The View From Wisconsin

After determining that I wasn't interested in reading any of the other books in the Left Behind series, I ended up reading through the third and fourth books of the series, Apollyon and Soul Harvest. The tone of the series has, obviously, gotten darker with each book; despite this, I found a section in the fourth book (Soul Harvest) that comes out as an unintentionally funny scene.

For those of you that have not read the series, the books by Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye deal with life on Earth in the last days – after the Rapture of Christian believers has occurred, all the way to the battle of Armageddon and the return of Christ. At this point in the series, there has been a great, world-wide earthquake – predicted in Revelation – that has literally turned the world upside down. One of the major characters in the series, Buck Williams, is in search of his missing wife, Chloe. He has managed to find a makeshift hospital near where he and his wife had been living with other post-Rapture believers, and is trying to talk to a police officer in an attempt to track her down.

The officer, who is a security guard of the "Global Community" (the name of the government under the Anti-Christ, Nicolae Carpathia), offers his help by seeing if he can get a message out to other GC officials and track down where she may be. The scene was easily a throw-away bit of dialogue – essentially, "give me a picture and I'll see if we can get it out there." However, that is not how the authors decided to write the scene:

Ernie did the clerical work himself. Buck was impressed at how sharp the enlarged copy was. "We only got this machine working about an hour ago," Ernie said. "Obviously, it's cellular. You hear about the potentate's (another name for Carpathia) communications company?"

"No," Buck said, sighing. "But it wouldn't surprise me to know he's cornered the market."

"That's fair," Ernie said. "It's called Cellular-Solar, and the whole world will be linked again before you know it. GC headquarters calls it Cell-Sol for short."

Now, I don't know about anyone of whom, perhaps, English is a secondary language, could get the joke right away. I, however, started giggling at this point. It reminded me of an old Isaac Air Freight comedy routine about a "Son Shield" that "Monty Lucifer" wants you to wear to avoid the "Son" (of God, obviously).

The obvious joke is that it is a pun, of sorts. Someone who is in league with the Devil would obviously find no problem in naming a cell phone company after a homonym for "Sell Soul".

The punch line to all this comes two paragraphs later, after Ernie has written down the info on Chloe.

"Tell me where I can reach you, Mr. Williams. You know not to get your hopes up."

"Too late, Ernie," Buck said, jotting his number. He thanked him again and turned to leave, then returned. "You say they call the potentate's communications network Cell-Sol?"

"Yeah. Short for – "

"Cellular-Solar, yeah." Buck left, shaking his head.

You can almost hear the double-take in Buck's response. To take such a mundane moment and make it unintentionally funny – or is that "punny"? – adds a shade of laughter to a very gloomy situation.

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Issues with The End Times

Despite the play on words, there are some minor issues that I have about the series: the foremost is the somewhat cavalier treatment of WWIII by the authors. There is mention of a nuclear attack on New York City, and yet it's "okay" for planes to be diverted through Boston.

With the two "meteors" that come streaming down from the heavens at the end of Soul Harvest, I have severe doubts that the destruction wouldn't be greater than what the authors portray in the book. And, after what happened with the tsunami in 2004 and Katrina in 2005, I'd find it hard to believe that a large meteor the size of the Appalachians wouldn't cause more damage than was intimated. The authors seem to forget that the Great Lakes would have experienced some form of storm surge from the impact – and you could basically forget about most of the Eastern United States.

The theme of the later books is how not only the world is experiencing the wrath of judgment, but how the population of the earth is being destroyed at large chunks at a time – no further pun intended. Even at the end of the next-to-last book, Armageddon, you have a sense that when Christ returns, there will be very few people left to witness it. And, from the judgments that are poured out, there probably isn't a whole lot of habitable space left on the Earth by that time, as well.

I pray strenuously that I'm not around to see any of these events, as I am well aware as to what that would mean. I'm also aware that Messrs. Jenkins and LaHaye are simply trying to tell a story, hanging it on the biblical prophecies about the end times and Christ's return. These are merely little nits to pick; it's understood that the primary characters need to remain (mostly) intact until the Return, or there wouldn't be much of a story.

The book I may be forced to pick up and read is Glorious Reappearing, the final chapter in the series. Even though I know how it ends, it will be intriguing to see how the characters react to it.