Glorious Appearing: The End of Days (Left Behind Series No. 12)

Glorious Appearing: The End of Days (Left Behind Series No. 12) Tim F. LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 2004. Rapture, Revelation, and the End Times: Exploring the Left Behind Series Bruce David Forbes and Jeanne Halgren Kilde. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Rapture Culture: Left Behind in Evangelical America Amy Johnson Frykholm. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. In 1995, the Left Behind series began a narrative march toward Armageddon with its founding title, Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth's Last Days. In this beginning, innocent children and those blessed by sufficient faith in Christ were raptured to heaven. For those left behind, the moment of rapture initiated seven years of "tribulation," in which the greater part of humanity would die from natural calamities or human crimes. Some of the left-behinders would repent and develop soul-redeeming beliefs, while others would capitulate to the Global Community (GC) and its antichrist leader, Potentate Nicolae Carpathia. In Tribulation Force: The Continuing Drama of Those Left Behind (1996), the almost salvationworthy remnant forms an underground opposition movement that struggles to evade the mark of the beast on their bodies. At the same time, they disseminate their faith through the Internet and underground churches while coordinating acts of sabotage and assassination. In the twelfth and nominally final title Glorious Appearing, Jesus himself arrives to slay hundreds of millions of armed GC warriors, cast Satan into the lake of fire, and send the unbelieving "goats" of humanity to their eternal doom. The edenic period following this global slaughter will last but a thousand years, since the Book of Revelation 20:3 intimates-as rendered in the Lahaye and Jenkins epilogue-"after these things [Satan] must be released for a little while" (399). Surely the series will continue with sequels and prequels, adding titles in the "Left Behind for Kids" product and additional feature films beyond Left Behind (2000) and Left Behind II: Tribulation Force (2002). Lahaye and Jenkins have become familiar celebrities, being featured on the cover of Newsweek and in other venues for the famous. The sales superlatives for their successful end-times line of goods is constantly outdated by the steady flow of new rapture products. Given such prominence, the Left Behind franchise presents an overflow of cultural meanings. For those who scan the landscape to find formulaic creations, the series is a small museum of blended genres. It contains numerous "proof-text" style sermons that map events against the Bible's prophecies. It is an action-adventure thriller that pays loving attention to the weapons and the techno-capers of the insurrection against the antichrist. It uses slapstick comedy and parody of the Freemasons to render Carpathia and his chief at the GC palace in New Babylon. In Assassins (#6), they are compared to Abbott and Costello (4); the GC "Potentate" label seems to mock the Shriners' Imperial Potentate, especially because the swish Fortunato wears a fez and frequently snags or stumbles upon his robe. Catastrophe film conventions are invoked in a double way. In the original Left Behind Rayford Steele "triggers" the rapture moment in history when he feels sexually tempted by Hattie on the airliner he captains. And once begun, the punishing disasters flung from heaven - ice, meteorites, and so on - selectively fall on the wicked, sparing the spiritually rebellious Tribulation Force. The "opposites attract" romantic formula is steadily employed with those who pair off for the tribulation. The horror film genre is invoked when the assassinated Nicolae Carpathia rises from the dead. Especially distinctive as mythic formula is Glorious Appeanngs rendition of Jesus and his lieutenant Michael as superheroes. Jesus appears on a flying horse to face the millions of warriors assembled by the GC for the destruction of Jerusalem. …