L.B.: The missing children

Left Behind, pg. 255-256

In describing his "electromagnetism" theory* for the mass disappearances, Nicolae Carpathia said:

... certain people's levels of electricity made them more likely to be affected. That would account for all the children and babies and even fetal material that vanished.

Give the Antichrist credit for this: he is the first person in the book -- 255 pages in -- to make any attempt to "account for" all these missing children and babies and fetuses. His theory may be lame, but at least -- unlike the roomful of assembled journalists -- he has the sense to realize that the world's newfound childlessness is worth remarking on.

As the first political leader to address this, Carpathia could gain the attention and support of the hundreds of millions of traumatized and grieving parents, but that's not why the authors have him say this. His mention of the missing children, after all, is little more than an aside, and it is included here only so that LaHaye and Jenkins can make a political point they know will appeal to their target audience. Carpathia doesn't just make the signal distinction between "babies" and fetuses -- he callously refers to the latter only as "fetal material." This is, for Left Behind's intended audience, the equivalent of cackling fiendishly while fingering the tips of his waxed mustache.

We read earlier about this aspect of the disappearances -- every pregnant woman in the world instantaneously became unpregnant. This worldwide spontaneous abortion is an act of God, but it's presented here as an argument that abortion is evil. (We'll see much more of this in the next chapter, as Hattie describes how the Divine Abortionist has put the earthly competition out of business, so more on that later.)

After Nicolae's speech, we are told:

Broadcast commentators urged that he be named an adjunct adviser to the U.N. secretary-general and that he visit each headquarters of the various U.N. agencies around the world.

One of those agencies, of course, is UNICEF -- the United Nations Children's Fund. L&J don't mention this, or speculate on what that agency might be up to in this new world without children. It just doesn't seem to occur to them.

If it seems I'm being picky here, singling out their neglect of UNICEF, note that they also never explore what's going on with parents, grandparents, schools, day-care centers, nurseries, orphanages, toy stores or Nickelodeon. Even New Hope Village Church hasn't given any thought to what it means to have church without Sunday school. The only thought the authors give to the ramifications of this sudden childlessness is to note that abortion clinics would be out of work.

This is a very strange way of thinking about children and the meaning and value of children. Their disappearance -- their presence, absence or existence -- only seems to matter in this book insofar as it involves some political point. Thus we go for chapters at a stretch in which it seems that the authors have forgotten this earth-shattering aspect of their premise, and then suddenly they mention it again, in passing, as part of some political aside.

Many of the errors and contradictions in Left Behind are likely due to simple shoddy craftsmanship. Jerry Jenkins has said that he only spent about a month typing this book, and he just doesn't seem to care much about taking much care. But I think the strange forgetfulness about their childless world stems from something else. I think it has to do with the difficulty of simultaneously believing and not believing the same thing, with the herky-jerky mental repulsion and attraction of cognitive dissonance.

Fast forward to the end -- all the way to the end, to the 13th book in the series, Kingdom Come. They've posted an excerpt from the beginning of this book at LeftBehind.com.

I would warn against "spoilers" here, except that if you're intent on reading this entire series of books, there's little anyone could do to further spoil that experience.** In the interest of preserving whatever suspense there might be, though, I'll just point out that Kingdom Come is set in the earthly paradise of a literal millennial kingdom, and that just because a given character appears in this book doesn't tell you whether or not they might have died before then.

In the excerpt linked above, Chaim Rosenzweig says "half a billion or more" disappeared at the Rapture. LaHaye and Jenkins present this as an accurate accounting, part of Chaim's the-story-so-far exposition at the beginning of Book 13 in which he presents the authors' point of view.

That "half a billion" represents the Real True Christians, the truly elect of the elect, which L&J apparently believe comprises at most a fourth of the roughly 2 billion nominal Christians worldwide. Roman Catholics and mainline Protestants are probably not a part of this remnant of a remnant, and the Eastern Orthodox and the Coptic faithful don't have a prayer.

