slacktivist

L.B.: The hidden display

Left Behind, pp. 456-458

I should start by acknowledging something remarkable about this passage: Jerry Jenkins succeeds in conveying some of what he's trying to get across. Nicolae Carpathia is genuinely creepy here, just as Jenkins intended. There are touches that actually work. Nicolae's calm, polite cold-bloodedness is effectively disturbing.

This isn't the first time we've encountered something creepy in these pages. Nearly every scene with Rayford, for example, is deeply disturbing. But this is the first time that Jenkins succeeds in being intentionally creepy -- still not creepy enough, perhaps, but to some extent legitimately creepy. Yes, the scene borrows heavily from things we've all seen before, and yes it goes on a bit too long, but on some basic level, this bit here works:

"Everyone be seated, please," Carpathia said, calm again. "Jonathan, on your knees."

Painfully, the old man crouched, using Hattie's chair for support. He did not face Carpathia or look at him. The gun was still in his ear. Hattie sat pale and frozen.

"My dear," Carpathia said, leaning toward her over Stonagal's head, "you will want to slide your chair back about three feet so as not to soil your outfit."

Part of the reason that little bit works a little bit is because it's understated. As we've seen time and again, Jenkins is capable of understatement, but he can never seem to leave it at that. Every time readers encounter something that seems subtle or nuanced, we're quickly reminded that Jenkins uses such light touches only as a one-two combination, a quick jab always followed by a big, sweeping, off-balance roundhouse.

Stonagal began to whimper. "Nicolae, why are you doing this? I am your friend! I am no threat!"

"Begging does not become you, Jonathan. Please be quiet. Hattie," he continued, looking directly into her eyes now, "stand and move your chair back and be seated. Hair, skin, skull tissue and brain matter will mostly be absorbed by Mr. Todd-Cothran and the others next to him. I do not want anything to get on you."

That seems less creepy and more just kind of gross.

Plus I think Nicolae is right about Jonathan Stonagal -- begging doesn't suit him. He shouldn't be the begging type, and "I'm no threat" is exactly the opposite of what he should be saying here. He's Jonathan Stonagal, after all, he owns banks and governments all over the world. He's the head of an international shadow-government conspiracy. It seems likely he's had a gun pointed at him before.

We've all seen this scene on television or at the movies enough times to be familiar with its conventions (which is a nicer word than "cliches"). The eerily calm master manipulator never flinches at the sight of the gun. He simply explains to the person with the gun why shooting him would run counter to their own best interest. He mentions intimate details about their friends and family members in a vaguely menacing way; he explains the consequences he has ensured will occur should anything unforeseen happen to him. He hints at secrets that would never be revealed if he were to die, and at secrets that he would no longer be able to conceal. He doesn't raise his voice and he doesn't beg. And he absolutely never whimpers or pleads for mercy on the basis of friendship.

We're supposed to accept here that Stonagal is surprised by Nicolae's sudden betrayal. That seems unlikely. First of all, Stoney didn't get to be where he is today as a global puppet-master by trusting anyone. He might have to rely on his associates and his deputies, but that's not the same as trusting them. He would anticipate the possibility of betrayal by any or all of them, and he'd have plans in place for that contingency. That seems doubly true in the case of his protege. He knows that Nicolae is capable of murderous betrayal because he, personally, taught him how to do it. So it seems unlikely that Stonagal could be caught off-guard like this.

Stoney is also well-acquainted with all of the dirt in Nicolae's past. He knows where the bodies are buried. Rather than whimpering and begging, he ought to be reminding his protege of that and advising him of the consequences of pulling the trigger -- such as perhaps the nonstop global broadcast, through his many-tentacled media empire, of every incriminating or embarrassing or career-ending detail of Nicolae's past. ("Remember that unfortunate situation in the Ukraine? I told you not to worry, that I'd take care of it? Well, she's still alive. Oh yes. She's almost 12 now, and the specialists think she may even be able to walk again some day. And that videotape? I'm afraid I may have exaggerated slightly when I told you that every copy had been destroyed. Although should anything unforeseen happen to me that tape would be the least of your problems ...")

Stonagal is supposed to be the great Machiavellian manipulator. What we needed to see here was Nicolae out-manipulating him, beating him at his own game. There ought to be a final chess match between these two evil megalomaniacs, ending with Nicolae's crowning "checkmate," but instead he just knocks the board over, scattering the pieces. That doesn't fit with the picture Jenkins is trying to paint of Nicolae as a calm, methodical mastermind carrying out a carefully devised plan.

This chapter's preoccupation with seating arrangements also undermines that image. Everyone comes into the room and Nicolae has them all take their seats just as he's arranged for them to do, orchestrating their every movement according to his master plan. Now at last, the pieces are all in place and his grand scheme can go into ... Wait. Sorry. Jonathan, you and I need to switch places. Right, good. Thanks.

OK, now at last the pieces are all in ... Hold on. Todd-Cothran, would you mind switching seats with Hattie? Just skooch over a little there ...

This game of musical chairs might have worked if Nicolae was supposed to be a capricious sadist -- a psychopath who took pleasure in toying with his victims before killing them. But that's not what the authors are shooting for here. Nicolae is supposed to be anything but capricious. He has a meticulous Master Plan. It's hard to worry about his nefarious Master Plan, though, when he can't even put together a proper seating chart.

Carpathia was in no hurry. "I am going to kill Mr. Stonagal with a painless hollow-point round to the brain which he will neither hear nor feel. The rest of us will experience some ringing in our ears. This will be instructive for you all. You will understand cognitively that I am in charge, that I fear no man, and that no one can oppose me."

... Until I run out of bullets.

Again, it's difficult to be impressed by what was billed as a supernatural display of power when the only actual power on display turns out to be that of Man With Gun in Room Full of Unarmed People.

Buck considered a suicidal dive across the table for the gun, but he knew that others might die for his effort.

So Buck continues to just sit there, doing nothing. In a few pages there's a dramatic scene in which he sits there, saying nothing. And then a few pages later he springs into action and ... runs away.

"When Mr. Stonagal is dead, I will tell you what you will remember. And lest anyone feel I have not been fair, let me not neglect to add that more than gore will wind up on Mr. Todd-Cothran's suit. A high-velocity bullet at this range will also kill him, which, as you know, Mr. Williams, is something I promised you I would deal with in due time.

Todd-Cothran opened his eyes at that news, and Buck found himself shouting, "No!" as Carpathia pulled the trigger. The blast rattled the windows and even the door. Stonagal's head crashed into the toppling Todd-Cothran and both were plainly dead before their entwined bodies reached the floor.

Those high-velocity bullets, it turns out, are way deadlier than your typical low-velocity bullet.

Nicolae puts the gun into Stonagal's hand, staging the scene, roughly, to look like a kind of suicide with collateral damage. He's not wearing gloves, so his prints are on the gun and the powder residue is on his hand, but he's not really worried about that. He can always mind-mojo the CSI squad if he needs to, and he's got a room full of eyewitnesses to support his version of the story:

"What we have just witnessed here," he said kindly, as if speaking to children, "was a horrible, tragic end to two otherwise extravagantly productive lives. These men were two I respected and admired more than any others in the world. What compelled Mr. Stonagal to rush the guard, disarm him, take his own life and that of his British colleague, I do not know and may never fully understand."

And of course this works. Over the next several pages, all of the non-born-again eyewitnesses in the room will dutifully repeat this version of the story, believing that this is what they really saw happen. Here, at last, we see that Nicolae really does have some supernatural Antichrist powers beyond the kind of trigger-pulling powers available to every mere mortal.

The display of supernatural powers by the Antichrist ought to be chilling, but here in the final chapter of Left Behind it falls flat. This is partly due to bland, unimaginative writing (as we'll see when we look, in our next installment, at the following pages), but mainly it's due to his grand display of Antichrist powers just plain not making any sense.

Nicolae demonstrates his supernatural powers by concealing them. I can't figure out how this constitutes a "show of strength."

Everyone in the room is thoroughly convinced that they saw nothing other than the suicide Nicolae just described. That scenario scarcely holds up -- Stonagal could barely kneel unassisted, how could he have overpowered the guard? And why would he have run back to his seat? -- but set that aside. Apart from Buck, no one in the room will remember what they really just saw. Apart from Buck's Tribulation Force friends, no one outside the room will ever hear any other account of what occurred there. How is that account supposed to make the whole world "understand cognitively" that Nicolae is in charge, that he fears no man, that no one can oppose him?

Bruce Barnes said that, according to prophecy, "The Antichrist will solidify his power with a show of strength." If Nicolae is really the Antichrist, he told Buck, then "He has to show some potency. What might he do to entrench himself so solidly that no one can oppose him?"

What might he do? Well, he might just convince the entire world that he had been a hapless bystander at a suicide. Power solidified. Prophecy fulfilled.

L.B.: Pistol-packing pacifist

Left Behind, pg. 456

We left off here:

Carpathia raised the .38, cocked it, and stuck the barrel into Stonagal's right ear. The older man at first jerked away, but Carpathia said, "Move again and you are dead."

We've discussed how disappointing it is that the Antichrist's first on-screen kill should involve something as mundane as a handgun. I was hoping for something creepier, something a bit more supernatural or cinematic.

A second disappointment here involves the death of my dim and implausible hope that Nicolae Carpathia might turn out to be an interesting tragic villain. Up until those two sentences above that was still, at least theoretically, a possibility. After all, Nicolae came preaching a message of "love, peace, understanding and brotherhood." If he had genuinely believed in such ideals, but had tried to impose and enforce them by imperial fiat, we'd have been looking at the stuff of tragedy. This scene confirms that's not going to happen here. Nicolae Carpathia, it turns out, is just going to be one of those mustache-twirling villains inexplicably dedicated to villainy for villainy's sake.

What's harder to figure out is whether this villainy makes Nicolae a hypocrite in the authors' eyes when he's preaching his message of love, peace, understanding and brotherhood. Nicolae Carpathia, remember, is also a "thoroughgoing pacifist," a man described as "a peacemaker ... leading a movement toward disarmament."

Now we find this alleged pacifist wielding a gun and threatening lethal violence. In any other book, I'd know what to make of that. "Aha," I would think, "so he's not really a pacifist after all." Seeing the character's actions contradict his words, I would conclude that his words must have been false. Actions speak louder, etc.

Here in Left Behind, however, things are a bit more complicated. In these pages, words are almost always more important than deeds. And in these pages I'm not certain that being a "pacifist" precludes killing people with a handgun.

Let's deal with the latter point first. We've noted earlier (see "Cursed are the Peacemakers") how Nicolae's pacifism and his dedication to peacemaking marked him as morally suspect from the authors' point of view. This idea is simply a given for Tim LaHaye and his premillennial dispensationalist colleagues, and they treat it as such, presenting this audacious bit of up-is-downism with a disarming matter-of-factness. The Antichrist is diabolically evil, they say, and so of course he's a man of peace, what else might one expect?

As Alice discovered in Wonderland, this kind of confident, reassured madness can be difficult to engage. We don't have any way of knowing what the rules are when we talk to such people. The accustomed meaning of words and logic don't seem to apply. It doesn't help when LaHaye et. al. explain that they're just repeating what they read in the Bible because no amount of Bible-reading will take you through the looking glass to this alien world where goodness is proof of evil.

So let me try to retrace their steps as they travel from Point A to Point Crazy.

