Tribulation Force, pp. 28-32
-- Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho), in Duck Soup
Bruce Barnes has a plan. That, it turns out, is why he's called this special emergency executive session of the Tribulation Force -- even though it's taken him eight pages to get to the point, what with all the crying and male-bonding going on.
But Bruce knows, specifically, what the future holds. He knows about the trials and the wrath to come and he knows about the job he and the others will have to do. And with all of that in mind, he has devised the following two-part strategy:
2. Hide in it until Jesus comes back.
Bruce's plan involves an actual hole in the actual ground, but apart from that detail his plan is remarkably similar to the strategy employed by millions of American premillennial dispensationalist Christians now. These Christians -- people H.R. Niebuhr might have classified as belonging to the "Christ terrified of culture" category -- are trying to dig themselves an underground bunker by creating a subcultural bubble free of all worldly temptations such as sex, science, books, film or ideas.
This would seem to make PMD types like Tim LaHaye less threatening to others than their theological opposites -- the dominionists and other post-millennial, theocratic types who seek to conquer the world, setting up a sectarian kingdom for Jesus to come back to reign over. Theocrats want to rule the world. PMDs just want to hide until it's over. So where the former set out to dictate how others must also live, the latter -- in theory -- simply expect the world to keep getting worse and worse until it falls apart and don't claim there's anything they can or should do about it.
That's in theory. But alas, in practice, PMDs turn out to be much closer to the theocrats than their premillennial pessimism would indicate they ought to be. This is illustrated by the career of LaHaye himself -- he helped found both the Moral Majority and the Stonagal-esque Council for National Policy -- and of his wife Beverly, Queen Bee of Ladies Against Women. PMDs, it turns out, want to hide, but in a really BIG hole -- one the size of America, actually. And that means dragging the rest of us down there with them and forcing us to live by the rules of that temptation-free world as well.
Even if PMDs were, in practice, as harmlessly passive and bystanderish as their theology suggests they should be, they would still pose a dilemma for those of us outside of their hidey-hole. We are not meant to be passive bystanders, after all, and it seems cruel and uncaring to allow these, our PMD neighbors, to live out their lives in the stunted confines of their hole without at least affording them the possibility of liberation.
But anyway, back to Bruce Barnes and his plan.
"The press of God?" Rayford repeated. But Bruce broke into tears.
Four pages later, he's regained his composure and is somewhat better able to describe the enormous responsibility he feels and to convey the crushing weight of his own godly awesomeness:
Bruce repeatedly struggles, and fails, to reconcile those two concerns -- "to meet that need" and "more trouble is coming." His first suggested course of action doesn't quite address either one:
The reason for this meeting is to announce future meetings -- lots and lots of regularly scheduled future meetings, because "we have no time to waste." We've all heard that before. Bruce sounds like he'd have a bright future in corporate management.
I'm just not really clear on how cloistering themselves in Bruce's study every weeknight is supposed to lead, even indirectly, to more churches being started. Studying "prophecy" in an invitation-only small group doesn't seem like an effective church-planting strategy. I guess maybe the "144,000 [singing, virgin] Jews" are supposed to spring up to take care of the front-line work.
"I am thrilled," Bruce said. "But there will be little time to rejoice or to rest. Remember the seven Seal Judgments Revelation talks about?" She nodded. "Those will begin immediately, if I'm right. There will be an 18-month period of peace, but in the three months following that, the rest of the Seal Judgments will fall on the earth. ..."
Bruce, like Tim LaHaye, has a way of running off the rails when he gets into the details of his prophecy scheme. One can, in fact, open the book of Revelation and find mentioned there seven "seals" of divine judgment. By mentioning that fact first, Bruce casts a kind of biblical halo over whatever non-sequitur nonsense he says next -- "Remember the seven Seal Judgments Revelation talks about? Well, then Godzilla, lamb chop, munchkin, glockenspiel gumdrop." And everyone nods along as though he was somehow citing chapter and verse with authority.
This is where "Bible prophecy experts" leave me dumbfounded. It's not simply that they're offering some strange interpretation or some overly imaginative exegesis -- they just flat-out make stuff up. Arbitrary, deliriously weird stuff. "Remember the seven Seal Judgments Revelation talks about?" Yes, in fact, I do remember that. It's in Revelation 6. Feel free to read that yourself some time and look for any hint or basis for spinning out this 18-month/3-month business. It can't be found there.
This might sound to you like I'm simply disagreeing with LaHaye/Bruce over the meaning of a passage in our sect's sacred text, but it's much more than that. It's not like a couple of Melville scholars arguing over the meaning of the whiteness of the whale. It's more like encountering a supposed Melville scholar who tells you that Moby Dick is mainly about killer robot ninjas from outer space.
A close reading of Revelation 6 also suggests that Bruce is seriously underestimating the body count from those seven seals:
Rayford didn't have to look around the room. He sat with the three people closest to him in the world. Was it possible that in less than two years, he could lose yet another loved one?
