Left Behind, pp. 213-217 (take two)

Stories of religious conversion — or "testimonies," as we evangelical types call them* — can be tricky. The convert wants to tell this story because she is convinced that it is important. Very important. But also deeply personal and, at some level, ineffable. Attempts to convey the ineffable often come across as kind of effed up.

I noted earlier (see "Explicit Content") how this mix of the transcendent and the intimate can lead conversion stories to resemble pornography:

Religious ecstasy, like sexual ecstasy, is difficult to portray directly in a work of art. It is too intimate, sacred and transcendent — and any portrayal that fails to respect that will seem reductive and cheap. A good artist knows when to fade to black (or, as in Dante's "Paradiso," to fade to white), when to suggest rather than to show, when implicit metaphor will be more truthful than explicit detail.

"Fire," Pascal wrote at the time of his conversion. "Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy."

Frederick Buechner writes of hearing a preacher speak about "the coronation of Jesus in the believer's heart":

… this coronation … took place among confession — and I thought, yes, yes, confession — and tears, he said — and I thought tears, yes, perfectly plausible that the coronation of Jesus in the believing heart should take place among confession and tears. And then with his head bobbing up and down so that his glasses glittered, he said in his odd, sandy voice, the voice of an old nurse, that the coronation of Jesus took place among confession and tears and then, as God was and is my witness, great laughter, he said. Jesus is crowned among confession and tears and great laughter, and at the phrase great laughter, for reasons that I have never satisfactorily understood, the great wall of China crumbled and Atlantis rose up out of the sea, and on Madison Avenue, at 73rd Street, tears leapt from my eyes as though I had been struck across the face.

It's not always a matter of fire and crumbling walls, of course. Dag Hammarskjold's description of his conversion seems a bit more restrained:

I don't know Who or What put the question, I don't know when it was put. I don't even remember answering. But at some moment, I did answer Yes.

Anne Lamott cites that in her book Traveling Mercies, in which she also relates her own "beautiful moment of conversion":

I hung my head and said, "Fuck it: I quit." I took a long deep breath and said out loud, "All right. You can come in."

Re-read all of the above examples but imagine that the topic is not religious conversion. Imagine that each is, instead, one of those little video interludes in When Harry Met Sally in which some charming old couple is recounting how they first fell in love.

The testimonies all make sense when read this way because, after all, this is what they are: people recounting how they fell in love. Disregard that love and such stories are meaningless. They become merely accounts of people going through the motions without context. They become pornography.

All of which brings us to Rayford Steele's strangely anticlimactic conversion in the pages of Left Behind, which reads less like the testimony of someone falling in love than it does like the testimonial of someone who is very pleased with his new insurance policy.

Like many conversion scenes, this one is intrusively intimate, making the reader feel like a voyeur. It affords little respect for the idea that something transcendent might be occurring, and it offers no meaningful context suggesting that what we are peeking at through the blinds is ultimately an act of love. What keeps it from being purely a piece of spiritual porno is the authors' earnest hope that this scene should also serve as a kind of instruction manual. This mix of the pedagogical and the prurient reminds me of those omnipresent ads for the Better Sex Video Series. (I haven't seen any of those, but the ads make them seem like porno for people who don't like porno, except presumably with a different, er, concluding shot.)

Anyway, when we left off with Rayford, he too was watching an instructional video and he was just getting to the good part near the end:

If what the pastor said about the disappearances was true — and Rayford knew in his heart that it was — then the man deserved his attention, his respect.

It was time to move beyond being a critic, an analyst never satisfied with the evidence. The proof was before him: the empty chairs, the lonely bed, the hole in his heart. There was only one course of action. He punched the play button.

So, filled with this newfound resolution to take decisive action, Rayford resumes watching the television screen. The Rev. Vernon Billings crams in a few more paragraphs of boilerplate from his Summer Prophecy Conference lectures, which LaHaye and Jenkins seem to regard as a kind of foreshadowing. And I suppose it is a kind of foreshadowing — at least if, say, reading the Cliff Notes plot outline of a book before reading the book itself counts as foreshadowing.

The Antichrist, Billings warns, "will rise up soon" and "will deceive many." He notes that the book of Isaiah says:

… the kingdoms of nations will be in great conflict and their faces shall be as flames. To me, this portends World War III, a thermonuclear war that will wipe out millions.