But as Carpathia pointed out, the Rapture also included "children and babies and even fetal material" (also see earlier, "Pagan Babies"). At the time the first book was written, there were roughly 1.2 billion children age 9 or younger in the world. Even if we set the age of accountability much lower -- age 4 or younger -- that's still more than 600 million kids. Add to that the 100 million or so who were raptured in utero*** and it's clear that L&J's "half a billion" estimate is way too low, even before we count a single RTC adult.

They haven't entirely forgotten about those 1.2 billion+ children. In the literal kingdom, Rayford Steele even meets his raptured-and-now-returned son, Rayford Jr. Like all the heavenly children, post-Rapture Raymie is "suddenly full grown."

So the raptured children return, along with all the raptured adults, but still the authors through Rosenzweig tell us that they total only "half a billion" or so. This could, again, just be a matter of carelessness -- the authors may simply not know or care to know that their figures are ridiculously low. But consider who else is missing in this scene.

L&J's post-rapture roll call strives to be comprehensive. Much of the excerpt reads like a rip-off of Hebrews 11 or of Dante, a long litany of the pre-Christian righteous and of all the saints of history. Yet one group they assured us would be there seems to be missing.

Where are those 100 million who were raptured from their mother's wombs? One would expect, following the premise of the series, that these unnamed millions would, like Raymie, be walking the streets of the New Jerusalem "suddenly full grown."

Those possessed of the slightest imagination will see here the potential for countless questions and endless speculation. What would it mean to make the leap -- in the twinkling of an eye -- from blastocyst to full-grown adult? What would it mean to be "full grown" without development, without experience, without choice, without memory, without the passing of time that we call "life"? In the hands of a thoughtful writer (i.e., not LaHaye or Jenkins) such questions could be the stuff of fascinating storytelling (it's not all that different from the fascination with artificial intelligence in sci-fi).

But our authors keep their distance from all such questions.

Maybe they avoided this discussion because they simply realized they weren't up to the task. Maybe they realized that any discussion of these sudden-saints would be as baseless and speculative as a discussion of angels on the head of a pin and thus they decided that it would be irresponsible to subject their readers -- who tend to treat the series as Gospel truth -- to such speculation.

Or maybe they saw the flashing red warning lights of cognitive dissonance and reflexively turned away from Things We Mustn't Think About.

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

* Kung Fu Monkey informs us that Buffy writers had another term for what we earlier called "technobabble":

"phlebotonum": The placeholder word for the magic thingie/spell/hoo-haa needed in a script, used until the internal logic of the magic/sci-fi setting can be applied.

Carpathia's supposed explanation for the disappearances might have been more convincing if L&J had just left a placeholder word in place and had him say "phlebotonum" instead of "electromagnetism."

** Plus, even though this series is fiction, the authors and many of their readers regard these books as realistic and accurate descriptions of what they call "prophecy," which is to say actual events that will occur very soon at the imminent end of human history. The entire series, in other words, is presented as one big "spoiler" for all of life as we know it.

*** We can assume that L&J would also count among the raptured the frozen embryos stored at fertility clinics, but I'm not including them in this ballpark tally. (I would call these the "frozen chosen," but Presbyterians already have dibs on that name.)

Comments

[Ryan Ferneau]

Oh, so that's why they use that word on tvtropes.org rather than "technobabble". Too many Buffy fans. Except, is it spelled "phlebotinum" or "phlebotonum"?

[Luthe]

I think the problem that LH&J have with the raptured children is that they don't know how to deal with children in real life. I bet they treat their children as miniature adults who are expected to accept Jesus as RTC even though they are too young to truly understand. The concept of childhood and child development is beyond them.

[ako]

It does seem like what one would write if one didn't actually like children, but felt they were important to "traditional family values" and wanted to seem like a good person by not dumping babies int hell. The focus on fetuses and abortion, failing to grasp how much different life would be without children, regarding having children thrust into instant adulthood as a sign of divine perfection and an unmitigated good (sort the the way most people will accept the assumption "nobody want to be old" the authors coul find it obvious that nobody wants to be children).

[Doctor Science]

There are LB children's and YA books, aren't there? What are they like?

