I did, though mostly secondhand (I had a couple of classmates who were into them). My main exposure to them was via an evangelical’s huge multi-year writeup dissecting exactly why they were awful.
These things sold tens of millions and informed a huge number of Christians’ religious views. Some highlights include:
- The very first words of the very first book are “Rayford Steele’s mind was on a woman he had never touched. With his fully loaded 747 on autopilot…”
- Russia and Ethiopia fire their entire nuclear arsenals at Israel. This is because the authors see it as fulfillment of the Bible verse discussing “Gog and Magog.” Divine intervention destroys every single missile and aircraft with no Israeli casualties. Somehow, this does not cause any of the characters to question their own religious beliefs.
- The Rapture happens. Billions of people vanish overnight. Somehow, this exact fulfillment of the Rapture prophecy is treated as something between “Huh. I wonder if the Christians were right” and “That’s just a kooky Christian theory, it was actually caused by the electromagnetism from nuclear weapons.”
- Less than a week after The Rapture, the world gets back to normal despite something like a third of the Earth’s population having just disappeared. There is no sign of long-term trauma or logistical strain.
- The Antichrist is a Romanian who takes over the world by ascending to the position of UN Secretary General. His evil plan includes dismantling the world’s militaries and using the money saved on weapons to pay for the development of the Global South.
- Female characters have two possible personalities: perfect tradwife and sinful harlot.
- One of the later books includes a graphic, gory description of Jesus simultaneously exploding tens of thousands of people.
Mandatory plug for The Leftovers, an HBO drama that’s my favourite show of all time: (cw: suicide, sex) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLT3YUALJno
It’s a secular version of Left Behind which critically interprets Christian mythology in an absurdist world. 2% of the world’s population disappears and the series follows the psychosocial collapse that causes. The portrayal of faith and Christian themes is so much more interesting when they aren’t trying to sell it. There’s a scene where a wayward priest confronts someone who might be god and it’s one of the best dialogues on television because the show spent two seasons making him Job and giving him reasons to hate god, something Christian media is totally unwilling to honestly portray because it’d offend their audience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0KHjAJXDv4
The Leftovers is one of the GOATs. The scene that always gets me is when he has to sing karaoke in order to leave the hotel (this will make sense when you see it lol). Also the line “We fucked things up with Nora.”
You have to be in the right state of mind because the show dives deep into regrets and grief. It also has an awful pilot and doesn’t really pick up until around the third episode.
Liv Tyler is fucking terrifying as a villain.
What’s nuts is the show finished years before covid and QAnon, yet predicted both. 2% of the world doesn’t sound like much to cause everyone to go crazy, yet we had less than that causing people to become unhinged.
I watched it before COVID, during it, and after. That’s the thing that convinced me it was the best. It asks all the questions that broke people’s minds during COVID and then asks how those can even be answered in a world without meaning. Justin Theroux’s performance, especially in those dream sequence episodes, is on par with Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood. Post-apocalyptia is my genre and originally made me watch/judge it, but after living through a collapse it’s the only post-apocalyptic media I can think of which humanistically portrays what that feels like.
I had tried watching it before covid. Tried it again during covid, and it touched a nerve. Forever changed my brain chemistry.
Holy shit wow
It’s so beautiful. The writing, acting, and score are a step above anything else on TV and most films. The pacing can be awkward but this show is uniquely emotionally resonant for me and the way it handles the subject is fascinating.
Oh geez, it’s good? I got a bored and gave up after three or four episodes, because I didn’t feel like there was any commentary on society at large. Everything felt very individual.
Then again, it sounds like I missed something.
The early episodes of the first season are where it drags. That’s where it’s trying to adapt straight from the novel instead of making its own narrative. Especially during the second season you see the larger effects beyond the Guilty Remnant.
I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Link 1:
Link 2:
I’ve got the Nic Cage movie adaptation and the behind the scenes are hilarious. Basically a whole bunch of fundamentalist groups put all their money together to hire Nic Cage and that’s all the money they had so the rest of the production is trash. Nic Cage says in a special feature he’s always liked doing supernatural films and cites Ghostrider as something similar to it in his mind.
My main exposure to them was via an evangelical’s huge multi-year writeup dissecting exactly why they were awful.
The same guy (Slacktivist/Fred Clark) wrote the False Witnesses essay that’s frequently linked here. iirc he describes himself as a “progressive evangelical” who mostly defines his faith as community-building and mutual aid. He’s shockingly based and his whole blog is well worth reading esp b/c of his vast insight into the White Evangelical movement and why it sucks. The LB series is particularly special, he absolutely eviscerates that trash from a theological, practical, political and writing point of view in a way I’ve never seen anyone else come close to
Yeah, Clark has his lib moments but grading on a curve, he’s miles above any other evangelical I’ve ever seen and outdoes 90% of garden-variety libs as well.
