L.B.: LPU&B

Left Behind, pg. 256

Unlike Buck, the other journalists present at the United Nations actually file stories on Nicolae Carpathia's speech and press conference, turning the Romanian president into a media superstar:

By the time of the evening network news, a new international star had been born. He even had a nickname: Saint Nick. More than sound bites had been taken from the floor of the U.N. and the press conference. Carpathia enjoyed several minutes on each telecast, rousing the U.N. audience with the recitation of countries, urgently calling for a recommitment to world peace. ...

The news broadcasts didn't offer mere "sound bites" from Carpathia's speech because it didn't contain any sound bites. The guy recited lists of countries, agencies and secretaries general. It's hard to imagine some news producer telling her editors, "Be sure we use that bit about U Thant -- that's what everyone will be talking about tomorrow at the water cooler." Then again, it's hard to imagine any news producer caring a whit about a U.N. speech by the president of Romania, even on the slowest of slow news days. And since there's still no trace of every child on the planet and still no full accounting yet for how many and who all is among the disappeared, this wouldn't seem to be a slow news day. (Just think of what CNN would like following the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of white women.)

But set aside the unprecedented context of The Event and its aftermath. The president of Romania giving a speech at the United Nations, about the United Nations, wouldn't make the paper if it happened today, let alone the network news. Speeches at the U.N., even by national leaders, just aren't that big a deal. They might make the news if they include something newsworthy -- like Hugo Chavez's "smells like Bush was here" shtick -- but generally speaking, they're not news.

I understand that LaHaye and Jenkins have their own peculiar perspective on the United Nations, but you'd think they might have noticed, if they've ever watched the nightly news, that such broadcasts do not usually begin with even sound-bite coverage of speeches there. The media attention Carpathia is getting would make slightly more sense if he had spoken, instead, before a joint session of Congress in Washington, but L&J have studiously avoided any mention of the American government and how it might be responding to The Event. LaHaye lives in southern California and Jenkins lives in Colorado, but quite honestly they don't seem to occupy the same planet that the rest of us live on.

He had carefully avoided specific talk of global disarmament. His was a message of love and peace and understanding and brotherhood, and to quit fighting seemed to go without saying. No doubt he would be back to hammer home that point, but in the meantime, Carpathia was on the charmed ride of his life.

Speaking of hammering home one's point, L&J remind their readers here, yet again, that anyone with "a message of love and peace and understanding and brotherhood" should be viewed with suspicion. That's the language of the Antichrist, after all, the language of evil. This is not a minor point in Left Behind and I suspect it's one that many of their 60 million+ readers have absorbed. (I wouldn't be at all surprised to find a close correlation between that readership and the 29 percent of Americans who believe the war in Iraq is going well.)

L&J's insistence that the Antichrist be a promoter of peace and disarmament is part of what lends an unreality to the whole narrative of Carpathia's rise to power. Post-Event the world would be in chaos, chaos that would extend even to the personal, existential level -- those left behind have just witnessed the erasing of the boundary between being and non-being. With the population traumatized, desperate for answers and direction, the situation would be ripe for dictators to seize power by declaring martial law, restoring order with an iron hand. The Post-Event rise of global dictatorship practically writes itself. But L&J instead present a scenario in which Carpathia rises to power on the basis of little more than utopian appeals for cooperation as chaos flowers into peaceful order. (I suppose, again, that if this scenario seems plausible to you, you might really think the war in Iraq is going well.)

The authors follow some strange twists of logic to arrive at the idea that "love and peace and unity and brotherhood" is the message of the Antichrist. The idea seems to have its roots in the biblical warnings against false Christs, passages like Matthew 24:4-5, "Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, claiming, 'I am the Christ,' and will deceive many." For these impostors to "deceive many," their claims must seem plausible, so they must talk like Jesus. A false Christ, in other words, would likely talk about the same things that Jesus Christ talked about -- love and peace and understanding and brotherhood. But this talk will be fraudulent, the false Christ wouldn't really mean any of it.*

Somehow L&J seem to have lost sight of the fact that the words of such frauds should not be taken at face value. (I think this is partly due to their reflexive antagonism against "works righteousness," which leads them to emphasize words over deeds.) They are not on the lookout against the deceptions of disingenuous false leaders, but rather against anyone with a message of love and peace and understanding and brotherhood. They've gotten so caught up in guarding against wolves in sheep's clothing that anything in sheep's clothing is viewed as the enemy. So all sheep must be shot on sight.