[ali]

I've never actually raed any of the Left Behind books, but I did read part of the excerpt you linked to and wow! was it boring. Also, spoiler warning for anyone who cares

And Rayford seemed bored, bored and like he wasn't really apart of what was going on, just an outsider looking in who was also getting a free pass. There was no wonder or sense of immediacy. He should be full of excitement and overwhelmed with joy and emotion. Instead he's comparing it to waiting around for Chloe's name to be called at graduation, and I felt like he was waiting aroudn to get to the "good part" which was getting into Heaven and Jesus wasn't a big deal. Rayford is witness Jesus honoring the Old Testament leaders and he's checking his watch!!?! He's in the presence of Jesus! Not metaphorically but literally, standing in the Glory of God and Rayford is bored.

I don't believe L & J have any sense of wonder or curosity and they barely have an imagination. Fred, I think you are giving them way too much credit, if the thought ever crossed their minds "what would it be like to go from in uetero to adult" the answer they'd probably come up with is "God will provide" and then move on.

[perianwyr]

I think the major take-home from your LB reviews is simple; that here is a subject with excellent potential for being extremely interesting, and here are some authors who really don't care enough about the actual subject matter to bring it to life (they are more concerned with political ramifications to be too concerned with a human story.)

[histrogeek]

I suppose all those returned raptured infants could have developed their wisdom and intelligence in the seven years in Paradise during the Earthly Tribulation. After all they had access to the greatest source of knowledge of all. On the other hand, the "returned" seemed more like the people on board the alien ship at the end of Close Encounters, no experience of their time aboard although the kids grew up.
The concept of a childless world and its impact on humanity was far better explored in Children of Men (I haven't seen the movie, just read the novel). P.D. James did a great job of showing the despair of a people slowly dying out with no future and little regard for the past (which only reminds them of the heritage that ends with this generation).
Such atmospheric psychology is hopeless beyond L&J. It would involve two things they clearly don't have: empathy and imagination.

[Chris_C]

The only thought the authors give to the ramifications of this sudden childlessness is to note that abortion clinics would be out of work.

Abortion clinics would only be out of work for 12 weeks, wouldn't they? Or has The Incident also rendered every remaining human sterile?

Actually, for a clinic worker, the Rapture would be a real blessing. A three month vacation coinciding with the cessation of death threats and the removal of the protestors. I expect they'd all breathe a sigh of relief.

[Jos]

You know, I have thought about the raptured kids suddenly turning into adults and I've really only been able to come up with one theory:

Angels did it.

Now, I'm not much of an expert on the afterlife, but I'm assuming that angels run most of the mundane tasks of keeping Heaven running, so to speak.

So there could be a place in Heaven where time moves slightly differently (in order to account for the "sudden adults" thing) and where the babies and fetuses are allowed to grow under the care of angelic 'parents'.

Of course, their childhood wouldn't exactly be an ordinary Earth childhood and I'm not sure how good angels are at being parents, but it sounds halfway likely to me.

[ako]

Rayford is witness Jesus honoring the Old Testament leaders and he's checking his watch!!?!

So Antichrist reads long, apparently boring list, and everyone is spellbound. Jesus reads a long, apparently boring list to his own devout worshippers, and they check their watches and wait for him to mention anyone they know.

That makes the Antichrist more impressive than Jesus.

[Jos]

That makes the Antichrist more impressive than Jesus.

Yeah, but, didn't we know that already?

[aunursa]

This could, again, just be a matter of carelessness -- the authors may simply not know or care to know that their figures are ridiculously low.

No doubt that's precisely what happened. You're giving the authors far too much credit when you suggest that they might have had some reason for contradicting themselves. They don't include the children because they forgot about them. They don't include the millions of unborn and fertilized embryos because after Jenkins wrote about it in the first book, he forgot all about it.

[McJulie]

At the risk of turning this into another endless abortion thread, I think you've nailed something important here -- anti-abortion crusaders often say words like "murder" to describe abortion, but they don't act like they believe it. If you look at their actions it's clear that most people who consider themselves anti abortion actually, deep down, think of it as a sexual sin more in line with adultery than manslaughter.

This comes out in many odd ways, such as abortion opponents who can actually have abortions without changing their stance. Or people who claim to be mostly against "irresponsible" abortions, as if forcing an "irresponsible" woman to bear a child is somehow beneficial to the child.

