The "Left Behind" books: How the Christian Right Uses Jews and Israel.

Salon.com (via Alternet) ^ | August 2, 2002 | Michelle Goldberg

[Commie Basher]

The most popular novel in America right now is one in which the world is tyrannized by the former secretary general of the U.N., who operates from Iraq, and his global force of storm troopers, called "peacekeepers." Revered rabbis evangelize for Christ, repenting Israel's "specific national sin" of "[r]ejecting the messiahship of Jesus." Much of the world is deceived by a false prophet, part of the inner circle of the Antichrist, who seems a lot like the pope -- he's a Catholic cardinal, "all robed and hatted and vested in velvet and piping."

"The Remnant," which debuted at No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list, is the 10th entry in Jerry B. Jenkins and Tim LaHaye's phenomenally popular "Left Behind" series, a Tom Clancy-meets-Revelation saga of the Rapture, the Tribulation and, presumably, the eventual return of Jesus. Last year's "Desecration," the ninth volume of a projected 14, was 2001's bestselling hardcover novel. There is probably very little overlap between Salon's readership and the audience for apocalyptic Christian fiction, but these books and their massive success deserve attention if only for what they tell us about the core beliefs of a great many people in this country, people whose views shape the way America behaves in the world.

After all, Tim LaHaye isn't merely a fringe figure like Hal Lindsey, the former king of the genre, whose 1970 Christian end-times book "The Late Great Planet Earth" was the bestseller of that decade. The former co-chairman of Jack Kemp's presidential campaign, LaHaye was a member of the original board of directors of the Moral Majority and an organizer of the Council for National Policy, which ABCNews.com has called "the most powerful conservative organization in America you've never heard of" and whose membership has included John Ashcroft, Tommy Thompson and Oliver North. George W. Bush is still refusing to release a tape of a speech he gave to the group in 1999.

The point isn't that all these leaders are part of some kind of right-wing Illuminati. It's simply that the seemingly wacky ideology promulgated in the Left Behind books is one that important people in America are quite comfortable with. The Left Behind series provides a narrative and a theological rationale for a whole host of perplexing conservative policies, from the White House's craven decision to cut off aid to the United Nations Family Planning Fund to America's surreally casual mobilization for an invasion of Baghdad -- a city that is, in the Left Behind books, Satan's headquarters.

Political attitudes and actions that make no practical or moral sense to secularists become comprehensible when viewed through Christian pop culture's eschatological looking glass. At a time when America is flagrantly flouting international law, spurning the U.N. and tacitly supporting the land grabs of Israeli maximalists, surely it's significant that the most popular fiction in the country creates a gripping narrative that pits American Christians against a conspiracy of Satan-worshipping, abortion-promoting, gun-controlling globalists -- all of it revolving around the sovereignty of Israel.

Israel is the key to the theology that dominates Left Behind (as well as much of American evangelical Christianity). In the religion, as in the series, the rapture is kicked off by a military attack on the country, which survives almost unscathed (though the first Left Behind, written before the current intifada, had Russian aggressors rather than Arabs). Indeed, the chain of events that lead to the return of Christ depends on the existence of a Holy Land that is under catastrophic assault. No wonder the born-again lobby is obsessed with Israeli self-defense, but opposed to any peace plan.

Those Israeli settlements in the West Bank that add so much kindling to the conflagration in the Middle East are often "adopted" and funded by American evangelical churches whose members are devouring a novel that depicts Jews reclaiming Palestinian land, moving Al-Aqsa Mosque out of Jerusalem and rebuilding the second temple on the Dome of the Rock. The chosen people are suddenly the darlings of the religious right, while a bestseller promotes the idea that Jews will soon convert to Christianity -- and atone for their centuries of stubbornness -- en masse.

Of course, it's not that every reader of the more than 50 million Left Behind books sold so far is an end-times fundamentalist any more than every Eminem fan is a homophobe. Nor are the books guaranteed to change their audiences' views on American foreign policy -- the relationship between culture and politics is never that simple. But the stories people tell themselves about the world necessarily shape the way they act in it, and right now, this is the story that's captivating America.

On one level, the attraction of the Left Behind books isn't that much different from that of, say, Tom Clancy or Stephen King. The plotting is brisk and the characterizations Manichean. People disappear and things blow up. Revelation is, after all, supremely creepy, which is why it gets so much play in horror flicks from "Rosemary's Baby" to "End of Days."