Follow the logic. Once you've decided that the Most Important Thing is to avoid the wolf in sheep's clothing, your safest course of action is to embrace the wolf in wolf's clothing.

Apply this logic to vigilance against the Antichrist. We "know" the Antichrist will come claiming to favor LPU&B. Now imagine we are faced with a choice between two leaders. The first advocates LPU&B, but the second, instead, favors the opposite -- hate, war, dissension and enmity. From LaHaye and Jenkins' perspective, we should choose the second leader, because we know he's not the Antichrist. The first one might be (or, at least, he might be an unwitting tool of the one-world government conspiracy that will eventually be led by the Antichrist).

Anyone who talks about love, peace, unity or brotherhood might be the Antichrist, so anyone who speaks of such things must be rejected.

Through books like LB and through the vast network of "Bible prophecy" seminars, newletters and radio hosts, tens of millions of Americans have been taught to think like this. Consider how you might go about energizing such voters if you thought of them as your "base" of electoral support.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

* The most extensive discussion of such false Christs is found in 1 John, which also introduces us to the term "Antichrist." (John actually speaks of "antichrists" -- plural -- and the term is not found anywhere else in the Bible, not in Revelation or any of the other apocalyptic passages favored by PMDs.)

John's first epistle is all about recognizing and avoiding what he calls "the spirit of the antichrist," and it's chock full of blunt, stark statements on the topic, such as this from Chapter 4: "If anyone says, 'I love God,' yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen." For John, in other words, actual "love and peace and unity and brotherhood" are the hallmarks of genuine faith.

Comments

[Cogito]

Excellent insight, but I think you're missing a piece of the puzzle - fear of an Antichrist who preaches LPU&B and institutes a one-world government seems to grow in part from the weird and entirely unbiblical notion that God prefers the United States of America above all other nations, and He wants us to retain our ability to kick global ass.

The most extreme American Christians, to my mind, give some lip service to Jesus, but in practice ignore almost all his teachings, and instead salivate over Old Testament style "chosen people" conflict and carnage. Jesus's main function is simply to have transferred "chosen people" status from Israel to the U.S. Naturally, these beliefs rule out any support for a one-world government, not just because it's a trapping of the Antichrist, but because such a government would unseat the U.S. as the remaining superpower, and force us to conform to all those pesky rules like the Geneva Convention, which really should only apply to those other countries.

Of course, this just makes your comment about courting these voters all the more scary.

[Salamanda]

Oh, I love LB Friday!

"Absorbed" is an excellent way of putting it. I read several of these books in high school, and absorbed that way of thinking so willingly, so uncritically, that for a long time---even still, somtimes---it's hard for me to read Scripture without reading that perspective into it, along with the perspective of Oh dear, He's really fucking mad at me now! I suppose I'll get over it, but it has made for a few sleepless nights.

So all sheep must be shot on sight.

Exactly.

[the opoponax]

cogito brings up an interesting point.

are there any non-US christian groups that embrace this particular quirk of the Antichrist?

i mean, aside from the fact that there aren't many non-US christian groups that go in for the Antichrist thing.

[cjmr's husband]

[waiting for this to deteriorate into baaaaad sheep jokes]

[aunursa]

Now imagine we are faced with a choice between two leaders. The first advocates LPU&B, but the second, instead, favors the opposite -- hate, war, dissension and enmity. From LaHaye and Jenkins' perspective, we should choose the second leader, because we know he's not the Antichrist. The first one might be (or, at least, he might be an unwitting tool of the one-world government conspiracy that will eventually be led by the Antichrist).

Not necessarily. From the L&J perpective, since it's possible that the first leader is not the Antichrist, we can't say that he would be malevolent. We would need more information in order to make a determination.

Moreover, it doesn't necessarily follow that L&J would choose the leader who preaches HWD&E. They may in fact believe that the Antichrist will preach LPB&U in order to gain power to implement HWD&E policies.

[Jeff]

waiting for this to deteriorate into baaaaad sheep jokes

:-D Then shouldn't it be "a message of love and fleece and understanding and brotherhood"?

[Dan]

If you follow the Matthew 24 passage, Jesus goes on to say that wars, famines, and earthquakes must happen, and Christians shouldn't be alarmed by that. Now, with the proper nuance and context, this statement isn't as negative as it sounds. But in the world of lahaye and jenkins it is interpreted to be "these things MUST happen, so anybody against them is against Jesus."

"His was a message of love and peace and understanding and brotherhood. . ." Hide the children. Peter, Paul, and Mary are here! They're singing about peace and brotherhood! They are the antichrist!