One fourth of the world's population will be gone a mere 21 months from now. That notion might have a bit more emotional impact if it weren't being suggested here, a mere two weeks after the callously little-regarded disappearance of one third of the world's population.
Buck Williams said this. He's looking ahead, thinking of all the phone calls and flights back and forth it may require for him to arrange to be seated at the table when those seal judgments occur so that he again has the opportunity to sit mutely, paralyzed by fear, as he watches them unfold firsthand. That's our Buck.
"You can go to college right here," Bruce said. "Every night at eight."
In one respect, this is similar to something Buck thought earlier in this chapter:
The intent of both of those passages seems to be an exhortation to Christians to remember where their priorities ought to lie in living the Christian life. Such passages seem a bit confused in the context of this story. They're directed to the readers of this book -- people living now in our pre-apocalyptic world, where it makes sense for them to hold on to their day jobs. Whether the same advice makes sense for Buck, living in the midst of apocalyptic wrath, is another question.
In any case, Bruce's advice to Chloe -- that church Bible study is all the college she needs -- has more than a whiff of sexism to it. Buck and Rayford's initial reaction to the new meeting schedule, after all, was to remind Bruce that they are men and thus they have to work:
"Me too," Rayford added.
Bruce didn't say to them, "You can go to work right here. Every night at eight." That advice was reserved for the girl. And it all works out for Chloe anyway, in the authors' view, since it's there in Bruce's study that she secures her MRS degree -- the only reason they can imagine for a woman going to college in the first place.
Now, at last, we come to the core of Bruce's plan:
Buck was impressed that Bruce had a plan, a real plan. Bruce said he would order a huge water tank and have it delivered. It would sit at the edge of the parking lot for weeks, and people would assume it was just some sort of storage tank. Then he would have an excavator dig out a crater big enough to house it.
Meanwhile, the four of them would stud up walls, run power and water lines into the hold, and generally get it prepared as a hideout. At some point Bruce would have the water tank taken away. People who saw that would assume it was the wrong size or defective. People who didn't see it taken away would assume it had been installed in the ground.
The Tribulation Force would attach the underground shelter to the church through a hidden passageway. ...
Before turning to the shortcomings of Bruce's Big Plan, let's first consider its strengths.
Look again at those seven seals in Revelation, then skim ahead through the further bowls, vials and trumpets of judgment described in that book. If you believe that's what the next few years hold in store, then hiding in a hole seems like a prudent and reasonable response.
I also appreciate Bruce's concern for his shelter to be hidden and secret. That corrects a common mistake made by most doomsday cults. Doomsday cults always seem to opt for the large, conspicuous, above-ground compound. Such compounds practically scream, "Here we are now, please come raid us." They invite the sort of scrutiny that leads, inevitably, to some federal agent spotting your ammunition stockpile through a pair of binoculars, and then before you know it you're besieged by the FBI, the ATF and the state police and, if you don't want to look like a hypocrite, you're going to have to respond in accordance with the Manichaen, apocalyptic rhetoric you used to build up your following and ... well, you know the rest. It never ends well.
So let's commend Bruce for getting the secret, hidden and underground ingredients right here. I'm not sure that suburban Chicago is the optimal location for a secret underground headquarters, but that may not matter so much when we consider the scope of the two distinct threats this shelter needs to hide and protect them from. There's the Antichrist, of course, and the virtually omnipresent agents of his fearsome OWG. But he's actually, by far, the lesser of Bruce's worries. His bigger problem is figuring out how to shelter and hide from a menace who is literally omnipresent.
Because really that's what this shelter is for: Hiding from God and the massive, relentless and indiscriminate outpouring of God's wrath over the course of the next seven years.
"Where can I go from your Spirit?" David asks in the 139th Psalm. "Where can I flee from your presence?"
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
If I say, "Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,"
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
David meant these words to be reassuring. His idea of the character of God made the idea of God's inescapable presence a comforting thought. LaHaye & Jenkins paint a portrait of God that suggests a far less comforting understanding of that constant presence. "His eye is on the sparrow and I know he watches me," suggests, to L&J, that neither I nor the sparrow has any hope of escaping the divine crosshairs which are, even now, targeting us for famine, war, pestilence, earthquakes, hail and demonic locust-hordes. These things aren't the Antichrist's handiwork in this story, they're from God. Bruce's big hole is meant to hide them from God.
With that in mind, I kind of doubt his water-tank ruse is going to work. It seems unlikely to fool the church's neighbors, let alone Nicolae and his minions. And "Hey, look over there at the big water tank!" seems an unpromising approach to deceiving someone both omnipresent and omniscient.
The other big problem with Bruce's Big Plan isn't theological, merely logistical: The shelter only has room for four.
What about Loretta and the rest of the "frightened people" for whom Bruce is supposed to feel such a heavy burden of responsibility? What about the millions in all those new churches that will arise during the coming "soul harvest"?