It starts with this idea of the Antichrist. We looked earlier (see "Speakerphone") at the way PMDs put together their Antichrist Check Lists by collecting every generic warning against evil in the Bible and reinterpreting these as a unified warning against a single, future personification of evil: The Antichrist. This vast collection of biblical passages warning against evil includes several passages warning readers not to be deceived by false promises of peace.

So far, so good. According to the convoluted allegorical scheme of the PMDs "literal" reading, then, it makes sense for them to apply those warnings about false promises of peace to this future Antichrist. But that's as far as the internal logic of this scheme takes you. If PMD were consistent with itself, it would teach that the Antichrist will be a sham-peacemaker, someone who pretends to be concerned with peacemaking, but really isn't.

That's more or less the picture one gets from the early 20th-century prophecy gurus -- people like C.I. Scofield, the man who first popularized Darby's psychedelic invention through his "Reference Bible." To Scofield and his contemporaries, the Antichrist would be an evil man who, at first, pretended to be a good man. Part of that false facade of goodness would be the Antichrist's claim to be a proponent of peace. Their assumption, in other words, was that genuinely advocating peace was a Good Thing. They believed that by pretending to be good, pretending to be a man of peace, the Antichrist would lull the world into a false sense of security and then, abruptly, reveal his true self: the rider on the white horse, armed and crowned, riding out "as a conqueror bent on conquest." They saw "man of peace" and "conqueror bent on conquest" as two different, incompatible things.

Scofield's contemporary heirs, however, seem to think that "peace" and "conquest" are just two words for the same thing.

In the latter half of the 20th century, the most popular "Bible prophecy scholars" -- from Hal Lindsay to Tim LaHaye -- moved away from the idea that the Antichrist would be making false promises of peace and began to suggest that this ultimate personification of evil would be an actual peacemaker. This happened, in part, due to their reinterpretation of PMD through the lens of America's so-called "culture wars." LaHaye came to PMD carrying with him all the baggage and presuppositions of his John Birch Society, McCarthyist Cold-War paranoia. Lindsay came to it in full-blown panic over Vietnam and the '60s. Neither of them was capable of imagining such a thing as a false peacemaker because they did not believe there was such a thing as a genuine peacemaker.

To LaHaye and Lindsay, all peacemakers were, by definition, false. All proponents of peace, from their point of view, were duplicitous fools -- not peacemakers, but peace-niks. At best they might merely be cowardly, dovish dupes, but at worst they are subversive fifth-column agents of the enemy.* The PMD teaching that the Antichrist himself will one day rise from the ranks of such peaceniks simply confirms what they already believed to be true: that anyone advocating peace should be presumed guilty.

So the biblical warnings not to be deceived by false promises of peace have evolved into the belief that any promise of peace -- or any effort to achieve peace, or any policy that includes peace as its ultimate stated goal -- is itself false and, in fact, Satanic.

This belief has real-world repercussions. Many of those biblical warnings specifically mention deceivers making false promise of peace with Israel. Thus whenever LaHaye & Co. hear anyone speak of a plan for peace in the Middle East, they assume that this person is helping to pave the way for the Antichrist's imminent reign -- or that he may even be the Antichrist himself. All such plans -- from Oslo to the current "Roadmap" -- are therefore denounced as evil and vigorously opposed in the name of "supporting Israel." Supporting Israel comes to mean ensuring that it never achieves peace with its neighbors. Up-is-downism as foreign policy.

So let's get back to the scene we're reading now. Since LaHaye views peace only as a mask for conquest, it may be that we're not meant to see anything contradictory at all in what we're witnessing. Nicolae Carpathia is a pacifist. Nicolae Carpathia sticks a loaded gun in Jonathan Stonagal's ear and pulls the trigger. For LaHaye, that action doesn't reveal Nicolae's true nature as a lethally violent non-pacifist, but rather it reveals what he believes is the lethally violent, tyrannical true nature of pacifism itself. (Poor LaHaye must be terrified in Amish country.)

Really, though, it's hard to know what to make of this apparent contradiction between Nicolae's claims and his actions because the universe of Left Behind doesn't recognize such contradictions as a possibility. In this book, words trump actions. The authors have stated that Nicolae is a pacifist and, according to the rules of this book, that makes him a pacifist even when he's firing a gun into someone's ear.

Bad Writing reinforces this. LB offers innumerable instances in which what we are told about a character seems to contradict the behavior we witness from that same character. We're told, for instance, that Buck Williams is a "star reporter," much admired by his readers and his peers for his unrivaled journalistic skills. But what we actually see of Buck is a lazy, incurious, ethically compromised hack who never files a story. Likewise we're told, repeatedly, that Rayford Steele is a good person, while the evidence we have been shown all seems to contradict this.**

But the Bad Writing here is, I think, part of the effect and not the cause of this inverted hierarchy of words and deeds. The problem isn't a failure of execution -- it's not that Jenkins is trying, but failing, to have the characters demonstrate the things he claims about them. The problem, rather, is a seeming disregard for any such correspondence between words and actions. He doesn't have to care whether or not they correspond, because it's only the words that matter. In a sense, then, Jenkins' notion of characterization matches his and LaHaye's notion of salvation, repentance and conversion -- they're all just a matter of saying the magic words.

And but so anyway, here we are:

Carpathia raised the .38, cocked it, and stuck the barrel into Stonagal's right ear. The older man at first jerked away, but Carpathia said, "Move again and you are dead."

Does this mean that Nicolae Carpathia is no longer a pacifist? I have no idea.

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

* We looked at this anti-peacemaker attitude in that earlier LPU&B post. There I wrote of people like LaHaye that: "They've gotten so caught up in guarding against wolves in sheep's clothing that anything in sheep's clothing is viewed as the enemy. So all sheep must be shot on sight." That probably understates the problem. LaHaye doesn't believe there's really any such thing as sheep, just a wooly fifth column of wolves.

** We're also told repeatedly that Rayford Steele really, truly loved his wife Irene, even though neither readers nor Irene ever saw much in his behavior that would demonstrate this to be true. I'm willing to give L&J a partial pass on that one since this particular mistake is hardly unique to LB. The idea that love is something one says or feels (passionately and sincerely), rather than something one does, is a widespread confusion shared by many people who have never even heard of this book.

L.B.: Chekhov's GIRAT

Left Behind, pp. 454-456

The next few pages are disappointing.

That probably seems like an odd thing to say at this point, about this book. We've spent more than four years so far marveling at the unrelenting awfulness of this wretched excuse for a novel -- a book that starts out by failing on every level yet somehow manages to get progressively worse as we go.

This utter failure is, I have contended all along, instructive. For anyone interested in writing, Left Behind is like one of those grisly films they show in driver's education classes -- offering a graphic illustration of the disasters that can occur from carelessness behind the wheel. On another level the book also illustrates, on nearly every page, the unreality, monstrousness and impossibility of the very ideas it seeks to promote. LB is a work of theological, ethical and political propaganda that becomes its own reductio ad absurdum. It propagandizes against itself, disproving the very ideas it sets out to prove.

After watching this train wreck unfold for more than 450 pages, it might not seem possible that our expectations could rise to a point from which they might be disappointed. But despite everything we've seen so far, we find ourselves here on page 454 with what would seem to be the ingredients of a can't-miss scene. We are in a room. In this room there's a gun and there's a villain who can control the thoughts and perceptions of others. Our hero has, unbeknownst to the villain, figured out a way to shield himself from the villain's mind control. You know what happens next. Anyone with even a passing familiarity with comic books or American movies and television knows what happens next.

Except that's not what happens next. What happens next is that Nicolae Carpathia seems to forget that he's the Antichrist, about to seize global power, and instead starts acting like a cheesy birthday-party magician.

For his next trick, the Great Carpathio will require a volunteer from the audience:

"I would like to present to you all just a bit of an object lesson in leadership, followership, and may I say, chain of command. Mr. Scott M. Otterness, would you approach me, please?" The guard in the corner jerked in surprise and hurried to Carpathia. "One of my leadership techniques is my power of observation, combined with a prodigious memory," Carpathia said.

Here's another lesson in leadership and, er, followership: Talking about your "leadership techniques" isn't a very good leadership technique. Particular when the skills you're patting yourself on the back for don't have much of anything to do with leadership and in any case aren't really techniques. The only way I can imagine an actual human saying that last sentence above without being immediately deposed and mocked by his former followers would be if it were said ironically, in self mockery. A campaign-weary politician praising the "great city of Cleveland," while speaking in Cincinnati, might get away with saying something like that as a joking apology. But just as he never uses contractions, Nicolae never employs irony.

"One of my leadership techniques is my power of observation," Nicolae says, "combined with a prodigious memory." And somehow, here in LB, the people who hear him say this are as impressed by him and he seems to be. This goes on for quite a bit.

"Mr. Otterness here was surprised because we had not been introduced, had we, sir?"

"No, sir, Mr. Carpathia, sir, we had not."

"And yet I knew your name."

The aging guard smiled and nodded.

One half-expects Carpathia to raise one hand with a flourish, like Jon Lovitz's Master Thespian, crying "Leadership!" (followed by this). The impression I get is of That Guy who thinks that reading the waitress' name off her name tag gives him license to send his steak back and tip a lousy 10 percent.

The description here of Otterness raises questions about another of Carpathia's leadership techniques: his utter disregard for security. The man is the president of Romania, newly elevated to the status of supreme leader of the One World Government. He should have an entourage. At the very least, he should be surrounded by a phalanx of dark-suited Romanian secret service agents. Yet all he seems to have by way of personal security is a gullible Jewish botanist.

Otterness, Nicolae, Buck

While we're on the subject, where's Jonathan Stonagal's entourage? Shouldn't the grand imperial wizard of international finance and head of a global conspiracy of evil have some henchmen? Even a guy like Todd-Cothran shouldn't be traveling solo. He's the head of a corrupt London syndicate that's infiltrated the stock exchange and Scotland Yard, you'd think he'd at least have a driver/bodyguard, somebody like Martin Landau in North by Northwest.

Yet all of these alleged members of the jet set seem to travel alone, apparently arriving in New York on commercial flights, then renting cars to drive themselves to the United Nations (although I'm sure they all flew first-class and rented really nice cars). The hallway outside the conference room should be filled with dozens of bodyguards personal, corporate and diplomatic, but instead as the new OWG convenes for the first time, the only security present is one old guy with a hand gun.

"I can also tell you the make and model and caliber of the weapon you carry on your hip. I will not look as you remove it and display it to this group."

Buck watched in horror as Mr. Otterness unsnapped the leather strap holding the huge gun in his holster. He fumbled for it and held it with two hands so everyone but Carpathia, who had averted his eyes, could see it. Stonagal, still red-faced, appeared to be hyperventilating.

"I observed, sir, that you were issued a 38-caliber police special with a four-inch barrel, loaded with high-velocity hollow-point shells."

"You are correct," Otterness said gleefully.

Oooh! Such power of observation, and what a prodigious memory! The man is a born leader.

Superlative emotion is a routine part of LB, with characters almost randomly seeming to be overcome by rage, rapture, joy, depression, etc., but having so many of them in one room paints quite a picture. Buck is in "horror," Stonagal is "red-faced" and "hyperventilating," Otterness is "gleefully" holding a gun and everyone else is smiling "beatifically." A stranger walking into this room would likely think it was a drama class working on some bizarre exercise.

"I observed, sir, that you were issued a 38-caliber police special with a four-inch barrel, loaded with high-velocity hollow-point shells."

"You are correct," Otterness said gleefully.

"May I hold it, please?"

"Certainly, sir."

