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Summary: religious fantasy for the feeble-minded
Review: A light & breezy fantasy of what 1 man thinks will happen. He presumes that mankind will end, end suddenly, & that you agree with that presumption. It is loosely based on the Revelation of John. Sort of in the manner that McDonald's is loosely based on the dining room of the Ritz Hotel in Paris. The author of Left Behind makes his own interpretations, presumably based on some English translation of the original works. His interpretations of John's metaphors will turn one way early in the story. He will change his interpretations later in the book to fit his storyline. This is not a book for a thinking person. It is for those who want others to do their thinking for them. Those others have their own agenda, usually involving vast sums of money. I read this because I promised a friend I would. But I won't read any more of this series.
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Summary: Pseudo-Christian pornography
Review: This kind of writing suffers from a condition once described as "taking literally what was meant metaphorically, while taking metaphorically what was meant literally". This series is an example of both defects at once. If taken at all seriously, it is an intellectual and spiritual insult to Christians and non-Christians alike, and it reduces religion itself to an idiotic who's in, who's out fraternity initation rite with a pornographic obsession with imagining another's damnation. Read it as you might read Mein Kampf: just to experience how a dangerously wacky mind works. But it is so thoroughly trashy, that even at that level it is hard to stomach.
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Summary: this book is heretical! watch out!
Review: the doctors of the church have generally avoided heavy comment on the apocalypse of john. there is a good reason for this: prophecy is difficult to understand, shrouded in mystery, and may be accessible only to the most wise; all the saints agree in this. we cannot afford the risk of misleading people. novelizations of the possible ways that prophecy may play itself out only serve to distract us from our callings.preparing for the end of the world is much easier than this book makes it seem. we needn't fear for our lives, we needn't form paramilitary cartels; we need only do what Christ commanded. let us love one another, let us do only good and no evil. if we could just do that most difficult thing and be like Christ, all the planning and political theory and governmental knowledge in the would would be unneccessary; indeed, these things are as dust anyhow. the greatest thinker of the twentieth century, c. s. lewis, once observed the frantic discussions which we christians have over the exact time and place of Christ's coming, and noted how odd it is that, having heard Him say that He will "come like a thief in the night," we attempt to prove Him wrong by knowing the exact moment and place! our mission is clear: love one another. why do we allow political intrigue to distract us?
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Summary: Total waste of time and money
Review: Poorly written, OMFG! That this book is so popular does not say much for the American education system when supposedly educated adults find this less than mediocre BS entertaining. They should have published this in comic book form, the dialogue is already written for it! If you have not read this book yet, don't waste your time or your money. I think most people were "guilted" into reading and confessing to enjoy it by their christian bothers and sisters. What better way to sell a book but by using guilt? Mel Gibson is having success with the Passion for the same reason. People are made to feel like they are letting god down if they don't see this movie or read this book. They are like sheep, blindly led to empty their wallets into the pockets of their leaders. AMEN!
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Summary: Left Me Behind
Review: The best selling Christian fiction series in history... is mediocre. The first book, Left Behind, left me completely behind, and underwhelmed. I've read the entire series so far and it doesn't get much better. If you don't know, the series takes place after the rapture of the church. Those left behind must choose between Christ and the anti-Christ. A group of survivors realizes that Jesus is the way and they dedicate themselves to taking a stand for Him, calling themselves the Tribulation Force. The problem I have with the series is simply that it is not well written. It feels as if it's written at a 6th grade level, has unconvincing dialogue, and a plot which I've seen done much better. And done in only one book (there's no excuse for stretching this series out over twelve books). The authors also talk down to the reader, assuming they are not smart enough to follow the storyline without constant reminders of major plot points. That gets old really fast. Quit patronizing me and give me a little bit of credit, thank you. The phenomenal sales figures are impressive, but due in no way to the quality of the writing. I recognize that there still may be ministerial value in these books, but that doesn't excuse the above points. Two stars, and a hope that the final books in the series pick up the slack.
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Summary: At best guilty pleasure fiction.
Review: Obviously whether or not you're a Christian will influence whether or not you enjoy this book (and series). Most of the reviews others have left for the most part are accurate in their assessment. My complaints centrally revolve around two points: 1) In an effort to make the prophetic events palatable as popular fiction, the story centers around a "cast" of characters. One has to suspend disbelief to swallow a story where events of such magnitude revolve only around a handful of people. You can almost see the Hollywood movie-like casting, obligatory racial stereotypes included. 2) For readers who happen to be Christian, the fact that the book is fiction (though based on prophesied events) seems to be somewhat insulting to faith. That is, if one believes the prophesies that form the basis of the story, reading about them in a book peddled to the masses alongside other fiction offerings like Star Trek may seem to denigrate their importance. IMHO, it's best for the Christian and non-Christian alike to see this book as a piece of fiction based on prophesy, and nothing more.
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Summary: Convicting
Review: Left Behind discusses the Christian belief that Jesus Christ will return to a chaotic earth, destroying what we now know of it, taking all believing Christians with him to heaven, and leaving all unbelievers despairing on earth. This is the first compelling book in the series by Tim Lahaye and Jerry B. Jenkins attempting to give perception of earth's last days.
Rayford Steele, a very prideful plane captain, always looking out for himself in life, comes to the realization that he needs to change when his wife and son are amongst the ones taken to heaven. His determination throughout the novel is inspiring once he realizes his wrongs. Taking his daughter under his wing, he vows to change his fate.
