Jesus is going to kneecap you for that post.

The fictional Antichrist, a Romanian named Nicolae Carpathia, rises to power as head of the United Nations. He signs a peace treaty with Israel,

Huh? The UN is at war with Israel? Or does he mean Romania? Not that that would necessarily be any more accurate, but it doesn't seem like accuracy is job one for Dr. Lahaye . . .

what can you say? there's a lot of science fiction lovers out there.

This brings to mind the excellent story by Ted Chiang, Hell is the Absence of God (excerpt). The premise is that angels appear all the time in modern society, and that when they do lots of unpleasant physical things can and do occur. It's a story in the book, Stories of Your Life and Others. Good stuff.

i think i hate the slactivist's blogging of the left behind books. no, wait, i find it informative and witty. http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/left_behind/index.html

Hmmm... brutal dictatorship... false religion... I guess evangelicals aren't too introspective about their Dominionist leanings, are they?

Jesus, the divine cosmic ninja is totally cool-- and by totally cool, I mean totally sweet.

Ooh, I know. There's that Batman fan-film that's been circulating on the net...the one where Batman fights the Joker, the Aliens, and a squad of Predators. God should be mixed into the sequel. My money's on the Predator.

So anyway, how close is Tim LaHaye to Sun Myung Moon?

Christian is as Christians tend to do; there's nothing unChristian about what dude's writing. He's writing within the tradition of fundie eschatology that took off, as I understand it, wildly in the 1970s with Hal Lindsey ('The Late Great Planet Earth') and with the novel '666' (and its sequal, '1000': I might have the names wrong, but this is the stuff I read to kill time during sermons when I was 9))

But I think his real source is the Spire Christian Comics version of Hal Lindsey's "There's a New World Coming." This is drawn by Al Hartely, who drew the Archy comics, I believe.

Google: "There's a new world coming" + comic and you'll have to agree with me, I think.

what never ceases to amaze me is that the "left behind" series takes it's name from one of the two passages that offer the flimsy scriptural basis for the relatively recent "rapture" mythology.

it's luke 17:34-35 - i tell you on that night there will two in one bed; one will be taken and the other left. there will be two women grinding meal together; one will be taken and the other left. however what the rapture crowd always fail to do is to read two verses up where this is put in context, verse 32: remember lot's wife. of course we all know that she was the one that got turned into a pillar of salt for not following directions when god nuked sodom for oppressing the poor.

so if one day you do turn around and there's only a pair of smoking shoes where your annoying evangelical co-worker was standing a second before, i think you can draw your own conclusions about which way he went.

Jesus, talk about masturbatory power fantasy. That LaHaye is one sick, sick motherfucker.

The appeal is pretty simple: the kool kids get to leave behind the rest of us who somehow couldn't see their inner superiority in time to try and become just like them. It's the ultimate high school reunion fantasy, only now the dorks come back with God on their side to make our punishment permanent and enormously painful.

But they're still dorks. So if I have to go to hell because I'm not one of them, so be it. At least all of my friends will be there too.

The appeal is pretty simple: the kool kids get to leave behind the rest of us who somehow couldn't see their inner superiority in time to try and become just like them. It's the ultimate high school reunion fantasy, only now the dorks come back with God on their side to make our punishment permanent and enormously painful.

But they're still dorks. So if I have to go to hell because I'm not one of them, so be it. At least all of my friends will be there too.

sorry for the double post. damn technology.

what's frightening is that I once bought a copy of one of the teen versions of the Left Behind books as a joke for a friend..after i had searched all over the Young Adult section of Barnes and Noble i finally found it under "Young Adult Non-Fiction." Seriously.

God versus Bruce Lee. Cosmic ninja smackdown! With special appearance by the Predator!

Wasn't that roughly the plot of the Ninja Gaiden trilogy?

Seems to me that these books have alot in common with the movie Kill Bill-'cept that in Kill Bill, Uma Thurman is an ass-kicking Jesus and Mary rolled into one, and the Anti-Christ is David Carradine. Makes sense to me.

Ezra,

If all the world's evangelicals disappear at the same time, I, for one, will be drinking champaign in the streets. Think how peaceful the world would become.

If heaven is filled with these self-righteous sacks of protoplasm, I don't wanna be there with 'em.

Not that I believe in heaven (or hell, etc.)...

every now and then i get an idea that i should read these books just sort of so i can have an opinion about them. i never really get around to it though. life is short after all and there are other books. what i assume i would find in them is an attitude i have noticed in many religious people. they believe that god is exactly like them, only way more powerful.