Aha! Nicolae's ponderous "pick a card, any card" routine was just a ruse, a sneaky ploy to get his hands on the gun. But seeing as how Nicolae has mind-control powers, why would he need to resort to such a trick? For that matter, since Nicolae has mind-control powers, why would he need a gun?

"Thank you. You may return to your post, guarding Mr. William's bag, which contains a tape recorder, a cellular phone, and a computer. Am I correct, Cameron?"

Nicolae has the gun already, so he really doesn't need to be continuing with this Great Carpathio shtick. (And your wallet, Mr. Williams, it contains cash, a driver's license and some credit cards. Am I correct yet again? Leadership!) ... And wait -- did he really just say that the security guard was there to protect Buck's bag?

Buck stared at him, refusing to answer. He heard Stonagal grumble about "some sort of parlor trick." Carpathia continued to look at Buck. Neither spoke. "What is this?" Stonagal whispered. "You're acting like a child."

"I would like to tell you all what you are about to see," Carpathia said, and Buck felt anew the wash of evil in the room. He wanted more than anything to rub the gooseflesh from his arms and run for his life. But he was frozen where he sat. The others seemed transfixed but not troubled, as he and Stonagal were.

That seems to confirm that Stoney is, indeed, immune from the mind-control, or at least that Nicolae isn't trying to use it on him.

Nicolae asks Stonagal to stand:

Stonagal sat staring at him. Carpathia smiled. "Jonathan, you know you can trust me. I love you for all you have meant to me, and I humbly ask you to assist me in this demonstration. I see part of my role as a teacher. You have said that yourself, and you have been my teacher for years."

As we read last week, Stoney's irritation throughout this scene arises from his sense that Nicolae has not been sufficiently fulsome in praising him, that his protege hasn't shown proper gratitude or deference. He's looking to be flattered, and here that flattery is supplied, but he's still not happy. Maybe it's because of that gun Nicolae is holding.

Stonagal stood, wary and rigid.

That's a fine sentence, actually. It's accurate, economical, almost elegant. And to be perfectly fair, it is not the only fine sentence in this 468-page book. There are 11 others. Well, 10 1/2. But three of those are really quite good.

"And now I am going to ask that we switch places."

Stonagal swore. "What is this?" he demanded.

"It will become clear quickly, and I will not need your help anymore."

That's an ominously ambiguous statement. And it's nice to see Jenkins for once resisting his compulsion to ...

To the others, Buck knew, it sounded as if Carpathia meant he would no longer need Stonagal's help for whatever this demonstration was. Just as he had sent the guard back to the corner unarmed, they had to assume he would thank Stonagal and let him return to his seat.

He just can't help himself.

The two men switch places. Since the seating arrangement is important to the logistics of what Jenkins and Nicolae have planned next, we're subjected to a paragraph that reads like someone arranging the head table at a wedding reception:

Stonagal, with a disgusted frown, stepped out and traded places with Carpathia. That put Carpathia to Stonagal's right. On Stonagal's left sat Hattie, and beyond her, Mr. Todd-Cothran.

Got it? Nicky, Stoney, Hattie, T-C. And then the first-runner up to Ambassador from the Great States of Britain, and another dozen or so faceless ambassadors and financiers, with Steve, and Rosenzweig and Buck sitting, you know, over ... here somewhere. Just so we all have a clear mental picture.

"And now I am going to ask you to kneel, Jonathan," Carpathia said, his smile and his light tone having disappeared. To Buck it seemed as if everyone in the room sucked in a breath and held it.

"That I will not do," Stonagal said.

"Yes, you will," Carpathia said quietly. "Do it now."

"No, sir, I will not," Stonagal said. "Have you lost your mind? I will not be humiliated. If you think you have risen to a position over me, you are mistaken."

Carpathia raised the .38, cocked it, and stuck the barrel into Stonagal's right ear. The older man at first jerked away, but Carpathia said, "Move again and you are dead."

And there you have it, the Antichrist's big Show of Strength. Nicolae Carpathia demonstrates that he now has all the power of ... a man with a handgun. Why, he's almost as powerful as Scott M. Otterness himself!

See what I mean by disappointing? This is so utterly not how you write a scene involving a gun and a villain with mind-control.

Here again are the elements Jenkins gave himself to work with here: 1) A loaded gun, 2) a villain with mind-control powers, and 3) a hero the villain thinks is under his spell, but isn't. There are dozens of ways this could play out that could produce genuine tension and suspense, but Jenkins manages to avoid all of them.

The idea of "Chekhov's gun" is well summarized by Peter Case, "a gun in the first act always goes off in the third." Jenkins, unsurprisingly, takes this dramatic principle a bit too literally, as though it applied only to guns and not to Antichrists with mind control or to heroes secretly shielded from it. Anton Chekhov himself was not quite so literal-minded when he described what he meant:

"If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."

If Nicky's mojo isn't going to be fired, then it should't just be left hanging like this. If he thinks somebody needs to get shot, there's no reason for him not to simply mind-whammy the security guard into shooting them. That would seem like the most efficient approach for a villain with mind-control, sparing us all the elaborate "power of observation" business.

That would be a bit inelegant, though, seeing as the guard is a minor, previously unknown character. Better to work the mojo on Stonagal himself, having him walk over and take the gun from Otterness, sticking it into his own ear. Again, if you've ever spent any time reading comics or watching TV, you're familiar with such a scene. A common variation is to have the in-thrall character protesting the whole time, staring at his seemingly alien, Strangelovian hand's betrayal. When done well, this can be fairly creepy and effective.

Those scenarios both would work better than the actual events of this chapter because they account for two of the elements listed above (the loaded gun and the mind-control), while Jenkins' version only accounts for one. But better still would be a scenario that made use of all three elements.

In other words, given this set-up, what really needs to happen is for Nicolae to put the gun in Buck's hand and, mistakenly believing Buck to be in his thrall, order Buck to do the shooting.

But instead, of course, we have the scene as written. The gun eventually gets fired. The Antichrist and Buck are left hanging on the wall, unused.

L.B.: Pruneface Stonagal

Left Behind, pp. 452-453

Nicolae Carpathia is working his way around the conference table, inducting his followers one by one into his Team of Evil with his hypnotic incantation and his look-into-my-eyes mind control mojo.

Carpathia went through the ceremony with Steve, who gushed with pride. Nicolae eventually covered everyone in the room except the security guard, Hattie, and Jonathan Stonagal. ...

So of the 20 or so people assembled in the room, the authors only bother to show us the induction ceremony for the six characters we already knew by name -- Buck, Steve, Hattie, Chaim, Stonagal and Todd-Cothran. This is frustrating. Assembled in this room are the Antichrist's hand-picked lieutenants, the Grand Council of Evil, the Vice-Regents of Armageddon, the Ten Henchmen of the Apocalypse. Yet we aren't introduced to a single one of them by name.

This scene wouldn't fly in the funny pages. Even the worst hacks in the comics biz know how to properly introduce a Rogues' Gallery. As a sometime comic writer himself -- Jerry Jenkins scribes the syndicated newspaper serial Gil Thorp -- he should know better. After dropping the ball on this scene, Jenkins' dreams must've been haunted by the angry ghost of Chester Gould.

What sort of people are assembled around this table? That ought to matter. Is this a collection of explicit villains ("Ambassador of the Great States of East Asia Kim Jong Il," "Ambassador of the Great States of Africa Reanimated Zombie Mobutu," "Rupert Murdoch, emperor of Australia")? Or would that be too obvious? Maybe this council of One World Government vice-regents would be composed of others, like Nicolae, who are wolves in sheep's clothing -- Nobel Peace Prize laureates, environmentalists and champions of the poor. Introducing these various ambassadors, even briefly, should have been a prime opportunity to reinforce one of Left Behind's central themes, Tim LaHaye's upside-down belief that those who speak of peace, justice and unity are actually the dupes of Satan.

As it is, readers are left with only the vaguest impression of a conference table ringed by interchangeable, faceless white men in expensive suits. That sounds much more like my idea of an evil syndicate than like LaHaye's.

Carpathia turns to Hattie and gives her the whole "I welcome you to the team ... rights and privileges ... consistency and wisdom" spiel.

Buck tried to catch Hattie's eye and shake his head, but she was zeroed in on her new boss. Was this Buck's fault? He had introduced her to Carpathia in the first place. Was she still reachable? Would he have access? ...

"Access"? If that's not a Freudian slip then I don't know what else to make of it.

Everyone stared with beatific smiles as Hattie breathed her heartfelt thanks and sat down again.

Here again it's impossible to tell whether the creepy, unnatural behavior of everyone at the table is meant to be seen that way. The inappropriate and inhuman response of this mostly anonymous group might be intended in this scene to show that they are in the thrall of Carpathia's mind control. But then it's not all that different from the inappropriate and inhuman responses that have characterized everyone in the novel, even in scenes that Nicolae has nothing to do with, so who can say?

Carpathia dramatically turned to Jonathan Stonagal. The latter smiled a knowing smile and stood regally. "Where do I begin, Jonathan, my friend?" Carpathia said. Stonagal dropped his head gratefully and others murmured their agreement that this indeed was the man among men in the room. ...

We haven't much time left to consider the sad case of Jonathan Stonagal, so if we're going to do so before it's too late we'd best do it now.

Poor Stoney has just never quite fit in Left Behind. Try as he might, Jenkins was never really able to integrate him into the story. Stonagal's subplots kept turning into tangents wholly unconnected -- and unconnectable -- to the book's main plot and setting.

First there was Buck's Unnecessary Adventure in London -- an uncomfortably inserted interlude in which our hero travels to an England from another world, a place where The Event seems never to have occurred. That whole chapter, a pastiche of stock scenes from spy thrillers, fit in so poorly with the rest of the book that even Jenkins seems to have noticed, hastily undoing every consequence of its events as soon as Buck returned to New York. (The conspirators want Buck dead! Oh, nevermind, now they just want him to attend a meeting.)

All we learned of Stonagal from that episode was that he was somehow connected to a plan to consolidate the world's money into only three currencies. The plan was public knowledge -- it's not like you could change the currencies of more than a hundred nations without their knowledge or consent -- yet Stonagal acted as though it were a secretive, surreptitious scheme. The authors didn't bother to explain, but presumably the international banker (he owned "several" banks, we're told) was pursuing some kind of insider-trading angle to profit from the currency scheme.

All of that scheming would seem to have been rendered moot days later when Carpathia, newly installed as All Powerful Global Leader of the OWG, declared by fiat that there would be only one global currency.

But of course it's still true that Nicolae Carpathia would not have become All Powerful Global Leader if not for the assistance and maneuvering of his shadow-government sponsor Jonathan Stonagal. The details of this maneuvering are, again, pretty sketchy, as is the explanation for why Nicolae -- already receiving the full assistance of Satan himself -- would even need Stonagal's help.

And that's Stoney's real problem. He's the Satan figure from a different story, a different mythology. Stumbling unwelcome and unneeded into this story -- where the Satan figure is actually Satan -- he just can't compete.

Jonathan Stonagal doesn't belong here. He is, as his name inelegantly suggests, the stand-in for the Rockefellers and Rothschilds of a very different fantasy world -- the conspiratorial nightmare realm of LaRouchies and John Birchers. The Rockefellers -- or, rather, a nefarious, fun-house mirror version of them -- play a central role in the John Birch Society mythos that Tim LaHaye enthusiastically embraced* before he later moved on to become a premillennial dispensationalist "Bible prophecy" guru.

