Rating: 
Summary: Not the Jesus I know
Review: Jesus is portrayed as a vengeful, bloodthirsty killer determined to destroy all those opposed to him. How does this make him different from the anti-christ Carpathia? How does this reconcile with such passages I read in my Bible as:Matthew 11:28-29 "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart" Luke 6:27-28 "But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you. Bless thoses who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you." According to the fundamentalist theology which the authors profess to believe, these are Jesus's words inerrantly recorded in the Bible. Did Jesus say these things for us to believe and follow while He doesn't? Also concerning the central idea of millenialism theology, the creation of a thousand-year reign of Christ on Earth, how is that reconsiled with John 18:36 "My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest. But now my kingdom is from another place" Again, Christians profess to belive that these are Jesus's words. How does that reconcile with a belief in an earthly 1,000 year reign. And how is the 1,000 year figure taken literally concerning an earthly millenium, when, elsewhere in the Bible, Jesus also says that the sheep on 1,000 hills are his. Does this mean the sheep on ONLY 1,000 hills are his, or is the figure symbolic of Jesus's ownership of all things? If this is a symbolic figure, why isn't the other reference also symbolic? The whole of premillenial dispensational theology rests on selective proof-texting of the Bible. Too many Christian believe this erroneous theory and don't want to do the work involved in doing their own reading and study of proper Biblical theology. Thank God this series is over (maybe). Go read some historic Protestant theology and let's let this series die.
Rating: 
Summary: Is this really the end?!
Review: I was very disappointed with this book. I also was not pleased with Armageddon. This book took too long to get to the best part! I found myself aimlessly skimming through yards of scripture, desperate to get to the anticipated appearing of Christ.
I have a Bible, and while I realize that the authors wanted to get the "word" out to unbelievers, I felt that it was too much. I probably skipped about 1/3 of the book because it was all scripture. I read this book to get some fiction, I read my bible to get the truth.
Aside from that, I thought the appearing was well done, though not long enough. I wanted to read more about the reunion with the trib saints and those who were raptured (namely Ray's wife and son). It was a tremendous let down. I put in a great deal of time, energy (sleepless nights trying to finish the books) and emotion to read this series and to know the characters. Yet, I managed to get through the end with hardly a word from some of the main characters who died. (I won't reveal who I mean). It was very dissappointing and the only reason I give three stars is because there is nothing better than imagining the return of Christ.
Rating: 
Summary: A Wrap Up for the Fans
Review: With only hours to go before the return of Jesus to set up his earthly millennial reign, Buck and Ray are unaccounted for. While members of the Tribulation Force try to find out what happened to them, the forces of Carpathia are taking over Jerusalem and lining up to attack Petra again. Chaim is trying one last effort to save those who might still be undecided. But the thought foremost on everyone's mind is, today is the day we will get to see Jesus. So really, the question comes down to, will fans like it? As with just about every book in the series, reaction will be mixed, but I liked it. There were some amazing scenes and it once again renewed my faith in God's awesome power. Yes, there were some things that made me roll my eyes, especially characters desires to get to a particular place to see what would happen. I know why the authors did it (so we could see it), but it did seem to get out of hand a few times. They even managed to explain logically some of my biggest complaints with the ending of the last book. However, there are some flaws. The second half of the book seems to really slow down with pages of scripture quotes. While some of that is fine, it got to be excessive at times, and I found myself skimming past it. And, while the final chapter was wonderful for us long time fans, that chapter was what I was looking forward to most and could have been longer. In the end, I think fans will find it a satisfying end to the series. New comers will be lost if they jump in here. It really is best to start at the beginning. And people who don't like the series will certainly want to steer clear as there will be nothing here to change their minds.
Rating: 
Summary: HOMERUN FOR SERIES
Review: I LOVED THE BOOK!!!! MUST READ FOR ALL!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Not the Payoff I Hoped For
Review: I've never been a dyed in the wool fan of the Left Behind series. The characters were always a little underdeveloped, and some easily confused with others. The storylines, while tight and suspenseful on some pages, faltered and lumbered on to dead ends on others. The plot twists contradicted themselves at times and some of the books' wide margins suggested that a little more compacting might have gotten us to the end of the saga a little more quickly with less money. That said, I've read every one of the Left Behind books! As with most Christians, I'm very interested in biblical prophesy regarding the coming of Jesus and while these volumes have their problems, the subject matter is compelling enough to leave you always wanting to know what's going to happen next!