Screw 'em, I guess. No room for them here. Let 'em dig their own damn hole.
What's called for here, obviously, is something far bigger than Bruce's Big Plan. They don't just need one four-person shelter hole, but a vast, worldwide network of shelter holes for all of the millions of second-chance soul-harvest Christians of the post-Rapture.
The scope and magnitude of that necessity shows us how inadequate Pastor Billings' In Case of Rapture video really was. The man knew, in detail, exactly what was awaiting the intended viewers of that video. He knew their only hope of surviving would be just the kind of underground shelter network Bruce hints at here. And yet he offers no such advice, no more specific instructions for those viewers. That seems callously negligent.
In Billings' defense, though, he needed to be cautious about saying too much or being too specific in his video. He couldn't risk it falling into the wrong hands.
So let's think about this. Imagine you're Pastor Billings -- or perhaps one of the thousands of actual pastors here in the real world who were inspired and instructed to make actual versions of such a video after reading Left Behind. You want to prepare the future-Christian viewers of that video to face the trials that await them in the Great Tribulation, but you can't just give them detailed shelter-network instructions for fear the Antichrist or his minions might see this video as well.
That means you're going to need some kind of code. Your secret message to the future Tribulation Force Christians will need to be communicated in some way that is decipherable only to the most determined and devout future students of your PMD faith. This secret, coded message will be pretty extensive. You'll need to explain the necessity of the shelters and the gravity of the threats. You'll need to explain about the 18-month period of peace and urge them to take advantage of that window of opportunity for their clandestine project.
But wait, is 18 months really enough time for such a project -- particularly given the supply disruptions likely to follow in the aftermath of the Rapture? This huge, globally coordinated project would seem a more plausible undertaking for Christians now, before the Rapture.
Think of it, instead of merely leaving a collection of vague, I-told-you-so videos for the post-Rapture world to find, we could leave them a fully constructed, fully stocked global network of ready-for-use hidden shelters. That would, in a way, allow us to play a part in -- and to claim at least partial credit for -- the great global soul harvest of the Last Days. Constructing those tunnels now without the secret getting out might be difficult, but not impossible -- and it would be far easier for us than it would be for them.
That leaves only the last hurdle of figuring out some way to let these future Christians know of the legacy we have provided, but doing so in a way that we can be sure the Antichrist and his legions will not be able to decipher. We can't just leave the keys under the doormats of our churches with notes explaining where the secret trap doors are. Such instructions would need to be left -- embedded or encoded -- where only the truly devout could find them.
Here the PMDs' arcane skill set will prove useful. They're enthusiastic students of intertextual splicing, numerology and coded symbolism. Employing those skills, a shrewd author -- or authors -- might construct a book which, while outwardly appearing to tell one story, secretly contained a second, hidden and more detailed narrative.
Such a book, or set of books, might be difficult to construct so that it worked on both levels. It might mean that in order to communicate the coded message with as much precision and detail as possible, the authors would have to sacrifice style, plot, characterization, continuity, etc., in the secondary, surface-level story. So be it -- the encoded instructions would be the books' only true priority. And anyway it might actually be useful if the books seemed unreadable, sloppy and dull -- that would discourage casual readers from inspecting them too closely and inadvertently stumbling onto their coded message. Ideally, the subject matter would be something that would seem off-putting to the Antichrist and his followers, but attractive to the intended audience of new believers in the post-Rapture world. You could even make the surface-level story about people just like those intended readers, that way they'd be sure to pay at least some attention.
You see what I'm getting at. I offer this as an actual possibility for your consideration.
What I am suggesting, in other words, is that there exists -- really, right now, in this actual world -- an elaborate network of secret and fully provisioned shelters connected to PMD evangelical churches around the globe. These shelters have been built, in total secrecy, by devout PMD congregations in anticipation of the coming Great Tribulation that they all attest they are confident is coming very, very soon.
These Christians all believe they will be raptured away before that day arrives, but that other new Christians -- the converts of the coming "soul harvest" -- will be here on earth to witness its horrors. Since they cannot stay behind to counsel or otherwise aid those young Christians through the coming trials, they have done the next best thing -- preparing the hidden shelters for their use.
Detailed instructions on the locations of and access to these shelters have been left behind, embedded in an elaborate code in the pages of the Left Behind novels. To ensure that this coded message in a bottle is easily accessible to the future believers, the PMDs have printed millions of copies, buying them in bulk and scattering them throughout the world in libraries, waiting rooms, rummage sales and remainder bins everywhere.
This is, I admit, an audacious and preposterous theory. But we need an audacious and preposterous theory to explain the otherwise inexplicable awfulness of these Very Bad books and their even more mysterious success as global best-sellers and an unprecedented publishing phenomenon. Which is more likely -- A global conspiracy constructing a worldwide network of hidden shelters with perfect secrecy? Or the idea that these books -- these awful, awful books -- have sold tens of millions of copies to readers who somehow enjoy them without being repulsed and offended by their careless, shabby, impenetrable and contradictory storytelling?
