Left Behind

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Great and terrible

Books

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On our shelf:
This darkness is of the Lord. Can you not feel it?
—Chaim Rosenzweig, Glorious Appearing

The Left Behind books are a series of apocalyptic novels written by evangelical Christian activist Timothy LaHaye and writer Jerry Jenkins. The series attempts to portray the End Times from a premillennialist dispensationalist perspective and is often lumped in with science fiction novels, though this is an inaccurate categorisation.[1] It has become a wildly successful franchise since the launch of the first book in 1995 and has spawned a series of children's novels, prequels, sequels, movies and two rather odd computer games. However, they are among the worst novels ever written - the series has mostly served to line the authors' pockets with cash, and line the readers' minds with Rapture-based fluff.

The primary premise of the novels is that if all 1.5 billion Christians literally corporeally vanished completely in a single instant from the face of the Earth that people would still not believe in Christianity. It has been suggested that such an event would push even Dawkins to at least a 4 on the atheism scale.[2] It's a widely known fact among Christian circles that atheists "just hate God" rather than "require empirical evidence of a deity" which is why even a rapture wouldn't convince them.[3]

It should also be noted that one of the main antagonists, Nicolae Carpathia, is a very thinly veiled spoof/ripoff of infamous Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, as both are Romanian, communist politicians of short stature with large egos (although Ceausescu's positions on abortion aren't far from that of most Left Behind fans).

Contents

[edit] Books

Until Left Behind was published, the longest, most overblown, and worst "this is fiction but it REALLY ISN'T -- this is really our world on the brink!" series ever written was L. Ron Hubbard's Mission Earth series. However, Christian End Times ranters were appalled at the thought that they could be outdone by Scientology, and so Timothy LaHaye teamed up with an actual author, Jerry Jenkins, to churn out an even BIGGER, LONGER, MORE BORING and FAR MORE UNBELIEVABLE series that seemed to drag on forever without ending. This, of course, made the series a super best-seller. It sold millions of copies worldwide.

Over at Conservapedia, the entry for the Left Behind series states, "As is common with Christian works that become successful, it [Left Behind] was given poor reviews by many critics for its Christian-specific themes instead of being more generic and all inclusive, a standard that is seldom applied to non-Christian works." [1] In other words, the work was panned because Christians Are Always Being Persecuted.

[edit] The Original Series

  • Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth's Last Days (1995)
  • Tribulation Force: The Continuing Drama of Those Left Behind (1996)
  • Nicolae: The Rise of Antichrist (1997)
  • Soul Harvest: The World Takes Sides (1999)
  • Apollyon: The Destroyer Is Unleashed (1999)
  • Assassins: Assignment: Jerusalem, Target: Antichrist (1999)
  • The Indwelling: The Beast Takes Possession (2000)
  • The Mark: The Beast Rules the World (2000)
  • Desecration: Antichrist Takes the Throne (2001)
  • The Remnant: On the Brink of Armageddon (2002)
  • Armageddon: The Cosmic Battle of the Ages (2003)
  • Glorious Appearing: The End of Days (2004)

[edit] Prequels

  • The Rising: Antichrist is Born: Before They Were Left Behind (2005)
  • The Regime: Evil Advances: Before They Were Left Behind #2 (2005)
  • The Rapture: In the Twinkling of an Eye: Countdown to Earth's Last Days #3 (2006)

[edit] The Epilogue

  • Kingdom Come: The Final Victory (2007)

[edit] The Spin-Off Series

  • Left Behind: Apocalypse (written by Mel Odom) -- 4 books
  • Left Behind: End of State (written by Nessa Hart) -- 3 books
  • Left Behind: The Kids (written by Tim LaHaye, Jerry Jenkins and Chris Fabry) -- 40 (forty!) books

[edit] The End -- The New End Times Series

  • Edge of Apocalypse (2010)
  • Thunder of Heaven (2011)
  • Brink of Chaos (2012)

...talk about milking the cash cow dry!

[edit] Films

The Left Behind series includes three films. Kirk Cameron is the lead actor in the series - which says everything you need to know, really. The entire idea behind the films was parodied in The Simpsons when Homer watched an apocalyptic movie called Left Below - you know, people will have watched that episode thinking "what a shit movie, I'm glad they don't make stuff like that in real life". Grace Hill Media was the PR firm behind the movies.

[edit] Left Behind - The Movie

Left Behind - The Movie was released in September 2000. It was almost universally panned, with only 14% Fresh reviews at RottenTomatoes, and 15% Fresh from the Cream of the Crop.[4] During the airplane scene—the entire flight crew is raptured: what are the odds of that? This is likely based around an urban legend that airlines won't allow Christian or evangelical pilots in case such as situation happens for real. Also, look for a corpulent, bespectacled, balding white guy - that's John Hagee in a cameo.

[edit] Left Behind II: Tribulation Force

The second film was released direct to DVD in 2002. It was generally ignored; only 2 ratings of 6 on RottenTomatoes were Fresh.[5] The second movie focuses on what happens after the Rapture, and the rise of a so-called antichrist, who just so happens to be head of the most hated organization in the right-wing fundie world: the United Nations.

It also features a conversion via Pascal's Wager.

