L.B.: The Holy Hand

Left Behind, pp. 393-395

Here, just after he finished typing Chapter 21 and just before he began churning out the first and only draft of Chapter 22, here is where I think Jerry Jenkins paused briefly to skim over the previous 392 pages.

In doing so it seems he noticed a few -- but only a few -- mistakes. He seems to have reconsidered the impact of the whole Babel Fish incident -- the explicitly divine harmless destruction of thousands of incoming nuclear warheads high above Israel. And he seems to have realized, after repeated proselytization scenes and one full-blown conversion, that he hasn't provided even a hint of what his evangelists and evangelizees were discussing (we'll get to that next week).

Most writers, realizing such problems in their initial draft, would have gone back to those earlier pages and rewritten those scenes. That is, actually, what "writer" means. But Jenkins doesn't work like that. He doesn't do rewrites. Instead, he just begins typing Chapter 22, proceeding with the next scene -- Buck's Brief Dark Night of the Soul -- while trying to squeeze in as many retroactive corrections as he can manage. This works about as well as when someone who only partially recalls the joke they are trying to tell keeps doubling back to correct the set-up or to insert something they'd left out.

The chapter begins with Buck in his apartment, unable to sleep. What the writers tell us, actually, is that he "did not sleep well." They also tell us that he is pacing in his living room. I, for one, have usually found it difficult to sleep well while pacing in my living room.

Partly he was excited about his morning surprise. He could only hope Chloe would be happy about it. The larger part of his mind reeled with wonder. If this was true, all that Rayford Steele had postulated -- and Buck knew instinctively that if any of it was true, all of it was true -- why had it taken Buck a lifetime to come to it? Could he have been searching for this all the time, hardly knowing he was looking?

I don't follow the logic, or even the "instinct," of the idea that "if any of it was true, all of it was true." It seems perfectly reasonable to say, for example, that Jesus' prediction in his mini-apocalypse of "wars and rumors of wars" and of "famines and earthquakes in many places" has proven quite accurate without having to therefore embrace all the nuttery in Tim LaHaye's or Hal Lindsay's prophecy cult.

"If any of it was true, all of it was true" seems to be simply another version of the fundamentalist insistence that if any of it is not true, then none of it is true. This is the house-of-cards implication fundies draw from their notion of biblical "inerrancy" which, again, has very little to do with the supposed inerrancy of what the Bible actually says and everything to do with their own alleged inerrancy as its interpreters. This is what makes fundies so vehement over things that have no biblical basis -- from the chronologies of LaHaye and Bishop Usher, to the insistence that David never danced, Jesus never drank or that the Book of Isaiah had a single author. Question any of that and they will respond as though you were denying the divinity of Christ or the very existence of God. All of that makes fundamentalism a very fragile construct, which is why it has to be guarded so fiercely. "If any .. then all" may just be the flip-side of that construct.

Alternatively, it could just be an expression of LaHaye's conspiratorial side. He was once a lecturer for the John Birch Society and still advocates many of their convoluted notions about how the world "really" works. "If any of it is true, all of it is true," sounds like the sort of thing someone would say to you just before they tell you about Groom Lake or Rose Cheramie or the Trilateral Commission.

The rest of this, Buck's literal restlessness and his lifelong search, seems to be shooting for something like St. Augustine's "our hearts are restless until they rest in God." That gets a bit confused here -- and even more so in the pages to come -- due to Buck having been simultaneously touched by the Holy Spirit and stricken with Cupid's arrow. Yet for all of his initial infatuation with Chloe, she's not the Steele he can't stop raving about:

Yet even Captain Steele -- an organized, analytical airline pilot -- had missed it ...

Oh Captain! my Captain! I have all due respect for airline pilots. They have a difficult job with little margin for error. But this recurring motif -- that airline pilots should be regarded with reverence and awe -- is just getting silly. I can't figure out why pilots should be considered particularly "analytical." Nor do I understand why being organized and analytical would qualify one as a spiritual guru. (Tell me, O Certified Public Accountant, what is the summum bonum?)