[the opoponax]

"They may in fact believe that the Antichrist will preach LPB&U in order to gain power to implement HWD&E policies."

but this isn't how it manifests in the popular consciousness. for instance i've heard a lot of noise about how Obama is the antichrist, just because, well his message is of LPU&B. nothing Obama has done at this point would give most people pause about the fact that he may be a wolf in sheep's clothing. you can go to his voting record, and he seems pretty consistently antiwar and in favor of initiatives that cross the aisle. before he was in the senate, he was an illinois state senator, and we can look at his voting records there and see that this was also true back then. furthermore, he started his career as a community organizer in inner city chicago -- if that's not the ideal LPU&B job title, i don't know what is. so every action we have on record for Barak Obama, for DECADES, aside from a few unpaid parking tickets, is LPU&B. he is, in every way that it is ever possible to know, definitely on the up and up and not just playing us on this stuff like so many others tend to be.

but in the eyes of many, this makes him MORE likely to be the antichrist, and in fact it is the reason that he is the latest "antichrist" target. they're clearly not looking for a wolf in sheep's clothing, but a sheep, period.

[JS Bangs]

I vaguely remember hearing some passage saying that destruction comes when people say "Peace, peace!" Of course, I couldn't actually find it in my Bible; the closest was Jeremiah 6:13-14. But that might just be flashbacks to my dispy upbringing.

[cjmr's husband]

[In short, Obama *must* be pulling the wool over our eyes]

[alfgifu]

are there any non-US christian groups that embrace this particular quirk of the Antichrist?

None that I'm aware of in the UK. There is a long history of a similar identification with the 'chosen people', the modern Israel, etc - but that sort of went out of fashion after WWII when our empire was disintegrating. Nowadays the most virulent nationalist groups tend to have a faint patina of (probably very shallow) Anglicanism because of it being our traditional faith, but I've never come across any group of Christians taking the nationalistic line.

Christians playing 'name the Antichrist' in the UK tend to be in the minority; although there are plenty of people convinced that we're living in the 'end times' who get all upset about things like the government's recent ID card scheme, the consensus seems to be that we'll know the Antichrist when we see him, and we ain't seen nothing yet. Christians (including the evangelical/charismatic/red-letter variety - whatever the trendy term is now) are in the minority in the UK, anyway. Also, they tend to be politically overwhelmingly liberal and left-wing.

[Hibryd]

Fun with Falwell! Or why the UN will be the platform of the Antichrist and online billpay will pave the road for the Mark Of the Beast economy.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200608280008

[Raphael]

The opoponax: The concept of the Antichrist used to be very common in European and European-settled-countries Christianity, but seems to be a lot less common out of the US by now. However, the specific version of belief in the End times that is so common among American Evangelicals, with the specific interpretations of the various people and things and events in Revelations that they have come up with, is mainly an American thing. (there are US-style Evangelicals pretty much everywhere in the traditionally Christian parts of the world now, though, allthough usually not many.)

[the opoponax]

oh, Raphael, i know the concept used to be quite common.

my question is, who were they pointing at? because the only two i can think of are Napoleon and Hitler, and well, both of them were quite clearly not wearing sheep's clothing. is there a history of Antichrist-o-philes in europe who simply pick anybody who argues for LPU&B?

[PK]

L&J have studiously avoided any mention of the American government and how it might be responding to The Event.

What American government? All the Republicans have been raptured.

[Cat]

The idea of the USA as God's chosen people dates back to the Pilgrims. They wanted America to be the third, final, and sole successful covenanted nation--the first two being Israel and England, which according to them had failed miserably. It didn't help that the US's founding fathers used a lot of secularized religious language and imagery. I can see how religion and patriotism could get conflated in people's minds just on the basis of that.

It's not just that PMDs suspect that anyone preaching peace and love is the Antichrist; according to Timothy Weber's On the Road to Armageddon they believe that decay, dissolution, and misery have been foreordained for the end times, so anyone standing against these things is opposing God's plan. In the thirties, some of them went so far as to say proponents of Social Gospel were doing Satan's work. Back then they believed in helping people on an individual basis, but not actually making sweeping changes that would improve life for the poor in general, and it strikes me that this meshes nicely with political conservatism and its focus on private charity rather than a social safety net. (Weber says the motivation for PMDs finally getting into politics in the seventies had to do with them seeing what they regarded as decay and wanting to stave it off at least until they themselves were good and dead and didn't have to deal with it, but that strikes me as too simplistic, and besides that, what Fred has been talking about--an assumption of bad faith.)