LaHaye's years spent as a missionary for the goofy beliefs of the John Birchers helped to prepare him for his second career as a promoter of the even goofier beliefs of PMD prophecy mania. Those two worlds share some common traits. Both believe in global conspiracies with evil, if vague, agendas. Both insist that only true believers possess the secret, gnostic keys for decoding the true meaning of history and current events. But these different conspiracies aren't really compatible -- the John Birchers and the PMD heretics decrypt the signs of the times in very different ways.

Yet despite this incompatibility, LaHaye can't quite seem to let go of many of his younger self's JBS notions. The continuing influence of those ideas can be seen throughout LB in the authors' obsession with the United Nations and in their stubbornly perverse misunderstanding of that institution. And this influence can be seen in Jonathan Stonagal, a character who inhabits the faultline or seam between these two systems that LaHaye is still trying, unsuccessfully, to stitch together. Stonagal -- the evil Rockefeller** stock character from the John Bircher rogues' gallery -- seems purposeless and adrift in Left Behind. He stumbles around the edges of this story, unable to find any legitimate reason for his presence. He seems a sad, vestigial relic.

This vague purposelessness of Stonagal's also underscores one of the defining traits of LB, and of PMD mythology in general, something we might call conspiratorial naivete. LaHaye believes, fervently, that history is shaped by murky, behind-the-scenes forces striving to create a One World Government. Yet he's complacently incurious about the actual institutions he suspects are part of that conspiracy, and he can't be bothered to learn anything about how they actually operate or what their motives might be. Stonagal, we assume, is trying to amass money and unchecked power, but how and why he intends to do this doesn't seem to interest the authors at all. The vague villainy of these conspiracies is proved by a tidy bit of circular reasoning: We know their deeds are evil because they are the deeds of evil men; we know they are evil men because they commit such evil deeds. Beyond that, the authors don't know, or care to know, any more about such villains.

The portrayal of Jonathan Stonagal in this, his final scene further illustrates L&J's conspiratorial naivete. For all of their apparent interest in characters like Stoney, they have no idea what might actually make someone like him tick.

Stonagal is meant to be the grand vizier, the power behind the throne -- think of Cardinal Richelieu, or James Brady Baker, or Dick Cheney. Such men, as a rule, don't care about fame, prestige or recognition. They don't seek titles, since the unrestrained influence they seek to exert always goes beyond the restrictions of any given title. Titles, after all, imply formal offices -- with all the checks and balances, responsibilities and restrictions that come with them. That's not the prize such characters are after.

The powers behind the throne always avoid the spotlight, the headline and the podium, not because they are modest or humble, but because such attention would interfere with their ability to wield power without concern for public opinion or public good. Puppets appear on the stage. Puppet masters do not.

And here we learn that Jonathan Stonagal is too vain, too needy, to succeed as a puppet master. He wants to be thanked, to be praised, to be loved. A real puppet master, a Richelieu or Cheney, would view Stoney's behavior here with contempt and disdain:

Carpathia took Stonagal's hand and began formally, "Mr. Stonagal, you have meant more to me than anyone on earth." Stonagal looked up and smiled, locking eyes with Carpathia.

"I welcome you to the team," Carpathia said, "and confer upon you all the rights and privileges that go with your new station."

Stonagal flinched, clearly not interested in being considered a part of the team, to be welcome by the very man he had maneuvered into the presidency of Romania and now the secretary-generalship of the United Nations. His smile froze, then disappeared as Carpathia continued, "May you display to me and to those in your charge the consistency and wisdom that have brought you to this position."

Rather than thanking Carpathia, Stonagal wrenched his hand away and glared at the younger man. Carpathia continued to gaze directly at him and spoke in quieter, warmer tones, "Mr. Stonagal, you may be seated."

"I will not!" Stonagal said.

"Sir, I have been having a bit of sport at your expense because I knew you would understand."

Stonagal reddened, clearly chagrined that he had overreacted. "I beg your pardon, Nicolae," Stonagal said, forcing a smile but obviously insulted at having been pushed into this shocking display.

Real puppet masters don't allow their feelings to be hurt when they don't receive proper recognition for their accomplishments. They'd prefer their accomplishments to go unnoticed. And they don't have feelings.

The only thing about this "shocking display" that's actually surprising is the accidental revelation that Jonathan Stonagal seems to be immune to Nicolae's mind-control. No amount of warm-toned, hypnotic flattery or eye-gazing seems to work. The Antichrist is unable to bend Stonagal to his will.

That's interesting. We were told that Buck Williams alone was shielded from Nicolae's powers due to his "commitment to Christ" and to the protective prayers of his friends in the Tribulation Force. I doubt that we're meant to assume that Stoney has also become a born-again RTC, or that Bruce and the Steeles are desperately praying for him too. And even with all that divine counter-magic, Buck still wasn't able to resist as firmly as Stonagal did -- wrenching his hand away and saying "I will not!"

So what accounts for this apparent immunity to Nicolae's preternatural charisma? I have a theory. Like many of my theories that attempt to explain the unexplainable in LB, this one is unsupported, and probably contradicted, by the book itself, but I think it's interesting.

For about 30 pages in the previous couple of chapters, Jenkins tried to inject a bit of suspense by raising the possibility that Stonagal, rather than Carpathia, was the real Antichrist. What if that were actually true? Or, rather, what if they both were?

What if, years ago, a young Jonathan Stonagal agreed to a deal with the devil. He agreed to dedicate his life to the service of his infernal master, paving the way to One World Government and one counterfeit world religion. In exchange for this faithful service, he would one day rule the world as Satan's anointed, warring against Heaven itself as the Antichrist.

Here, after decades of careful but ruthless toil, the final pieces of his grand scheme are at last moving into place. The figurehead he personally selected and groomed has been installed as the man through whom he, Jonathan Stonagal, will rule the world. His triumph, finally, is at hand.

And then, just as he is about to receive his reward, Old Scratch points out the fine print in their contract. These things always have fine print, even if all it says, way down at the bottom in microscopic, blood-red ink, is that you'd be a fool to trust the Devil to keep a bargain. Other deals and other promises have been made, Stonagal learns, too late, but only one will be kept. He did all the work, but the figurehead will reap the reward.

That scenario would have made Stonagal a more interesting, more tragic villain. It would also have added an interesting aspect to Nicolae Carpathia's character -- haunting him with the kernel of doubt that belongs to every triumphant adulterous lover.

But as I said, this theoretical scenario isn't really supported by the book itself. The authors don't really know or care to know why Stonagal has worked so hard for so many years to set the stage for Nicolae's global dominion. His elimination in the pages that follow isn't presented as the inevitable tragic fate of a diabolically ambitious villain. It is, rather, an awkward and belated attempt to correct a wrong turn in the story, to purge an unnecessary character who wandered in, accidentally, from a different conspiratorial fantasy and never really belonged in this story in the first place.

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

* For much more on Tim LaHaye's roots in the John Birch Society, see Michael Standaert's insightful Skipping Toward Armageddon.

** LaHaye may also be clinging to some 50-year-old worries about the ecumenical movement. The Rockefellers were generous patrons of the once-influential National Council of Churches, helping to fund, among other things, the NCC's offices at 475 Riverside (a.k.a. the "God Box"). The council was once feared by fundamentalists as a source of corrupting liberal theology. Fundamentalists also criticized its emphasis on interdenominational cooperation as a form of syncretism -- a stepping stone to the One World Religion that LaHaye is certain looms in the future of our doomed planet. The Fosdickian bomfoggery once enthusiastically promoted by John D. Rockefeller is now as dead as J.D. himself, but LaHaye seems to cling to this bugbear from his youth the way other men his age still cling to the hairstyles and fashions of the postwar years.

L.B.: Meta-Buck gets saved

Left Behind, pp. 449-451

And so the final chapter, the big showdown begins. Nicolae Carpathia steps forward to cement his control with an undeniable "show of strength." Soon the whole world will bear witness to his fearsome power.

Except that Nicolae is, at the moment, in "a private conference room" with no TV cameras. That's not really an ideal location for staging a show of strength for the whole world to see, but he has arranged to have the press there to report on the feats he's about to perform.

Well, not so much the press as one reporter, actually.

Well, one former reporter who never actually publishes anything.

Oh, and Nicolae plans to brainwash that reporter and everyone else in the room to make sure that no one ever hears about what he's about to do there.

I'm starting to think that maybe Nicolae hasn't really thought this through. If a show of strength falls in the forest and no one's there to hear it, will anyone be impressed?

Nicolae's actions in this chapter provide a bit of the creepiness that's been sorely lacking for most of this book, but it would have been much creepier, much more unsettling and affecting, if those actions had also made sense. He conducts his grand public demonstration in private and then ensures that even the few witnesses he's assembled won't be able to remember what they just saw. This grand display of his eeeevil powers, which he performs in full-on "So you see Meester Bond ..." mode, also doesn't turn out to be all that evil, really. I mean, yeah, it's wrong -- his actions are clearly both a crime and a sin -- but his victims also had it coming. The authors seem to be shooting for a grand violent gesture in which Nicolae displays his cold-blooded ruthlessness in pursuit of power -- something like Keyser Soze on the docks or the baptism scene from The Godfather. But here at the end of a book with a body count already in the millions, the deaths of two more people just doesn't seem all that chilling.

The fact that this scene was written by Jerry Jenkins also doesn't help:

Nicolae Carpathia stepped out from his place at the table and went to each person individually. He greeted each by name, asking him to stand, shaking his hand, and kissing him on both cheeks. He skipped Hattie and started with the new British ambassador.

"Mr. Todd-Cothran," he said ...

This is a signature tick throughout the book. First Jenkins summarizes what's about to happen, then he goes back to the beginning and goes through it again step-by-step. But he does this all in the past-tense, making it hard to figure out the actual sequence of events. (Is T-C the first person he addresses, or has he worked his way around the table and then "started" to repeat the established pattern with T-C?) You get the feeling that Jenkins always starts a joke with the punchline.

Why not just start like this instead?

Nicolae rose and approached Todd-Cothran, asking him to stand. He shook the financier's hand and kissed him on both cheeks. "Mr. Todd-Cothran ..."

Anyway, Carpathia tells T-C:

"You shall be introduced as the ambassador of the Great States of Britain, which now include much of Western and Eastern Europe. I welcome you to the team and confer upon you all the rights and privileges that go with your new station. May you display to me and to those in your charge the consistency and wisdom that have brought you to this position."

This again demonstrates that LaHaye & Jenkins don't really understand what "ambassador" means. They seem to think that ambassadors to the United Nations are appointed by the United Nations -- that they are chosen by the secretary-general to act as his lieutenants, like colonial governors or prefects of the One World Government.

This arrangement isn't something newly instituted by Carpathia as part of his future OWG -- this is how the authors imagine the U.N. works now, today. They believe that Ban Ki-moon is, right now, the supreme leader of the whole world, dictating policy for all the member nations of the U.N. Again, this seems an impossible thing to believe -- requiring an astonishing level of ignorance about an institution that they claim is of supreme importance. They are able to maintain such ignorance, in part, because this delusion also allows them to flatter themselves. They enjoy telling themselves that America, and only America, has managed to maintain its national sovereignty, refusing to bend its knee to Ban or to allow his hand-picked delegate, Zalmay Khalilzad, to dictate our national policy.

This is breathtaking stupidity in the service of self-congratulation. Then again, that's kind of the theme of the entire book. What else would you expect from a pair of authors whose Mary Sue stand-ins are Rayford Steele and Buck Williams?