Abruptly, Buck begins a two-page meditative flashback on his experience at ground zero during the divinely thwarted Russo-Ethiopian attack on Israel. (Buck was there to interview Chaim Rosenzweig, who had won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry despite not being an airline pilot.)

The Holy Land attack had been a watershed even in his life. He had stared his own mortality in the face ...

This is, again, why Buck's epiphanies ring so hollow. He crosses the watershed and the water is still flowing in the same direction. His life didn't change. The experience was not a watershed; it wasn't even a water closet. Back in the original description of Buck's experience we read that:

Buck admitted, if only to himself, that he became a believer in God that day. ... Christian friends wanted Buck to take the next step and believe in Christ, now that he was so clearly spiritually attuned. He wasn't prepared to go that far, but he was certainly a different person and a different journalist from then on. To him, nothing was beyond belief.

Aside from these two assertions, 379 pages apart, Buck never seems particularly "spiritually attuned." And in the more recent instance of his "staring his own mortality in the face," his response was less spiritual and more pragmatic -- he cut a deal with Carpathia to bury a story in exchange for his own life. (Also, what "Christian friends"? Lucinda and who else?)

Back to the current, revised and updated flashback:

He had stared his own mortality in the face and had to acknowledge that something otherworldly -- yes, supernatural, something directly from God almighty -- had been thrust upon those dusty hills in the form of a fire in the sky. And he had known beyond a doubt for the first time in his life that unexplainable things out there could not be dissected and evaluated scientifically from a detached Ivy League perspective.

Wait, which was it? Upon those dusty hills? Or in the sky? Never mind. What's more confusing here is the same-page flip-flop from that little anti-intellectual shot to this, just one paragraph later:

Everyone in the world, at least those intellectually honest with themselves, had to admit there was a* God after that night.

So being all Ivy-League intellectual is Bad, but being intellectually honest is Good. And if you don't believe in this particular concept of God, then you're not intellectually honest and therefore an intellectual. Or something.

We get several more paragraphs here about how incredibly amazingly incredible and amazing this explicit miracle was and about how it left observers with no choice but to accept it as proof of the existence of God. Nice of you to catch up with your readers, Mr. Jenkins, we've pretty much realized that since back on page 12. We figured it out when, the night after personally swatting aside all of those missiles and planes, God appeared on a special two-hour Larry King Live to talk about it.

Mixed in with all of this miracle flashback is Buck's rumination on something else he finds awe-inspiring -- his own talent as the Greatest Investigative Reporter of All Time:

Buck had always prided himself on standing apart from the pack, for including the human, the everyday, the everyman element in his stories when others resisted such vulnerability. This skill allowed readers to identify with him, to taste and feel and smell those things most important to them. But he had still been able, even after his closest brush with death, to let the reader live it without revealing Buck's own deep angst about the very existence of God.

So he "became a believer in God that day," yet he has some "deep angst" about it. And after that event "everyone in the world ... had to admit that there was a God," but Buck left that out of his story. Like Marty DiBergi, Buck was more interested in making sure that readers could "smell those things most important to them." We're told that Buck captured those smells so vividly that he was awarded the Hemingway Prize for his report of the Holy Hand over the Holy Land, yet we readers are only allowed a single glimpse at the words Buck set down with such apart-from-the-pack skill:

To say the Israelis were caught off guard, Cameron Williams had written, was like saying the Great Wall of China was long.

This gives us a glimpse into Buck's apparently collaborative process as a writer:

BUCK: The Israeli's were sooo caught off guard.

STEVE: ...

BUCK: I said, the Israeli's were soooo caught off guard ...

STEVE: Oh, sorry. Right. How caught off guard were they?

