L.B.: Speakerphone

Left Behind, pp. 435-437

In this little section Bruce Barnes and Rayford are playing the Antichrist Game, trying to reconcile what they know about their prime suspect with the many arcane details they've compiled in their check list. Let me briefly try to explain where such details and such check lists come from.

The Bible is full of warnings not to be deceived by false prophets, false teachers or false leaders of any kind, religious or political. Read through the Bible and you will encounter, again and again, various versions of something like this:

Don't be fooled by false leaders. They deceive people with their lies, so watch out to make sure you're not taken in by them.

In many instances, the writer will use a definite generic instead of the plural, so you'll read something like this:

Don't be fooled by the false leader. He deceives people with his lies, so watch out to make sure you're not taken in by him.

Here's the fun part for prophecy enthusiasts: What if that second version doesn't simply replace the plural with the generic? What if, instead, it actually refers to a specific, actual, singular False Leader?

Let the game begin! Get a highlighter and go through the entire Bible, circling every passage that warns against this false leader. (Read carefully -- he goes by many names.) Next, go back through and write down all the descriptions those warnings provide of this false leader/teacher/prophet -- anything that might serve a clue as to this single person's singular identity. And there you have it, your very own Antichrist checklist.

Your final checklist will likely be a bit confusing. Some warnings seem to be describing the False Leader as an Israelite. Other warnings make it clear that he is a gentile. In the first part of Daniel the False Leader sounds like someone very much like Nebuchadnezzar, but in the later chapters of the book he sounds more like someone very much like Antiochus Epiphanes. Later still, John's Apocalypse makes him sound almost like some kind of Roman emperor. This is where the game gets tricky. We seem to be looking for a Jewish gentile who is part Babylonian, part Syrian, part Roman. Trying to reconcile all of those seemingly contradictory descriptions in one single person isn't easy, but that's how the game is played.

(Note: The descriptive details in your check list may seem so irreconcilably disparate or so closely bound to the various biblical authors' distinct contexts that you may even begin to suspect that these details weren't really all intend to prophesy a single, particular False Leader. But that's just crazy talk. Press on -- your speculation about the identity of the Antichrist might end up being wrong, but you won't be any wronger than everyone else who's ever played this game.)

Bruce and Rayford have an advantage over the rest of us when playing the Antichrist Game: They've got a prime suspect carefully tailored by the authors to match every detail of the check list. Yet despite that, they've still got questions, like why is the Antichrist Romanian? This is the question they seek to answer here in Chapter 24:

After the core-group meeting, Rayford Steele talked privately with Bruce Barnes and was updated on the meeting with Buck. "I can't discuss the private matters," Bruce said ...

Bruce and Buck didn't really talk about any "private matters," so I like to think that he's just saying this to give Rayford a hard time. "Hey you know that 30-something guy who's been seeing your freshman daughter? He and I talked yesterday. I can't discuss the private matters -- nudge, nudge, wink, wink -- but we talked for quite some time."

"I can't discuss the private matters," Bruce said, "but only one thing stands in the way of my being convinced that this Carpathia guy is the Antichrist. I can't make it compute geographically. Almost every end-times writer I respect believes the Antichrist will come out of Western Europe, maybe Greece or Italy or Turkey."

Turkey, traditionally, is not regarded as part of Western Europe, what with it's being in Asia, but if we're going to have any hope of reconciling all of the things in our Antichrist check list then we can't allow ourselves to be constrained by such tired geographic conventions.

Poor Rayford is just trying to keep up. If Bruce says the check list doesn't allow for an Antichristescu, then he'll play along.

Rayford didn't know what to make of that. "You notice Carpathia doesn't look Romanian. Aren't they mostly dark?"

"Yeah. Let me call Mr. Williams. He gave me a number. I wonder how much more he knows about Carpathia." Bruce dialed and put Buck on the speakerphone. "Ray Steele is with me."

"Hey, Captain," Buck said.

