Survivors

by Dave Mckay

  This verse clearly says that the rapture will take place at the sound of the "last trumpet". But what does that mean? It was some time later that I learned that the "Great Tribulation" is punctuated in The Revelation by blasts from seven different trumpets. This, too, is universally accepted to be true: the seven trumpets mark seven aspects of the Great Tribulation.

  In other words, both sides agree that the I Corinthians 15:51-52 passage refers to the Rapture, and the Seven Trumpets of the Revelation (chapters 8-11) refer to the Great Tribulation. Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins themselves would agree. Together, these two passages of scripture clearly place the rapture at the sounding of the "last trumpet". And yet the most widely accepted teaching about the endtime today is that the rapture will not happen at the last trumpet, but rather that it will happen even before the FIRST trumpet of the Great Tribulation has sounded. Why is this?

  The answer is quite simple: Popularity. People in today's pampered Western world do not want to even think about the possibility that they may have to suffer and die for their faith. So any teaching (and any teacher) who tells them that they can escape it all by saying a little prayer, is going to be terribly popular. It is doubtful that any book which teaches otherwise would ever make it to the New York Times bestseller list.

  The secret rapture teaching is the great escape from sacrifice, persecution, suffering, obedience, and discipline. According to these people, all you have to do is say the magic word ("Lord, Lord!") and in return you will get unbridled wealth, health, and popularity.

  As we have said, it is good that the Left Behind series is getting people thinking about the return of Jesus. But until people face up to the fact that they are going to have to make some rather costly changes to their lifestyle, they are going to end up just as lost when they have finished reading the series as they were when they started.

  Mind you, if we are wrong, and there should actually be a secret rapture before all the trouble begins, we will have lost nothing. We will have been prepared for a trial that God never asked us to endure. But what about the reverse? What about the possibility that the people believing the Great Escape theory are misguided? If they are wrong, there will be hell to pay for it. Literally as well as figuratively! Isn't it worth some serious consideration?

  (Table of Contents)

  Appendix B: The Prince of Peace

  The Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins makes repeated reference to the Antichrist being a pacifist. We presume that the reason for this is that Bible prophecy says the Antichrist will "through peace destroy many", and it warns that "when they say 'Peace! Peace!' then sudden destruction will come." Certainly as you read through the series it becomes clear that the Antichrist's outward talk of peace masks a personal delight that he takes in making war. We agree that there will be (and is) a lot of deception that hides behind a facade of supposed pacifism. The old Soviet Union would, for example, support peace marches in the West, even though they themselves were actively preparing for war against the West. In our article "Anarchy and Pacifism" we discuss a number of fallacies and weaknesses in the pacifist philosophy.

  However, we are deeply concerned that the Left Behind series says almost nothing in support of real pacifism. What is even more disturbing is the book's assumptions about violence on the part of Christians. In Nicolae (volume 3), on page 191, a Christian boatman says to Buck Cameron, "I have twice within the last forty-eight hours fired this weapon into the heads of people I've believed were enemies of God." (He does it because he is protecting a spiritual leader, Tsion Ben-Judah.)

  The boatman goes on to say, "People coming up this river looking for someone I don't want them to find wind up dead. If you're the third to go, I'll still sleep like a baby tonight."

  Buck asks him how he justifies such murders, and he says, "Those were the wrong people looking for the wrong person."

  Later, on page 194, he explains further: "I do not consider it murder. Better their bodies than his."

  That is all the explanation that Buck (and presumably La Haye/Jenkins' readers) need to be at peace about the murders. And this is just one of many such comments with regard to violence by Christians during their period of persecution.

  Throughout Assassins (volume 6) the book's other hero, Rayford Steele, plots the assassination of the Antichrist, as part of his service to God. He even prays for divine assistance.

  (Table of Contents)

  Appendix C: Torture and the Virgin Army

  I have only just found the time to read “Armageddon”, the latest volume in the Left Behind series. It’s almost 400 pages long, and I have only read as far as page 353 so far. I don’t know when I’ll have the time (or the inclination) to finish it; so I have decided to say some things about what I have read so far.

  As happens in each issue of the series, the subject in the title (this time, the Battle of Armageddon) hardly gets a mention for more than half of the book. In fact, it all starts on page 299.

  Prior to that, readers encounter the predictable blossoming of new romances; but they also encounter something that has not been so predictable in the series so far. It is the amazing torture of Chloe Steele. To be fair to the suspense of “Armageddon”, we will not say whether or not Chloe is actually executed. You can read that for yourself. But we will say that 300 pages of torture amounts to little more than missing a few meals on the part of our brave heroine. In fact, Chloe herself sums it up when the Antichrist guards protest that they have treated her quite well. She says that they have taken her away from her family, made her miss a few meals, given her a sleeping tablet, and flown her halfway across the country. How can they possibly feel that such behaviour is anything short of torture? (p. 239) On top of that, she is later made to stand for an hour in the sun without water. (p. 255)

  It is consistent with the theme from the start of the series (i.e. that true believers should be able to escape all of the inconveniences, which are reserved almost exclusively for Jews and non-Americans). Like so much of what appears in the other volumes in the series, Chloe’s torture reflects the pampered confusion, escapism, and lukewarmness of middle-class American churchianity.