I suppose the latter is likelier, but both possibilities seem equally disturbing.
The best part of Moby Dick? The sharks with frickin' lasers.
/goes back to read article
Posted by: cjmr's husband | May 01, 2009 at 07:19 PM
In almost three years of reading this blog...I've never even been close to being first.
uhhh...Pensive Boobie?
Posted by: Kyle | May 01, 2009 at 07:20 PM
Psalm 139 is good, but I think Amos 9 works better:
"Though they dig into Sheol, from there shall my hand take them;
though they climb up to heaven, from there I will bring them down.
Though they hide themselves on the top of Carmel, from there I will search out and take them;
and though they hid from my sight at the bottom of the sea, there I will command the sea-serpent, and it shall bite them.
And though they go into captivity in front of their enemies, there I will command the sword and it shall kill them;
and I will fix my eyes on them for harm and not for good."
Posted by: Dan | May 01, 2009 at 07:20 PM
DAMMIT
*shakes tiny angry fist at cjmr's husband.
Oh well...I suppose I can wait another couple years.
Posted by: Kyle | May 01, 2009 at 07:21 PM
I can't decide if the bit about Psalm 139 reminds me more of "Sinnerman" or The Runaway Bunny. (My mother, incidentally, thinks that The Runaway Bunny is deeply disturbing and a terrible message. I imagine she would not find the psalm comforting either.)
Posted by: burgundy | May 01, 2009 at 07:21 PM
Dancing boobies!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYmzdvMoUUA
Posted by: Dorothy | May 01, 2009 at 07:22 PM
This is the best thing I've read al week.
Seriously, how awesome would it be in all the mega-churches were really just a cover for S.H.E.I.L.D. I guess the logistics would put fairly easy to figure out. I mean, if you know that there will be 100,000 Christians lefts at the end of the world, and at most they'll be around for seven years, then how difficult can it possibly be to figure out how much food, water, medical supplies, and and shitty ersatz pop music they'll need?
Posted by: CombatQueer | May 01, 2009 at 07:28 PM
No way that theory works because Rapture Ready's boards would accidentally leak it all the time. They can't even remember that they're not supposed to be publicly rooting for the destruction of Damascus after all. The moderators have to regularly give warnings about how being excited when it looks like Israel might be attacked and bummed when peace treaties are signed looks to the outside world.
Posted by: zzyzx | May 01, 2009 at 07:28 PM
"I think we need a shelter. ... Underground. ... During the period of peace we can build it without suspicion. ... I'm talking about getting an earthmover in here and digging out a place we can escape to. ..."
"Say reverend, what do you need that earthmover for?"
"Oh, uh... just moving some earth! Can't a man of the cloth move a little earth now and again without getting the third degree? Shit! He's on to us!" walks away quickly, sweating.
"Huh. Just gonna ask him if he wanted the backhoe, too."
Posted by: Keith | May 01, 2009 at 07:30 PM
Why waste time encoding Left Behind novels when you've got gematria and isopsephy in the Bible itself! ;)
Posted by: Mark Baker-Wright | May 01, 2009 at 07:35 PM
So how is this different from Charlie Manson looking for a giant hole/cave in the desert to escape the coming race war
from which to emerge as the leader of the new world.
Besides the naked hippies that is.
Posted by: William | May 01, 2009 at 07:35 PM
No music post today? And I was so looking forward to linking to First of May, too.
I dunno. I like this interpretation of the LB books. I think it's sort of sweet, actually, to contemplate all those earnest PMD's building and stocking shelters for sinful Episcopalians like me.
But if they don't include a liquor cabinet, lots of luck in luring us down there...
Posted by: hapax | May 01, 2009 at 07:36 PM
'The Runaway Bunny' is deeply disturbing.
Posted by: Rocambole | May 01, 2009 at 07:36 PM
But FOUR FUR FEET is pure awesome. GOODNIGHT, MOON, too.
Posted by: hapax | May 01, 2009 at 07:37 PM
"Detailed instructions on the locations of and access to these shelters have been left behind, embedded in an elaborate code in the pages of the Left Behind novels."
O Sinner Man
No, not the Nina Simone version, a celtic one.
Posted by: Murfyn | May 01, 2009 at 07:41 PM
And THE RUNAWAY BUNNY isn't nearly as creepy as Munch's I WILL LOVE YOU FOREVER. I mean, you've got a grown man's aged mother *stalking* him, creeping into his bedroom at night to cuddle him...
eeeewwww.
When my son's second-grade class put on a Mother's Day pageant based on that book, it was all I could do not to stand up and scream "Run, you fool, before the Pod-Woman eats you!"
Posted by: hapax | May 01, 2009 at 07:41 PM
I have nothing to contribute here, except to point out how awesome this idea is.