In fact, I think the "murder" accusation is mostly a way of smearing liberals with blood libel, given how often I see it sputtered out by angriest-dog-in-the-world conservatives who enthusiastically support things like the Iraq war and the death penalty.

[Rosina]

Do we have any idea about the way the millions of Raptured children from other faiths cope? If young Ray knows who he is, presumably young Mohammed, young Rakesh and young Takuma also know enough to realize that their parents aren't just not Raptured, they're being cast down into hell. So they've been kidnapped, denied a childhood, seen their parents tortured, eviscerated, condemned to an eternity of pain...

But let's be cool about this, that doesn't make Jesus a bad guy. They've learned the right songs in the last 7 years and now they can sing them.

[Ken]

One of those agencies, of course, is UNICEF -- the United Nations Children's Fund. L&J don't mention this, or speculate on what that agency might be up to in this new world without children.

I'm sure UNICEF would find some way to not only justify its existence under those circumstances, but actually expand its mandate and jurisdiction. That's the way of bureaucracies.

(I would call these the "frozen chosen," but Presbyterians already have dibs on that name.)

As do the veterans of a certain winter battle of the Korean War...

[jody]

I do notice that those who tolerate L & J will defend them and their writing as infallible- as Gospel truth. Yuck.

[firefalluk]

hmm, half a billion (more or less) kids raptured .. half a billion saved souls. Perhaps -no- Real True Christians got raptured, only kids? Well, not none, but just the odd hundred thousand or two.

Also, no mention of the other worldwide catastrophe, 100% infertility, which might cause some discomfort.

[Ken]

Initial impression of the excerpt:

The Judgement Seat of Christ scene reads like a Talking Head in a featureless White Room(without even a humming Black Monolith...) A lot of Christian Apocalyptic Fiction is basically a run-on-rails scenario -- Tribulation Event after Tribulation Event, with the characters there only to passively observe, and point out (as Talking Heads) how what just happened fulfills such-and-such Chapter-and-Verse of Prophecy. Like the resurrected Miracle-Gro Rosensweig does in the excerpt, quoting Chapter-and-Verse like a Calormene quoting the poets.

Even Christ, RL model for Iluvatar and Aslan, Infinity Personified, becomes nothing more than another Talking Head moving about on the End Time Prophecy gameboard. (They say "heresy" is best defined as criminal misrepresentation of God...)

The sequel (Vol.13) opening also reads like a Talking Head Infodump, crossed with a nightmare idea of Heaven: The Never-ending Testimony Night, where everybody Shares Their Testimony (TM) for all eternity.

No implication or suggestion that there's anything outside of this featureless New Earth, Sharing Testimony, Praising the LORD, and eating Steaming Piles of Produce Drenched in Butter. Oh, and "turning America into a REAL Christian Nation".

Think about this: They have just received a new Arda from the hand of Eru Iluvatar Himself. A new, perfected Cosmos, up to and beyond anything you can see in the Hubble Deep Field shots (Sagans of galaxies, Sagans-squared of stars, Sagans-cubed of worlds and places). The Ring is melted down, the Dark Lord is no more, the Sun shines bright on the ruins of Barad-Dur in the very heart of what was Mordor, and from the Great Gates to the Tower of Ecthelion, the cry goes up throughout a Minas Tirith encompassing the entire Cosmos and beyond -- "THE KING HAS RETURNED!"

And it may as well be a blue-painted dome over a flat Earth. NOTHING transcendental about their reaction or actions, no hint of this perfected Cosmos stretching out who knows how many billions of parsecs, no hint of the Timeless Halls and Great Music of the Ainur beyond the edge of that Cosmos and the shout of "EA! LET THESE THINGS BE!" that gives reality to the imaginings of that Music, just Share Your Testimony, Study Your Bible, Build a REAL Christian Nation (politically), and eat Steaming Piles of Produce...

[Alan]

Okay, I just read that excerpt and I'm going to have nightmares tonight. How could L&J have written that and not known how creepy Jesus would appear to most people with actual souls. First, everyone talks like a Heaven's Gate cultist, then Jesus casually murders untold millions and all the "Christians" think it's just splendid, and then all the married couples are reunited and cheerily comment on how their all still fond of each other but the love they shared on Earth is insignificant and meaningless next to their blinding love of Jesus.