Upon reading the word "speakerphone" there I half expected confetti to drop from the ceiling as a Sousa march would begin to play and top-hatted officials would arrive to commemorate this apotheosis of LaHaye & Jenkins' weird fixation with telephony.

"We're just doing some studying here," Bruce said, "and we've hit a snag." He told Buck what they had found and asked for more information.

"Studying" makes it sound like they're translating obscure prophecies from ancient tomes rescued from the library of Alexandria. What they've actually been doing is watching CNN's replay of Nicolae's press conference and comparing his agenda to the Antichrist check list the late Rev. Billings left on his desk before he disapparated. One world government? Check. One world religion? Check. Peace treaty with Israel? Check. Babylonian/Syrian/Roman/Jewish heritage? Hmmm. ...

"Well, he comes from a town, one of the larger university towns, called Cluj, and --"

"Oh, he does? I guess I thought he was from a mountainous region, you know, because of his name."

Following the logic of the dialogue in Left Behind isn't any easier than following the logic of the plot. One bumps into these Python-worthy non-sequiturs at every turn: "Is the town in the mountains?" "No, it's a college town." Huh?

"His name?" Buck repeated, doodling it on his legal pad.

"You know, being named after the Carpathian Mountains and all. Or does that name mean something else over there?"

Buck sat up straight and it hit him! Steve had been trying to tell him he worked for Stonagal and not Carpathia. And of course all the new U.N. delegates would feel beholden to Stonagal because he had introduced them to Carpathia. Maybe Stonagal was the Antichrist! Where had his lineage begun?

The ambiguity of Steve's remark -- "my boss moves mountains" -- sets up what might have been an intriguing mystery. But at this point, 436 pages into a 468-page book, it's a bit late to be introducing a new red herring. The possibility that Stonagal, rather than Carpathia, is our Big Bad is emphatically ruled out a mere 20 pages from now. Jenkins half-heartedly tries over those few pages to milk the question for suspense, but this falls flat since he's already spent so much time establishing that Nicolae is, without a doubt, the Antichrist. Readers thus aren't thinking, "Hey, Buck's right, it could be either one of them," but rather, "Pay attention Buck, you moron, it's Nicolae."

The larger problem with the section I just quoted is that we're in the middle of a Rayford-POV section. The whole point of having Bruce and Buck's conversation on speakerphone was so that Rayford, and the reader, could hear what was being said. Yet we're also somehow able to see what Buck is doodling and to hear his unspoken thoughts. Either Jenkins has completely lost track of which character's perspective he's supposed to be writing or else Rayford has some kind of supernatural mind-reading powers. ... Hey. Maybe that's it. Maybe it's not Carpathia or Stonagal, maybe Rayford is the Antichrist!

"Well," Buck said, trying to concentrate, "maybe he was named after the mountains, but he was born in Cluj and his ancestry, way back, is Roman. That accounts for the blonde hair and blue eyes."

Then again, if this strange-but-apropos Blonde Map of Europe is to be believed, Nicolae's being from Cluj, in northwestern Romania, might also "account" for his hair color.

Bruce thanked him and asked if he would see Buck in church the next day. Rayford thought Buck sounded distracted and noncommittal. "I haven't ruled it out," Buck said.

Following that paragraph is another one of these:

 

 

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

Indicating a shift back to Buck's perspective for the following section, which begins:

Yes, Buck thought, hanging up. I'll be there all right. He wanted every last bit of input before he went to New York to write a story that could cost him his career and maybe his life. ...

So immediately after reading Rayford's perception of what Buck is thinking we switch perspectives to read what Buck was really thinking and find out that Rayford had it backwards. Again. This was mildly interesting the first time Jenkins did this trick, less so the next four or five times. Here it doesn't work at all because, again, Jenkins got confused and presented Buck's perspective as Rayford's.

If you're a book editor, you should own a copy of Left Behind to take along to your annual performance reviews. Just open to a random page, have your boss read it, and then remind them that this is why you're worth every penny and then some.