Posted by: LMM | May 01, 2009 at 07:41 PM
Bruce said he would order a huge water tank and have it delivered...and people would assume it was just some sort of storage tank.
It is some sort of storage tank. What else would they think it is? And what difference is this oh so clever manuvering going to make in the long run any way? When the crap hits the fan people are going to remember the earth moving and the storage tank and figure out where the all important hole is hidden. The threat of death is inspiring that way.
L&J don't bother or aren't able to make even the small things make sense. I should be used to that by now and yet somehow I'm not.
Posted by: Lori | May 01, 2009 at 07:43 PM
Is it really that bad? I mean, consider the target age. When you're that young, isn't it good to know that even if you're Bad, your parents will still be your parents? Sure, as you get older, your parents need to take on more responsibility and be independent and if you're 20, or even 12, the message "Mommy will follow you no matter how hard you try to get away" is awful. But when you're 2?
A friend of mine used to do a lot of child care work - and she told me once about her kids' reactions to Prince of Egypt. I assumed they'd be most freaked out by the Death of the Firstborn scene; certainly I found it disturbing. But she said that these really young kids were actually deeply upset by Moses' mother putting him in the basket in the river. His mother threw him away. There's a need for security at that age that I think The Runaway Bunny speaks to.
We could probably get into a really awful flamewar about whether or not this says anything about the maturity level of people who require that kind of security in their theology. But it's Friday, and an LB post, so let's not.
Posted by: burgundy | May 01, 2009 at 07:44 PM
Now that we've got Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, there may come a day when Moby-Dick really is about killer robot ninjas from outer space.
Posted by: Michael | May 01, 2009 at 07:49 PM
"I think we need a shelter. ... Underground. ... During the period of peace we can build it without suspicion."
I would have thought a time of peace was the most suspicious time to build an underground bunker.
Posted by: Ian | May 01, 2009 at 07:54 PM
Boobies
I work for the agency in Texas that regulates electricians and air conditioning contractors. Believe me, four untrained people will NEVER be able to wire and plumb anything like this in a safe manner, much less a secret one. For one thing, I'm sure Chicago actually meters electricity, and if a building with a stable pattern of electricity use suddenly spikes its power consumption, people will notice. (If the cops can use power spikes to find marijuana growers, don't these conspiracy freaks think that the bleeding ANTICHRIST will have his minions check on such things? Jeez, we don't just rely on black helicopters you know.) Actually, keeping with my parenthetical, the black helicopter guys would probably see the big piles of wire and wall studs required for this system.
Posted by: Karen | May 01, 2009 at 07:54 PM
It's more like encountering a supposed Melville scholar who tells you that Moby Dick is mainly about killer robot ninjas from outer space.
Wait. You mean it wasn't?
And "Hey, look over there at the big water tank!" seems an unpromising approach to deceiving someone both omnipresent and omniscient.
I dunno. It took God quite a while---and special trip down to earth besides---before he noticed the whole Tower of Babel thing going on, and that was with them building it with the intent of reaching heaven.
Let 'em dig their own damn hole.
Hey, God helps those who help themselves, right? Or...well, He used to... hm.
Posted by: Salamanda | May 01, 2009 at 07:54 PM
I'm curious about why Mr. Barnes isn't actually using the tank. Does he really think that municipal pumps and wells will keep working throughout the Times of Trouble? Wouldn't it make more sense to have a backup water supply in case the power gets shut off? Have I possibly already thought about this more than either of the authors? I think so.
I assumed they'd be most freaked out by the Death of the Firstborn scene
As an eldest child, I can assure you that the question of whether "Death of the Firstborn" referred to the oldest child or the oldest son was deeply pressing to me at the age of six.
Posted by: everstar | May 01, 2009 at 07:56 PM
My goodess, for books about the end of the world, they sure are BORING!
By definition, our heroes can't actually do anything that will make a big difference in the world. They can't kill the antichrist, and no matter what they do, Scary Disembowling Jesus will come back at the appointed time, no sooner, no later.
And they aren't intersted in trying to save any other individual people from their individual little fates.
So... this series is really ten more books about people hiding in a hole?
HOW IN THE HELL WERE THEY SO POPULAR?? I mean, really, I worked at Barnes and Noble when they were coming out! We had trouble keeping them in stock!
I mean, jeez, we can't even have Nicholae doing creepy things? And I mean more creepy than shooting someone. Creepy Antichrist things. Or maybe scary monsters eating people? At least the first book had stuff getting blown up at the beginning. Oh wait, that was just in the movie, right?
But no. "I called you all here for something very important! We're going to... DIG A BIG HOLE!" OOH!
Wake me up when something exciting happens.
Posted by: Neohippie | May 01, 2009 at 08:03 PM
// (If the cops can use power spikes to find marijuana growers, don't these conspiracy freaks think that the bleeding ANTICHRIST will have his minions check on such things? Jeez, we don't just rely on black helicopters you know.)//
Funnily enough, my family were discussing this at our annual get-together last weekend. My uncle told us a fun story about someone who tried to get round that by stealing power from the nearby streetlamp.