[PepperjackCandy]

Perhaps -no- Real True Christians got raptured, only kids? Well, not none, but just the odd hundred thousand or two.

It was just the RTC members of New Hope Village Church.

[Ken]

I do notice that those who tolerate L & J will defend them and their writing as infallible- as Gospel truth. Yuck.

Jodi, that's characteristic of fanboys in general -- Trekkies, Furries, UFOlogists, Global Warming, you name it. Like the Da Vinci Code fanboys that caused so much trouble for Roman tour guides last year. The guide would be giving his spiel about a certain place or event on the tour, and some DVC fanboy would pipe up "NO! YOU'RE WRONG!", pull out a copy of DVC and start quoting Chapter-and-Verse from it. Those tour guides HATED Dan Brown...

[aunursa]

Do we have any idea about the way the millions of Raptured children from other faiths cope? If young Ray knows who he is, presumably young Mohammed, young Rakesh and young Takuma also know enough to realize that their parents aren't just not Raptured, they're being cast down into hell. So they've been kidnapped, denied a childhood, seen their parents tortured, eviscerated, condemned to an eternity of pain...

Not only do the authors not deal with this conundrum, but none of the characters even ponders the idea that their unsaved friends and relatives are burning in hell. L&J evade this problem by asking their readers to accept the improbable -- that all of the leading characters' family members sooner or later accept Jesus before their deaths. Even seemingly unlikely characters such as ... Hattie Durham, Steve Plank, and (a character from a later book) Ming Toy's father ... all eventually see the light, sparing their family and friends from dealing with the issue.

IIRC, there are only a couple of exceptions ... Hattie's sister, and (another sequel character) Leah Rose -- whose husband kills himself immediately after the Event. Nevertheless, neither Hattie nor Leah spends much if any time contemplating that her loved one is doomed to an eternity of unending pain and torment.

[Dan]

Just think what the loss of all the kids does to an economy that counts on the billions of dollars spent on those same kids. Disney, Hannah Anderson, Super-Sweet Crunchio cereals, day care providers, the entire preschool and elementary school system, the Kids' Choice Awards, the Olson twins, Nick jr, the Wiggles, Toys-r-Us, Leapfrog, Jay-jay the jetplane. . .every one of those companies and product lines would instantly tank. For 10 months there would be no need for Labor and Delivery nurses, for diapers, for bottles and formula, for breast pumps and baby monitors, for car seats and strollers. Pediatricians would be out of work. Hospital birthing wards would be empty. Neo-natal care units would sit idle.

And then there's the psychological toll. Every time the family got together there would be a gaping wound - not just parents, but grandparents, aunts and uncles, older siblings would be carrying around massive amounts of pain, sorrow, guilt, and anger. People would be surrounded by pictures of their kids, they would still have the grainy ultrasound images of their coming child, their shelves would be lined with all the videos of their kids. . .

Yet these +authors+ can't even begin to include any of that in their story. What garbage.

And one more thing: what if you were 13 years old, but your 12-year old sister and 10-year old brother were taken? Wouldn't that just seem a little unfair?

[mcc]

It does seem like what one would write if one didn't actually like children, but felt they were important to "traditional family values" and wanted to seem like a good person by not dumping babies int hell.

What was that bumper sticker again? "Human Rights begin at conception, and end at childbirth".

Actually, come to think of it, if we're assuming the Left Behind model, then isn't abortion a good thing? I mean, what with the Age of Reason thing meaning instant access to heaven plus an instant advance to being a platonically formed adult for any random bunch of fetal material that happens to die off. Someone without L&J's theological peculiarities might I imagine be able to reasonably bemoan the eternal destruction of a human life, if they considered a fetus to be one; or even if they believe in an afterlife could bemoan the denial of human experience to the aborted. But in the PMDverse experience seems to be mostly something to fear and shun, just another bunch of chances to keep you out of heaven, whereas abortion means escape from the dangerous mortal coil (it seems like only a very small proportion of everyone who ever lived goes to heaven rather than hell in the PMDverse, and I don't think I saw a purgatory mentioned anywhere) and instant ascension into the only kind of life experience that LB seems to consider valid, a selfless devotion to Jesus. The LB ideas, in short, seem basically to rob Christian philosophy of its ability to denounce abortion as an ill; as far as I can tell instead we can think of abortion as a like a little tiny rapture. And rapture is good, right? Is that not the entire message of Left Behind?