The passage Billings cites, Isaiah 13, was written for a people still reeling from their conquest by the Babylonian Empire. The prophet is essentially telling them, "Don't worry, one day Babylon will get what is coming to it." The King James Version, which Billings quotes, foretells that Babylon will become a desolate place where "owls shall dwell" and "satyrs shall dance" and "the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces." All of which, perhaps, might be open to interpretation as something other than an explicit prediction of global thermonuclear war. (I suppose satyrs and dragons could be immune to radioactive fallout, but I'm fairly sure owls are not.)

"Millions" also seems like a low-ball estimate for the death toll in a thermonuclear World War III — but maybe Billings is discounting due to the elimination of the entire Russian nuclear arsenal during the failed Russo-Ethiopian sneak attack on Israel described earlier in the book. That event left the world with only one nuclear superpower, and it's not clear why Billings thinks that superpower would launch WWIII by attacking Babylon — but then real-life events have demonstrated that said superpower is more than willing to launch a war against Babylon for no apparent reason, so maybe we'll give Billings a pass on that one.

"Bible prophecy is history written in advance," Billings says, and then offers up one last burst of this pre-history:

You'll find that government and religion will change, war and inflation will erupt, there will be widespread death and destruction, martyrdom of saints, and even a devastating earthquake. Be prepared.

Billings advice for what it means to "be prepared" is as vague as his description of the calamities to come. Given the grim outlook of his advance history, it's hard to imagine what "being prepared" would mean other than fleeing for the hills and getting really, really drunk (not necessarily in that order).

With his next breath, Billings begins his sales pitch for salvation. Neither Rayford nor the authors seem to regard this as abrupt, but I was rubbing my neck from whiplash, squinting and flipping pages back and forth looking in vain for some hint of the jarring transition:

God wants to forgive you your sins and assure you of heaven. Listen to Ezekiel 33:11: "I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live."

I've got to give some style points here for the use of Ezekiel. Apart from his references to "Gog" and "Magog," I didn't expect L&J to have read much of anything by this psychadelic, R-rated prophet.

It's kind of refreshing to see an evangelical altar call that reaches beyond the usual greatest hits of John 3:16 and the "Romans road," and it's a bit startling to see such an aggressively Arminian** passage cited. But it's especially startling to see this passage cited here, in the pages of Left Behind. LaHaye and Jenkins clearly do take "pleasure in the death of the wicked" and they consistently seem to imagine and to portray God as enjoying and savoring it even more than they do.

"You can become a child of God by praying to him right now as I lead you," Billings says, and Rayford presses the pause button to think for a moment.

… he knew that he needed Christ in his life. He needed forgiveness of sin and the assurance that one day he would join his wife and son in heaven.

Rayford sat with his head in his hands, his heart pounding. … He was alone with his thoughts, alone with God, and he felt God's presence. Rayford slid to his knees on the carpet. He had never knelt in worship before, but he sense the seriousness and the reverence of the moment. He pushed the play button and tossed the remote control aside. He set his hands palms down before him and rested his forehead on them, his face on the floor. The pastor said, "Pray after me," and Rayford did.

What follows is L&J's distillation of "the sinner's prayer." Prayers are sometimes referred to as "invocations," but this one seems to be an invocation in more than one sense. It seems almost an incantation — like saying "Bloody Mary" three times into a mirror. If you are not a Christian and do not want to become one, you might want to be careful not to read the following aloud:

Dear God, I admit that I'm a sinner. I am sorry for my sins. Please forgive me and save me. I ask this in the name of Jesus, who died for me. I trust in him right now. I believe that the sinless blood of Jesus is sufficient to pay the price for my salvation. Thank you for hearing me and receiving me. Thank you for saving my soul.

Left Behind is crammed with heresies, heterodoxies and the sorts of tortured interpretations one winds up with when one starts with the idea that the main theme of the biblical prophets was to record an advance history of a thermonuclear war in one's own lifetime. But here L&J are mostly theologically sound. I might prefer something a bit more elegantly worded — something like the good old "Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed" — but I have no quarrel with the essential elements of this prayer. (Although I would eliminate the bit of catechism on substitutionary atonement they've inserted. Either it's a separate matter not needed here, in which case it can be omitted, or else L&J think that a particular understanding of the workings of atonement is needed here, in which case it really ought to be omitted.)

