and did not respond. “You did, didn’t you?” Rayford pressed. “Yes, I did.” “And it wasn’t there, was it?” “No, it was not.”

When plummeting tongues of fire joined the hailstones, Rayford just stared. Mac said, “Wow!” over and over.

Hoping Mac will be played by Owen Wilson in the film version

“What is that, Ray? It’s raining, but it’s red! Look at that! All over the snow!” “It’s blood,” Rayford said, a peace flooding his soul. It did not assuage his grief or take away his dread over the truth about Amanda. But this show, this shower of fire and ice and blood, reminded him yet again that God is faithful.

“Here comes the blood,” Tsion said, and suddenly Hattie sat straight up.

I want to make a period joke, but since Hattie is pregnant, it just won’t work

Hattie turned and Buck saw her tears.

Buck was dumbfounded at the improvement in Chloe. Floyd Charles took her casts off, and within a few days, atrophied muscles began to come back. It appeared she might always have a limp, residual pain, and a slightly cockeyed face and frame. But to Buck, she had never looked better.

Nearly a month from the night Rayford had discovered Amanda’s body, David Hassid presented him with a high-tech disk with all of Amanda’s computer files listed. “They’re all encrypted and therefore inaccessible without decoding,” David told him.

Buck and Chloe prayed for Hattie every day. Chloe confided in Buck, “The only thing that will keep me from going is if Hattie has not received Christ first. I can’t leave her in that state.” Buck had his own reasons for wishing she would revive. Her salvation was paramount, of course, but he needed to know things only she could tell him.

Buck is a dick even when it comes to dying pregnant women.

Rayford hoped he would work himself into a frenzy. Your day is coming,

This is a weird typo. Either there’s a comma where there should be a period, or this sentence just trails off as the scene ends. It happened on a page break, so I had to play with the text size to make sure it wasn’t a glitch.

A message from Rayford said, “It’s happening! Turn on the TV. This is going to be some ride!” Buck tiptoed downstairs and flipped on the television, finding an all-news station.

It’s been a while since we’ve gotten one of these. I’m both annoyed and a little nostalgic.

Newscasters told the story of what astronomers had discovered just two hours before—a brand-new comet on a collision course with Earth.

It has the potential to split the earth or to knock it from its orbit. “The Global Community Aeronautics and Space Administration projects the collision at approximately 9:00 a.m., Central Standard Time. They anticipate the best possible scenario, that it will take place in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. “Tidal waves are expected to engulf coasts on both sides of the Atlantic for up to fifty miles inland. Coastal areas are being evacuated as we speak. Crews of oceangoing vessels are being plucked from their ships by helicopters, though it is unknown how many can be moved to safety in time. Experts agree the impact on marine life will be inestimable.

That is some last-minute comet discovery.

The Tribulation Force went to their computers to spread the word that this was the second Trumpet Judgment foretold in Revelation 8:8-9. “Will we look like expert prognosticators when the results are in?” Tsion wrote.

The Global Community military positioned camera-toting aircraft strategically to film the most spectacular splash in history. The more than thousand-mile-square mountain, finally determined to consist largely of sulfur, burst into flames upon entry to the atmosphere. It eclipsed the sun, blew clouds out of its path, and created hurricane-force winds between itself and the surface of the sea for the last hour it dropped from the heavens. When it finally resounded on the surface of the deep, geysers, waterspouts, and typhoons miles high were displaced, rocketing from the ocean and downing several of the GC planes. Those able to film the result produced such incredible images that they would air around the clock on TV for weeks. Damage inland was so extensive that nearly all modes of travel were interrupted. The Israel rally of the Jewish witnesses was postponed ten weeks.

This final chapter feels like someone got tired and pressed fast-forward on the book. We’re zipping through weeks at a time, and it’s not like the action here is anything less interesting than the stuff in the rest of the book. It feels like the authors had a lot more outlined for this one book, got halfway through, and decided to just jump to the end.

Just days before the rescheduled departure of the Tribulation Force for Israel, the GCASA again detected a threat in the heavens. This object was similar in size to the previous burning mountain but had the consistency of rotting wood.

Two giant meteors in a single chapter???

With great fanfare, the press showed the launch of a colossal ground-to-air nuclear missile designed to vaporize the new threat. As the whole world watched, the flaming meteor the Bible called Wormwood split itself into billions of pieces before the missile arrived. The residue wafted down for hours and landed in one-third of the fountains, springs, and rivers of the earth, turning the water a bitter poison. Thousands would die from drinking it.

We’re moving so fast through these disasters that it almost feels like just plagiarizing Revelation

Rayford believed the only way to exonerate Amanda was to decode her files, but he also knew the risk. He would have to face whatever they revealed. Did he want the truth, regardless? The more he prayed about that, the more convinced he became that he must not fear the truth.

Maddening doubts filled him, but he became obsessed with knowing. Either way, lover or liar, wife or witch, he had to know.

“So, those who wonder if you are afraid of the scholar who—” “Afraid!” “—showed you up on the Internet and called your bluff before an international audience—” “You are trying to bait me, Captain Steele,” Carpathia said, smiling.