Comments

[Froborr]

The main problem is that I only have two characters: the shut-in adult daughter (I haven't yet decided the nature of the trauma that makes her unable to leave her apartment) of a deceased folklorist who specialized in the comparitive study of apocalypses, and her Meals-on-Wheels guy. I kinda need more to write a good metapocalypse. Ideally this would be one of those novels that requires a character list at the front.

Also, I've written female characters, but they were all (at least outwardly) very tough cookies. I'm not sure I have the chops to write an openly broken woman without being mawkish.

[Jeff]

The post at 4:02 was me.

[Hawker Hurricane]

Greece is considered part of Western Europe. The "East-West" boundry is the one between NATO and the Warsaw Pact...

[ohiolibrarian]

Apparently L&J see scripture as the Godly equivalent of an Ouija board.

Or a Magic 8-Ball?

[pepperjackcandy]

Froborr --

Could the female lead's father not necessarily be dead, but have disappeared mysteriously? That way, you have a subplot built right in.

And you can get rid of characters that have outlived their usefulness by sending them off looking for Daddy.

[Chris]

Oh, and one of the funniest LB Fridays so far, Fred!

[Praline]

I'm starting to get the feeling that the AntiChrist is Romanian solely so that the narrators can use their Scary Dracula Voice when reading his lines.

What? He speaks ninety-nine languages and can't manage an educated accent in any of them?

Yeesh.

[Froborr]

Or a Magic 8-Ball?

Q: Oh Magic Scriptural 8-Ball, does Susie in homeroom like me?

A: And Jehovah spake unto Moses, saying, " -- Numbers 9:9

Q: Uh... well... crap.

I refreshed several times and got no begats, so I don't think they actually have the entire Bible in there, but I think that verse is pretty win as it is.

[Froborr]

And you can get rid of characters that have outlived their usefulness by sending them off looking for Daddy.

ANGELS are fighting SEA MONSTERS during a GLOBAL PANDEMIC -- and that's before the aliens invade!

I'm pretty sure getting rid of characters is not going to be a problem. ;-)

[Jos]

the shut-in adult daughter (I haven't yet decided the nature of the trauma that makes her unable to leave her apartment)

*sigh*

You know, some people don't need a trauma to go utterly batshit. And maybe you know that, but the usual depiction of such fears coming from some kind of trauma (usually childhood) is getting really tiring.

Then again, I suppose "well... because" isn't a good enough explanation in fiction.

[Kelly]

Okay, the random POV change without warning in the middle of a scene actually makes the entire LB series make more sense to me now. Clearly, it's just a bad fan fiction. Of course, how it got published is still beyond me...

Then again, I suppose "well... because" isn't a good enough explanation in fiction.

Yep. Fiction has to be narratively satisfying, which is why it cannot be truly realistic.

[longstreet63]

I'm starting to get the feeling that the AntiChrist is Romanian solely so that the narrators can use their Scary Dracula Voice when reading his lines.

And what's really funny is that the Scary Dracula Voice has a Hungarian accent. (Although Lugosi's hometown later became part of Romania.)

Whoever said movies don't change the world?

Steve "The Chldren of the Night--What comments they post!" James

[Froborr]

4:41 was me.

I'm commenting too much, a clear sign I should go home and sleep. Sadly, it's my turn to provide dinner, so I can't go *straight* to sleep.

[Tonio]

The Children of the Night

That could be Fred's next song thread:

Children of the Grave - Black Sabbath
...Sea - Sabbath again
...Sun - Billy Thorpe
..Damned - Iron Maiden
...Night - Whitesnake, Bad Company, Richard Marx, Survivor
...World - Amy Grant, Backstreet Boys, Aaron Carter
...Revolution - T. Rex
...Earth - Radio Architecture

[McJulie]

In the rest of Europe and in most of the US, an adult blonde is a dyed blonde.

See, I realize that genetic blondes are rare, but I still bristle at the built-in assumption that if you see an adult with blonde hair, he/she dyes it. Maybe you're just looking at someone of Scandinavian descent.