The only difference, the authors believe, between Nicolae's U.N. and the real one that exists today is that Carpathia has merged the subordinate nations of the world into only 10 federations. They chose the number 10 because of Revelation 13:1:

And the dragon stood on the shore of the sea. And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. He had 10 horns and seven heads, with 10 crowns on his horns, and on each head a blasphemous name.

L&J don't really have any idea what that means either, but it's got the number 10 in it, so they've decided the "10 horns ... with 10 crowns" must refer to 10 divisions of the One World Government instituted by the secretary-general of the United Nations.

This is what L&J mean by a "literal interpretation of the Bible."

"Thank you, sir," Todd-Cothran said, and sat down as Carpathia moved on. Todd-Cothran appeared shocked, as did several others, when Nicolae repeated the same sentiment, including precisely the same title -- ambassador of the Great States of Britain -- to the British financier next to him. Todd-Cothran smiled tolerantly. Obviously, Carpathia had merely misspoken and should have referred to the man as one of his financial advisers. Yet Buck had never seen Carpathia make such a slip.

Apart from the clumsy writing, that's actually a half-decent bit of foreshadowing. What squelches that for me is Buck's utter lack of interest in Todd-Cothran, a man he's seeing here for the very first time. This guy planted a bomb in Buck's car. This is the man who forced Buck to flee for his life, lamming to Germany under an assumed name. That was seven days ago. A week later Buck isn't the least bit curious about the guy or the least bit uncomfortable to be sitting across the room from him. I realize that he claims not to want Buck dead at the moment, but he's still someone you'd think our hero would want to keep an eye on.

All around the four-sided table configuration Carpathia went, one by one, saying exactly the same words to every ambassador, but customizing the litany to include the appropriate name and title. The recitation changed only slightly for his personal aides and advisers.

This reminds me of something:

"Enthusiams. What are mine? What draws my admiration? What is that which gives me joy? Baseball!"

Those are lines from The Untouchables, spoken by a baseball-bat wielding Robert Deniro as the mobster Al Capone, circling a similar group of dignitaries arranged around a similar table. The air of palpable menace in that scene seems to be what L&J are trying for, but they never quite get there. Not even after Chekhov's gun makes its belated appearance a few pages from now.

What we get here, instead, are repeated recitations of:

"I welcome you to the team and confer upon you all the rights and privileges that go with your new station. May you display to me and to those in your charge the consistency and wisdom that have brought you to this position."

We've been told that Carpathia is eloquent and that he speaks, always, in "perfect English," but that's hard to reconcile with the character we actually see -- the man who thinks this ugly, awkward paragraph conveys a sense of ceremonial solemnity. "Consistency" is an odd word-choice there, conveying some middle range of praise, somewhere between "punctuality" and "dedication." And "team" is just jarringly wrong. Evil Transylvanian megalomaniacs setting out to rule the world just do not say, "welcome to the team." The Antichrist shouldn't talk like David Brent. (Although if he did, consistently, this would've been a much more entertaining, and much more frightening, book.)

When Carpathia got to Buck he seemed to hesitate. Buck was slow on the draw, as if he wasn't sure he was to be included in this. Carpathia's warm smile welcomed him to stand. Buck was slightly off balance, trying to hold pen and notebook while shaking hands with the dramatic Carpathia. Nicolae's grip was firm and strong, and he maintained it throughout his recitation. He looked directly into Buck's eyes and spoke with quiet authority.

"Mr. Williams," he said, "I welcome you to the team and confer upon you all the rights and privileges that go with your station. ..."

Since we've noted that Carpathia's actions in this chapter don't make any sense, we should probably also note that Buck's actions, even his very presence here, are equally absurd. Ever since Bruce Barnes warned him not to go to this meeting, Buck has insisted that he had to go -- that it was his duty as a reporter and an opportunity he couldn't turn down. And he was right about that -- an all-time scoop is unfolding before his eyes. Here, for the first time anywhere, the newly appointed World Leader is laying out the political and geographical divisions of the New World Order. And here, for the first time anywhere, he is identifying the Council of Global Governors, the men who will each rule one tenth of the world. Sure, this will all be reviewed again at the press conference an hour from now, but Buck is getting more of the story and he's getting it first.

Yet Buck isn't taking notes as these men are introduced and their various principalities are outlined. Buck isn't even paying attention. He couldn't pick the Ambassador for the Great States of South America out of a police lineup. He was willing to risk his life to be the lone journalist granted access to this room, but once there he fails to perform any journalistic function, focusing instead only on those details that are of interest to him personally -- details he has no intention of reporting to his readers, should he ever actually write anything.

That's not surprising, since this what Buck has done throughout the book. He has used his role as a "journalist" to book flights to London and Chicago, to gain access to meetings at the U.N. and to private interviews at the Plaza, yet he's never taken any notes, or filed any reports from any of those places. He's run up an enormous tab on Global Weekly's expense account, yet the magazine has nothing to show for it. (What's more, the magazine doesn't seem to care. Nobody says, "Say, Buck, didn't we just pay to send you to London? Shouldn't we be getting a story out of that?" Instead, he gets promoted.)

It's not that Buck seems to be a bad journalist, but rather that he doesn't seem to be a journalist at all.

Yet now, here, in the presence of "the truest, deepest, darkest spirit of evil," face to face with the Antichrist himself, Buck's soul is kept safe. And what is it that protects him? It's not divine intervention, not the prayers of Bruce and Chloe on his behalf, and not the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. No, the thing that saves Buck's soul here, that shields his mind from the mojo-puppetry of the Antichrist, is his indignation that his independence as a journalist is being called into question.

This is Buck Williams' Scott-McLellan moment:

What was this? It was not what Buck expected, but it was so affirming, so flattering. He was not part of any team, and no rights or privileges should be conferred upon him! He shook his head slightly ... but Nicolae nodded slightly and smiled all the more, looking more deeply into Buck's eyes. ...

Buck wanted to stand taller, to thank his mentor, his leader, the bestower of this honor. But no! It wasn't right! He didn't work for Carpathia. He was an independent journalist, not a supporter, not a follower, and certainly not an employee. His spirit resisted the temptation to say, "Thank you, sir," as everyone else had. He sensed and read the evil of the man and it was all he could do to keep from pointing at him and calling him the Antichrist. He could almost hear himself screaming it at Carpathia. ...

After an awkward silence, Buck heard chuckles, and Carpathia said, "You are most welcome, my slightly overcome and tongue-tied friend." The others laughed and applauded as Carpathia kissed him, but Buck did not smile. Neither did he thank the secretary-general. Bile rose in his throat.

It feels strange to write this, but I like that passage.

Buck Williams has been, up until this moment, the shoddiest of craftsmen and ethically bankrupt as a journalist. He has buried stories at the behest of criminals. He has conducted every interview off the record. And he hasn't filed a story in more than a year. He is, in every way, just about the sorriest excuse for a journalist imaginable. And yet here he grasps something basic about the job that most of our elite Beltway media do not seem to understand.

The scene above could be read aloud every year at the White House Correspondents Dinner for the edification of the journalists assembled there. This is how you should respond when some politician gives you a chummy nickname or invites you to a barbecue or lets you sit next to him on the bus or otherwise threatens to co-opt your independence by making you feel like you're just part of the team: You should jump back, point at them, and scream "Antichrist!" until they get the picture.

After he sits back down, Buck tells himself that:

Had he not belonged to God he would have been swept into the web of this man of deceit. ... Bruce Barnes had pleaded with Buck not to attend this meeting, and now Buck knew why. Had he come in unprepared, had he not been prayed for by Bruce and Chloe and probably Captain Steele, who knows whether he would have made his decision and his commitment to Christ in time to have the power to resist the lure of acceptance and power?

But re-read the passages quoted above. It wasn't God or those prayers that gave Buck "the power to resist power." It was something far more modest -- the tiniest remaining sliver of Buck's journalistic ethics. That lonely, stunted, heretofore-neglected crumb of integrity seems to have saved Buck's soul.

But then even that is not quite right. What really causes Buck to rise up and resist Nicolae isn't the idea of violating his journalistic integrity. What allows him to resist here is his indignation that he might be thought of as someone who would do this. In a sense, it's Buck's vanity -- his delusional, comically inflated self-perception -- that gets his ire up here.

Yet it's simply impossible that such vanity could be sustained here. Not in this time and place, around this very table where the two men sat who had agreed to withdraw their contract on Buck's life because he had already, explicitly agreed, just one week ago, to betray his journalistic independence and to accept his role as part of the team from the very man who was, at this moment, shaking his hand and looking into his eyes. In that situation, it's just impossible to think that Buck could tell himself he was "an independent journalist ... not an employee," and believe what he was thinking.

So I like to think here that in that moment of desperate self-assertion Buck may have experienced a nanosecond's worth of actual self-knowledge. He may have caught a sideways glimpse of the yawning chasm beneath his feet, of the vast gulf between the things he told himself about himself and the way he really was. The glimpse couldn't have lasted any longer than that briefest instant or he wouldn't have been able to survive it, but perhaps it lasted just long enough -- the twinkling of an eye, as it were -- to serve as a window to grace.

In his letter to the Romans, St. Paul writes that "The Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express." That's a very different concept of prayer than the idea that we can bind God to our will by saying the magic words, but perhaps this was the sort of prayer accredited to Buck in that nanosecond. "Oh my God," he thought in that instant, "I'm ridiculous!"

And perhaps that was enough.

L.B.: Doin' the deal

Left Behind, pp. 443-448

In the final pages of the penultimate chapter of Left Behind, Jerry Jenkins tries to ratchet up the suspense before Buck Williams' encounter with the Antichrist.

The supposedly suspenseful questions -- Will Buck get saved? Is Nicolae the Antichrist? Or is it really Stonagal? -- aren't all that suspenseful. The answers are thuddingly obvious (yes, yes and no, duh, respectively). Yet despite that, the conclusion of this book does involve a bit of suspense. After 400+ pages of non-sequitur plot developments, inconsistent characterization and glaring continuity errors, the reader approaches the end of this book with the realization that anything, absolutely anything, might happen. Since the normal rules of plot, character, motive, logic, physics, human nature, and cause and effect do not apply then anything goes.

Bruce Barnes warned that the Antichrist is planning some "show of strength," something big. In a normal book, that would seem ominous, but we have no idea what to make of such a suggestion here in the world of L.B. In this world, no one seems particularly impressed by a nuclear holocaust or the disappearance of every child from earth, yet the sight of two guys tripping and dying held the entire planet spellbound. In such a deliriously strange world, readers have no way of knowing what a "show of strength" might mean. That provides suspense, of a sort, just not the kind the authors seem to intend.

Buck's credentials were waiting for him at an information desk in the U.N. lobby. He was directed up to a private conference room off the suite of offices into which Nicolae Carpathia had already moved. Buck was at least 20 minutes early, but as he emerged from the elevator he felt alone in a crowd. He saw no one he recognized as he began the long walk down a corridor of glass and steel leading to the room where he was to join Steve, the 10 designated ambassadors representing the permanent members of the new Security Council, several aides and advisers to the new secretary-general (including Rosenzweig, Stonagal, and various other members of his international brotherhood of financial wizards), and of course, Carpathia himself.

So Buck is headed for a room full of people, at least 20, most of whom he has never seen before. And here he is walking down the hallway to that room and the hallway is full of people he has never seen before. Yet somehow Buck knows that these unrecognizable strangers are a different set of unrecognizable strangers. So who are all these people in the hall and what are they doing there? Don't worry about that. They're just Other People, and if there's one thing we've learned from Left Behind, it's that Other People don't matter.