After witnessing Explicit Divine Intervention No. 1 in Israel, Buck then -- along with the rest of the world -- witnessed EDI No. 2, the Event itself:

Not that many months later came the great disappearance of millions around the world. Dozens had vanished from the plane in which he was a passenger. What more did he need? It already seemed as if he were living in a science fiction thriller.** Without question he had lived through the most cataclysmic event in history.

Odd that Buck seems to think that living through "the most cataclysmic event in history" somehow separates him from everyone else -- the other 4+ billion people who lived through it too. Yet despite all the ret-conned "deep angst" in this section, neither of the global-scale EDI's really seemed to impress him terribly deeply or to force him to change his agenda. ("The most cataclysmic event in history? Yeah, I'll look into it, but first I gotta go check on my friend Dirk ...") Neither of those was really, for Buck, a "watershed event in his life."

But Rayford's description of the Two Witnesses and the Trip 'n' Die Guys -- that rendered him sweaty and speechless.

Buck realized he'd not had a second to think in the last two weeks. ...

Amidst all the retroactive revisionism of this section I've decided to read this as Jenkins' own apology, or at least his excuse, for not integrating any of this into the preceding 390 pages.

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

* Why just one? The freaky hail-and-meteor storm and the mystic, protective fire across the sky was clearly the work of a god (or perhaps of Dr. Stephen Strange -- it was certainly more his style), but how could you be sure which one? Yes, the protection of Israel in particular would seem to point toward their God (or to a certain Miss Rosenberg), but it could also have been the handiwork of some angry Chechnyan and Somali deities who just really hated the Russians and their Ethiopian allies. Or maybe it wasn't supernatural at all, merely a gesture of gratitude by some technologically advanced alien race who had used Dr. R's miracle formula to revitalize their once-dying planet.

** I've been trying to classify that according to the TV Tropes categories. Buck seems to think he's being genre savvy, which he's not, but he's not quite genre blind either, having read the back of the book along with everyone else. I want to describe this as something like "misplaced genre savvy," maybe The Man Who Knew Too Little?

Comments

[Vermic]

Attendant: Want me to grab you a coffee, Bob?
Pilot: Thanks, Linda. Two sugars, please.
Attendant: Sure thing!

And then the man and the woman bite into a cookie, and nine months later a baby comes.

[Reverend Ref]

Two things:

First, jamoche, it will reveal the depths of my bad musical taste to note that the words "fire in the sky" will indelibly imprint a John Denver soundtrack in my head for the rest of the afternoon... hapax

Personally, I found Deep Purple running through my head.

And second, He had stared his own mortality in the face and had to acknowledge that something otherworldly -- yes, supernatural, something directly from God almighty -- had been thrust upon those dusty hills in the form of a fire in the sky.

Did I miss something somewhere? Didn't Rosenzweig invent some sort of super duper fertilizer stuff or something that allowed the dessert to grow mass quantities of food? If that's the case, why would the hills be dusty?

[Buffybot]

"Without question he had lived through the most cataclysmic event in history."

Shouldn't Christian fundamentalists rate Noah's flood as the most cataclysmic event in history? The Event hardly rates - apparently life has gone on as normal except for a few traffic problems. I'd like to think that Jenkins has creeping doubts about the veracity of the flood, and this is those doubts seeping through into the text.

[vanya]

I guess I am old, I can still remember when airline pilots were cool, even if I was on the tail-end of it. "Catch me if you can" did a very good job of catching that zeitgeist. But so did "Airplane!". Anyway, airline pilot is the perfect hero for this type of evangelical - the job requires dedication, intelligence and the ability to control powerful "modern" (by 1960s standards) technology, but not dangerous intellectual abstract thinking, pilots have physical courage (or at least people who are afraid of flying think so), pilots travel enough to seem worldly on the surface, but don't put down roots in foreign places and get infected by foreign ideas, and pilots wear snappy uniforms and have titles so they are clearly "leaders." The one drawback is pilots are (or were in the 60s-70s) perceived as sexually promiscuous, but dang if LH&J didn't have the courage to address that issue from the get-go.