(Says the person of Scandinavian descent... I'm convinced that blondes are commonplace...)

Also, I hate blonde jokes, because I believe they are misogynist. In nearly all of them, there is an assumption that the blonde in question is *female*.

[yagowe]

there is an assumption that the blonde in question is *female*

A blonde is female by definition...

(But yes, I'd agree the jokes are inherently misogynist- I've never heard a 'dumb blond joke').

[kodiak]

McJulie, it's possible that you're running into a built in stereotype that I have always run up against... that's assuming that there are many people like you out there. For years when reading fiction I took it one further and assumed, when lacking further information, that charachters were just like me. Which I admit now is weird... but it worked into my early 20's when I started noticing this bias.

I think that we approach the world from the easiest point of reference, and that is ourselves. So you see blondes everywhere, and I see brunettes, and a friend of mine sees asians.

I could be wildly off-base tho! :D

[chaos_engineer]

Here's Neil Gaiman's Omni-Apocalypse poem, "The Day the Saucers Came":
http://www.spiderwords.com/feature1.htm

[cjmr]

I refreshed several times and got no begats, so I don't think they actually have the entire Bible in there,

As interminable as the begats seem, they're less than 0.5% of the whole text of the Bible -- you'd have to refresh more than several times to guarantee getting one.

-----

Even the 'Scandinavian blond' blond kids I knew in school (the ones whose hair turned almost white in the summer) were barely dishwater blond by the time they were 30.

[Izzy]

I was under the impression that natural blondes are much more prevalent in the U.S., particularly the Midwest, than in most non-Scandinavian places in Europe (thus the rather sickening "All-American Girl!" image) because there was a ginormous influx of Scandinavian immigrants there back in the day. So when I see a blonde American chick, I don't assume she dyes.

The exception is metro Southern California. But I lived in SoCal long enough to know that "everything is fake" is a reasonable default assumption about anyone in L.A.

[hagsrus]

Omni-Apocalypse

Not the same, but Pratchett has fun with battling sun gods in Pyramids.

[McJulie]

McJulie, it's possible that you're running into a built in stereotype that I have always run up against... that's assuming that there are many people like you out there.

Well, actually, it was intended to be a joke about my *immediate family* being full of obnoxious yellow-haired Vikings, and therefore the critters seem commonplace.

Even the 'Scandinavian blond' blond kids I knew in school (the ones whose hair turned almost white in the summer) were barely dishwater blond by the time they were 30.

This brings up another aspect of blondishness: where does blond end and light brown begin? Because our culture considers blond desirable, there is social pressure to claim it in marginal cases... but it also means that worldwide blondness estimates might be wildly overinflated, if it's based on self-reporting and not on a disinterested third party holding up some kind of tint-matching card.

Also, there is the sun-bleaching factor: in the sunbelt, even without chemical enhancements, blond(e)s are more common because people with hair in marginal brown will bleach out to a more obviously blond shade.

They should have made Nicolae a "ginger," though, because I have it on good authority (South Park) that ginger kids have no souls...

[Dorothy]

As for Roman woman buying their blonde hair, the Roman epigrammatist Martial wrote a clever little joke about this

Martial poked fun at the raven-haired beauties, too:

"Nycilla dyes her locks, 'tis said,
But 'tis a foul aspersion;
She buys them black; they therefore need
No subsequent immersion."

[Paula]

I never got hung up on the phone calls so much as how big a deal they made out of flying west to east instead of east to west or whatever it was. It's been quite awhile ago and it may not have been in the first book, but later on. Hope I didn't spoil the plot for anybody.

[Mad Monkey]

Tim LaHaye was born in 1926. That might be why he thinks that Turkey is in Western Europe. The gigantic
Turkish Osman Empire had just broken up about a decade previously, so he might have gotten his geo-graphy mixed up.

[Robert]

Darn! Now Fred's got me hooked on looking at all the maps at strangemaps.wordpress.com.