I'm doing a term paper on the Left Behind novels. Every book I've read so far talks around the series--social context, history of PMD, readership, political influences both ways--which is good for what I'm focusing on, but this blog is the first thing I've found with any in-depth analysis of the books themselves, and it's far funnier, more human, and more engaging than anything else I've read on the subject. So, um, Fred--thanks!

[Ken]

Follow the logic. Once you've decided that the Most Important Thing is to avoid the wolf in sheep's clothing, your safest course of action is to embrace the wolf in wolf's clothing.

Slack, one of the historical speculations on the Antichrist was that there would actually be TWO Antichrists (probably "The Beast" and "The False Prophet") working as a tag team. One would be a fanatical persecutor ("anti-" as "in opposition to", an obvious wolf-in-wolf's-clothing), the other a slick deceiver ("anti-" as "in imitation of", the deceptive wolf-in-sheep's clothing). And the people would flee to the second (and take his mark) for protection from the first. (This was one of the well-thought-out bits of the FRP game Rapture: The Second Coming.)

Apply this logic to vigilance against the Antichrist. We "know" the Antichrist will come claiming to favor LPU&B. Now imagine we are faced with a choice between two leaders. The first advocates LPU&B, but the second, instead, favors the opposite -- hate, war, dissension and enmity. From LaHaye and Jenkins' perspective, we should choose the second leader, because we know he's not the Antichrist. The first one might be (or, at least, he might be an unwitting tool of the one-world government conspiracy that will eventually be led by the Antichrist).

Using the Antichrist tag-team idea from above, what if both leaders are Antichrist? One obvious and one deceptive? "The Beast" and "The False Prophet"? Choosing the second "because we KNOW he's not the Antichrist" just means you've been deceived into taking The Mark. (The aforementioned FRP game used this idea: since the game's End Times/Tribulation DIDN'T go down on the Darbyite checklist/conventional Rapture everyone expected, Real True Christians in the L&J mold ended up helping the second ("we KNOW he's not") Antichrist in the tag-team climb into power, only to be crushed between the two Antichrists when the Beast and False Prophet joined forces to spring the trap.)

[Drocket]

aunursa, I think you're not really understanding here.

*They may in fact believe that the Antichrist will preach LPB&U in order to gain power to implement HWD&E policies.*

Its not that they MAY believe that - they DO believe that. Therefore, anyone who preaches LPB&U must automatically be viewed with mistrust. Sure, they may not be the antichrist - but they very well could be (or at least could be working for him, or unwittingly be paving his way.) This leads directly to the conclusion that anyone who preaches a message of war and destruction CAN'T be the antichrist, and therefore is automatically at least somewhat trustworthy (unlike those damn hippies.)

[Ken]

(Weber says the motivation for PMDs finally getting into politics in the seventies had to do with them seeing what they regarded as decay and wanting to stave it off at least until they themselves were good and dead and didn't have to deal with it, but that strikes me as too simplistic, and besides that, what Fred has been talking about--an assumption of bad faith.)

I think Totem to Temple touched on this subject a couple years ago. Here's a summary:

The "Build a Christian Nation/Christian Reconstructionist/Handmaid's Tale For Real" types were originally called "Theonomists", and came from a Post-Mil perspective. They believed that Christ would not return until the entire world was Christianized first, at which point they would turn their Christianized world of Christian nations over to Him at His Second Coming. Theonomists originally did not teach "Takeover" (in the sense of imposing a forced theocracy) so much as winning hearts and minds and making enough converts to reach critical mass; upon which there would emerge a popular theocracy, accepted by the almost-completely-Christian population. This was anticipated to take several generations at least.

Then the PMDs got on board in the late Seventies, as a reaction to The Sixties and its aftermath. ("Seeing what they regarded as decay," partially caused by Christians' self-removal from the mainstream, whereupon The Future happened without their influence.) Being PMDs, they KNEW Christ was returning very soon, like literally tomorrow. Since Time Was Short (TM), the PMD Reconstructionists skipped the original Theonomists' long "hearts & minds" prep period and concentrated on the end stage -- sort of "Theocracy Now!"

(If Christ is coming tomorrow and "It's all gonna burn", what's the point of doing the takeover in the first place? These PMD Reconstructionists never realized the absurdity.)

[Ken]

I vaguely remember hearing some passage saying that destruction comes when people say "Peace, peace!"