[aunursa]

Well in this interview, Jenkins acknowledges his stand-in:

FamilyChristian.com: Which character is most like you?

Jerry: In looks, Rayford-about 6'4" and gorgeous. Just kidding. I suppose I identify most with Buck, as he is a journalist and writer.

But I'm still looking for the interview where LaHaye identifies with Rayford Steele.

[Randy Owens]

Great. Now I'm imagining that Don Pardo voice, "Now, for picking the right God to believe in, show them what they've won!", followed by Ivanna White pulling aside the curtain to reveal... steaming piles of produce, drenched in butter. OK, so it's more '80s than '60s. Write what you know, and all that.

[aunursa]

LaHaye named the pilot:

EarleyZone-guest: Why did you decide to use the last name Steele for Rayford? Does it have anything to do with his personality?

Jerry_Jenkins: Yes, it does. That name actually Dr. LaHaye came up with two of the names, Rayford Steele was one, and Hattie Durham was the other. I think he named the pilot Rayford Steele because he thought it sounded masculine.

[mike timonin]

And so the parishioner is left with trusting him or herself or the combined weight of everything they have ever been taught is good and righteous and wholesome and the knowledge that all of their friends and families can see the plain meaning the minister sees. It's a horrible thing to do to a person.

Huh. So this is basically a return to a pre-Luther system in which the only person who can read the Bible is the priest. Interesting - I'd never considered it that way before.

[damnedyankee]

I think he named the pilot Rayford Steele because he thought it sounded masculine.

Especially when set to 1970's porno music.

Boom-chikka-wow-wow...

[Blackadder]

Le Hay and Jinkies: the Men Who Knew Too Little.

[Jeff]

Yes, I watch the Game Show Network far too much for my own mental stability. My dreams are a fevered miasma of polyester suits and orange shag carpeting...

Charter stopped carrying Game Show Network and G4. I think they have something against games.

We have to have Nicky as the center of the LB Squares. His answers are not only snide, but he repeats each one in ten different languages.

=====================

Ralph Kramden might have to save the world.

At least they'd have the Order of the Water Buffalo to back them up.

======================

Personally, I found Deep Purple running through my head.

So Eli would have been the "stupid with a flame-thrower"? (LB as a "check-list of "Smoke on the Water" -- an actual event, with embelishments -- that could be fun!)

[Jon]

Personally, I found Deep Purple running through my head.

I had Ozzy Osbourne running through mine (from a "hidden" untitled song on No Rest for the Wicked).

[Alan]

I would hazard a guess that in the 50's and 60's most airline pilots came to the industry after serving in the Air Force in WWII and Korea, so in a sense they were really only one step removed from "Top Gun." Plus, Americans of that era probably idolized pilots in general because of the space program. I guess LaJenkins thought that being a pilot meant that Rayford could been an astronaut but chose not to be because he had a family to support (or maybe because NASA is some kind of liberal conspiracy -- who knows). Heck, Rayford Steele almost sounds plausible as a name when compared to Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong.

BTW, I now have the theme from "Match Game '79" running incessantly through my head, so thank you all for that bit of torment.

[Jon]

I take that back; that's not from the hidden track, but it is from No Rest for the Wicked.

[Robb]

I think he named the pilot Rayford Steele because he thought it sounded masculine.

I think he named. . . that right there says far more about this book's conception & writing than anything else said in the interviews. A real partnership of real artists, whatever the medium, would have discussed just a little bit, the names of the characters and the attached signifcance & meaning therein.

"So, for the book..."
"Yeah?"
"I have a name for the character I was talking about, y'know the airline pilot"
"ok - what?"
"Mordecai Kleidermacher"
"....mmm"
"Whaddya think?"
"..... mmm uh. . . that's a little. . .eenh, ethnic sounding."
"So?"
"Well, it's just, y'know, obviously Jewish in origin, which isn't bad, it's just this guy obviously isn't Jewish. Y'know?"
"Oh. . . I guess. . . . yeah, yeah I guess that makes sense. How 'bout Ernesto Guevarra?"
"Um. . ."