Posted by: Nick Kiddle | May 01, 2009 at 08:15 PM
Revelation 6:13: "and the stars in the sky fell to earth, as late figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind."
Hey, any literalists here? 'Cause I would really like to see THAT happen!
slacktivist: "Screw 'em, I guess. No room for them here. Let 'em dig their own damn hole."
Ah, the Republican credo.
Posted by: stinger | May 01, 2009 at 08:16 PM
Is anyone else reminded of the South Park episode "Cartoon Wars" when folks literally buried their heads in sand as a way to avoid controversy?
Posted by: victoria | May 01, 2009 at 08:17 PM
David meant these words to be reassuring. His idea of the character of God made the idea of God's inescapable presence a comforting thought. LaHaye & Jenkins paint a portrait of God that suggests a far less comforting understanding of that constant presence.
More like Big Brother, innit? This just reinforces my sense that L&J and their fans don't worship God because they believe he's good -- they worship because he's powerful. If God told them to torture a baby they would do it so fast your head would spin.
Posted by: Tehanu | May 01, 2009 at 08:17 PM
So... this series is really ten more books about people hiding in a hole?
Well, there's quite a few more phonecalls.
(No, seriously. I remember several chapters just about them getting new phones and listing exciting things about them.)
Posted by: Deird | May 01, 2009 at 08:21 PM
Now that we've got Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, there may come a day when Moby-Dick really is about killer robot ninjas from outer space.
Hey wait a second, Moby Dick already has ninjas!
"But at this critical instant a sudden exclamation was heard that took every eye from the whale. With a start all glared at dark Ahab, who was surrounded by five dusky phantoms that seemed fresh formed out of air. The phantoms, for so they then seemed, were flitting on the other side of the deck, and, with a noiseless celerity, were casting loose the tackles and bands of the boat which swung there. This boat had always been deemed one of the spare boats, though technically called the captain's, on account of its hanging from the starboard quarter. The figure that now stood by its bows was tall and swart, with one white tooth evilly protruding from its steel-like lips. A rumpled Chinese jacket of black cotton funereally invested him, with wide black trowsers of the same dark stuff." (Moby Dick, end of ch. 47 and start of ch. 48, word for word, unabridged)
If that's in the text already, think how easy it would be to give Moby Dick the PPZ treatment. Right-Behinders, the gauntlet has been thrown down!
Posted by: Ian | May 01, 2009 at 08:26 PM
Revelation 6:13: "and the stars in the sky fell to earth, as late figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind."
Hey, any literalists here? 'Cause I would really like to see THAT happen!
Ew, I wouldn't. Our neighbors had a fig tree, and every year it'd get all splatty and gross and attract rats.
Though OK, I'll admit, star-splats might be pretty.
Posted by: Salamanda | May 01, 2009 at 08:29 PM
You know I'm trying to run this church...
I thought they had all been raptured except for Loretta. What's there to run?
Posted by: SueW | May 01, 2009 at 08:29 PM
That was the funniest thing I read all day, beating out the unintentional hilarity of finding "decreased conciousness" in a list of symptoms on Wikipedia. How can one have "decreased conciousness"? You are either concious, or you are unconcious.
Posted by: Lauren | May 01, 2009 at 08:31 PM
The idea doesn't even sound that farfetched. After all, there's programs you can get that, if you don't log on to your computer for X number of days, sends an emergency "In case of Rapture" email to your friends and family. Perhaps LH&J have something similar set-up, and if Jenkins doesn't log on his computer for a week, an email detailing this secret code will be automatically sent to megachurches across America.
That said, I don't think Bruce has fully thought out his water tank plan. Personally, I'd be worried enough about an apocalypticistic cult-leader buying an unnecessarily big water tank anyway, especially since he lives in a Chicago suburb rather than in the countryside where it might be useful. Secondly, there's a massive flood predicted, in which case the worst place to be would be underground. Third, in the event of an emergency, how would he escape? He already has a perfectly innocuous building - a church - and all he needs to do is get builders in and have them reinforce the walls surreptitiously - much less suspicious than buying a bloody huge water tank and then "sending it back", never speaking of it again.
Posted by: Schrodingers Duck | May 01, 2009 at 08:32 PM
(so obviously the evenstar commenting above is not my six-month old, nor husband or myself speaking for her)*
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I'd have thought Fred's proposal was merely amusingly silly, except for a thread I was reading today on one of my homeschooling boards.
First some backstory--since last summer, some of the Mormon homeschoolers have been giving kind of an online course in how to obtain and maintain the years' supply of food that they are required to have stocked up, and several of the PMD families have been stocking up a years' supply for their families based on this advice. (Personally, I'm doing well if we have a two-week supply!)