I don't remember where that passage is, but it always struck me as more likely a general pattern:

You might desire "Peace! Peace!" so badly that you end up deceiving yourself into ignoring a real enemy who really is out to destroy you.

I believe this is the danger the "antiwar" movement (founded in the aftermath of Vietnam) has gotten themselves into regarding the Islamic Wars. I cannot forget that a similar thing happened in Europe during the Thirties, when in the aftermath of World War One peace movements swept all Europe -- except for Nazi Germany.

[Steven S.]

I believe this is the danger the "antiwar" movement (founded in the aftermath of Vietnam) has gotten themselves into regarding the Islamic Wars. I cannot forget that a similar thing happened in Europe during the Thirties, when in the aftermath of World War One peace movements swept all Europe -- except for Nazi Germany.

OK. I may be about to feed a troll here, in which case I apologize to the rest of you.

You're right, Ken, you can't forget that fact. Because it didn't happen, and to remember it, it would have needed to happen.

Germany had a peace movement. It was destroyed. And I find it interesting that the Twenties appear to have been omitted from your little scheme, probably because it made it easier to draw the Nazi comparison.

Oh, and the "Islamic Wars"? That's a new one, since I am guessing you're not talking about either the spread of Islam or the Crusades. If you're talking about now, (as I suspect you are), then I suggest you think for a while about the wisdom of Wars on Abstract Nouns, and who's been going around starting wars lately.

You're right, in one regard. Nazi Germany is what you get when those who stand for peace and good conscience are driven away, silenced, and destroyed, and a vague threat of the Other is used to make a society accept it.

[aunursa]

What American government? All the Republicans have been raptured.

The American president plays a role in the sequel Tribulation Force. A Democrat, he is in the middle of his second term at the time of the Event.

A plot summary of the Left Behind video World at War indicates that the president, played by Louis Gossett Jr., takes on a slightly different role than he does in Tribulation Force.

A LB spinoff series features the Rapture (and some of the LB characters) from the perspective of the White House staff.)

[aunursa]

This leads directly to the conclusion that anyone who preaches a message of war and destruction CAN'T be the antichrist, and therefore is automatically at least somewhat trustworthy

Sorry, I don't follow. That appears to be "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" fallacy.

[Turcano]

The media attention Carpathia is getting would make slightly more sense if he had spoken, instead, before a joint session of Congress in Washington, but L&J have studiously avoided any mention of the American government and how it might be responding to The Event.

That, and the notion that Carpathia could have won over the powers-that-be and the general public with a recitation of the fifty states, the roster of US presidents, and an overview of Cabinet departments would have been mind-blowingly asinine even by their standards.

[inge]

the opoponax: my question is, who were they pointing at?

The Pope, usually.

[Hibryd]

A LB spinoff series features the Rapture (and some of the LB characters) from the perspective of the White House staff.)

Spinoff series? (Clicks link). Holy crap...

13 books (whoops - I'm sure they didn't mean to do that) in the original series, 3 in the "Countdown to the Rapture" series, 3 in the "Political" series, 3 in the "Soon" series, 3 in the "Military" series, 10 graphic novel rehashes of the first few books, and they're up to #40 (!!!!) in "The Kids" series...

Makes a total of 72 fictions books (so far) in this franchise. And that doesn't even count all the guides and "non-fiction" companion books. For two people who are convinced Jesus is coming before they check out, they sure are hell bent on making as much money as possible.

[cjmr's husband]

[yup, they're really fleecing the people who buy these books!]

[ChristianPinko]

Arrrggh! Here I was all set to make the best comment over, and Cogito nails it in one. All I can do is quote Hank Hill: "It's Jesus peace, not hippie peace."

Obviously, the antichrist is with the hippies, since they committed the unforgivable sin of questioning whether America might not be the center of teh Universe.

[aunursa]

13 books (whoops - I'm sure they didn't mean to do that) in the original series

Actually Kingdom Come is the final book -- it's not actually counted in the original series.

12 books in the original series. No doubt representing the 12 tribes or 12 apostles.

Three books in the Countdown series, probably to symbolize the trinity.

Don't forget the LB product line -- you can buy calendars, greeting cards, music, and the "In Case of Rapture" video from the original book. LB is a large and profitable business.

