The Left Behind Complete Set, Series 1-12

by Tim LaHaye

“The Harem?” he said, reading the neon sign. “You sure this is only a bar?” “I’m sure it is not, Cameron,” Rosenzweig said. “I don’t want to think about what else goes on in there. I’ve never been inside. Usually I wait out here while my security chief goes in and drags Jacov out.”

Truly this will be a voyage into the heart of darkness. The sirens’ songs are sweet and beautiful. But as long as none of the sex workers are seductively eating cookies, Buck might just be strong enough to resist temptation.

He can hold his liquor, as we like to say.

That famous Israeli saying

Dr. Floyd Charles’s story was so similar to Rayford’s it was eerie. He too had had a wife serious about her faith, while he, a respected professional, played at the edges of it.

Hmmm... do I smell the grooming of a secondary POV character, in case one of ours should be misplaced in the future?

Gigi and I were basket cases, nervous for her, scared. I said putting her on that big old impersonal bus made me feel like I was sending her off to face the lions. Gigi said we just had to trust God to take care of her. Half an hour later we got the call.”

Gigi suffered, sobbed her heart out till it almost killed me.

Gotta love that Floyd’s wife’s grief is framed as a burden on her husband first and foremost

“You know what convinced me?” Floyd said suddenly. Rayford snorted. “Besides the Rapture, you mean? That got my attention.” “I was actually convinced before then. I just never pulled the trigger, know what I mean?” Rayford nodded. “You knew your wife was right, but you didn’t tell God?” “Exactly.

Huh. We learn a little more about the rules of being a Christian in the Left-Behind-iverse. It’s not enough to know about and believe in Jesus; you have to say the magic words as well. Interesting.

But you and I both know what it got me when Jesus came back. Left behind.”

“I don’t want to bad-mouth an old friend,” Rayford said, “but I suggest you think about the kind of woman your wife was before you consider Hattie as a replacement.” Floyd pursed his lips and nodded. “I’m not saying Hattie couldn’t become that kind of person,” Rayford added. “I know. But there’s no evidence she wants to be.”

This is awful, and I hate it. “You should reconsider your feelings for Hattie, because I don’t know if you can fix her.” Barf.

Buck and Chaim got stares from both men and women as they approached The Harem.

Well at least *somebody* who isn’t straight is taking an interest in Buck. Though, after seeing his relationship with Chloe play out, they should probably just keep their eyes on Chaim.

Not all the couples were made up of both sexes. This was not the Israel he remembered. The smoke was so thick that Buck knew he’d have done less damage to his lungs if he himself was smoking.

“Stefan! Where’s Jacov?” “Well, he’s not with me!” Stefan shouted, straightening up and laughing more. “But he’s here all right!” Buck’s heart sank. He knew Jacov had been sincere in his conversion, and God had proved it with the seal on his forehead. How could Jacov desecrate his own salvation this way? Had his brush with the GC been more gruesome than Buck could imagine?

Chaim, appearing overcome, strained to see into the main room, from which music blared and strobe lights flashed. “Oh, no!” he moaned, backing into Buck. “He’s totally drunk. This shy, young man who hardly looks you in the eye when he greets you is carrying on in front of everyone! I can’t take this.

My friends when they find me at the end of a night out

“It’s not like me to run. I can’t hide from Carpathia for the rest of my life anyway, short as it may be.”

Foreshadowing, or just cliche writing?

“Just talked with Chloe. I smell trouble. No way Nicolae is going to let them out of Israel alive. We have to go get them.”

Jacov was shouting and gesturing and trying to keep people’s attention. They laughed at him and seemed to curse him, whistling and throwing cigarette butts at him. Two women splashed him with their drinks. His face was flushed and he looked high, but he was not drinking, at least then. Buck recognized the word Yeshua, Hebrew for Jesus. And Hamashiach, the word for Messiah.

Jacov was little more than entertaining. His motive might have been pure, but he was having zero impact.

Rosenzweig looked at Buck. “He had garlic today, but I do not smell alcohol.” “Of course not!” Jacov said. “I was preaching! God gave me the boldness! I am one of the 144,000 witnesses, as Rabbi Ben-Judah says! I will be an evangelist for God!” Chaim slumped in his seat and raised both hands. “Oy,” he said. “I wish you were drunk.”

“Can’t we rent one? I could ask David Hassid, our guy inside the GC, to have one waiting for us at Jerusalem or Ben Gurion.”

These names

“This is entirely too much skullduggery for me, Cameron.

British Rosenzweig makes another appearance

The guard was making his announcement in several languages—first in Hebrew, then in Spanish, then in an Asian tongue Buck couldn’t place. Finally, he spoke a broken English with a Hebrew accent, and Buck realized the GC guard was an Israeli.