[edit] Left Behind: World at War

The third film was released on DVD on October 25, 2005 after being given premieres in Churches - an interesting way of avoiding the "direct-to-video" smear, at least. The movie is based on the last two chapters (50 pages or so) of the novel Tribulation Force and gets even weirder than the previous films. It was given even less attention than the second; only two reviews are listed on RottenTomatoes.[6]

[edit] Remake

Oh, come on, you knew this was coming. This is Hollywood we're talking about here. Their real politics are all about the almighty dollar. If they see a source of money, even if that source is a bunch of fundamentalist kooks, they're gonna go for it. So of course, they rebooted Left Behind.[7] The star? None other than Nicolas Cage. Why? It's Nicolas effing Cage, is there any role that one would be genuinely surprised at him taking at this point?[8][9]

The remake was released on October 3, 2014, and the reception seems to be: mother of God does this suck.[10] It currently "enjoys" a 2% Tomatometer, with the Rotten Tomatoes critics' consensus reading "Yea verily, like unto a plague of locusts, Left Behind hath begat a further scourge of devastation upon Nicolas Cage's once-proud filmography."[11] They somehow made a movie even worse than the original. Here's how bad it is: they make a movie about the end of the world, starring Nicholas Cage, and they cast him in the role of the sane one.

[edit] Left Behind: Eternal Forces

On November 7, 2006, Left Behind: Eternal Forces, a real-time military-simulation strategy game for PC, was released by Left Behind Games. The game received generally negative reviews, with an average rating of 45% on gamerankings.com.[12] The general concept of the game was relatively warmly received, but the majority of the criticisms came from the execution of that concept, including numerous bugs, badly coded AI, poor graphics and the tendency of the game to want to push religious pseudoscience down your throat and sell you religiously themed products.[13][14][15][16][17] One can play through the entire game without converting a single person and win by slaughtering men, woman and children civilians as well as peaceful, heavily-armed U.N. workers and peacekeepers who are simply trying to spread aid.[18]There is a down side to the player killing innocents: It makes the Christians less powerful (or as the game puts it, it lowers their spirit meter). Never fear, players can encourage their team members by casting spirit blasts -- which are oddly like the healing spells case in "pagan" World of Warcraft -- or by subjecting the player's team to Christian rock (although, the Antichrist may attack with his heavy-metal musicians).[19] Three sequels were recently released, with effectively no hype or fanfare whatsoever, and seem to be simply more of the same with the latest including full-motion video clips. The Hutaree Christian terrorist group was found to have multiple copies of the original game in their possession.[20][21][22]

In a funny twist, the multiplayer let you play as the "Global Community" AKA The Armies of the Anti-Christ. In another funny twist, they were far and away overpowered compared to the Tribulation Force. (The unraptured Christians... what?)

[edit] Blogging Left Behind

Slacktivist (Fred Clark), a liberal evangelical blogger, became something of a minor hero by going through the whole book, page by page, and writing an exhaustive commentary on the theology, underlying ethics, and awful writing. He is presently up to the third book, Nicolae: The Rise of Antichrist, and his archive is not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach.[23]

[edit] Left Behind Wiki

The 'Left Behind Wiki is the wikia-based wiki dedicated to the book and movie series, touting itself as the "Only free to edit encyclopedia on the series". It has articles on locations, plots and characters— of which there are millions.

From their main page - on May 10 2009:

The new year of 2009 is coming very soon, and us [sic] at the Left Behind Wiki are very excited. And not just because it's a new year! Some exciting changes are going to be happening here in the month of January and the rest of next year. For a sneak preview of what's gonna happen, click here!!
UPDATE: Two of the things on the changes list has [sic] been completed! Tell us what you think of the new logo and this new main page on Jonathan W.'s talk page.

But the contributors don't rest on their laurels - they have chosen the Featured User of October 2009... still proudly displayed on the site as of January 19th, 2014. Oops.

We rest our case.

[edit] What is going on at Left Behind Wiki?

Not a lot. However, the wiki is still active, getting a handful of edits each month.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] Footnotes

  1. This ain’t science fiction, Fred Clark.
  2. http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Ne5jeKqrEkQ/T5f5-cSaD5I/AAAAAAAAFQU/lWUWXuRqDOI/s1600/chart2.png
  3. http://creation.com/atheist-god-hate
  4. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/left_behind/
  5. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/left_behind_ii_tribulation_force/
  6. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/left_behind_world_at_war/
  7. IMDb: Left Behind (2014)
  8. Williams, Mary Elizabeth. "Holy Rapture! Nicolas Cage gets 'Left Behind'." Salon, 22 Oct. 2012.
  9. Besides, he's already done one movie that's pretty much Left Behind, but with aliens instead of angels.
  10. Watkins, Gwynne. "Disaster Movie? We Round Up the Most Scathing 'Left Behind' Reviews." Yahoo! Movies, 3 October 2014.
  11. Rotten Tomatoes: Left Behind (2014)
  12. http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpages2/928956.asp?q=Left%20Behind
  13. http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/745/745956p1.html
  14. http://uk.pc.gamespy.com/pc/left-behind-eternal-forces/749748p1.html
  15. http://uk.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/leftbehindeternalforces/review.html
  16. http://arstechnica.com/reviews/games/leftbehind.ars
  17. http://compactiongames.about.com/od/reviews/fr/leftbehind_rev.htm
  18. That, or it simply encourages believers to sing in front of soldiers who are shooting at the believers, in an attempt to kill themselves in order to convert the soldiers (I actually played the game that far!).
  19. Wired.com video game review
  20. Tim LaHaye's Apocalyptic Dreams Hits Pay-dirt With the Alleged Cop-Killing Plan of Michigan Militia
  21. The Hutaree Militia and the 'Left Behind' Video Games
  22. Is the Hutaree Militia the Final Word in Lunacy–or Just the Beginning?
  23. There are now hundreds of these posts, organised into index pages of 50 each. These can be found at the following links: I, II, III, IV, V, VI (updated Feb '13.)
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