[Erick Oppeen]

In L. Sprague de Camp's excellent overview of the history of the occult, _Spirits, Stars and Spells,_ he discusses the ways that the whole "Antichrist" thing has been subsumed to political ends. For quite a long time, anybody who was unpopular and prominent was likely to be what de Camp calls "beasted;: (identified with the Beast, or the Antichrist): Quite a few Popes, Martin Luther, Napoleon Bonaparte (who did preach some good things, at least insofar as he represented the ideals of the French Revolution; his career had the unexpected side-effect of making it hard to be for those things in large areas of Europe for decades afterwards, but that's another story) Kaiser Wilhelm (who was 666 months old when he declared war, or so it was said), Hitler (of course), and so on.

And I have to say that for the Antichrist, or anybody else with evil intentions, to preach anything _but_ peace, love, universal understanding and things like that would be terminally stupid. Kind of like trying to seduce a MOTDS; I don't think I'd get very far if I started out telling her that her clothes made her look fatter even than she was, her hair reminded me of Medusa on a bad-snakes day, her zit-scar-covered face put me in mind of the moon's surface and so on. Telling her _things she wants to hear_ works a lot better. (Hmmmm---how about an Antichrist that offers a way to lose those extra pounds without dieting that actually works?)

One of the reasons the Communists were so insidious was that they preached equality, peace and other Good Things. Keep in mind, unlike Hitler and Mussolini, Stalin _did_ have covens of covert followers working to extend his rule everywhere, while the Nazis' and Italian Fascists' appeals were pretty strictly to their own nationalities. Even the groups that ended up allied with the Axis in WWII weren't kiver-to-kiver Nazis, and usually had their own agendas.

[cjmr's husband]

MOTDS? Message Of The Day? I'm missing something.

(although I remember an old joke: You've been reading Usenet too long when you see a jar of MOTTS applesauce and wonder what the Third sex is...)

[Steve]

Slack, one of the historical speculations on the Antichrist was that there would actually be TWO Antichrists (probably "The Beast" and "The False Prophet") working as a tag team. One would be a fanatical persecutor ("anti-" as "in opposition to", an obvious wolf-in-wolf's-clothing), the other a slick deceiver ("anti-" as "in imitation of", the deceptive wolf-in-sheep's clothing). And the people would flee to the second (and take his mark) for protection from the first.

So its pretty much that episode of the Simpson's where the two aliens take over Bill Clinton and Bob Dole's bodies as they run against either other for president. "Don't blame me, I voted to Kodos!"

[LMM]

What, and the forty kids' books represent the forty days of Lent or something? They're making this stuff up as they go along.

[hf]

...And the people would flee to the second (and take his mark) for protection from the first.

Really?! Then why did biblical literalist leaders do exactly that back when Communism seemed like a threat?

Cogito and several other commenters reminded me of Bob Altermeyer's research (pdfs here). He studies authoritarian followers, loosely speaking, and Social Dominators. He also explains what "close correlation" means, if anyone doubts Fred's claim about that.

[Cactus Wren]

JS Bangs: I vaguely remember hearing some passage saying that destruction comes when people say "Peace, peace!" Of course, I couldn't actually find it in my Bible; the closest was Jeremiah 6:13-14. But that might just be flashbacks to my dispy upbringing.
I think Fred touched on this in an earlier entry.

Erick: (Hmmmm---how about an Antichrist that offers a way to lose those extra pounds without dieting that actually works?)
This made me LOL. Have you read Good Omens? The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are characters in it: War, Famine, Pollution, and Death (Pestilence retired after the invention of penicillin). Famine, we're told, is the inventor of nouvelle cuisine, as well as the developer of a diet product called CHOW™. CHOW™ is tasty and satisfying but contains no sugar, no carbohydrates, no fat, no protein, no vitamins, and in fact nutritional content “roughly equivalent to that of a Sony Walkman”. You can eat all of it you like and you will still lose weight. (“And hair”, we’re told in a footnote. “And skin tone. And, if you ate enough of it long enough, vital signs.”)

Famine’s newest achievement is called MEALS™. “MEALS™ was CHOW™ with added sugar and fat. The theory was that if you ate enough MEALS™ you would a) get very fat, and b) die of malnutrition.”

[Technocracygirl]

Doggone it, hf! I was just about to post a link to Altemeyer. (Working my way through _The Authoritarian Specter_ right now.)

If you want to get a good look at the mentality of people who will pick HWD&E over LPB&U and the absolute amoral bleepity-bleeps who recognize this and are willing to capitalize on it, Bob Altemeyer's been working on this for thirty years. He's very readable, funny, and scared to death of his subject matter. And I would definitely armchair psychologist L&H into the "Double-High" bleepity-bleep category.