Unfortunately, "next" in The Glorious Appearing, is next to nothing. Yes, Jesus returns, finally, on page 203. Despite the major entrance on the clouds which leaves us with no doubt as to His identity, He keeps trying to convince the faithful of that very thing. Scripture verse after scripture verse of I am this I am that....It seems that this Jesus doesn't know that he's preaching to the choir. Don't get me wrong, I have much respect and deep reverence for scripture, but after being apart from us in the physical sense for 2000 years, I want to hope that our Lord has New Words to say.
The rest of the book is nothing more than a mishmash of the various other characters scrambling around like aimless ants. Even they admit that they don't really need to be where they find themselves. There's Mac in Jerusalem, George et. al in the desert, Abdullah in his helicopter. I'm assuming that this is all a creative function of using characters to give the reader the eyewitness view of every detail. But the method fails when we have to wonder why these folks aren't sitting back at Petra, where their only true function is to wait on the Lord.....
At the end of the day, I can say that I read the entire Left Behind series. I don't regret it, but the payoff isn't nearly what I hoped for.
Rating:
Summary: Great Wrap up Yet still Disappointing!
Review: First let me start by saying that I'm glad that the Left Behind books were written and I have thoroughly enjoyed them throughout the past few years. Jenkins had done a fabulous job creating these wonderful characters in which to tell the story through and throughout the series I've fallen in love with Buck and Chloe and everyone. But this is where the book falls short where it previously excelled. The death of Buck and the resulting resurrection at the end does not do the character justice. I fully expected to be in tears when Irene and Rayford meet again. Instead I was completely unimpressed and oddly unmoved. The character development took second place to long pages of scripture, which while interesting, didn't really do a lot for the story. The earlier books in the series, such as Nicolae, were much more interesting to me than the latter, which is odd, because the action takes place in the end! To me the most exciting and interesting parts were in the stables where the antichrist and Lucifer separate and when Jesus speaks to each member personally during prayer. This book is so close to being completely awesome that its extra disappointing to me that it falls short. I miss the characters and reading this book did not bring me much closer to reuniting with them.
Rating:
Summary: More than expected!
Review: I have read all of the "Left Behind" books, including the latest, "Glorious Appearing", which I finished last night. I must say that even though I am aware that it is a fictional account of the book of Revelation, in The Bible, it helped to see the relevance of thoses passages. I was a Catholic for forty years, but within the last few years, I found less and less comfort in the church. I decided to read the Old Testament and the New Testament, and participate in a bible study group. When I first started the Bible, I was confused, with the language, and determining analogies from actual happenings. After reading the Left Behind series, in conjunction with bible study, I became clearer on what the Lord wants of us all. I could actually see myself caught up in the fiction of the Left Behind series, but what I really liked were the direct quotes used throughout the books, to explain certain happenings of Revelation. I liked the series very much!
Rating:
Summary: A real letdown after 11 incredible books.
Review: I have been a fan of the Left Behind series for a very long time, and have enjoyed the postapocalyptic storyline. My review here is not a religious one because clearly the story followed the prophecies as interpreted by these authors to the letter. It is as a story itself, removed from belief, that this book fails where the others succeeded. The beginning of the story is actually pretty good, picking up on the big cliffhanger of whether Ray or Buck is the one who died at the end of book 11. It gets a little dragged out as we wait for the coming of Jesus, but that just shows that the authors are getting you in nearly as much anticipation as the characters. To me, the first bad moment was the seperation of Carpathia and Lucifer in the stables. Religiously, yes it is important to remind Christians that Jesus is here to fight the devil and not an evil man, but Carpathia has been established for all these books as a great villain and I was really excited to see him actually challenged. That excitement went away as we were reminded that Carpathia is not the real villain but is just a pawn of the devil. The story goes on pretty well until Jesus comes where things just completely jump the shark. Jesus speaks almost completely in scripture which gets tiring to read, and the way he annihilates the global army is again great for religion, horrible for a story. There is no uplifting story of a small band of believers overcoming the awesome odds facing them. The Jerusalem group gets decimated while strangely the Petra group is protected completely as they have been for a couple books now. Once Jesus comes, not a single one of his followers dies. Jesus is portrayed much more like the old testament God than the New Testament's Jesus. There is nothing humanoid about him at all. Spoiler alert:
Finally after the destruction of the millions of global army soldiers, the big confrontation between Jesus and Carpathia goes down, and frankly it is here that the story was at its worst. Carpathia withers to a near-skeleton as Lucifer leaves him, and he and Fortunato grovel and beg as they are dropped into hell for eternity. Lucifer himself, who we are now supposed to treat as the big villain, puts up hardly more of a fight. He is manhandled by one angel, which since he is an angel himself makes little sense... and then cannot even speak once Jesus takes away his power. There is no feeling that the good has triumphed over evil in a great battle, just that everybody good and bad has stumbled along in a stupid, long ago predicted pattern with no attempts to change it. Jesus as portrayed in this book is cocky and annoying, and kills a tremendous amount of people. Millions upon millions of them. This is one area where I find a religious complaint. This is not a good representation of the peaceful Jesus who says "put away your sword." And since when does God cruelly slaughter those who don't believe in him... ok maybe they will end up in hell, maybe not, but it has never been God's way to say believe in me or die. That seems like the same behavior the antichrist was engaging in. The ending of the book was quick and predictable, without showing what the heavenly kingdom will look like. One thing is for sure, it looks like it will get boring fast if all it consists of is a thousand years of praying and worshipping day and night, and having to pull the curtains to be able to sleep because the "light of Christ" never goes away. The sad truth of it is that as a reader one realizes that the characters' ordinary lives were ruined by the antichrist as he followed the plan God set in motion, and instead of getting those lives back, people get forced into some kind of a vast religious overnight camp from which there is no escape but hell.