We're about to get another four pages of Buck in anxious, fretting, full-of-dread mode. Since Buck is also Jenkins' Mary Sue surrogate, this description needs yet again to be prefaced with a disclaimer reminding readers that Buck is a manly man's man and that all of this fear and worry should in no way be interpreted as suggesting that he is anything other than a hard-charging, vigorous alpha male.

Buck had always been energetic and confident. Others had noticed his purposeful stride on assignment. ...

Keep in mind this is Buck's perspective here. We never read of those others actually noticing his purposeful stride, energy and confidence. All we read is his assumption that his must be something others must have noticed about him.

This is all you really need to know about Buck (or about Rayford Steele, for that matter). Will Ferrell has made a career out of playing this exact character -- the self-centered incompetent with epically disproportionate self-confidence. Buck is just like any of those interchangeable Ferrell characters -- Ricky Bobby, Ron Burgundy, George W. Bush. (Tell me you can't hear Bush's voice saying this: "Others have noticed mah ... purp-oseful strad.")

Others had noticed his purposeful stride on assignment. Now his gait was slow and unsure, and with every step his dread increased. The lights seemed to grow dimmer, the walls close in. His pulse increased and he had a sense of foreboding.

There are several more paragraphs of this --

What he feared, he knew, was not mortal danger. At least not now, not here. The closer he got to the conference room, the more he was repelled by a sense of evil, as if personified in that place. ... He was nearly paralyzed by the atmosphere of blackness. He wanted to be anywhere but there. ... he felt the darkest anguish of his soul ...

We get two full pages of this overheated, Lovecraftian dread between the elevator and the door to the conference room. Somewhere in the midst of all that: "Buck found himself silently praying, God, be with me. Protect me." And then, on the following page:

He tried to force himself toward the door, his thoughts deafening. Again he cried out to God, and he felt a coward -- just like everyone else, praying in the foxhole. ...

Yet he did not belong to God. Not yet.

Buck is still standing in the hallway when Steve Plank finally spots him.

"Buck! We're almost ready to begin. Come on in."

But Buck felt terrible, panicky. "Steve, I need to run to the washroom. Do I have a minute?"

Steve glanced at his watch. "You've got five," he said.

The last time these two spoke, Steve was darkly hinting that Buck shouldn't ask too many questions about the group assembled for this meeting or both of their lives might be in danger. Steve was so spooked in that conversation that he wouldn't even mention Carpathia or Stonagal by name. "Staten Island," he had warned Buck. "Staten Island!"

Here, however, Steve seems chipper and carefree. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named-Either are just a few yards away, but this no longer seems to trouble him.

Lots of thrillers feature just this sort of unsettling shift from whispering coded warnings to cheery bonhomie. The mysterious stranger full of ominous threats in the previous scene is now smiling broadly, but the smile seems a bit forced and he seems to be stealing furtive glances over his shoulder. Or there's the Stepford/Body Snatchers variation, in which the now cheerful character seems genuinely puzzled by any reference to their earlier warnings. Such devices are so familiar that at first one suspects something like that was intended here.

But it's not. This is just more Bad Writing.

You'll recall that ever since Buck got off the phone with Steve he's been trying to figure out what exactly his old boss had meant by "he moves mountains." Was that a reference to Carpathia or to Stonagal? Here's his chance to ask Steve which he meant, and to ask him some of the other questions Buck urgently needs answered before he goes into that meeting. Yet he doesn't ask any of those questions. He doesn't mention their previous conversation at all. Like Steve -- and the authors -- Buck seems to have forgotten that conversation even took place.

A bit of accidental realism follows here, as Steve does what someone always seems to do if you've only got five minutes before a big meeting and you're trying to run to the washroom -- he keeps Buck standing there, talking:

"When you get back, you'll be right over there."

Steve pointed to a chair at one corner of a square block of tables. The journalist in Buck liked it. The perfect vantage point. His eyes darted to the nameplates in front of each spot. He would face the main table, where Carpathia had placed himself directly next to Stonagal ... or had Stonagal been in charge of the seating?

One of these two men was responsible for the murders of Dirk Burton, Alan Tompkins and Eric Miller. One of them -- probably the same one -- was also the Beast, the Antichrist, the embodiment of evil. But which one? Obviously, it was whoever had been in charge of the seating arrangements.

Next to Carpathia on the other side was a hastily hand-lettered nameplate with "Personal Assistant" written on it. "Is that you?" Buck said.

"Nope," Steve pointed at the corner opposite Buck's chair.

How can they see opposite corners of this block of tables from out here in the hallway?

"Is Todd-Cothran here?" Buck said.

"Of course. Right there in the light gray."

The Brit looked insignificant enough. But just beyond him were both Stonagal -- in charcoal -- and Carpathia, looking perfect in a black suit, white shirt, electric-blue tie, and a gold stickpin. Buck shuddered at the sight of him, but Carpathia flashed a smile and waved him over. Buck signaled that he would be a minute. "Now you've got only four minutes," Steve said. "Get going."

I'm not sure if the sartorial shades of gray here are meant to be symbolic. (Evil. Evil-er. Evil-est!) If we're dressing the bad guys in black, then Todd-Cothran would seem to deserve a darker shade. He is, after all, a cop-killer and proud of it. He was also, very nearly, a GIRAT-killer. Buck magnanimously seems willing to let that pass. He decides T-C is "insignificant enough" (enough for what?).

Buck put his bag in a corner next to a heavyset, white-haired security guard, waved at his old friend Chaim Rosenzweig, and jogged to the washroom. He placed a janitor's bucket outside and locked the door.

Did he just barricade the outside of the door? That seems like a neat trick. And what is it with this guy and bathrooms?

Buck backed up against the door, thrust his hands deep into his pockets, and dropped his chin to his chest, remembering Bruce's advice that he could talk to God the same way he talked to a friend. "God," he said, "I need you, and not just for this meeting."

And as he prayed he believed. This was no experiment, no halfhearted attempt. He wasn't just hoping or trying something out. Buck knew he was talking to God himself. He admitted he needed God, that he knew he was as lost and as sinful as anyone. He didn't specifically pray the prayer he had heard others talk about, but when he finished he had covered the same territory and the deal was done.

I've written several times in this series about the pornographic nature of the conversion scenes in a lot of Christian-branded fiction. Spiritual intimacy, like sexual intimacy, does not lend itself comfortably to observation and description. Such scenes, if rendered too explicitly, seem like a violation of privacy and like a reduction of something transcendant.

Buck's Big Conversion Scene here is, thankfully, underplayed without too much graphic detail. Yet despite that, it still seems coarsely reductive. "The deal was done." (Just try to imagine someone using that phrase in their testimony during an evangelistic revival.)

The authors here seem to have anticipated our "magic words" critique of this book's notion of personal(ized) salvation, clearly stating here that one can still "do the deal" even if one doesn't use the exact syntax of the official prayer. You can paraphrase a little, they suggest, and the magic spell will still work. It's still a magic spell, though.

It's also interesting that for all the talk in this book about "praying The Prayer" (or a close paraphrase of The Prayer for nonconformist rebels like Buck), the authors never really tell us what, exactly, The Prayer is. They've got a "Seeking God" section on Leftbehind.com, and they offer a 24-hour toll-free number (1-866-321-SEEK) where you can "Talk to someone about your eternity," but the book itself never spells out the spell. That seems, from their perspective, like a pretty big oversight.

The passage above does give us a few hints about "the territory" that The Prayer needs to cover in order to get the deal done, the core of which seems to be this: "He admitted he needed God, that he knew he was as lost and as sinful as anyone." That's almost a confession -- although of what, exactly, it's hard to say.

We should also note that, as with Rayford's Big Conversion Scene earlier, love never enters the picture. Not God's love for Buck. Not Buck's love for God. Buck admits to his share of some vague, generic "sinfulness," but that doesn't seem to have anything to do with love, or the lack thereof, either. I could go on here about how appallingly screwed up that is, but this confusion is, alas, not confined to LaHaye and Jenkins in particular, or even to premillennial dispensationalists.

The newly converted Buck returns to the conference room:

When he walked in, everyone was in place -- Carpathia, Stonagal, Todd-Cothran, Rosenzweig, Steve, and the financial powers and ambassadors. And one person Buck never expected -- Hattie Durham. He stared, dumbfounded, as she took her place as Nicolae Carpathia's personal assistant. She winked at him, but he did not acknowledge her.

Buck's only been a Christian for about four minutes, but already he's demonstrating everything Rayford taught him about the Christian male's duty of treating Hattie like dirt. This is also further proof that Nicolae is evil. Not only does he acknowledge Hattie, he's helping her with her career. Pure evil, that, luring a young woman into the wanton life of a career outside the home. From LaHaye's point of view, career-woman and working-girl are pretty much the same thing.

Meanwhile, Buck's spirit-sense is tingling:

While no special feeling had come with Buck's decision, he had a heightened sensitivity that something was happening here. There wasn't a doubt in his mind that the Antichrist of the Bible was in this room. And despite all he knew about Stonagal and what the man had engineered in England ... Buck sensed the truest, deepest, darkest spirit of evil as he watched Carpathia take his place. Nicolae waited till everyone was seated, then rose with pseudodignity.

The others may be fooled, but Buck, with his Jesus-powered "heightened sensitivity," is now able to tell the difference between dignity and "pseudodignity." As his new faith takes hold and his powers of discernment grow, Buck may soon also realize that "a black suit, white shirt, electric-blue tie, and a gold stickpin" is only pseudostylish.

"Gentlemen ... and lady," he began. ...

Yeah, that's right. Hattie is the only woman in the room. They expand the Security Council to 10 seats and it's still an all-boys club. (This is a bit surprising, actually, since you'd expect Tim LaHaye's notion of an evil cabal to include at least a token feminist. His wife Beverly, after all, heads up Concerned Women for America -- an antifeminist group dedicated to the proposition that no woman should head up anything.)

So as we head into the final chapter all of the supposedly suspenseful questions seem to have been dealt with. Buck's soul is saved and he's now mojo-proof. We've confirmed that Carpathia is, indeed, the black-suited Antichrist while Stonagal is merely a charcoal-suited wannabe. And we've all-but confirmed that Hattie is making the beast with two backs with the Beast with Ten Horns. All that's left for the last 20 pages is Nicolae's big "show of strength."

L.B.: Back to school

Left Behind, pp. 442-443

Chloe Steele told her father of her plans to finally look into local college classes that Monday.

That makes sense, right? Chloe was just beginning the winter quarter of her freshman year at Stanford when her studies were interrupted by a loss in her family. She returned home to be with her father but now, after two weeks of sitting around at home, she's looking into resuming her studies closer to home. Makes perfect sense.

Or, rather, it would make perfect sense in a completely different novel -- one where the Steeles' family trauma was an isolated event and not part of a global apocalypse, a world-altering trauma heralding the end of the world. Here in Left Behind, the idea that Chloe would begin resuming classes -- or that there would even be classes for her to resume -- doesn't make any sense at all.

Part of the reason that she can't just pick up where she left off after her mother's funeral is that there was no funeral. Not for Irene, not for Rayford Jr., not for any of the 2 billion or so people all over the world who are now gone.

LaHaye and Jenkins could not allow funerals in this book. For them, everything depends on their ability to maintain an artificial distinction between "raptured" and "dead." This isn't just the alleged premise for this book, it's the linchpin for their entire End Times check list and the thing that reshapes every aspect of their theology -- not just eschatology but soteriology, ecclesiology, theodicy, the whole shebang. If they'd allowed funerals in Left Behind, then this artificial distinction would've been impossible to sustain and the wheels would have flown off their entire belief system.