Instead, Tim tells Jerry "Rayford Steele", and that's it. Fred says it best: this is instructively bad.

[mmack]

LaHaye enlisted in the Air Force in 1944 at the age of 17, after finishing night school. He served in Europe as a machine gunner aboard a bomber.

I'm not going to slag on LaHaye if he climbed into a B-17 Flying Fortress, B-24 Liberator, B-25 Mitchell or B-26 Marauder and did 25 missions back and forth over the continent. Being a pilot and having an interest in history, I've climbed through a restored B-17 and cannot imagine flying one through the flak and fighter attacks those crews faced, much less being a scrawny eighteen year old waist position or top, belly, or tail turret gunner as Luftwaffe fighters zoomed in with all guns blazing. In that case I can understand wanting to be the person at the controls, and not being along for the ride.

His inspiration and Jerry's writing however . . .

[aunursa]

GENE: Nick Carpathia was SO EVIL...
AUDIENCE: How evil?
GENE: He was SO EVIL, that when he wanted to make a move on Hattie, he put __________ in her drink.

[Vermic]

I'm not going to slag on LaHaye if he climbed into a B-17 Flying Fortress, B-24 Liberator, B-25 Mitchell or B-26 Marauder and did 25 missions back and forth over the continent.

Yeah, well, what has he done for us lately?

[Llelldorin]

So being all Ivy-League intellectual is Bad, but being intellectually honest is Good. And if you don't believe in this particular concept of God, then you're not intellectually honest and therefore an intellectual. Or something.

I think this is a strange effect of the conservative/evangelical alliance. Randites used to use the phrase "intellectual dishonesty" a lot to try to resolve the cognitive dissonance caused by the fact that a lot of obviously very smart people kept arguing that their claims to an objective, intellectually-derived-and-thus-unassailable morality were nonsense. "How can such smart people," goes the thinking, "when our perfect arguments are made to them, nonetheless reject them? Obviously they must realize that we are right, and just dishonestly reject what they know to be correct."

From there, it degraded into a generic insult used by conservatives, particularly after the 1994 elections. As far as conservatives were concerned, 1994 somehow marked the total intellectual (as opposed to merely political) triumph of conservatism, and anyone still arguing for liberalism was essentially just being stubborn.

For a conservative evangelical like LaHaye, particularly one writing in the 1994-1995 time frame, that phrase would have been ringing in the air. The fact that it doesn't make any sense when coupled with the usual evangelical disdain for intellectualism wouldn't have troubled him.

[mmack]

GENE: Nick Carpathia was SO EVIL...
AUDIENCE: How evil?
GENE: He was SO EVIL, that when he wanted to make a move on Hattie, he put __________ in her drink.

"His peak, Gene"

"Let's see, Nick Carpathia was SO EVIL, that when he wanted to make a move on Hattie, he put his peak in her drink . . . . "

[mmack]

I was going to post a riff on Family Feud:

Richard Dawson: Contestants, hands on the buzzers. One hundred people surveyed, top five answers on the board. Name the MOST EVIL character in Left Behind.

BZZZZT

Richard Dawson: Hattie?

Hattie: Rayford Steele

Richard Dawson: Survey SAYS!

BZZZZZT

Richard Dawson: Oh, I'm sorry Hattie, there's no Rayford Steele

Hattie: But he's such a dick!

But I realized after The Rapture, half the players would be gone.

[Richard Hershberger]

"Huh. So this is basically a return to a pre-Luther system in which the only person who can read the Bible is the priest. Interesting - I'd never considered it that way before."