There was also a real time strategy game based on these books
Oh, yeah, the one where Christians could be destroyed by hearing profanity or something
Okay, thar would be a cool Sim city mod
They should do a version where all of the “evangelical” Christians get raptured away and the world immediately gets better.
Sounds like it did!
Yeah, I was raised ridiculous American evangelical and everyone was all about these books.
Now I’m no longer Christian, AND I know that
A. The rapture really isn’t supported by biblical text at all unless wildly out of context; it’s considered a heretical idea, and started in the US in the 1800’s.
B. The books are totally ridiculous.
You’re wrong about A unless maybe your referring to specifically how The Rapture happens in Left Behind. And even then that would vary a lot depending on which denomination. Jesus is quoted in the Bible saying the world wouldn’t last more than a generation and pretty much every Christian ever has had to try to make him not a false prophet by having some belief of a nearby apocalypse. The protestant reformation led to many people interpreting the Bible themselves and creating a shitload of sects that exist to this day and many, including the puritans totally thought the apocalypse was just around the corner. It’s a baked in part of the religion if you bother reading the Bible with some historical context. Most of protestant Christianity was really into the idea a couple hundred years prior to the 1800s and don’t even get me started on the 30 years war. Christians always believe the end time is upon the. Cause it’s an essential aspect of the religion
Christians always believe the end time is upon the. Cause it’s an essential aspect of the religion
I knew a guy once who was extremely well-versed in scripture. Like "knew the original Koine Greek translations to Latin " levels of knowledge. He was also totally convinced the apocalypse would happen in his lifetime, then he died between the Mayan calendar 2012 stuff and Trump’s 2015 presidential campaign.
I would have said “I told you you’re full of shit,” but he can’t hear me anymore.
Jehova’a Witness or something similar kinda guy I’d guess
Naw some kind of Baptist or born-again denomination. He thought Mormons and JWs were heretics.
I think he may have made up his own new thing
I’m specifically talking about the “all Christians just up and vanish like that” aspect that the rapture refers to. Afaik, it’s not really supported by the scripture, except going back and retrofitting various verses to support the idea.
Yeah, that’s the ‘bodily rapture’ and came from 1800’s US, there was a misinformation push among end times preachers like Jack Van Impe in the 90’s against clear evidence that it was from the US revival meetings in recent history. Before that Christians mostly believed the same as Muslims: when the end times arrive everyone’s physical bodies are restored- whether they live on earth or in heaven, if they’re judged then or in 1000 years, etc. etc. were the more common and schismatic questions
That aspect is weird and for sure recent-ish. I could see where someone may get there in retrospect but only in retrospect. I would have never predicted it had I been around to do so. No one who picked up Twilight for the first time could have predicted 50 Shades of Grey either, but you work your way back and it makes sense.
I was really into them. I had already gone atheist, but I found Revelations and other apocalypse myths super fascinating. The writing is not good, but as a kid I couldn’t tell.
I was really into the concept and my dad was all surprised and excited. We watched a show together and it was boring as hell, I just wanted to see a story about what life is like after the apocalypse and they kept talking about christianity.
Many years later I realized my excitement was basically for the Walking Dead, while his was for Passion of the Christ.
i vaguely remember a special gun that spun the bullets anticlockwise
Oh, yeah, IIRC it was a handgun and it broke a tree in half or something. Some real fifth grade stuff.
Nah my dad is a tech bro atheist, he handed me a copy of Atlas Shrugged instead
(This actually happened)
I read these as a kid lmao.
The writing was actually somehow worse than the teen drama and romance novels I also read. And those were pretty bad.
Def, haha, was always afraid I was going to miss the rapture
I didn’t get exposure to the books themselves, but my mom often kept around tabloids with articles telling similar stories that I would end up reading. Since I was a child I worried about the end of the world, a feeling that carries on to this day, but now for different reasons.
Russia and Ethiopia fire their entire nuclear arsenals at Israel.
Bit idea: All the countries get nuclear arsenals except
My family and I have been getting super high and rewatching the movies with Kirk Cameron.
Total trash.
Couldn’t make it past 20 pages. I can’t recall much (must be 20 years or more since I tried reading it) except to say, I remember the writing was atrocious. Like, Jehonahs Witness Watchtower meets dimestore novella. Just garbage.