In the early pages of the book, Rayford recalls his wife's cheerful description of this indistinct distinction:

"Can you imagine, Rafe," she exulted, "Jesus coming back to get us before we die?"

Her tone would have been a bit less exultant if she had avoided the euphemistic dodge of the "rapture": "Can you imagine, Rafe, Jesus coming back to grant us an instantaneous and painless death?"

But the latter is just as accurate as the former. Irene and every other real, true Christian and Raymie and every other innocent child on the planet have passed on. They are no more. They have ceased to be, gone to meet their maker. They've shuffled off their mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible. The plumage don't enter into it.

This transition from earth to heaven, from life to afterlife, is in every way indistinguishable from the inevitable form that this transition usually takes. We have a word for that experience. It's called "dying." Irene Steele went to bed, fell asleep and died. Saying that she was raptured does not, in any meaningful way, change the experience for her. Her experience of this event would've been no different had there been a carbon monoxide leak, or a gas leak and explosion, or a Donnie Darko-style jet engine through the roof. And the experience for those she left behind -- for her surviving husband and daughter -- isn't different in any meaningful way either.

The majority of the 2 billion or so "raptured" at the start of this book are children, those L&J believe are below some blurry "age of accountability" and who therefore would be regarded as innocents. (In interviews outside of the book L&J seem to underestimate the proportion of the earth's populace that falls into this age range. They seem to have assumed that developing countries would have the same basic ratio of old and young as we have here in the U.S.) These innocent children are included in the rapture, L&J say, because God is merciful, sparing them the suffering of the coming Great Tribulation.*

Viewing the rapture of these children as an act of divine mercy is entirely dependent on the dubious distinction between raptured and dead. As long as we think of it as a worldwide "snatching away," and not as a worldwide slaughter, then we can pretend that what has happened to all those children is somehow merciful. But that requires us to avoid anything that would allow or cause us to think more deeply about whether these things really are any different. Such deeper thoughts cast a disturbing light on Irene's exultant longing for the coming rapture -- and on the longing of her real-world counterparts (look again at that John Hagee sermon we looked at last week).

"To live is Christ, to die is gain," St. Paul wrote, but this longing for and celebration of a global rapture seems to have less to do with that than with something more like Jonestown, or Heaven's Gate, or the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments.

Hence no funerals in Left Behind. Better to describe an impossible world in which humans do not act like humans -- in which the universal human need to grieve and to ritualize mourning does not exist -- than to allow readers to reflect on the similarities between the indistinguishable statements "Irene was raptured" and "Irene was dead." Elephants mourn their dead. The alleged humans in Left Behind do not.

But even in the impossible, inhuman, no-funerals-allowed world of this book it seems unlikely that local colleges would or could so soon be resuming their normal routine.

A mere two weeks after The Event, these schools would still be struggling to figure out which of their students and faculty members were among the disappeared. I realize that L&J view intellectual, academic types as inherently ungodly, but surely some of them would have been taken, and surely some would have been killed in the hundreds of plane crashes and thousands of highway disasters that occurred the night of The Event. And even if those who remained/survived aren't allowed to conduct funerals or memorial services, they would all, like Chloe, have been touched in some way by the disappearances and the concurrent carnage.

Consider also how The Event would forever alter most of the various academic disciplines. Physics and chemistry professors couldn't very well continue teaching their students about the Conservation of Matter, what with 50 million or so tons of the stuff having just vanished from the universe. Professors teaching early childhood education or obstetrics probably wouldn't see much sense in continuing with business as usual either. Those professors of religion and philosophy who remained would, of course, all be busy berating themselves because they were wrong, wrong, wrong not to have listened to Tim LaHaye.

It's hard to imagine a course of study that wouldn't have been shattered and turned upside down by The Event. But even if we assume that Chloe is studying subjects that might seem unaffected -- say, I don't know, Renaissance poetry -- it seems impossible that classes could just go on as before without the professor breaking down, sobbing, mid-lecture. "Today we're going to turn again to Petrarch's sonnets, and ... and ... and ..." (curls into fetal ball behind the podium) "My daughter. My beautiful daughter is gone and no one can tell me what has happened to her ... et le piaghe che 'nfin al cor mi vanno ..."

Then there's the question of where Chloe might be studying, of which local college she would be enrolling in.

This is trickier than it might seem. She's a convert now, a member of New Hope Village Church's prophecy-addled variant of the evangelical subculture. As such, somewhere like Northwestern or the University of Chicago just won't do. But if such hotbeds of secular humanism would no longer be an option for Chloe neither would she have any remaining religious options of the sort viewed as acceptable by her newly adopted subculture. Pre-Event she'd have had multiple options within commuting distance -- Wheaton College, Trinity Christian College, Judson University, even Christian Life College right there in town. But post-Event those campuses would be all-but deserted.** If the Christian alternatives are now closed and the secular schools are now unacceptable to her -- devoid even of the shelter of a Campus Crusade chapter, like Sodom without even 10 righteous to be found -- then where exactly is Chloe supposed to go?

Then again, the above difficulties all seem secondary to the larger question of why Chloe would even bother with college. The world is going to end in six years and 352 days. Spending three and a half of those years working toward her B.A. might not seem like a big priority at this point -- even if she thinks that she'd be able to finish in that amount of time without things like Wormwood poisoning the seas or an army of monstrous dragon-locusts interrupting her studies. (On the other hand, it would be pretty sweet to take out all those college loans knowing that you'd never have to pay them back.)

Alas, all of this discussion about Chloe's college plans turns out to be, well, academic. She soon ends up married to Buck and thus, in the authors' view, no longer needs to worry her pretty little head about getting an education.

"And I was thinking," she said, "about trying to get together with Hattie for lunch."

"I thought you didn't care for her," Rayford said.

"I don't, but that's no excuse. She doesn't even know what's happened to me. She's not answering her phone. Any idea what her schedule is?"

I appreciate the distinction Chloe makes there -- the obligation to care about people even if you don't care for them. That's a rare thing here in Left Behind. Note the contrast here between Chloe's willingness to go out of her way to meet with someone she doesn't really like and Buck's unwillingness, a few pages ago, to answer the direct questions of a friendly stranger. Even post-conversion Stepford Chloe seems like she could do better than Buck.

Her dad calls the airline to find out Hattie's schedule:

Rayford was told that not only was Hattie not scheduled that day but also that she had requested a 30-day leave of absence. "That's odd," he told Chloe. "Maybe she's got family troubles out West."

Not that he's going to bother checking in with her to find out if everything's OK. Rayford doesn't care for or about Hattie. He assuaged his guilt over their pseudo-affair by forcing her to sit silently through his gospel lecture, so as far as he's concerned, he doesn't need to give her another thought. And anyway, he's busy:

"I promised Bruce I'd come over and watch that Carpathia press conference later this morning."

It might seem easy to mock Rayford and Bruce's idea of a good time here, but I'd be eager to see that press conference too. There's a chance, after all, that Nicolae could announce what the new One World Language was going to be, and if that didn't turn out to be English I might need to re-enroll in college myself.

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

* This Great Tribulation, according to LaHaye and his prophecy-studies compatriots, is a calamitous time shaped by war, famine, disease and, stalking in the rear, gigantic, inevitable death within seven years. It's worth noting that this is, right now, an apt description of what life is actually like for millions of children here in the real world. I would ask why God isn't doing something to change that for these innocents but, as the saying goes, I'd be afraid that God would just ask me the same question.

** I'm picturing poor Mark Noll, shell-shocked and wandering through the empty halls of Wheaton's campus, muttering to himself and ripping the pages one by one from Michael Williams' This World Is Not My Home like Ophelia with her wildflowers.

L.B.: Heebie-jeebies

Left Behind, pp. 440-442

Buck felt more alone than ever on the flight home. He was in coach on a full plane, but he knew no one. He read several sections from the Bible Bruce had given him and had marked for him, prompting the woman next to him to ask questions. He answered in such a way that she could tell he was not in the mood for conversation.* He didn't want to be rude, but neither did he want to mislead anyone with his limited knowledge.

Why the brush-off? His dodging of this woman's questions would seem to be, from the authors' own perspective, a shirking of responsibility. I realize that Buck is not yet a fully certified convert, but he has already decided that the stuff he's reading there is the Most Important Thing. When someone asks you a direct question about the Most Important Thing, it seems cruel not to tell them what you know, even if your answers are only partial or limited (as opposed to having un-limited knowledge, which the authors seem to suggest is a possibility).

So here is this poor woman. She witnessed the Israel miracle and then The Event, and she's started putting two and two together. Now she's desperate for answers and she turns to Buck Williams. He's got Bruce's annotated Bible right there in his hands. He's just finished what amounts to a three-day seminar, complete with Bruce's "crash-course in prophecy" and one, maybe two viewings of the ICR video. He is, in other words, the perfect person to begin to answer her questions. Yet he doesn't.

The morning before he was "moved to tears" by Chloe's story, in which she said that she believed his presence in the airplane seat next to hers was a sign from God. If he believes that to be true, then surely it was also God's divine plan that he is again, just a few days later, in an airplane seat next to a woman full of questions about God. But if Buck's presence in the next seat was a sign of God's love for Chloe, his presence next to this woman would seem to be a sign that God, like Buck, doesn't care what happens to her. (What if this woman gets off the airplane, walks out of the airport and gets hit by the hypothetical bus?)

I'm also not sure what to make of the apparent warning there against evangelism by those with only "limited knowledge." Throughout the rest of the book, this is presented as a universal, unavoidable duty for every believer. But here they seem to be saying it's better left to the experts. Odd.

The frustrating thing here is that this woman's questions would likely have been very similar to the questions Buck is asking himself. She would have provided a convenient means to present Buck's inner monologue as an actual dialogue, a conversation. But instead he blows her off and goes back to sulkily asking himself rhetorical questions in what seems like the voice-over narration of a bad movie. (I really believe that Jerry Jenkins has a Post-it note stuck to the monitor of his computer reading, "Tell, don't show.")

Sleep was no easier for him that night, though he refused to allow himself to pace. ...

This is, like, totally different from the bit in the last chapter where Buck was up all night, unable to sleep as he grappled with these same questions. In that scene, Buck was pacing. Here, he's not. See? Totally different.

He was going into a meeting in the morning that he had been warned to stay away from. Bruce Barnes had sounded convinced that if Nicolae Carpathia were the Antichrist, Buck ran the danger of being mentally overcome, brainwashed, hypnotized or worse.

There is that, of course. But keep in mind that Buck is also headed to a meeting where he will be sitting alongside Jonathan Stonagal and Todd-Cothran for the first time since he'd been forced to fake his own death and travel incognito because they planted a bomb in his car. This is the same Todd-Cothran, you'll remember, who telephoned Scotland Yard to inform them that he'd be murdering one of their policemen and there was nothing they could do about it. Yet Buck doesn't seem to be the slightest bit anxious about seeing these men face to face. He had promised -- cross-my-heart, pinky-swear -- never to write anything bad about them and in exchange they had agreed not to murder him in cold blood. Buck sees no reason not to take them at their word, so he's not nervous to be meeting them face to face.