But no, LB tells us that fetuses are human life and human life is to be preserved at all costs, even as basically everywhere else in the entire series (Jesus sweeps his hand, etc) they do everything possible to tell us that they consider the value of human life to be in fact incredibly low.

[alsafi]

I have a certain idle curiousity about how much of L&J's ambivalence regarding children can be chalked up to them being men deeply involved in a subculture that lionizes rigidly-defined gender roles, and therefore not having much actual interaction with children. From what Fred says about the way they alternately make much of and ignore the disappearance of all the children on the planet, I'd guess they are the kind of fathers who never know or care to know much about their kids' lives, and for whom it is easy and convenient to leave childrearing responsibilities to others unless they want to trot their "darlings" out to score a point.

[Doctor Science]

Ken --

You say "Talking Head" with caps like that, and I start wondering which song ... "Same As It Ever Was"? "Life During Wartime"? "Psycho Killer"?

Also, re: your 1:04 comment -- do you think that's a fan*boy* thing, particularly? As a fan*girl*, I'm used to talking about "canon" in a ha-ha-only-serious fashion, as something that gives me the ingredients I can refashion to my own liking -- which, yeah, often means smut, but not always.

[Vee]

Regarding the in-utero to adult issue...all the other characters in this universe are so one dimensional, it doesn't seem like missing all those years of development and experience would be much of a problem. Just plug in the "must love Jesus" meme and they're good to go.

And the excerpt from Kingdom Come reminds me of how Satan describes the way people think of Heaven in Mark Twain's "Letters from the Earth." http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/twain/letearth.htm

[aunursa]

instant ascension into the only kind of life experience that LB seems to consider valid, a selfless devotion to Jesus. The LB ideas, in short, seem basically to rob Christian philosophy of its ability to denounce abortion as an ill; as far as I can tell instead we can think of abortion as a like a little tiny rapture.

Funny you should say that. In a later book, Chaim Rosensweig assembles all of the Orthodox Israeli Jews at Masada and preaches the gospel to them (as if Orthodox Jews are ignorant of Christian theology) and asks them to accept Jesus. The ones who convert are promised refuge from the Antichrist's forces; the ones who reject the offer are sent back to Jerusalem, and presumably their doom.

Yet by L&J's theology, they should have offered refuge -- not to the saved -- but rather to the unsaved. The saved wouldn't need to be protected from attack, because upon death they would immediately be with Jesus in heaven. The unsaved, by contrast, could benefit from having additional time to reconsider their decision. But the Tribulation Force abandons the unsaved Israelis, presumably ensuring their ultimate doom.

[Geds]

Wow, mcc. That's brilliant and disturbing.

Given that postulation, it would actually make perfect sense for the RTCs to start aborting every single baby ever conceived in their attempts to open the Hellmouth. It's just a shortcut to the Rapture, anyway. Give it eighty years or so and the human race will die out, anyway. In fact, not doing so would be evil, since those babies would all be able to grow up and fornicate, use four-letter words and become secular humanists.

And we really wouldn't want that, now would we?

[Jeff]

Tachyon particles explain it all. Something (probably the homosexual orgies with dead fetuses starring Obama bin Laden) that the non-Elect are doing destroys their tachyon particles. Come the Rapture, only those with healthy particles (children and RTC, neither of which have been exposed to howdfsObL) are Raptured. Their tachyon Particles accelearate them all the way to Heaven's Waystation, at the same time aging everyone to the Appropriate Age.

It's so obvious!

[Kevin]

OK, I'm sorely tempted to post Mark Twain's take on children v. heaven, but it's pretty long, and the whole story is worth reading, so I'm including a link. (except I can get it to show up as a link)

(To skip to the part that pertains to this discussion, search for 'pretty comfortable')

http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext97/cptsf10.txt

P.S. My preferred spelling (and I'm the only one as far as I can tell) is phlabotanum.