The opening sequence of the first Left Behind book is gripping and cinematic. Rayford Steele, an unhappily married commercial pilot, is flying to London and contemplating an affair with a stewardess, when, handing the controls over to his co-pilot and walking into the cabin, he finds her hysterical. People throughout the plane have disappeared, their clothes left in neat piles on their seats.

"This was no joke, no trick, no dream," Jenkins and LaHaye write. "Something was terribly wrong, and there was no place to run."

Returning to America, Steele finds a world in chaos. All real Christians -- as opposed to mere churchgoers -- as well as children and fetuses out of wombs have vanished. Planes flown by believers have crashed, along with cars driven by the faithful. The media struggles to make sense of it, but Rayford, whose marital troubles were caused by his wife's newfound religious passion, knows what happened. His wife had told him that Christians would be raptured up to heaven in preparation for the rise of the Antichrist, his nefarious seven-year reign and the Second Coming of Jesus.

The Left Behind books chronicle those seven years -- known to Christians as the Tribulation -- as a ragtag group of new believers form the "Tribulation Force" to thwart the murderous plans of Nicolae Carpathia, the U.N.-leader-cum-prince-of-darkness (often just called "the evil one," Osama bin Laden-style). Carpathia's rise is engineered by a cabal of bankers. He's supported by Israeli liberals enthralled by his devious promises of peace, and a Democratic American president sells out the country to Carpathia's one-world government. Meanwhile, the Tribulation Force finds a spiritual leader in Tsion Ben-Judah, a rabbi and former Israeli statesman who realizes the error of his Jewish ways and becomes a guerrilla media evangelist.

It's bizarre that more attention hasn't been paid to the series' open hostility to the Jewish religion, if not the Jewish people. Imagine if, say, James Carville wrote a novel in which a band of heroic gay socialists defeated a voracious army of slack-jawed Bible-quoting Republicans to turn the world into a gigantic French-speaking free-love commune. He'd be crucified on the talk shows, and all kinds of sinister motives would be impugned to the Democratic Party.

That a Republican player can create a blockbuster media empire out of analogous extremism suggests two seemingly contradictory things. First, Christian paranoia has become so mainstream that few see fit to remark on it anymore. Second, while the novels' popularity has received lots of media attention, their actual content is utterly off the radar of the kind of people who write about books. Nobody, it seems -- except, of course, for the series' millions of fans -- is reading Left Behind.

The Left Behind books actually play on that sense of being unfairly ignored, reveling in the moment when smug agnostics, insufficiently zealous Christians and, most of all, Jews realize how terribly wrong they were. As Gersholm Gorenberg wrote of the books in his "The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount," "Christianity's ancient, anxious amazement that the people who know the Old Testament best don't accept that it leads to Jesus (don't, in fact, accept that it is Old Testament) is at last disarmed."

Cannily, the authors make their protagonists disbelievers who are disdainful of fundamentalism. That means that doubters can relate to them and are thus drawn into their dawning religious consciousness, while believers get the satisfaction of seeing the heroes come around to their point of view. By having even minor characters recount their conversions, Jenkins and LaHaye make sure that each volume has moments when readers can enjoy a bit of high-minded revenge against mocking urbanites.

The writers take a special pleasure in the self-abnegation of supposedly sophisticated media types. In "The Remnant," a British reporter makes an appearance solely to explain her salvation. "All I can say is that the enemy has a stronghold over the mind until one surrenders to God," she says. "I was a pragmatist, proud, a journalist. I wanted control over my own destiny. Things had to be proved to me." Now born-again, she tells Steele that she's mystified by her former "lunacy."

Seeing the self-defeating delusions of erstwhile elites exposed may be the greatest pleasure the Left Behind books offer their readers.

The plotting alone certainly isn't enough to sustain attention in "The Remnant." That wasn't true of the first book -- theology aside, the setup of the original Left Behind makes for a strangely compelling thriller. The stage is the whole world gone mad, and the story roils with international intrigue. Jenkins and LaHaye are very good at turning esoteric biblical augury into real-world scenarios, and they get the action going before they start inserting too many sermons into the mix.

So simple fascination with a good story might have accounted for the book's initial success -- after all, audiences don't necessarily endorse the politics behind every action adventure they devour.