  Here is what happens.

  Chloe finishes dinner at 7pm one night, and eventually goes to bed. Her husband, Buck, is on night watch. This means that, from the comfort of their well-equipped underground apartment in Southern California, he operates a periscope which (hidden by a bush) is able to view any movements on the surface. Lest Buck suffer too much while on watch, we are told that his periscope does not even require him to move to operate it over a 360 degree viewing circle. Just press a button and the top part rotates while Buck sits still. (It’s done through a lot of mirrors, we are told.)

  In the middle of the night, Chloe starts to feel sorry for Buck. She offers to take his place, so that he can get some sleep. Buck agrees, and, after he has fallen asleep, Chloe spots a military vehicle outside. Rather than tell anyone else what is happening, she makes a decision to leave the underground hideout on her own. With no walkie talkie and one sub-machine gun, she sets out to take on the invaders single-handedly.

  Naturally, she gets caught and dragged off to jail in San Diego. When the antichrist forces discover that she is one of the top leaders in the Christian underground movement, they decide to torture her in order to get information on the whereabouts of others in her movement.

  The torture does not begin until later that morning. Her captors bring in a good old-fashioned American breakfast of pancakes, syrup, bacon, and eggs. But they tell her that she must spill her guts about her family and friends before they will give it to her. At first, Chloe is rock solid. No way is she going to betray anyone. But after half an hour without food, she slips and lets them know that she has a son. The text says that she realises from this that hunger is an effective tactic.

  To her credit, she does go without breakfast in the end... and lunch... and dinne
r. Well, not entirely. You see, the authors, apparently feeling sorry for Chloe, and not wanting to shock American believers into thinking that they would ever have to go through anything so painful, have Chloe’s captors telling her that they will give her one energy bar, just to keep her from dying on them! I’m not joking! Jenkins and LaHaye apparently think that a day or two without food could result in death. Because the energy bar is healthy and not junk food, it is apparently regarded as consistent with the “torture” that she is undergoing.

  Now fasting (or even eating small portions) is not my strong point. But surely, there must be Christians somewhere in America who know that a few days without food is actually GOOD for us physically, and that it is supposed to be more or less part of our routine training in Christian discipline. But, of course, discipline is a dirty word to modern-day, lukewarm, middle-class comfortable American Christianity, such as taught by LaHaye and Jenkins. Their books are big on miracles (including all-you-can-eat scrumptious manna that rains down in bucketloads three times a day if you are Jewish), but anything so extreme as fasting is virtually unheard of. It may have been okay for Jesus and for his early disciples, but not for overweight America... not even in the middle of the Great Tribulation!

  You would, of course, imagine that the bad guys were doing many other unspeakable things to Chloe (besides failing to serve her food) during the course of that first horrible day when she was in their custody. After all, they had threatened to make her suffer. But no way. They just leave her sitting in her cell, suffering only from such atrocities as the fact that her toilet does not have a proper seat on it.

  I can well imagine anyone who has not read the book thinking that I am exaggerating about what happens. But I am not. And what I have summarised above is the primary action that takes place over those first 228 pages.

  There is a THREAT or two of real torture, but it never happens, and I’ll explain why. The bad guys threaten to come into Chloe’s cell and do horrible things to her, but she tells them in no uncertain terms (and on several occasions) that if anyone comes into the cell to oppress her, “One of us is going to die.” No self-respecting torturer wants to be killed by an unarmed woman while entering her cell, and so the entire force of the Antichrist is left powerless to do anything to Chloe Steele, except refuse to give her food. Stop laughing! This really is how it goes.

  There is one other little side problem for the bad guys, which helps to keep those first 220 pages from getting too dull. You see, they want to switch Chloe to another prison (apparently fearing that her husband will storm the San Diego prison single-handedly and free her); but considering that she has threatened to kill them if they enter her cell, they are powerless to get her out. So that evening, after she has been some 24 hours without food, they come up with an ingenius way to get her out without anyone being hurt.

  They offer her a chocolate milk shake with a sleeping tablet in it. (Apparently Jenkins and LaHaye were thinking that just one energy bar to eat in a 24-hour period would be a bit too much suffering for their audience to endure. American junk food addicts might desert the faith altogether if they could not be assured that they would at least have hamburgers or ice cream to eat right up to the end.)

  So Chloe enjoys the milkshake, and then passes out, only to wake up on her way to the new prison.

  It is then that she is told that she has broken the will of her torturers. She has lasted more than 24 hours on very little food, and they say that experience has shown them that anyone who can go for 48 hours without food is virtually impossible to break through any other form of torture.