[Cowboy Diva]

The Smothers Brothers rewrote the song "Black is the Color of my True Love's Hair" thusly:

Black is the color of my love's true hair.
Black is the color of my love's true hair.
Though her tresses are red as a rose.
Black is the color of my love's true hair.
But only her hairdresser knows
(does she or doesn't she)
Only her hairdresser knows.

And of course, there is the James Bond (Goldfinger?) line about making sure "collar and cuffs match."

[Lauren]

Omni-Apocalypse

Come to think, David Brin wrote a graphic novel something like that, called The Life Eaters. The Norse gods show up at the end of WWII to save the Nazis, and they and their Shito allies conquer the polar regions but are stopped at the tropics by various SE Asian and African gods.

[Doctor Science]

I'm a Scandanavia/Irish redhead, but both of my parents had dark hair -- in fact, I suspect one reason red hair has the long association with trickiness or temper is that red hair tends to "crop up", instead of being inherited in an obvious way.

In the US at present, more than half of women dye their hair, and I've seen estimates that up to 5/6 of US "blondes" are dyed.

[Ahcuah]

You know, if you are going to try to figure out the antichrist solely by his name, you'd think the one named "Old Nick" would give it away.

[Karen]

I'm the redheaded child of blue-eyed blondes, and I am extremely grateful to LaJenkins for foregoing the "Anti-Christ as redhead" trope. I have no idea where that came from, since there is at least some Biblical and Rabbinic authority for King David and his descendants being redheaded. Thus, Jesus should have been one of us.

Doctor Science, I read somewhere that being redheaded is the result of a single-gene mutation, unlike the blonde-brown continuum which is polygenetic. That is, we have one gene determining our haircolor while the rest of the world has many. I can't remember what that gene is, but there is only one.

[cjmr]

In the US at present, more than half of women dye their hair, and I've seen estimates that up to 5/6 of US "blondes" are dyed.

I knew that it's unusual for someone as old as me (and with the amount of grey I have) to have not started dyeing their hair, but those figures still surprise me. I wonder how many of those dyed blondes are dark-haired people going blond and how many are just people who had interesting blonde hair when they were teens that got dull as they got older and their going back to their 'old' natural color.

-----

there is the James Bond (Goldfinger?) line about making sure "collar and cuffs match."

There are at least some women who don't dye, but whose "collar and cuffs" don't match.

[cjmr]

Ugh. Why is it I don't notice the mistakes until after I hit post, even when I preview? There is at least one place in my previous post where I typed 'their' when I meant 'they're'!

[Jeff]

I can't remember what that gene is, but there is only one.

Gene Reddburn, host of the Match [That Tint} game and the Match That Tint Game '85!

[aunursa]

Ahcuah: You know, if you are going to try to figure out the antichrist solely by his name, you'd think the one named "Old Nick" would give it away.

I can't recall whether any character expresses this realization anywhere in the series.

[CarlosMcRey]

So, I have to admit I'm a little intrigued as to whether we get any real back story on Nicky. Is he supposed to be a Rosemary's Baby type fostered on a poor Romanian woman? Is he raised by some Satanic cult? Or is he a normal kid who one day runs into Satan, who tells him, "I am your father."

Anyway, one thing that I don't quite get, and I'm curious if anyone else has any thoughts, is why all the talk of his background being "Roman." Is that in any way different than Italian? And if not, why don't they just say he's Italian?

[Chris]

@Karen: I really don't have more than a passing knowledge of the negative symbolism of red hair in mediaeval beliefs, but perhaps the red-headedness is *because* red hair was common in the line of David? He is the *Antichrist*, after all. Looks the look, walks the walk, talks the talk, rotten to the core.

Oh, I fully agree with Jos about fictional characters and traumata. I got annoyed at myself when I realised that, in my own writing, I had a tendency to base all the traits and desires of a character on a single all-important event in her childhood. Even fiction needs to be more subtle than that.

Oh, and may I also register my hatred of dumb blonde jokes.