Likewise, another character, Buck Williams, a journalist for a well-known magazine, is amid those left behind on earth. Much like Rayford, Buck had never given religion much thought. He had always been too busy with what he comes to realize were trivial things.
If you enjoy fast paced fiction, I recommend this book. Convicting as it is, it will leave you yearning to look deeper into your own faith, and read further into the series.
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Summary: Awesome Book!
Review: I personally loved this book! It's very well written and it kept my interest. The story talks about the rapture and all the events that will take place. Anyone who calls it garbage is obviously not seeing the true meaning of the story.
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Summary: No stupid puns on the title in this review. I promise!
Review: Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, Left Behind (Tyndale, 1995) So I figured after nine years, it was time for me to get around to reading the first book in the bestselling Christian fiction series in history, Left Behind. I had always avoided it, not because of the subject matter, but by and large books that break records tend to be writ large by those with the wit, talent, and grammatical skill of overly enthusiastic six-year-olds. Dame Barbara Cartland, Danielle Steel, Tom Clancy, John Grisham, Sandra Brown, you get the idea. Why should Christian fiction be any different?, I wondered. But despite all that, I dove into it. Expecting the worst may not have been enough. To call the book naïve would be, perhaps, too kind. It uses the conventions of satire without being in any way satiric, treats its readership like total idiots, has all the spelling and grammar mistakes one could possibly want from a mass-produced piece of claptrap, and various other things, all of which I will attempt to make sound as tactful as possible below. But the bottom line, for those who would rather stop reading now, is this: plot's not bad, but execution is some of the worst I have seen outside self-publishing. Ever. Without getting into the theological aspects of the book, it is impossible to write a comprehensive review of Left Behind without at least glossing over some of the more interesting (and less Biblical) assertions made by the authors, the most notable being the Rapturing (for lack of a better term) of everyone under the age of puberty. Hmmmmm. Including the ones in juvenile detention for murder? Okay, we'll drop the point. After all, our society is based (wrongly) on the idea that people can't make up their minds until they reach the magic age of eighteen. At least LaHaye and Jenkins dropped the magic age to twelve, for which they must get grudging respect. But little niggling theological concerns are perhaps less galling than LaHaye and Jenkins' complete and utter inability to ascribe a mote of intelligence to any of their characters, and by inference any of their audience. Not being a Christian and a regular attendee at church, I can't say for certain what the average joe learns about the end times. But even without regular church attendance for the last number of years, I remember enough of the Revelation of St. John from Bible study back in the day to have seen all the major twists coming at least a hundred pages before they actually do. And yet his characters, including the wife and daughter of a fundamentalist, are completely oblivious. Writing a book like this as a mystery/thriller, it seems, was not the way to go. Or if it were, perhaps adding a couple of extras who might have looked like they, too, could be the Antichrist might have helped with the suspense angle. (They do attempt a move exactly like this, but way too late and way too ineffectively.) I spent at least a hundred fifty pages of this book wondering, "where's the satire?" It was, of course, absent; LaHaye and Jenkins are deadly serious about approaching this series as novels mirroring the born-again Christian take on the end times. And yet despite their seriousness, they embrace the conventions of satire with open arms. Their businesses are thinly-disguised actual corporations with names that, in other circumstances, might be considered clever digs at those companies; their characters' names are ludicrous without being prophetic, a favorite mechanism of Dickens and Pynchon; the characters are often overwrought (and, really, it takes a good deal of mastery of the dime novel to make characters overact ON PAPER!); the aforementioned predictability in the mystery; you name it. It's all got the surface makings of great satire. Which makes me wonder how cool it would actually be if, after the series is finished, LaHaye and Jenkins called a press conference and yelled "April fools!" But I don't see that happening, and neither do you. Fully addressing the spelling and grammatical horrors in this book would take a book-length review, so we'll just note their existence, sneer at them, and move on to the stilted dialogue, the characters (who are cardboard cutouts of the thinnest stripe) and their inability to relate to one another (aside from, one assumes, snickering at the silliness of each others' names in the background), the constant use of cliché, the stopping of the plot every once in a while to throw in some gratuitous moralization (but this being right-wing Christian fiction, I expected a three-hundred-page altar call; I was not disappointed), and all the other little pieces of amateurism that add up to this book being of such horrible architecture that its popularity is really worth weeping over for the lover of the English language. It is obvious, here more than anywhere, that people are more than willing to overlook fatal flaws in the language as long as they can understand the book's message. St. McLuhan has lost the battle once and for all, and sixty-two million copies of the Left Behind novels speak with the public's booming voice: the message is the medium. It's enough to make a body want to give up reading. * ½
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Summary: A must-read for any Christian
Review: I found this book to be a fairly realistic interpretation of what could happen when the Rapture occurs. This is a fictionalized account of what the authors believe could happen, so it shouldn't be taken literally (that is, except for what has come directly from the Bible). The book predicts that once the Rapture occurs, those left behind will come up with every excuse possible to create some sort of an explanation, not wanting to believe that it was actually Jesus coming back for His people. It's not at all preachy, and it helps you to look at yourself and your faith and contemplate whether or not you yourself will be left behind. I believe that those who criticize the book and write it off as "garbage" are those who the book is about. If you are a Christian and you believe in the prophecy of the Rapture, you should definitely read this book. If you are not Christian and you don't believe in Jesus, then you probably shouldn't even bother - this book was not meant for you.
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