tgajdjis's Full Review: Tim Lahaye and Jerry B. Jenkins - Left Behind: Ilu...
This book about the Rapture (end of modern times, Armageddon, etc.) is truly dreadful. Well, it does have some good points, but I just can't work hard enough to remember them. As an aside before I go on, I would like to make a few things perfectly clear:
1) I have no idea if the Rapture will occur.
2) I am a Christian, but this book offends me.
3) If you love this book, you will be offended by my opinions, so give yourself a break and read one of the positive opinions, or just go to a love-in.
4) I take religion very seriously, and take much time and effort to try to separate the ridiculous from the truth, and this book is clearly a painfully obvious incarnation of the former.
Need I say more? Well, yes, I do! Let's start with some of the obvious things. Our main characters are literally two-dimensional. They have so little depth that if you turn them sideways, they would disappear. Rayford Steele, one of the main characters in the book is supposed to be a true skeptic, an analytic type who needs proof before he will accept new ideas. Well, the Rapture must have had a nuclear component, because he went brain dead after that. After the Rapture, his intellect was surgically removed, and everything that came across his radar was immediately accepted, and there wasn't even the tiniest progression from skeptic to believer, hence my hypothesis regarding his brain being irradiated. We can see a similar transition from Cameron (Buck) Williams. Here, we have a well traveled, respected journalist who can't even cobble two intelligent thoughts together after the rapture. Indeed, his thoughts are embarrassingly infantile, much worse than even a WWF commercial.
I can continue on and on about pathetically bad character development, but you get the idea. Let's change gears. I noticed that all the main characters in this book are good looking, intelligent, handsome, accomplished, etc. Well, I guess that really proves to me that if intelligent people such as these have become "saved", then it must be so. Anyway, I just hope that all the readers out there who wish to be saved are good looking, intelligent people.
Wait, don't turn the channel, there's more! In their desperate attempt to convert people as they are reading this book, the authors litter the dialogue with preaching that comes straight out of those pamphlets that litter the subways and airports everywhere. Yikes!! Please spare us. More competent authors would have used the book as an opportunity to get their views across in an interesting vehicle (the Rapture), and could have entertained us along the way, but no, they had to use the scorched earth policy. The readers are literally "flame-throwered" with Christian banalities, homilies, etc. Also, they could not resist throwing anti-abortion views in. Abortion is a hot button topic in America, and I wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole, but I can say that I am tired of being preached/shouted at by the left and the right. Enough said.
Incredibly, I actually read other books in the series to see if the first book is an aberration. It is not. Even though it strains credulity, some are actually WORSE than the first. Why, you ask did you do this? Well, honestly, its the same reason you pick at a scab until it bleeds, or you stop at an accident to see the carnage, you get the idea.
In conclusion, I would suggest you avoid this book. True Christians and the just plain curious can find many interpretations of Revelations elsewhere, and they will not be as bored.
In one cataclysmic moment, millions around the globe disappear. Vehicles, suddenly unmanned, careen out of control. People are terror-stricken before ...More at Christianbook.com
Best of the Best. Only one series will take listeners to the end of the world as they explore eternal truth--the bestselling Left Behind series by Tim...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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