They had appeared strange and weird from the beginning, wearing their burlap-like sackcloth robes and appearing barefoot. They were muscular and yet bony, with leathery skin; dark, lined faces; and long, scraggly hair and beards. Some said they were Moses and Elijah reincarnate, but if Buck had to guess, he would have said they were the two Old Testament characters themselves. They looked and smelled centuries old, a smoky, dusty aroma following them.

“Yo, what’s that smell? Was there like a centuries-old dude in here like five minutes ago? Phwew, he sure gives off a dusty aroma.”

A wild, cackling man brandished a bulky, high-powered rifle. Buck held his breath as the man waved it above the crowd, and the rest screamed warnings at him. The weapon had a sight on the stock that identified it as a sniper’s rifle with kill power from a thousand yards. Why, Buck wondered, would a man with such a weapon risk showing it within reach of the witnesses and their proven power to destroy?

Lampshading

Bible prophecy called for the witnesses to be given the power by God to prophesy one thousand, two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth. Both Bruce and Tsion held that those days were counted from the time of the signing of an agreement between Antichrist and Israel for seven years of peace—which also coincided with the seven-year tribulation. Such an agreement had been signed only a little more than two years before, and 1,260 days divided by 365 equaled three and a half years. Buck calculated that the due time was more than a year away.

Jenkins: “We ended that last chapter with a bit of a cliffhanger, but maybe too much of one. How do we bring the tension back down? I’m thinking to a comatose state.” LaHaye: “I’ve got it!”

As the crowd reached the base of the sloping hill and slipped in the dewy grass, Buck caught up. “It is ours to bring rain,” the witnesses shouted, and a freezing gush of water poured from the skies and drenched the crowd, including Buck. The place had not seen a drop in twenty-four months, and the people craned their necks, pointed their faces to the sky, and opened their mouths. But the rain had stopped the instant it began, as if Eli and Moishe had opened and shut a tap in one motion. “And it is ours to shut heaven for the days of our prophecy!”

This is just that scene from the beginning of Mad Max: Fury Road

The witnesses had not moved. Buck’s eyes were locked on them as blinding white light burst from their mouths, and they appeared to expectorate a stream of phosphorous vapor directly at the guards. The attackers had no time to even recoil as they ignited. Their weapons remained supported by the bones of their arms and hands as their flesh was vaporized, and their rib cages and pelvises made ghastly silhouettes against the grass. Within seconds the white heat turned their rifles to dripping, sizzling liquid and their bones to ash.

That is a tableau straight out of War of the Worlds. It’s also a pretty good example of the material Jenkins seems most comfortable writing: gruesome deaths and mass panic.

His emotions conflicted, as always, when he saw humans die.

Good job, Buck

He knew them. He had talked to them. They seemed to know the people of God. Should he say anything? And what does one say? Good to see you again? What’s up? Nice job on those guards?

He still had ten feet to go to reach the roof, but even if he fell from where he was, the railing was likely to cut him in two.

That has to be one sharp railing

He was not in trouble, but a wave of panic showed up on the doorstep of his mind. There was no wiggle room here, no leeway, no margin for error. A slip, a weak section, a fright that knocked him off balance would leave him no options. He would drop and could only hope to land close enough to the middle of the patio to keep from flopping over the rail. If he hit the ground, he was dead. If he hit the patio, he was probably dead.

It is so weird that there wasn’t even a scene break between Raiders of the Lost Ark style guard incineration and Buck’s wacky climbing antics. The difference in stakes is so drastic, and any attempt to build tension here just falls flat. We just saw Buck get a message straight from God. Gee, I wonder if he’s going to fall to his death off a drain pipe five minutes later?

I’m an idiot, he decided,

In fact, to his surprise, he discovered an ancient helipad. The markings were faded, but whatever this building had been before it was bequeathed to the national hero, it had required a landing area for a helicopter.

Lol, that’s convenient

He opened his eyes to a halo of yellow residue from the brief flash. Blinking, he tried to reproduce behind his eyelids the image that had to have been temporarily projected and burned there. He kept his eyes shut until his brain drew a rudimentary block picture of three more steps down to a large door. Buck didn’t know what else to do but trust his split-second vision. He felt his way down the stairs and found he had been correct. Another landing presented itself, and he felt the door.

I’ve never heard of someone navigating by retina afterimage before. This feels like so much padding to get a whole scene of Buck breaking into a friendly household without the use of his vision.

There would be no opening this door without a key. He would have to get back into his room the way he had come.

And then he turns around and goes back to his room! Why did we need this scene???