Recall much much earlier in the book where, following his loss of Irene, Raymond turned to the Bible. But the copy of the Bible with just, you know, scripture was empty and lifeless. This changed when he picked up Irene's annotated Bible that explained the Truth (as opposed to what your lying eyes would show you if you read only actual scripture).

So far as I can tell, it's not that these people are discouraged from reading the Bible per se, but they are given very careful guidance about which parts to read and how to read them. The other parts are still there, with all that lovey-dovey hippy crap that Jesus keeps droning on and on about, but these bits are discreetly passed over in favor of the good parts.

[Grumpy]

"Partly he was excited about his morning surprise. He could only hope Chloe would be happy about it."

Oh man. Since I don't understand what "his morning surprise" refers to, I can only imagine.... Oh man.

...before he began churning out the first and only draft of Chapter 22...

We've heard before about Jenkins' hasty habits, but is it really fair to assume that he never revises at all? Would Jenkins care to defend himself on that charge?

Probably not, since if he applied his writing talents conscientiously and still ended up with this result, it reflects badly on him.

[infernalserpent]

FamilyChristian.com: Which character is most like you?

Jerry: In looks, Rayford-about 6'4" and gorgeous. Just kidding.

Somehow, I don't think he's kidding at all underneath the words. There's truth in them there jokes.

[Randy Owens]

infernalserpent: You might, or might not, recall Al Franken's coining of the term "kidding on the square". I think that's what you're looking for there.

[Ken]

I think LB's pilot-worship must be a Tim LaHaye contribution. Wasn't there a time, some 40 years ago, when the job of airline pilot carried a prestige akin to rock stars and astronauts? (That's at least the impression I get from films like "Catch Me If You Can" and "View from the Top".) It makes sense that LaHaye would push to give his alter ego as cool an occupation as his stuck-in-the-early-'60s mind could imagine. -- Vermic

Verm, the early-'60s (what I call "the First 1960s") had a lot going for it. This was the 1960s of Googie architecture, the Space Age, early James Bond flicks, and Breakfast at Tiffany's glam. When the 1960s became The Sixties (TM) around 1968 ("when Sauron got The Ring", in the words of the guy blogging at EjectEjectEject.com), a lot of things went South at the same time (see RFK, MLK, LBJ, Detroit, Tet, and "Ball of Confusion" by the Temptations) and we lost a lot as well as gained in the change. "History became Legend, Legend became Myth, and much of what should not have been forgotten, was."

I don't mean, of course, to disrespect actual airline pilots or the job they perform. But -- due I'm sure to the more everyday nature of air travel nowadays -- the days of pilots as demigods are long over, gone the way of the "coffee, tea or me" stewardess (as well as the term "stewardess"). -- Vermic

Does anyone here remember Continental Airlines back in the 1960s/70s, when they called their fleet "Proud Birds with Golden Tails"? And the trouble they got into with a series of ads plugging their customer service -- "We Really Move Our Tails For You!", with footage of swivelhipped stewardesses bouncing along to the title jingle:

"We really move our tails for you,
To make your every wish come true..."

[Randy Owens]

Slight correction: I guess Al didn't coin the term, but boosted its popularity considerably.

We now return to our regularly scheduled steaming piles of produce....

[aunursa]

infernalserpent: Jerry: In looks, Rayford-about 6'4" and gorgeous. Just kidding.

Somehow, I don't think he's kidding at all underneath the words. There's truth in them there jokes.

You decide.

[Ken]

We now return to our regularly scheduled steaming piles of produce.... -- Randy Owens

That's Steaming Piles of FRESH Produce (drenched in butter)!

[John]

Steaming Piles (various sources)

This reference always puts me in mind of a couple of Firesign Theatre works.

[Raka]

Sarah Dylan Breuer: [Jesus] who died on a Roman cross rather than exercise violent resistance...