  Chloe is praised to her face by the torturers as an extremely courageous woman, and told that they will have to execute her at the end of the 48 hours without any further torture.

  What the co-authors do for 220 pages is what church leaders all over America have been doing for decades, and that is to expertly, dramatically, and awesomely say nothing. The Left Behind series started out as promising to give answers to the general public about the meaning of Bible prophecy. But it has gradually deteriorated into nothing but drivel. “Dry wells,” or “Clouds without water” as Peter and Jude called them. (II Peter 2:17, and Jude 12)

  A columnist in Australia complained recently because Hollywood producers made two parts (and thereby, two admission prices) out of a single movie in the “Matrix” series. But LaHaye and Jenkins have been going on for more than ten volumes now without giving any real answers. It could all have been said in one volume (as we have done in “Survivors”) if warning (or even instructing) the world had been their real motive. But surely by now, there could be no one fooled into thinking that the series aims to teach anything urgent or practical with regard to Bible prophecy. It is just another gimmick to make a few more million bucks.

  Or as some churchies have said to us, in defence of the series, “It was never supposed to teach anything. It’s just good Christian entertainment.”

  Everywhere you turn in America, there are people who boast of having read the entire series. But ask them, after having read nearly 4,000 pages of print, to summarise what the overall message of the Left Behind series is, and you’ll probably find them lost for words. The books teach little, if anything, that people did not already know before they started reading it, and the real message of Bible prophecy suffers as a result.

  Paul said that such people were “ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth”. (II Timothy 3:1-7) A good description, isn’t it!

  In the latest book, there is one laughable situation where some German Christians supposedly read a verse in the Revelation about God’s people being told to come out of Babylon, because the city was going to be destroyed “in one hour”, and so they travelled to the Antichrist headquarters in Baghdad just to save God the embarrassment of not having anyone inside to “come out” when the time came. Seriously! This is exactly how contrived the so-called fulfillments of various prophecies are, as far as Jenkins and LaHaye are concerned. Find a verse, weave it into a good car or plane chase, and then pretend that it is what the Bible was talking about all along.

  But back to the torture of Chloe Steele...

  We hesitate to say anything so ego-centric, but it does sound like our tiny little band of believers are actually being addressed in the opening pages of “Armageddon”. (We know for a fact that Jenkins and LaHaye are upset about “Survivors”. Their lawyers wrote to us, threatening to take action to stop our book. So it is understandable that they would be doing what they could to paint us as extremists.)

  Before Chloe takes off on her escapade with the intruders, she gives some thought to people who think that she was wrong to have a baby in the middle of the final seven years, or who question whether or not people should continue getting married and being given in marriage so close to the end. (See Luke 17:27.) The book twice expresses the thought that it is no one’s business but the couple themselves, whether they have kids or whether they get married.

  (See our teachings about birth control and about the Virgin Army, in which we address both of these issues. They are teachings which the churches have tried to claim are unspeakably extreme, and so it is understandable that Jenkins and LaHaye would try to discredit them too.)

  “Armageddon” very easily could have included some sobering consequences of Chloe having a child at such a time. The soldiers could have actually captured her four-year-old, tortured him, and, in so doing, extracted information from Chloe that she would not have otherwise volunteered. It could have led to the deaths of other Christians as a result. And she could have come to the conclusion that supposedly personal decisions about marriage and having children really could impinge on the security of others in such a life and death type situation. But nothing of the kind ever happens. It seems to be exactly the kind of sobering thoughts that the authors want to escape. The soldiers make a few threats about punishing Chloe through her son, but they fall as flat as thei
r threats to come into her cell and do her harm. Nothing ever results, and the authors just seem to lose interest in the whole subject after that.

  And when the Chloe story is finished, the very next thing that happens is the marriage of yet another couple (Ming Toy and Ree Woo), and further plans for marriage by another couple (Chang and Naomi) (p. 267), with a clear understanding that if they survive Armageddon, they’ll be able to stay married for a thousand years and “have lots of kids”. (Whatever happened to Matthew 22:30... “For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.”)

  One of the other annoying things about the book is that no one with any faith in God seems capable of speaking for themselves. Whether they be American heroes or 15 foot angels, all they can do is quote verses from the Bible. The Bible is a great book, and God often speaks to us through it, but if I were facing death, I should think that I could give a personal testimony and not have to quote something Paul said as though it was coming from me.

  There is a disturbing scene where Chloe hankers to be able to speak on television (even though the oversized angel has already spoken on TV at great length, during which the bad guys have been entirely powerless to pull plugs anywhere in the world in order to interrupt his broadcast). Chloe wants so badly to jump on the same bandwagon that she can just about taste it. So her captor offers her a microphone and says, “Taking this microphone also means taking the mark...” The very next line says: “She took the microphone.” How pathetic! and how brazen of the authors to suggest that one could give the impression that they have denied their faith in order to win such favours from the Antichrist. (p. 258)