Today, one of the PMD moms shared with us that she'd felt convicted lately that their family would not actually be using the supplies they've so carefully laid by, and that she should write a letter to those 'Left Behind' sharing with them the Gospel and how she'd like them to use the supplies that they will have discovered in her nicely stocked house. She posted her letter, which even mentioned that they should collect others who have come to be convicted by the Rapture of the truth of the Gospel and use her house as a safe house.**
Everyone who had commented on the thread last I looked thought that was a great idea and at least one of them was going to do something similar, but suggested that copies of the LB books and movies be left as well. So who knows, in a few months there may actually be such a pre-built safe house network, created by homeschool moms...
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*that probably goes without saying...
**up to today, I considered that particular mom one of the most sane/least hysteric of the PMDs on this board, too.
Posted by: cjmr | May 01, 2009 at 08:34 PM
Detailed instructions on the locations of and access to these shelters have been left behind, embedded in an elaborate code in the pages of the Left Behind novels
No, because when the Antichrist comes to power, the books would immediately fall under suspicion...unless the Antichrist knows that they were really written by his followers for their own secret communications.
This is actually almost the plot of Kurt Vonnegut's "Mother Night"...the hero appears to be broadcasting Nazi propaganda during WW2, but he's actually sending coded messages to the Allies through pre-arranged patterns of coughs and throat-clearings during his program.
His fatal flaw is that he's an actor, and he doesn't want to turn in a sloppy performance. He plays his role as effectively as he can, and does such a good job of broadcasting propaganda that he inspires the German people and quite possibly prolongs the war.
I'd guess that the demons who wrote "Left Behind" have read "Mother Night", and so they didn't fall into that particular trap.
Posted by: chaos_engineer | May 01, 2009 at 08:37 PM
No, because when the Antichrist comes to power, the books would immediately fall under suspicion...unless the Antichrist knows that they were really written by his followers for their own secret communications.
So... L&J are the Antichrist? Is that what we've determined?
Posted by: Deird | May 01, 2009 at 08:48 PM
It's more like encountering a supposed Melville scholar who tells you that Moby Dick is mainly about killer robot ninjas from outer space.
It may not have robot ninjas (although I might read it if it did), but Moby Dick did foretell the assassinations of various world leaders. Allegedly.
Does Bruce's Great Big Hole irresistibly remind anyone else of the Artilleryman from War of the Worlds?
Posted by: calenturian | May 01, 2009 at 08:48 PM
But Bruce knows, specifically, what the future holds. He knows about the trials and the wrath to come and he knows about the job he and the others will have to do. And with all of that in mind, he has devised the following two-part strategy:
1. Dig a really big hole.
2. Hide in it until Jesus comes back.
What? No 3. Kiss Your Ass Goodbye?
The other big problem with Bruce's Big Plan isn't theological, merely logistical: The shelter only has room for four.
Question, Slack, Everybody:
How does this differ from the Survivalist movements of the Eighties? Their Survival Refuges and Bomb/Fallout Shelters? Except the Trib Force's Secret Headquarters has got to shelter and SURVIVE (TM) far more than just a mere global thermonuclear war or total collapse of civilization.
Wait... Trib Force's Secret Headquarters... Doesn't this sound like either some kids' Sekrit Klub or a half-baked attempt at something out of a Bond movie? Or Art Bell's open phone lines?
This would seem to make PMD types like Tim LaHaye less threatening to others than their theological opposites -- the dominionists and other post-millennial, theocratic types who seek to conquer the world, setting up a sectarian kingdom for Jesus to come back to reign over. Theocrats want to rule the world. PMDs just want to hide until it's over. So where the former set out to dictate how others must also live, the latter -- in theory -- simply expect the world to keep getting worse and worse until it falls apart and don't claim there's anything they can or should do about it.
Actually, the Moral Majority et al arose from cross-fertilization (or cross-contamination) between PMDs and Dominionists. Can't remember which blog I read it on years ago, but here's the gist of it:
1) Post-Mil Dominionists (AKA Theonomists) were originally NOT takeover-and-Taliban types (or those that were were considered Fringe even by other Theonomists). Since Christ would not return until after the world was Christianized in the Millenium, they had no time constraints. The general strategy was to convert more and more of the world's population until the almost-totally-Christian population voluntarily placed themselves under the theocracy of Christ and the church, after which The End would come and the Kingdom would be voluntarily handed over. The prepwork could take several centuries, but then they had all the time they needed.
2) However, when Pre-Mil PMDs got hold of this idea, they skipped completely to the last page. Since Christ was Coming Soon (TM), they HAD to Christianize the world IMMEDIATELY, establishing the Christian Theocracy as quickly as possible. They jumped to the Theonomists end-stage without doing the centuries of prepwork, and at that point the only way to "Take Back America" was to effectively steamroller in and take over in a coup.