But by the time "The Remnant" starts, the suspense has pretty much died, because the story has the ultimate deus ex machina. Whenever things look grim for our heroes, when the enemy is closing in and there's nowhere to run, they're saved at the last minute by ... God. At the beginning of "The Remnant," Ben-Judah is encamped, Moses-like, with a million followers in the Jordanian desert. Carpathia's forces unleash a devastating bombing raid, but thanks to God, the resulting "massive sea of raging flames" leaves the so-called Judah-ites untouched. God can also be relied upon to speed up computer searches and drop plenty of nourishing manna on his blockaded flock. In the wittiest scene in "The Remnant," God is literally a co-pilot, sending an angel to help fly a plane during a tense getaway.

There's not much drama in the repeated victories of an omnipotent being, but that's not the only thing that makes "The Remnant" sluggish. In order to stretch out the series for so long, Jenkins and LaHaye have larded it with tedious subplots and countless techno-geek scenes in which a crafty Christian hacker named Chang sabotages Carpathia's plans or creates false identities for his comrades. About a third of "The Remnant" concerns the rescue of a Tribulation Force pilot named George Sebastian from Greece. The action mostly involves the characters driving around, splitting up, reconnoitering and then trying to find each other.

The Remnant has very little in the way of climactic good vs. evil showdowns. While there is a bit of supernatural deviltry (masses of vipers attack believers lured from Ben-Judah's protection by agents of the False Prophet) and some martyrdom (though not of any main characters), most of the story follows members of the Tribulation Force jetting around the globe running various errands. The nuclear annihilation of Chicago rates just a few lines, while the cellphone codes the Force uses to communicate gets several pages.

Left Behind cloaks itself in the conventions of ordinary airport thrillers, but it does far more than just provide a Christian alternative to decadent mainstream entertainment. It creates a Christian theory of everything, one that slates current events into a master narrative in which the world is destroyed and then remade to evangelical specifications. It's an alternate universe in which conservative Middle Americans are vindicated against everyone who doesn't share their beliefs -- especially liberals and Jews.

There's nothing wrong with that. Everyone is entitled to their fantasies. But LaHaye and Jenkins are at pains to show that the Left Behind books are meant as more than fiction. They write on the Left Behind Web site, "While it is true that in the broad spectrum of Protestant Christianity there are multiple views of the end-times scenario, the pre-millennialist theology found in the Left Behind Series is the prominent view among evangelical Christians, including their leading seminaries such as Talbot Seminary, Trinity Seminary and Dallas Theological Seminary."

So the rest of us can ignore Left Behind, or chuckle at its over-the-top Christian kitsch. We should keep in mind, though, that for some of the most powerful people in the world, this stuff isn't melodrama. It's prophecy.

[LostTribe]

>If your theory is correct, the population numbers should be roughly more equivalent.

No, there is no reason to expect they should be more equivalent. They did not start out equal in size (10 tribes vs ~3 tribes) and their histories have been almost totally different, not parallel. By the time of or their separate diaspora, they were a full order of magnitude (that's x10) apart. (North = ~5 Million, South = ~500K.)

Furthur, the Northern Kingdom has experienced steady ~exponential growth over the past 2,700 years, interrupted mainly by natural disasters such as the black death, which also affected others. The Southern Kingdom however has experienced numerous periodic political and social upheavals which repeatedly decimated it's ranks.

[Dales]

It's simply that the seemingly wacky ideology promulgated in the Left Behind books is one that important people in America are quite comfortable with.

It's a novel. A piece of fiction. I was raised a Catholic, and I am quite comfortable reading this novel. I am also quite comfortable reading lots of other novels, from "Silence of the Lambs" to "Atlas Shrugged" to "War and Peace".

Talk about trying to make a mountain out of a non-existant molehill.

[Alouette]

"Anglo-Saxons are the true Israelites" is debunked here and here and here and here and here.

[berned]

SHEESH.

Then defend specificly what you disagree with. The prophesy is written in the Bible. Do you disagree with Revelation? Do you disagree with the words of Jesus Christ?

Don't just attack something, tell us specifically WHAT IT IS you disagree with. What specifically is in the books that you don't agree with?

[berned]

Second line of post # 64 SHOULD read...