"The hair on your head will stand up

with the terror in each sip and in each sup.

Will you drink from that last offered cup

Or disappear into the potter's ground

when the man comes around?"

THAT'S how you do the apocalypse right!

I used to joke that the problem with the Rapture theory is that if it happened so many of the so-called religious leaders would still be around nobody would notice.

So many of the Christian community seems to have forgotten the very ethos of Christ's teachings. They seem far more interested in judging the behavior of others.

Someday maybe I'll find a church that believes what I do. Maybe I'll have to invent it. But that sounds like a lot of work, and dishonest work at that.

I'm glad the series is over. I used to work at a library and have to put a million of those things on the shelf.

LaHaye threw me for a loop with this. I didn't think the world was gonna end until the sales slowed down for the series.

God would be a fool to mess with Bruce Lee.

Finally the series is coming to an end. It was originally supposed to be only five books, then seven, and finally, twelve books.

All I can say is that if God is like the God depicted in the Left Behind books, I'll be more than happy to give him a big Fuck You as I'm shipped off to hell. It seems to me that there isn't a whole lot of difference between God and the Antichrist in their respective megalomania. If I wouldn't bow down and worship the Antichrist, and got fried (which is what happens in one of the LB books), I sure as hell am not going to bow down to a god who thinks that laser lighting through people wholesale is the way to go. That point seems to have escaped Tim LaHaye and his followers.

My favourite rapture story is still Neil Gaiman's Good Omens. Lahaye can suck tabasco-splashed donkey scrotum, as far as I'm concerned.

My favourite rapture story is still Neil Gaiman's Good Omens. Lahaye can suck tabasco-splashed donkey scrotum, as far as I'm concerned.

Jebus Christ, guys, sorry 'bout the double post. Someone up there hates me. Guess it could be all that flipping the bird I do in their general direction.

heh. "good omens" was pretty good.

When the Christians leave, can I have their stuff?

In fact, could they please leave now.

Uh, folks, can I jump back in and do something a bit gauche? Re-read what I wrote up there because I think it addresses directly what Ezra was saying.

Most y'all are just: a) attacking LaHaye for being irritating; b) attacking Christians, as if all Christians believe this rot. Now, I'm as anti-Christian as the next guy, and as OT as the next guy, but get back with it, people.

Ezra's calling LaHaye someone who has a distorted picture of Christianity. And I say, nope, LaHaye in well within what's by now (in the last 30-40 years) a standard fundie reading of the Last Days. Spire Christian Comics, let alone the Chick Tracks, were everywhere when I was a kid, and from what I understand about LaHaye's books, there's nothing new in them.

Karl, thanks for mentioning that this version of the end times has been SOP for the fundievangelicals for the last several decades. It's worth pointing out that the whole notion of a secret rapture had its beginnings circa 1830 and it may actually be the one major, significant doctrinal innovation originally thought up by a woman (Margaret MacDonald), although it was promoted by Edward Irving and John Darby. It really gained credence when it made it into C.I. Scofield's annotations on the King James version, and of course, you're probably old enough to remember The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey.

The point is, though, this is, as I said, a doctrinal innovation, brought about by mixing a stew of Old and New Testament scriptures, yanked out of context and then presented for our consumption. The people who promote this are perfectly within their rights to do so, and perhaps this is the most popular view of the end times out there, but there are other views with a longer pedigree than that of the pre-tribulation rapture.

I do call the Left Behind books distorted Christianity, however. I thought about this again after I posted last night; there is little difference save scale between God and the Antichrist in the measure of their acts of destruction. A moral person would worship neither, and I'm glad I don't have that choice because (a) I don't believe this revenge fantasy of LaHaye's will ever come to pass and (b) I don't believe in this "god" of LaHaye's. Again, as I said, if such a being exists, it's right to deny it worship, as worship would only encourage its megalomania.

Jebus Christ, guys, sorry 'bout the double post. Someone up there hates me. Guess it could be all that flipping the bird I do in their general direction.

Cheer up--maybe one of the posts will be Raptured, and then just the one will be left.

Yea, for two shall be writing blog comments, and one will be taken and the other left. For one shall be a conservative wingnut and the other ... left.

Thanks Deanna. I'm a medievalist, so what I know about Christianity is either: a) the old stuff; b) the stuff I grew up with.

But Christianity as revenge fantasy has a fine old pedigree, as any religion must that has an omniscient God damning souls to hell for all eternity. The belief that everyone's going to be saved eventually is Christian, sure, but it's a Christian heresy.