As Buck’s fingers gave way, he dropped straight down, his nose inches from the glass door. When his feet hit the patio, he found himself staring into another pair of eyes, wide and terrified and set in a ghostly pale face. Besides being startled at the image, Buck’s weight made his knees bend as he landed, but he was so close to the door that they banged into it, driving him off his feet and straight back into the railing. The top caught him just above his backside and his weight carried him backward over the rail. He grabbed the wrought iron as he flopped, desperate to keep from hurtling all the way to the ground on his head. With a loud grunt, Buck saw the sky as he flipped back, and his feet soon followed. He hung from the top of the rail by his hands, upside down, the back of his head pressed against the bars and his feet dangling near his face. It was all he could do to hang on, knowing his life was in his own hands. Meanwhile, of course, Chloe was screaming.

You worked really hard to throw yourself off that balcony, Buck. And it’s kinda fun to see that the slapstick of the series hasn’t just been reserved for the villains. Unless you, like me, also consider Buck a villain of his own breed.

“What in the world?” she said over and over. “I nearly gave birth.”

“Everything all right in there, ma’am? We heard a scream.” “Yes, thank you,” she managed, then giggled. The guard went away muttering, “Newlyweds!” and Buck and Chloe laughed till they cried.

“I found an old helipad, and—” “I know all about that,” Chloe said. “I asked Chaim about it when he finally got home.” “You did?” “I did.” “But I don’t want him to know we’re planning anyth—” “I know, super sleuth. I just asked him about the history of the place to see what I could learn. It used to be an embassy.

Not sure if this counts as a Chloe empowerment moment, since she just did the common-sense thing, and it didn’t contribute to the plot at all. I guess it shows that she’s marginally smarter than Buck?

“I’m such a dork,” he said. “You’re my dork.

Rayford grew desperate to get them out of Israel, but come dawn in the Chicago area, he finally fell asleep. When he awoke late that morning, he knew his counterparts in the Holy Land would be well on their way to the evening’s meeting, which he would have to watch via the Internet again.

“If you’re going to be up all hours playing Spiderman, you need your rest.

You misspelled Spider-Man

Chloe had agreed to stay at the compound, and Buck was worried. He had expected more debate from her, and now he wondered if she was suffering more than she let on.

In this series, it’s best to assume women are suffering as much as possible

GC guards looked menacingly at anyone connected with the program, as if silently expressing that they were only doing what they were commanded. If they had it their way, was the implication, they would destroy the lot of those who opposed their potentate.

Okay, we’re five books in, and the evil armed UN guards have less humanity than stormtroopers in Star Wars. That’s admittedly a longer time than I thought it would take, but here we are, nonetheless.

Buck again stood in the wings and watched and listened in awe to the man who had become a spiritual father to him—the rabbi who had come to Jesus through studying the prophecies of the Old Testament now led a flock of millions over the Internet. Here he stood, a smallish, plainspoken man with a Bible and a pile of meticulous notes. And he held the massive crowd in his palm.

The downside of the judgments that finally catch some people’s attention is that thousands also die from them.

That’s a pretty steep downside

The pilots had their flight plans out and doodled with charting their course to the Middle East. Assuming word got to Tsion, he would announce something official or ceremonious for Saturday, and that would trigger Rayford and Ken’s attempt to get to Israel. They would plan to arrive around midnight Friday and pick up their passengers shortly thereafter.

TRAVEL PLANS Y’ALL!!!! We’ve gotten so few of these in book 5

“We’ve already won,” Ritz said. “It’s just a matter of going through the motions. The Bible’s already told the story, and as Tsion says, ‘We win.’”

“Going Through the Motions” should be tagline for the whole series

The fourth Trumpet Judgment will affect the look of the skies and the temperature of the entire globe. “Revelation 8:12 reads, ‘Then the fourth angel sounded: And a third of the sun was struck, a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of them were darkened. A third of the day did not shine, and likewise the night.’ “Regardless of whether it means one-third of each star or a third of all stars, the effect will be the same.

I like that Tsion’s first though is “well, 1/3 of the stars could mean that God takes a pac-man slice out of all of the stars, and we can’t rule that possibility out.” I know Revelation is obtuse, but is it really *that* obtuse?

So the sun will shine only two-thirds the time it used to.

Very curious how the physics of that are going to work, since the sun is always shining somewhere 100% of the time. Does it go dark for even intervals so that all of the planet only gets 1/3 of its usual sunshine?

“Captain Steele,” Ernie said. “I took a call while you were in the air. Was your phone off or something?” “Yeah,” Rayford said, turning it back on. “I didn’t want to be distracted.” “I heard you had one of them wake-up features where it’ll ring even when it’s off.” “Yeah, but you can override that too.” “Cool.

Are the details of silencing a phone call important to the plot?

Rayford handed the phone to a puzzled-looking, scowling Ritz.