Then EXPLAIN specificly what you disagree with .

Not "defend" -- typo.

[Libertina]

wacky ideology
..."probably very little overlap between Salon's readership and the audience for apocalyptic Christian fiction"...
Hmmm, that reminds me, I want to finish Left Behind book #7 today... :)

[LostTribe]

>"Anglo-Saxons are the true Israelites" is debunked...

Uh, oh.  Here comes big bad Alouette again, trying to pick a fight he has lost several times before.  Too bad he can't (or won't) read the intro to my Freeper Profile, which clearly states:

This site is about HISTORY, both Archeological and Biblical. It is NOT about Christian or Jewish Identity, British  Israelism, White Power or anti-Semitism, so if that's  what you're looking for, SCRAM! I speak for no one else and no one speaks for me, so WYSIWYG. If you are a serious student of HISTORY, and have an open mind, read
 on...

When trying to discuss an intellectual subject on an intellectual level it is important to discuss the merits and demerits of the actual issue, and not try to argue apples and oranges.  Neither is it helpful to just stand on the sidelines like a pimply adolescent and throw rocks at the unknown.

C'mon in Alouette, the waters fine. But the dialogue begins with a point by point rebuttal of the 3-MINUTE HISTORY at my FR Profile below. Bring some brains with you this time, not just a big open mouth.

[ValerieUSA]

I do not disagree with the words of Jesus. You are engaged in an ad hominem attack against me with such a suggestion that my distaste for the FICTIONAL Left Behind series is a reflection on the state of my personal relationship with Christ or belief in the Bible.
That series commercially exploits the common misunderstandings of the fantastical imagery in St John's Revelation.
Revelation IS prophecy, written in symbolic, prophetic language of scholars, not meant for the simplistic literal translation found in Left Behind.

[Timesink]

Wouldn't you be hostile to a religion that believes you are going to hell? According to Christians... Jews and Moslems (and other non believers) will spend an eternity together because they haven't accepted Jesus.

Dude, a lot of Christians think all the other Christians outside of their own denomination are going to hell.

[Alouette]

I exposed your views as fictitious nonsense so you call me names instead of providing facts to back your bizarro theory. That speaks volumes about your intellect and objectivity.

[berned]

Revelation IS prophecy, written in symbolic, prophetic language of scholars, not meant for the simplistic literal translation found in Left Behind.

The "Left Behind" series DOES embrace the views of MANY Biblical Scholars.

Since you consider YOURSELF a Biblical Scholar, learned enough to pronounce scathing judgement on the writers of the "Left Behind" series, please tell us what is YOUR interpretation of Revelation.

I understand you can't "explain" the whole book, just hit some SPECIFIC highlights of YOUR interpratation of End-Times events as revealed in Scripture according to YOUR understanding of them.

Thanks.

[skraeling]

"Anglo-Saxons are the true Israelites" is debunked

Why do you keep MISrepresenting what Mr. LostTribe is saying? He doesn't say that at all, anywhere that I can find. I have watched you pull this stunt before. Have you no basic sense of honesty?

[ValerieUSA]

Name a Bible scholar (who is not profitting from the sales of these books) who agrees with this presentation of Revelation and would dare to say Left Behind is prophetic. I know of NONE.

[LostTribe]

>I exposed your views as fictitious nonsense

Okay, the 3-MINUTE HISTORY is only 8 paragraphs long.  Here are the first 4.  Please tell us exactly where you find  "fictitiuous nonense" and then we'll go on to the rest.

Four Thousand years ago, Abraham (a great-great grandson of Shem, a son of Noah ) and a small group of Hebrews(of which there were & are many varieties) migrated from southern Iraq to Canaan (~Palestine).Several generations later, around 1853 BC, his Grandson Jacob (who was renamed Israel) and his 12 Sons and families moved to Egypt. As offspring of Shem, they were called "Shemites" or "Semites", as were his many other offspring.

~1453 BC, now as the 12 Tribes of the 12 Sons of Israel, and over 3 Million strong, these Semites bailed out of Egypt in the well-documented EXODUS and fled back to ~Palestine.  But the Tribes “couldn't all get along” there, so ~922 BC these 5 Million Israelites split into the Northern and SouthernKingdoms.