[Shadow Wolf]

Nope, Nicky's the genetically engineered child of two gay men.

[Chris]

@CarlosMcRey: Nicolae's backstory is told in the prequel "The Rising" (The Antichrist Is Born... Before They Were Left Behind!). I haven't read it myself, but I'm sure someone else here might be able to do the plot *full* justice.

The constant harping on his "Romanness" seems to be some sort of sop to the fact that Babylon/the Whore in Revelation is symbolic of Imperial Rome, home of Nero and the persecutions of the Christians. I'm not quite sure why this is in the story, since L&J completely ignores that part otherwise: to them, Babylon is just Babylon.

[Chris]

Thanks, Shadow Wolf!

[Dash]

We seem to be looking for a Jewish gentile who is part Babylonian, part Syrian, part Roman. Trying to reconcile all of those seemingly contradictory descriptions in one single person isn't easy, but that's how the game is played.

Heck, those of us in the more cosmopolitan areas of the U.S. (and probably a bunch of other countries) can probably think of at least half a dozen people right off the bat who come really close to filling that bill.

"I guess I thought he was from a mountainous region, you know, because of his name."

Oh yeah? Well, I think Tim LaHaye is a girl, because his last name is French and begins with "la."

[CarlosMcRey]

Wow, Shadow Wolf, that sounds like a real Dave Barry, I-am-so-not-making-this-up kind of revelation. So are LHJ playing off the anxiety that a genetically engineered human can be born without a soul, or do the gay guys happen to have some Satanic DNA on ice?

I am roughly familiar with the Rome/Babylon connection. And, like I said it was sort of tangential thinking, like are there non-Roman Italians or non-Italian Romans? (Say, like the way one could, IIRC, talk about non-Persian Iranians or non-Iranian Persians.) It really brings out the way that PMD, at least the way it's presented in this book, isn't so much a chain of events (A leads to B leads to C, etc) as it is a disconnected series of events. After all, in a globalized world, why should it really matter where the Antichrist is from? (Oh, that's right--PMD checklist.)

[Dash]

The *only* places there are no shortage of adult blond(e)s are around the Baltic -- look at the map Fred linked.

In the rest of Europe and in most of the US, an adult blonde is a dyed blonde.

Well, no, according to the map. (I don't know how they're defining "blond," BTW, and where you put the line between "blond" and "light brown" is going to matter. But let's accept their definition as a given.) Notice that the khaki colored areas, which includes (for example) Hungary, have 20-49 percent blonds. That means somewhere between one in five and one in two people in those areas is blond. Not a majority, but not anywhere close to near absence, either.

[burgundy]

McJulie and yagowe - I know one (and only one) blond joke.

Q: Why do blondes have bruised belly-buttons?

A: Because there are blond men too.

[CarlosMcRey]

RE: LHJ's thinking that Romans are blond.

Could they have been thinking of Fabio? (And yes, I know he's not naturally blond, but LHJ might not.)

[McJulie]

being redheaded is the result of a single-gene mutation

According to Wikipedia, it's the melanocortin-1 receptor (MC1R), which is found on chromosome 16, and usually confers pale skin and freckles as well. The random crop-up nature of red hair/freckles might be why it is seen as uncanny, but the Wiki article makes it sound like most anti-redhead prejudice dates back to the middle ages in Europe, so I'm inclined to interpret it as anti-Celtic prejudice.

My natural haircolor is a medium blond, which people sometimes assume is dyed. However, when I dye my hair red, people tend to assume it is natural -- even when I dye it reds that are not particularly natural-looking.

I have no idea what, if anything, that means.

[cjmr]

McJulie -- my guess is it means that you have a fantastic skin tone for red hair. Congratulations, most people who dye their hair red don't.

[Dean Booth]

Yay, LB Friday!

My misreading gave me a laugh, too:

"His name?" Buck repeated, drooling on his legal pad.

[Ryan]

Hey why is it that the hair on Super Mario's head is brown, but his mustache is black? What's up with that?