Oh, and cmjr's husband, shouldn't that have been "O-baaaah-ma's pulling the wool over our eyes?" (Because bad puns should be written out so *everyone* can groan over them!)

[LMM]

hf: Er, no. That link leads to *this* page, not to Bob Altemeyer's work.

[sdf (Stu)]

Fred, I am a Slacktivist LB addict (though I comment only now and then), and this is one of your very best posts. Connects the insidious ideology of this claptrap to the political disease that has infected (uncomforatbly large percentages) of the U.S. population with precision and clarity.

"I think this is partly due to their reflexive antagonism against "works righteousness," which leads them to emphasize words over deeds."

Except (except, EXCEPT, EXCEPT!!!!) for sex of course. I've heard Christians literally say, "We will be judged by our actions" when condemning teh gay. They don't, of course mean it for any context other than sex. (I shan't go into the chasmous difference in understanding between those who see sex as an act and those who see it as an expression of a relationship).

I've said it before but I can EASILY imagine Christians and Christian pastors glad-handing people they knew had just come back from a stint as a torturer or a soldier who'd committed atrocities. It wouldn't even be a question of them [pastors] saying, "This man is forgiven". Oh no: They wouldn't even conceive that someone with human entrails under their nails NEEDED to be forgiven. But unorthodox fucking? Oh no: That's a hellworthy offense, no matter what else you do or believe.

I have installed a mental firewall against all Christians (yeah, even liberal ones). Whenever I they say, "Salvation is by faith" I instead literally hear, "I enjoy pain and death, greed and misogyny, but I don't feel like being judged as a bad person, so instead I cleave to and propagate a belief system that validates me despite my otherworldly barbarism."

[J]

Oh that last post was me by the way.

[rm]

Regarding leaders who preach PLB&U as a cover for war, hatred, enmity, & bad faith . . .

Think back to the days when George was popular, when "compassionate conservatism" was a brand that still had some persuasive power . . . I was sure he was [the/an] antichrist. I don't mean that in the LaHaye sense . . . I really doubt there will be "the Antichrist," but there is the spirit of antichrist as in 1 John -- I think of it as a way of describing the corrosive spiritual poison of human leaders who pose as righteous Christians while saying things like "lemme put it this way: they are no longer a problem for the United States of America" (too bad Marlon Brando wasn't around to put cotton in his cheeks and really deliver that line the right way).

George definitely played the part of an antichrist.
-- deceived even the elect (evangelicals recognized him as "one of our tribe"; soccer mom type voters thought he was a moderate; he had a genius for using dog-whistle phrases that would give out these two separate messages at once to each audience)
-- preached PLB&U while gunning for war (as a candidate, he was all about being a "moderate" "uniter")
-- sweet promises, bad fruits (he hasn't touched _anything_ that hasn't turned to sh&%)
-- manipulative liar (witness the sparkle that comes into his eyes when he delivers a phrase that he knows sounds like sweetness & light but MEANS bitterness & darkness. He delights in getting the deception across. If you've read the Lemony Snicket books, this is the aspect of George that is satirized perfectly there. George has traded in the sparkle for his grimacing "serious" face lately, but remember when he was still on top.)
-- wounded in the head (some wounds are internal)
-- perverting scripture: freeing the captives, wonder-working power, justice rolling down, all applied to the worldly power of the U.S. military. He's a blasphemer and idolater, technically, though he may not know it.

Well, so, anyway, to sum up: I think the corrosive spiritual poison isn't just in his policies that disdain peace or diplomacy, but more insidiously in his way of using the language of righteousness to refer to evil and bad fruit.

And to connect to _Left Behind_, this is the kind of thing -- that naturally if there were one Bad Guy he'd have to look TRULY good to the "ELECT", not just good to ignorant atheists -- those authors miss. They are sure the Bad Guy is going to be European, socialistic, etc. etc. Folks have referred to Altemeyer's work on the authoritarian mindset. The lack of ability to see subtleties, grasp irony, or use nuance in these people's minds just . . . I just can't . . . gaaaaaah. It's boggling.

Which brings me back to Fred's overall thesis: the original sin of these books is the author's lack of empathy.

So all of this insomniac rant boils down to "what Fred said."

[hf]

How odd. Let's see if this works.

[inge]

Erick, I'm not so sure that people acutally want to hear about LPU&B. In general, leaders and populists seem to have fared a lot better with telling people that they are right and that all the Bad Stuff is Someone Else's Fault.