[cjmr]

>>Perhaps -no- Real True Christians got raptured, only kids? Well, not none, but just the odd hundred thousand or two.

>It was just the RTC members of New Hope Village Church.

Well, them and all those folks attending the sporting event in Atlanta 20 (50?) pages or so ago...

[lou]

The question of how the children of other religions feel when they're raptured and what babies with no life experience would be like having gone from 0 to 33 in 0 seconds made me start pondering other questions. Do the mentally handicapped suddenly have full intelligence? What are the implications of that?

But yeah, those babies. just think, you wouldn't know how to eat, read, talk, you would have no vocabulary, though I guess it doesn't matter because everyone will be talking God-talk. you would need to know how to walk, jump, run, etc.
but I guess in their vision of heaven, everyone just sits around praising God, right? No need for books (shudder).

[Fraser]

A friend of mine refers to the phlebotonum as "yeeha physics," as in "Yeehaa! We reversed the tachyon flow and saved the Enterprise!"

Dear God, that Kingdom Come scene was bland by any standard, though in fairness, it's always hard to write an interesting utopia. But the scene where Gabriel rattles off the technical qualifications for paradise struck me as pure Biblegeek, the equivalent of debating Superman vs. Thor battles.

I did laugh at their invoking Jesus on giving the beggar your coat--we all know what a high priority compassion for the poor and downtrodden is in LaHaye's neck of Christianity.

[aunursa]

Do the mentally handicapped suddenly have full intelligence?

Since the physically handicapped are 'healed', presumably the mentally handicapped are as well.

I guess in their vision of heaven, everyone just sits around praising God, right? No need for books (shudder).

IIRC in the prequel The Rapture it is implied that writers will continue to write and artists will continue to paint ... just that all of their creations will be devoted to the glorification of God.

[emjaybee]

I ran into this conundrum (the only important babies are unborn babies) when, as a pro-lifer many years ago, I tried to start up a charity for single moms..the ones who didn't have abortions, and thus, needed our help. Got no interest whatsoever. And as I thought about it later, how can any organization that calls itself "pro life" not *already* have at least, a food pantry and baby supply donation closet for those moms who made the "right choice" and their kids? But there was nothing, nada, not a single ministry affiliated with the prolife movement that had that mission.

Weird, huh?

[yesteray]

firefalluk: Also, no mention of the other worldwide catastrophe, 100% infertility, which might cause some discomfort.

I wondered about that. Is that mentioned somewhere in the L.B. books or otherwise considered in the this theological point of view. Are there no conceptions during this seven year period?

[mds]

What would it mean to be "full grown" without development, without experience, without choice, without memory, without the passing of time that we call "life"?

but I guess in their vision of heaven, everyone just sits around praising God, right?

Indeed, we've already seen that the adults are basically reprogrammed with new personalities after death. So just keep cloning that "chastely, mindlessly praising Jesus" disk image onto the unborn. Who'll notice the difference?

Hang on, are they making the Kingdom look so boring and dystopian as a clever head-fake to undermine Christianity? Tim LaHaye used to be very cozy with Sun Myung Moon. What if this is all Manchurian Eschatology?

[e. nonee moose]

"The Frozen Chosen"

Priceless...

@ alsafi -- my thoughts exactly. given Jenkins' inability to write about ANYTHING he's not fully familiar with, or do any research, or think at all about anything outside his immediate ken, it's a good explanation.

another thing that struck me:

"What would it mean to be "full grown" without development, without experience, without choice, without memory, without the passing of time that we call "life"?"

that sounds a lot like the way that the humans who make it to heaven, anyway. even those who have had a life of experience on earth. those who lived are wiped clean of any personality they ever had.

[Jos]

Indeed, we've already seen that the adults are basically reprogrammed with new personalities after death.

You know, I'm suddenly reminded of the Antichrist. In this case, the Antichrist of Good Omens. Only he realises that playing around with people's minds is a very bad thing and decides not to do it.