3) However, the PMD Pre-Mil "Take Back America" types have never thought it through. Their plan contains one HUGE paradox right at its core: Since Christ is Coming Tomorrow at the Latest and It's All Gonna Burn, what difference does it make if the PMDs take over and establish a Theocracy? It's Still All Gonna Burn. (However, this does not discourage the likes of Rayford Steele; remember his line at the end of Volume 12 after being handed a Completely Renewed and Perfected Cosmos?)
Posted by: Headless Unicorn Guy | May 01, 2009 at 08:49 PM
Wow - "if Dan Brown wrote a Slacktivist post". :-D
Posted by: Sue | May 01, 2009 at 08:49 PM
It all makes sense now!
Reminds me of the meta-premise of Jack Williamson's "Darker Than You Think"...
Posted by: David | May 01, 2009 at 08:54 PM
(so obviously the evenstar commenting above is not my six-month old, nor husband or myself speaking for her)
Me? I am an ever, not an even. :) Although now I'm wondering if I ought to have forgone my usual nom de net.
Posted by: everstar | May 01, 2009 at 08:54 PM
My first comment here. Yay! Just found the blog a few weeks and loving it.
To chaos_engineer about Vonnegut's "Mother Night," there's a quote from the book that reminds me of much of the PMD mindset.
"And if you disagree me, you sir, are worse than Hitler."
Posted by: sofia | May 01, 2009 at 08:56 PM
My uncle told us a fun story about someone who tried to get round that by stealing power from the nearby streetlamp.
Does your uncle live in southern California? In the LA area gangs rent McMansions and turn them into giant grow rooms, floor to ceiling with pot plants. In order to keep from being discovered via their prodigious use of utilities they steal from everywhere---the neighbors, the street lamps, the traffic signals if there's one close enough. The stole water from neighborhood associations, parks, golf courses. I found myself reluctantly impressed with their ingenuity, though not their law breaking.
Posted by: Lori | May 01, 2009 at 08:58 PM
But if they don't include a liquor cabinet, lots of luck in luring us down there...
Don't really care much for liquor myself, but I could be lured in if they had a nice grow room- not a big ol' honkin' one that would cause power spikes that would attract police attention, just a small closet-sized one to maintain a supply for the small number of residents of the hole in the ground.
A big ol' honkin' hole in the ground. And they're going to do this in freaking suburban Chicago? 'Cause that wouldn't arouse suspicions of the people in the surrounding neighborhood, so that when the Antichrist's minions came knocking on doors asking folks if they knew if there were any Trib Saints hiding out in the area, nobody would say, "Well, you know, I do remember a bit over a year ago, the church up the street dug up their parking lot, and buried this huge water tank, and there seemed to be a lot of construction work going on before they finally paved the top back over again..."
Posted by: Not Really Here | May 01, 2009 at 09:05 PM
"If you disagree with me, you sir, are worse than Hitler."*
Posted by: sofia | May 01, 2009 at 09:06 PM
"I feel such a tremendous responsibility for you all . . .
Like the rest of us priests and pastors don't feel any sort of responsibility? I can't speak for others, but when I was struggling with my discernment regarding a call to the priesthood, that was one of my biggest issues: "Who am I to take responsibility for the spiritual lives of a congregation?"
Oh well . . . I'm just an Episcopalian, what do I know?
Posted by: Reverend Ref | May 01, 2009 at 09:08 PM
Ooh, time for a former EMT to show off, thanks Lauren.
Levels of consciousness (LOC) run from alert and oriented * 3 to unconscious in a series of steps. There's different scales, but the simplest is AVPU:
A) Alert means that you are capable of noticing what's going on around you. Oriented means you
know at least one of the following three things: who, where, and when you are. I know someone
who perpetually has problems with "when." The times three part means you can answer all of
those questions correctly. Times two, you can answer two of the questions. Times one, you know
who you are. That's usually the last one to go.
V) Verbal, i.e. responsive to verbal stimulus. If the care provider talks to you and you can at
least say "Huh?" you're at that level.
P) Pain, i.e. responsive to pain. If you don't know who are, and don't react to being talked to
(or even shouted at), but do react when someone runs knuckles down your sternum or pinches you
hard, you're responsive to pain.
U) Unconscious or unresponsive is when you don't react to anything.
That's most basic LOC assessment. One can refine it with the Glasgow coma scale which is broken into Eyes, Verbal, and Motor components. I will leave you to the Wikipedia description as it's kind of long. Suffice it to say that I normally worried about AVPU on the scene, but had to note GCS on my reports.
A reduced LOC usually means you need to start looking for head trauma or medical issues in the brain.
Posted by: Inquisitive Raven | May 01, 2009 at 09:09 PM
Oh, and technically, they're signs, not symptoms. Signs are something a care provider can objectively assess. Symptoms depend on the self-report of the patient, e.g. if the patient tells you his/her belly hurts, that's a symptom. If the patient knocks your hands away and tries to curl up in a little ball when you press on his/her abdomen, that's a sign.
Posted by: Inquisitive Raven | May 01, 2009 at 09:13 PM