[bad Jim]

Patrick Henry is supposed to have given a speech that included this:

Gentlemen may cry, "Peace! Peace!", but there is no peace. The war has already begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms!

about a month before Lexington & Concord. Give him marks for prescience.

[bad Jim]

Can't think of any appropriate sheep jokes. I could never understand the saying "May as well be hung for a sheep as a goat," wondering why anyone would want to act like a sheep, until I ran across the hierarchy of sacrifices in Deuteronomy. Duh. Sheep are worth more than goats.

Then again, I also had trouble with "All meat and no potatoes." What's wrong with skipping the fries?

[magistra]

'When your Money Fails' by Mary Relfe from 1981 (with a blurb on the cover from 'Colin Deal, Author of best seller, Christ Returns by 1988') thought there were four main candidates for Antichrist at the time: Henry Kissinger, Juan Carlos, Pope John Paul II and Anwar Sadat. She plumped for Anwar Sadat. Looking at it in 2007, I think Kissinger is far more plausible as an Antichrist.

[Rosina]

"May as well be hung for a sheep as a goat,"

In the UK the phrase is "May as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb", and doesn't mean 'as a sheep' as Bad Jim implies. It means that stealing livestock was a capital offence, and if you were going to steal woolly animals you might as well take the one with more meat and therefore worth more. In other words, if you're going to sin, sin big.

[hapax]

rm: "He's a blasphemer and idolater, technically, though he may not know it."

Which reminds me of one of the Ten Thousand Plots That Would Have Been More Interesting Than LB: What if the anti-Christ didn't know he was the anti-Christ? What if he really thought that LPU&B were a Good Thing, and that he was on the side of the angels? How would he react upon discovering that he was actually fostering the plans of Hell?

The Good Doctor Asimov touched upon this theme in his splendid short story "Flies,", and of course GOOD OMENS addresses it as well. But it would be an interesting read from the PMD view.

(Bishop Sheehan's MAGNIFI-CAT, a wonderful (if very dated) book, also toys with the idea of having Lucifer repent, while in SANDMAN, Gaiman has the First of The Fallen basically chuck the whole gig as a bad job. But that's not the same thing at all.)

[Mirele]

Just some random thoughts. I remember back in the late 70s, talk of the antichrist in the small Pentecostal church I attended included Henry Kissinger, Anwar Sadat and Ted Kennedy(!).

As for the Left Behind books. Originally, there were only supposed to be five, then seven, and finally twelve books. You can see this by getting early printings of the first few volumes. They had not planned for more than five. Personally, I think there was a lot of, uh, padding, to make it to twelve volumes, particularly when you realize that there are more than a few places where the writers skip a few months and then get to the next "episode" in the series. Someone, either LaHaye or Jenkins or Thomas Nelson saw dollar $igns all over the place.

[the opoponax]

kinda OT, but:

"Stalin _did_ have covens of covert followers working to extend his rule everywhere"

um, no? or i should say, if yes, examples?

stalin himself didn't have "covens" (cute) of "covert" followers working to extend his own rule everywhere.

the USSR and/or world communism as a whole had political parties in other countries, not covert splinter cells. most of which were fully open and public, unless as in the case of the US mccarthy era, there was serious persecution going on, and even then, most communists were totally open about their affiliation, and they were POLITICAL PARTIES that ran candidates and everything. many of these communist groups were not particularly enchanted with Stalin, and those who were cool with Stalin were assuming that the bad stuff was just anti-communist misinformation, that it couldn't be nearly as bad as people were saying, and that it was their duty as communists to assume good faith and not ask too many questions. afaik, none of the worldwide communist groups during the Stalin era were directly affiliated with Stalin himself and his cult of personality. in fact, many were associated much more with Stalin's mortal enemy, Leon Trotsky, who was assassinated while in Mexico working with local communist groups (who had nothing whatsoever to do with Stalin).

not to mention that most of world communism spread through homegrown communist sympathy, and wasn't specifically spread by Stalinist interests. international communism generally started independently of direct Soviet influence (except maybe in states that eventually became part of the soviet bloc and were communized for imperialist purposes, like Hungary or Romania). there were socialist parties and groups in most countries WELL before the Russian Revolution. a lot of them sprung up due to, well, reading Marx, between the end of the 19th century and the first world war. then when the revolution of 1917 happened, there was a groundswell of new groups forming everywhere that were more "communist" in the sense of the soviet marxism-leninism, because they saw how well things went for the Bolsheviks and wanted to model their outlook on a Bolshevik platform. all this happened WELL before Stalin came along (Dude, seriously, have you not seen the movie Reds?).