As he wearily showered and dressed in the morning, Buck concluded that he had come a long way from thinking that the religious angle was on the fringe. He had gone from bemused puzzlement at people thinking their loved ones had flown to heaven to believing that much of what was happening had been foretold in the Bible. He was no longer wondering or doubting, he told himself. There was no other explanation for the two witnesses in Jerusalem. Nor for the disappearances. ...

So he now believes the "religious angle" should be central to his article on the disappearances. He believes, in fact, that there could be "no other explanation." Yet he doesn't end up writing any of that in his article. He treats his readers just like he treated that poor woman on the plane. He has the answers, but he's not in a mood to share them.

But hold that thought, I'm getting ahead of myself.

We get another half-hearted attempt at the Stonagal-as-Antichrist red herring. This, again, seems utterly lame at this point in the book, since everyone with even half a brain already knows without a doubt that Nicolae Carpathia is the Antichrist. What kind of moron could possibly think otherwise?

Buck still leaned toward Stonagal. ...

OK, then. So our half-witted hero heads out the door:

He slung his bag over his shoulder, tempted to take the gun from his bedside table but knowing he would never get it through the metal detectors. Anyway, he sensed, that was not the kind of protection he needed. What he needed was safekeeping for his mind and for his spirit.

The "safekeeping" he refers to there is the divine protection that Bruce told him would come with his conversion. If I were him, though, I'd also be loading up like the Winchester brothers, taking salt, garlic, holy water and maybe even some chalk for pentagram-drawing, just in case.

But now we turn to something interesting. Or, rather, we turn to something that might have been interesting:

All the way to the United Nations he agonized. Do I pray? he asked himself. Do I "pray the prayer" as so many of those people said yesterday morning? Would I be doing it just to protect myself from the voodoo or the heebie-jeebies? He decided that becoming a believer could not be for the purpose of having a good luck charm. That would cheapen it. Surely God didn't work that way. ...

At first glance, this seems almost like a direct response to our criticism here of the mechanistic magic implied in the authors' idea of what constitutes salvation. Throughout the book the authors repeatedly and consistently portray "praying the prayer" as a transaction, almost like an incantation that binds God to the spellcaster's will like a djinni. Pray the prayer, get the salvation. This passage might be LaHaye & Jenkins' way of saying that they don't really mean that.** But then we read the rest of the paragraph:

... Surely God didn't work that way. And if Bruce Barnes could be believed, there was no more protection for believers now, during this period, than there was for anyone else. Huge numbers of people were going to die in the next seven years, Christian or not. The question was, then where would they be?

So the authors are saying, explicitly, that we must not say the magic words as a temporal "good luck charm." God doesn't work that way. The magic words are meant to be an eternal good luck charm, protecting our souls from the voodoo and the heebie-jeebies of the afterlife.

The authors here are treading carefully to avoid the more interesting question here, one that is suggested more strongly in the following paragraph:

There was only one reason to make the transaction, he decided -- if he truly believed he could be forgiven and become one of God's people.

What really matters to L&J is whether or not Buck "truly believes" -- whether or not he is, like Rayford, passionately sincere and sincerely passionate. My Calvinist brother calls this "Great Pumpkin" spirituality -- the idea that our sincerity, rather than God's grace, is the decisive factor. I'm very much not a Calvinist, but I agree that such Great Pumpkin spirituality makes no sense. Jesus' parables are filled with characters begging for forgiveness for the most selfish and venal reasons imaginable, yet that never matters in those stories.***

But even though Buck uses the word "forgiven" here, it hardly seems like he really thinks forgiveness is something he needs. We don't even get the half-baked sort of thing we got with Rayford, where he seemed to be repenting of his own awesomeness. Buck seems to think that God's grace works like a personal line of credit -- that it's only offered to those who can demonstrate they don't really need it. In Buck's scenario, God is willing to save those who ask unless they really need saving, because "that would cheapen it." Or something.

One can imagine a more interesting version of this story in which Buck, desperate to save his own sorry hide, was perfectly willing to beg for help in the cheapest, crassest way imaginable, and primarily for the most selfish of motives. What would come next? Would the receipt of such unmerited grace force him to change and grow? Or would he be able to maintain a selfish ingratitude ("Thanks for the eternal salvation -- sucker!")? That would of course be a very different story requiring very different authors than the ones who gave us this book.

God had become more than a force of nature or even a miracle worker to Buck, as God had been in the skies of Israel that night. It only made sense that if God made people, he would want to communicate with them, to connect with them.

Unless, of course, those people are seated next to Buck on an airplane, in which case they're S.O.L.

Buck entered the U.N. through hordes of reporters already setting up for the press conference. Limousines disgorged VIPs and crowds waited behind police barriers.

Police barriers. A red-carpet entry for a press conference by the new secretary-general. That might have worked as a satiric device meant to describe Nicolae's movie-star-like popularity, but I don't think that is what was intended. The authors seem to imagine that this is what life is like all the time for politicians and diplomats.

Buck saw Stanton Bailey in a crowd near the door. "What are you doing here?" Buck said.

"Getting autographs," Bailey says. "Omigod, did you see Richard Holbrooke? He's so dreamy!"

OK, not quite that, what the authors actually have Bailey say is this:

"Just taking advantage of my position so I can be at the press conference. Proud you're going to be in the preliminary meeting. Be sure to remember everything. Thanks for transmitting your first draft of the theory piece. I know you've got a lot to do yet, but it's a terrific start. Gonna be a winner."

This is impossible. Buck hasn't written even a rough outline of this article yet, let alone a first draft. We readers know this. We've been with him through every step of every day since the article was assigned and he hasn't written a thing. He hasn't had time.

Based on Bailey's reaction, the Rapture theory doesn't seem to be a dominant theme in Buck's first draft. This is also impossible. Apart from his coworkers, the only person Buck has interviewed so far for this article is Rayford Steele. He hasn't talked to any scientists about the possibility of an "electromagnetonuclear" incident, or to any UFO theorists or anyone else about any other possible explanations for the disappearances. So how can he have written a first draft that gives those other theories greater weight than the only theory he has researched? And if he really believes in that theory, if he really believes "there was no other explanation," then why doesn't he make that case in his article?

Like Bruce and Rayford, Buck seems far more interested in being initiated into the secret prophecy knowledge of the Tribulation Force than he is in sharing that truth with anyone else, whether it's the woman next to him on the plane, or Hattie, or the readers of Global Weekly, or even his boss and his coworkers. After all, if he shared this secret knowledge with everybody, then there'd be no one left for him to say "I told you so" to.

"Thanks," Buck said, and Bailey gave him a thumbs-up. Buck realized that if that had happened a month before, he would have had to stifle a laugh at the corny old guy and would have told his colleagues what an idiot he worked for.

We might have mentioned this before, but Buck Williams really is a douchebag.

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

* This scene's inversion of the usual nightmare-seatmate dynamic also seems like the premise for a comedy sketch (NOTE: Fixed scrambled names, but it's still not really that funny):

PASSENGER 2: Say what's that you're reading? Is that the Bible?

PASSENGER 1: What? Oh. Oh, yes. It's the Bible. ... I'm sorry, I've got a lot of reading to finish here and I just wanted to ...

PASSENGER 2: Oh sure, sure. No problem. Sorry.

P1: ...

P2: Sorry, I know you're trying to read, but I couldn't help but notice your lapel pin. That little fish, that's like a Christian thing, right? Like a "born-again" thing?

P1: Yes. The fish is a Christian symbol. Yes. Now, I'm sorry, but do you mind? (gestures back at the book)

P2: Oh right, sure. Sorry.

P1: ...

P2: So how's that work, anyway? Getting "born again"?

P1: Look, really, I don't mean to be rude, but I'd really just like to sit here quietly and read until we get to ...

P2: Hey, that's cool! I didn't notice that before.

P1: Excuse me?

P2: Your T-shirt! It looks just like a Budweiser T-shirt, but I just realized it actually says, "Be Wiser" -- oh, and instead of "King of Beers" it says "King of Kings!" Cool. I guess that means Jesus, right? And that I'd be wiser if I ... Hey, wow! Are those gospel tracts in your bag? Can I have one of those?

P1: Oh for God's sake! Why do I always end up next to you people?

** LaHaye and Jenkins seem dimly aware that critics of their books exist, and they seem to have a vague sense that it would be good to respond to those critics. But they never quite do. The closest they come is passages like this one, or the earlier scene where Chloe objected that this apocalypse seemed hard to reconcile with "a God of love and order." No one responded to Chloe's objection, she just seemed eventually to drop it for no apparent reason.

*** The difficulty in those parables for my Calvinist friends arises from what happens next. The selfish servant, motivated only by a desire to save his own behind from prison, throws himself on the mercy of the king, but the king forgives him anyway. A nice Calvinist parable if it stopped there. But the story doesn't stop there. "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors," we Christians pray, and we read "with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." And sometimes I wonder if the whole Calvinist/Arminian reframing of the question isn't just a means of avoiding what that seems to entail.

L.B.: Dear Captain

Left Behind, pp. 438-440

New Hope Village Church's Sunday service is drawing SRO crowds.

Rayford and Chloe watched for Buck until the last minute the next morning, but they could no longer save a seat for him when the sanctuary and the balcony filled. When Bruce began his message, Chloe nudged her father and pointed out the window, down onto the walk before the front door. There, in a small crowd listening to an external speaker, was Buck. Rayford raised a celebratory fist and whispered to Chloe, "Wonder what you're going to pray for this morning?"

(Out of sympathy for Chloe's embarrassment, we'll just ignore Rayford here and pretend that whole fist-pumping bit didn't happen.)

Post-Event I would think every house of worship would be jammed with overflow crowds like this one. This is one of the things we humans do in the wake of tragedy -- we gather together, often in churches. One baby trapped in a well will fill every pew in town for a week. The Event is a much bigger deal -- imagine every baby and young child on the planet lost down that well.

A mere 13 days after The Event, the world would still be reeling from the trauma and the impulse to gather together and hold vigils would be overwhelming. People wouldn't be able to hold vigils at the scene of The Event because it happened everywhere and nowhere. Churches would thus be the most likely place for such vigiling to occur -- they're easy to find, open to the public, and they've already got candles and experience conducting this sort of thing. Schools might be another gathering place* -- somewhere people could leave notes at impromptu shrines piled high with flowers, candles and stuffed animals. But those empty schools might also be a bit too much, too overwhelming. All those stuffed animals mouldering in the rain -- the last of the pre-Event plush manufactured before the stuffed-animal companies closed their doors on a world without children.

So even though most Americans don't go to church on most Sundays, most would likely do so on the Sundays following The Event. Out of civil custom, if not religious conviction, they would have swarmed their local churches and thus, rather quickly, people would have begun to notice a pattern -- an undeniable, unmistakable clustering of missing adults at many of these churches. Each of those churches would have their own versions of Bruce or Loretta, people who could tell them what had happened.

Every local paper would've soon been reporting this story, some reporting it as theory, but more than a few likely reporting it as fact, supported by the evidence that only certain adults of a particular kind seemed to be among the vanished. That evidence would make this explanation far more convincing than Nicolae's official story about electromagnetic something or other.

The Rapture theory would thus have been old news long before Buck even started on his Global Weekly story. While Bruce was conducting secret meetings with his inner-core core-groups, Loretta would be appearing on Larry King Live, playing the in-case-of-rapture video for the entire country.**

None of that happens here in Left Behind, of course. All those other towns are filled with Other People and the authors don't really care or wonder about Other People all that much. They imagine that New Hope Village Church is an exception -- perhaps the only church drawing such crowds. But even the Other People filling New Hope's sanctuary barely register in this story:

Bruce