Sadly, I don't think this is the predominant view of the crucifixion among American evangelicals. The characterizations I hear seem to view it as a sort of psychotic paternal gesture-- God didn't need to kill his son, but he did it to show us all how bad we were being. "See? See what you made me do? I love you SO FREAKING MUCH that I will STAB MYSELF IN FRONT OF YOU until you STOP MISBEHAVING! Now wear a little knife around your neck as a reminder of this sacrifice I made and remember that YOU OWE ME." Except that they seem to approve of this. Also, Jesus's acquiescence wasn't a matter of refusing to betray his own teachings even when doing so could have spared his life. No, it's a great example of bowing to authority and/or more expressing love through symbolic gestures of extreme masochism.

...teaching, healing, and confronting powers that oppress people...
No, no, no. You'd be a terrible evangelical. Jesus did nice things for good people. You know, people like us. People with okay sins, like the ones we'll admit to. He never meant us to tolerate, much less care for, the bad sinners, like gays and foreigners and hippies. See, you're confused because of all the interpreting you're doing.

[Praline]

Now, if Rayford wasn't supposed to be a portrait of LaHaye, what possible reason could he have for saying 'just kidding'? I think he's giving himself away there.

[practicallyevil]

Buck having trouble sleeping eh? This sounds like some good Right Behind fodder, I'm calling dibs on Bucks' sleepless ravings.

"Morning Surprise" - is that something akin to Afternoon Delight?

Thinkin' of you's workin' up my appetite
Looking forward to a little afternoon delight
Rubbin' sticks and stones together makes the sparks ignite
And the thought of lovin' you is getting so exciting
Sky rockets in flight
Afternoon delight
Afternoon delight
Afternoon delight

[infernalserpent]

Thanks for the link, Randy Owens! Yes, that was the phenomenon I was thinking of (albeit more in Freudian id-coming-out-in-jokes terms), what with this book revolving around two self-insert Mary Sues and all. Oh, yeah, I'm the tall, strapping hunk with the porn name. I mean, ha-ha-ha, no, I haven't thought about the question at all! Never!

Thanks for that link, too, aunursa. So that's what he looks like... I've never actually gotten up the guts to look into (or at) the authors. It's been more than enough just peeking into this mirror Fred's holding up to their work every week.

[car]

LaHaye indicates that the idea for the series came to him one day about 1994 while he was sitting on an airplane and observed a married pilot flirting with a flight attendant.

Ok, now, how did he know that the pilot was A) married and B) if so, not married to that flight attendant? Projection, perhaps? How did he know that the pilot wasn't gay and flirting as an in-joke within the crew? And how did he see this happen on a flight, anyway? Maybe it's because I always fly in the cheap seats, but I never even see the pilot, much less witness banter between the pilot and the rest of the staff. I think he saw it in a movie once and didn't want to own up to plagiarism.

Oh man. Since I don't understand what "his morning surprise" refers to, I can only imagine.... Oh man.

That made me laugh harder than I've laughed in days. The morning surprise to which he refers is that he's going to be seated next to her on a plane in the morning, and let her talk all about the flight without telling her that he would be on it (and he then switched his seat secretly to be next to her). Somehow this is supposed to be seen as romantic and gallant, rather than creepy and stalkerish.

[mcc]

Recall much much earlier in the book where, following his loss of Irene, Raymond turned to the Bible. But the copy of the Bible with just, you know, scripture was empty and lifeless. This changed when he picked up Irene's annotated Bible that explained the Truth (as opposed to what your lying eyes would show you if you read only actual scripture).

This hints at the possibility of an interesting dichotomy. Maybe the idea is they don't "interpret" the bible, they only "annotate" it?

[aunursa]

infernalserpent: So that's what he looks like... I've never actually gotten up the guts to look into (or at) the authors.

Well, he could be considered handsome, I suppose, particularly when compared to Tim LaHaye

[damnedyankee]

Now wear a little knife around your neck as a reminder of this sacrifice I made and remember that YOU OWE ME.