Rating:
Summary: Will There Be Another?
Review: I thought this was a great ending to the Left Behind series. I loved that they used half the book to describe the return of Jesus! The book did leave me wondering whether or not Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins are planning a book that comes in near the end of the Millennium Reign. Nevertheless, it was a great book and well worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: Tragic Abuse of Scripture
Review: I am bewildered by the fact that this series is so popular -- selling over 40 million copies to date -- given the fact that it is so bad. I attempted to read Left Behind when it was first released and gave up after 40 pages or so because it was so poorly written. I figured it was a fad that would quickly pass. I made the decision to read Glorious Appearing from beginning to end and try to get past the poor prose to see what is so deeply appealing about this series. Having finished the book, I think I know why it appeals, and frankly it makes me very sad.
Jenkins and LeHaye offer a stark, harsh, simplistic interpretation of "the end of days" that sends the same message as every "Die Hard/Lethal Weapon" style movie -- good guys will not only win, but they will brutalize, annihilate, and utterly destroy their enemies. This is the way the world works for narrow-minded, petty, angry people who have no sense of control in their lives -- one day we will be able to hurt and kill people we don't like. This is the grand hope of the "good Christians" at Jesus' glorious appearing.
Jenkins and LeHaye have usurped the stunning allegory of Revelation and turned it into trashy pulp fiction. The plot is plodding and laborious -- drawing images from scripture and reducing them to a monochromatic collage of vengeance imagery. The characters are non-existent -- mere caricatures, with supposedly diverse racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds. The reality is that names could be swapped off between characters throughout the story and no one would notice. The characters have no personality, to speak of, though Jenkins and LeHaye do manage to offend with their grossly racist attempts at dialogue.
Jesus himself is not glorious savior but a scripture-spouting automaton who wantonly metes out "justice" (defined by an expression of brief remorse as he causes bodies to explode and disintegrate) and seems to have very few original thoughts except to explain why he must destroy everyone who doesn't subscribe to this self-righteous version of Christianity.
Those saved are conceited, arrogant, self-absorbed, narcissists who kill arbitrarily with no remorse, and who are essentially unmoved by the violent, sadistic death of millions (who, in their worldview, deserve everything happening to them). There is no real sense of community -- the Pauline images of the body of Christ, and the gospel message from Jesus known as the Sermon on the Mount are painfully absent from this story -- each believer at the return of Christ encounter him as individuals, where he calls them by name, causing them to care about no one but themselves and Jesus.
All the "good guys" are noble, however -- nothing like the cartoonish buffoons who represent evil. The Antichrist is Colonel Clink and the Beast is Sergeant Schultz, while the merry band of Christians are more or less Hogan's Heroes. This book reads like an eighth grader's theme. Christians receive super powers, which is kind of cool, but appears to be a gloss on the Biblical story. But then, hey, why bother with scriptural integrity when you have a fun story to tell, right?
Commentaries in hand and a good translation of Revelation and the Old Testament prophets (make no mistake -- this is not Christian gospel, but good old fashioned Old Testament wrath of God, judgment of the nations, turn or burn theology) I checked a large number of the "scriptural references" uttered from the mouth of Jesus. LeHaye and Jenkins obviously feel that the Bible needed some good editing and improvement, because they take broad liberties pulling passages out of their historical and theological context, then "tweaking" them to make them fit their story better. Conveniently, there are no references to the scripture Jesus quotes, so you really have to work to check its veracity.
I obviously did not like this book -- even found it offensive -- but would close taking the argument to the LeHaye/Jenkins playing field, simply offering a proof-text scripture from Revelation 22:18-19, "I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to that person the plagues described in this book; if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away that person's share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book."
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