(In actual numbers, 5 Million people is about the same size as Ireland, Norway, Denmark or Israel today, and was 10% of the estimated 50 Million world population at that time. The world population is now ONE HUNDRED TIMES as large. Compared to todays 6 Billion people, the Israelites relative population would have been over twice as large as the United States of America!)

The very large Northern Kingdom of Israel was made up of 10 of the Tribes. Inheriting the Kingly names which applied to all 12 Tribes before the split, the Northern Kingdom (alone) becomes known as the Kingdom of Israel or House of Israel, (also House of Joseph, House of Ephriam, House of Isaac, and House of Omri), and is led by the northern Tribe of Ephraim.

[Timesink]

bump for the inevitable. What they have is not a stabilization of revenues, but rather an indication that they have plateaued. They're incapable of getting any more subscribers or advertisers, and their numbers are inevitably going to go down. And no matter how creative their press release writers are, math is still math, and revenues of $972,000 per quarter will never be enough to offset losses of $1.7 million per quarter. They've long since cut their staff to the bone; there's nothing left they could do to reduce expenses short of moving to West Virginia or something where the cost of living is maybe 1/4 of San Francisco's. But they'll never do anything like that because they're obnoxious elitist liberals who whould never move from their precious, snooty Bay Area to a scummy town of "Little People."

Which means they're doomed. And that suits me fine.

[berned]

I have asked you about four times now to get specific about WHAT you disagree with and are attacking in the "Left Behind" series. I will not answer until you get out behind the curtain of faceless attacks you are hiding behind and address the posts I made to you, SPECIFICALLY.

See posts #47, #52, #64, and #71.

[ATOMIC_PUNK]

Wouldn't you be hostile to a religion that believes you are going to hell?

It would be much more hostile to beleive we could exist without the knowledge of a greater being .....hell exists ! .....as does heaven! to beleive that they do not is more hostile in that life itself is anarchy without god

Rev 12:1 And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars:
Rev 12:2 And she being with child, cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered.
Rev 12:3 And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold, a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads.
Rev 12:4 And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to be delivered, to devour her child as soon as it was born.
Rev 12:5 And she brought forth a male child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up to God, and [to] his throne.
Rev 12:6 And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared by God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred [and] sixty days.
Rev 12:7 And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,
Rev 12:8 And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven.
Rev 12:9 And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out upon the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.
Rev 12:10 And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, who accused them before our God day and night.
Rev 12:11 And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives to the death.
Rev 12:12 Therefore rejoice, [ye] heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth, and of the sea! for the devil is come down to you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.
Rev 12:13 And when the dragon saw that he was cast to the earth, he persecuted the woman who brought forth the male-[child].
Rev 12:14 And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of the serpent.
Rev 12:15 And the serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away by the flood.
Rev 12:16 And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed up the flood which the dragon cast out of his mouth.
Rev 12:17 And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, who keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.

[yendu bwam]

The entire Judeao-Christian-Islamic tradition has elements of exclusivity and intolerance.

Pray tell, what did Jesus say that is intolerant of others? He taught not to judge others, and he reached out to all (including sinners) around him. He was tolerant of people (though not of sin), and was hardly exclusive! You seem confused between what Jesus taught, and what some did in his name.

[William Terrell]

"Anglo-Saxons are the true Israelites" is debunked here and here and here and here and here.

All these sites have to do with British Israelism or the Identity movement. They use the historical and Biblical data to reach the conclusion that the Jews are not part of Israel and have no claim to the Covenant of Abraham.

The current archeological information shows that Europe plus offshoots are descendents of the ten lost tribes of Israel. That leaves the unlost tribes: Judah, most of Benjamin and some Levites, which descendents are here and known, and most certainly are the heirs to that covenant, since they are part of Israel.

Now, this has been pointed out to you several times. The imlications have been explained to you many times, i.e. that the Jews are covered under the Abrahamic covenant; they are just not the only ones. Yet you still insist that the information losttribe, I and others put out has something to do with these nutso theories.

Why is that? Do you have an agenda? Are trying to fool the uninformed? Have a reading comprehension?

[yendu bwam]

But my main point is that I don't see believing your religion is the only right one as intolerant.

You're right, Rat Patrol! You can believe you're right about something, while respecting others' rights to believe what they want and to disagree with you. Actually, the people who use the word 'intolerant' the most are usually the most intolerant.