by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins
Paperback
ISBN: 0842329129
Pub. Date: January 1996
From Amazon.com:
Piloting his 747, Rayford Steele is musing about his wife Irene’s irritating religiosity and contemplating the charms of his “drop-dead gorgeous” flight attendant, Hattie. First Irene was into Amway, then Tupperware, and now it’s the Rapture of the Saints–the scary last story in the Bible in which Christians are swept to heaven and unbelievers are left behind to endure the Antichrist’s Tribulation. Steele believes he’ll put the plane on autopilot and go visit Hattie. But Hattie’s in a panic: some of the passengers have disappeared! The Rapture has happened, abruptly driverless cars are crashing all over, and the slick, sinister Romanian Nicolae Carpathia plans to use the UN to establish one world government and religion. Resembling “a young Robert Redford” and silver-tongued in nine languages, Carpathia is named People’s “Sexiest Man Alive.” (This reviewer, a former People writer, finds this plot twist plausible.) Meanwhile, Steele teams up with Buck Williams, a buck-the-system newshound, to form the Tribulation Force, an underground of left-behind penitents battling the Antichrist.
================
Blogging about the rapture a couple of days ago made me think about Left Behind, the story that began the series that was a major coup for Christian fiction. I read this book several years ago, but I recall I enjoyed it. When I read it, I think about the book of Matthew. There’s a scripture in Matthew that hauntingly reminds me of Left Behind.
Matthew 24:36-44
36 “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven,[e] but My Father only. 37 But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. 38 For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, 39 and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. 40 Then two men will be in the field: one will be taken and the other left. 41 Two women will be grinding at the mill: one will be taken and the other left. 42 Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour[f] your Lord is coming. 43 But know this, that if the master of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched and not allowed his house to be broken into. 44 Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.
When I read Left Behind, it reminds me of the scripture quoted above. It’s hard for me to comment extensively about this book since I read it so long ago. I just know it was kind of spooky when all of those people were left behind and you have older teenaged children running around without parents(that subject in covered in the Left Behind YA series). People who were raptured were gone, leaving behind eyeglasses, tooth fillings, contact lenses, these types of things were left in the spot where the person was sitting/standing while they were raptured.
Cars were crashing into each other since there are now several driverless vehicles on the road. Imagine the horror of the people left on this earth if you’re driving down the highway and the car near you no longer has a driver, and is going sixty or seventy miles an hour!
I read a lot of the books in this series, but never got around to reading all of them. I believe I read the first three or four. I actually purchased The Mark at the now-extinct Mid-Atlantic Christian Writers Conference. Jerry Jenkins was the keynote speaker at the first Mid-Atlantic conference and he signed the book for me!
Cecelia Dowdy
www.ceceliadowdy.com