I'd like to follow that with a reading from the Book of Bill Hicks (Blessed Be His Name and Pardoned Be His French):

A lot of Christians wear crosses around their necks. You think when Jesus comes back, he ever wants to see a fucking cross? Kind of like going up to Jackie Onassis with a rifle pendant on, you know.

[aunursa]

car: Ok, now, how did he know that the pilot was A) married and B) if so, not married to that flight attendant?

IIRC, LaHaye noticed that the pilot wore a wedding ring, but the flight attendant did not. The pilot seemed to be considerably older than the FA.

[mcc]

Ok, now, how did he know that the pilot was A) married and B) if so, not married to that flight attendant?

Check on google reveals an excerpt from "The Authorized Left Behind Handbook":

NEARLY 2 DECADES AGO, pastor and author Tim LaHaye was on a plane when he witnessed a pilot flirting with a flight attendant. The interplay between them caught his attention because the pilot was wearing a wedding ring.

As far as (B) goes, I can only assume that Tim LaHaye lives in a world where people who are already married do not ever flirt with one another.

[mcc]

but the flight attendant did not

Oh, well, okay, that might actually make sense then.

[lou]

This discussion of airline pilots as rock stars makes me think of the opening lines of Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff, explaining why all the airline pilots had a Chuck Yeager hollers--of-West-Virginia accent. Wonder if LaHaye was influenced by the test pilot legend? Probably not.

[aunursa]

Author FAQ
Q: How did you get the idea to fictionalize the Book of Revelation?
A: LaHaye—"I came up with the idea while sitting on an airplane. I saw the pilot flirting with a flight attendant. He had on a wedding ring and she didn't. I thought, What if the rapture were to occur now and the pilot was left behind but his wife wasn't? That was the first seed of my idea."

[Buffybot]

Well, he could be considered handsome, I suppose, particularly when compared to Tim LaHaye"

Are you sure that photo isn't of a particularly creepy ventriloquist's dummy?

[cjmr]

I'm not going to slag on LaHaye if he climbed into a B-17 Flying Fortress, B-24 Liberator, B-25 Mitchell or B-26 Marauder and did 25 missions back and forth over the continent.

I was watching Memphis Belle this morning while I was sitting around the car dealer waiting for the mechanic to come tell me how much it was going to cost to fix my car. There was an elderly gentleman sitting there with me who said that it was a fairly realistic movie, unlike some WW2 movies. Anyone who flew in one of those those things, especially the gunners, deserves a significant measure of respect.

[aunursa]

If this was true, all that Rayford Steele had postulated ... why had it taken Buck a lifetime to come to it?

Bear in mind that Buck is thirty years old.

If this was true, all that Rayford had postulated, why had it taken 27 year-old Hattie a lifetime to come to it?

If this was true, all that Daddy had postulated, why had it taken 20 year-old Chloe a lifetime to come to it?

If this was going to come true, all that Mom had postulated, why had it taken 15 year-old Lionel Washington a lifetime to come to it?

[Jeff]

Kind of like going up to Jackie Onassis with a rifle pendant on, you know.

Or, better yet, a T-shirt bearing the likeness of the Texas School Book Depository. A rifle is too generic, the TSBD would be dead-on, so to speak.

[Ian]

the mystic, protective fire across the sky was clearly the work of a god (or perhaps of Dr. Stephen Strange -- it was certainly more his style)

I suspect Magneto. He is, after all, a holocaust survivor -- the nuclear annihilation of Israel would not go over well with him.

Magneto could really throw a monkeywrench in the PMD timeline. His anti-telepathy helmet should protect him from Nicky's mojo, and if the Christerminator is made out of metal...

[car]

Still, though. Maybe she doesn't like wearing rings. Maybe the ring was from his gay lover. And as was mentioned earlier, maybe they were just being friendly and he over-interpreted because smiling at someone means you must want to sleep with them, or something. Or maybe I just have such a low opinion of him that I refuse to believe that he can interpret any actual real-life events correctly.