LB Jesus, on the other hand, seems to have missed that memo.

It's a bit strange... well, it should be a bit strange that a fictional Jesus gets way outclassed in basic ethics and morality by a fictional Antichrist.

emjaybee, as follow-up to an argument we had in another thread a few weeks ago, THANK YOU for having the chutzpah to admit that...

[the opoponax]

oh, and the two anonymous posts up there were me.

someone else used my computer today, and i swear they emptied my cache and deleted all my presets somehow...

[Richard Hershberger]

"If you look at their actions it's clear that most people who consider themselves anti abortion actually, deep down, think of it as a sexual sin more in line with adultery than manslaughter."

Precisely. The way to demonstrate this is not to look at artificial abortions, but at natural abortions, i.e. miscarriages. The reactions to a miscarriage vary wildly with timing and other circumstances. If it is fairly late-term, and the child is desired, it may be regarded as a trajedy. But under other circumstances it might not even be noticed, if very early. Anyone who really truly believes that a zygote is a full human being would be extremely concerned about such things. There would be funerals and internments and massive funding for medical research to avoid future miscarriages. But you know what? I have been in graveyards and seen stones for infants mere days old, and these are heart-rending. I have never seen a grave stone with negative dates (though I suppose PDQ Bach's would...).

The upshot is that if these people actually believe their dogma, they are sociopaths. But, as you point out, if their real concern is dirty, dirty sex and those dirty, dirty people having that dirty, dirty sex, then things make perfect sense.

[Geds]

I have a "skim rule" when I read that did me very well in college. It's basically where I default to skimming over the text of anything that is completely uninteresting to read and occasionally trying to pick out key words or ideas. I was trying to read that passage from Kingdom Come and couldn't turn off my skim rule. It was just entirely uninteresting.

However, I do find it interesting that they basically just ripped off parts of Revelation, Hebrews and the Gospels in order to write it. Leave aside the idea of Jesus and the angels having nothing better to say than what humans already put in to a book. Does anyone else find it odd that the only thing they could figure out how to do was quote John's Revelation? Wasn't John originally trying to get across a transcript of something he heard from elswhere, theoretically? So why did the angel who would have been the source, have to cite John in LaHaye & Jenkins world?

Also, way back toward the top histrogeek mentioned Children of Men. I haven't read the book, but I saw the movie twice. It's a far more interesting and realistic look at what would happen if every child on the planet suddenly disappeared, since the mechanic of the flu that killed kids and caused women to miscarry is basically the same thing as L&J's Rapture of the children.

[ali]

In the excerpt Jesus tells Cameron and Chloe that that they will be blessed with children because they had to sacrfice their son. But it's also stated that they now have a platonic relationship with each other.

So I assume that they are going to have platonic procreative sex at some point to have kids. Or maybe all the women will just wake up pregnant and that will eliminate the need for sex.

[ali]

In the excerpt Jesus tells Cameron and Chloe that that they will be blessed with children because they had to sacrfice their son. But it's also stated that they now have a platonic relationship with each other.

So I assume that they are going to have platonic procreative sex at some point to have kids. Or maybe all the women will just wake up pregnant and that will eliminate the need for sex.

[Geds]

"So I assume that they are going to have platonic procreative sex at some point to have kids. Or maybe all the women will just wake up pregnant and that will eliminate the need for sex."

Boy, sign me up for that program.

The only people who could possibly enjoy this would be the Puritans, since there's no way anyone could possibly enjoy it...

[cjmr]

I have been in graveyards and seen stones for infants mere days old, and these are heart-rending. I have never seen a grave stone with negative dates

Probably because standard practice when a miscarried child is buried is to put the date of the miscarriage as the date of birth and death. Cremation is far more usual than burial for miscarriages (in our area, at any rate).

[ali]

Actually the Purtians believed that a married couple should have a passionate and loving sexual relationship and that it was what God wanted. There were even some places where a couple could dissolve their marriage because of a lack of sex. I don't have the exact book but Edmund S. Morgan has written several very interesting books about Purtians.

Interestingly enough Puritans didn't believe in celebrating Christmas at all and people could be thrown in jail for such celebrations.