It's not the words of the prayer that seem troubling here, but rather the implication that these words must be spoken, this invocation must be invoked, or else God's hands are tied. Wrapped up in that implication is also the suggestion that this incantation is somehow sufficient for salvation. That's not simply Arminian, or even Pelagian — it's spellcasting.

Billings says, after the prayer, that "If you were genuine, you are saved." But "if you were genuine" seems here to refer to saying these words with the proper sentiment, the proper earnestness, the proper pounding heart and the "seriousness and the reverence of the moment." It's hard to imagine "genuine" meaning anything else when it is only "the moment" that matters.

The meaning of the moment depends on a larger context over time, which is yet another reason that stories of religious conversion can be tricky. I like to hear people tell stories about the moment they fell in love, but the real meaning of such stories depends on the rest of the story that follows.

- – - – - – - – - – - -

* Many Christians — myself included — have stories that do not fit neatly into the somewhat formulaic trope of a standard evangelical "testimony," which tends to disappoint, confuse or anger those who request to hear them. When confronted with the question "When were you saved?" I like to borrow the response that theologian Stanley Hauerwas uses: "2,000 years ago, give or take."

** "Arminianism" holds that — nevermind. Soteriological disputes strike me as the tedious and un-useful arguments among blind men about whether an elephant is more like a tree or a rope. The idea that soteriology — speculation about how grace works — is itself of much importance strikes me as, well, very bad soteriology. I am not God's math teacher and I don't need to see all the work.

Left Behind, pp. 211-213 (take two)

Rayford Steele, we're told, attended the New Hope Village Church only a few times after his wife Irene starting going there. If the Rev. Vernon Billings' In-Case-of-Rapture video is at all like the sermons Billings preached, then I understand why Rayford never went back. Billings is pedantic and condescending, even when he doesn't seem to know what he's talking about. He's almost Limbaughian.

"The Bible says that men's hearts will fail them for fear," Billings says. "That means to me that there will be heart attacks due to shock …"

That's an odd bit in part because, according to LaHaye & Jenkins' description of events in the previous 200 pages, it didn't happen that way. Much of what Billings predicts has not been mentioned or described earlier in the book:

Depending on when you're viewing this tape, you may have already found that martial law is in effect in many places, emergency measures trying to keep evil elements from looting and fighting over the spoils of what is left. Governments will tumble and there will be international disorder.

Those all seem like reasonably predictable consequences of the mass disappearance of every child on the planet. But again, none of this has happened in the novel. No martial law. Little mention of looting or rioting. No international disorder or tumbling of governments. The only country that has changed regimes since the mass disappearances is Romania, but this was as the result of an orderly election — an election that was neither delayed nor disrupted by the mass disappearances two days before.

Yet it seems that L&J want us to read Billings' surprisingly inaccurate predictions as unerringly accurate. The sense one gets from this passage is that the authors are using Billings to rewrite the account of the previous 200 pages, to fill in or even change the details of events we've already read about. It's a bit like listening to someone botch the telling of a long joke, when they realize halfway through that they've left out essential details and they start backtracking and correcting themselves: "So the priest says to the duck — oh, wait, he's not a priest, he's a rabbi, and he's got the duck on his head, see, did I mention the duck? And the rabbi says, no, wait, the duck says …"

This rewriting is a welcome change, since the international disorder and chaos that Billings describes sounds more interesting than the novel we've been reading up to this point. But the fact that it is a change undercuts the other apparent intended effect of Billings' video, which is to be so eerily accurate in its account of what Rayford has seen happening that he is compelled to accept its truth.

Here's more from Billings:

You may wonder why this has happened. Some believe this is the judgment of God on an ungodly world. Actually, that is to come later. Strange as this may sound to you, this is God's final effort to get the attention of every person who has ignored or rejected him. He is allowing now a vast period of trial and tribulation to come to you who remain. He has removed his church from a corrupt world that seeks its own way, its own pleasures, its own ends.

I believe God's purpose in this is to allow those who remain to take stock of themselves and leave their frantic search for pleasure and self-fulfillment, and turn to the Bible for truth and to Christ for salvation.

This is theology of a sort that we don't usually get from Tim LaHaye. LaHaye, and his spokesman, the Rev. Billings, are usually so preoccupied with treating the Bible as God's Day Planner that they never engage in questions of "why this has happened" or of "God's purpose in this." But here, briefly, we get a glimpse of LaHaye/Billings theory of why.

The Great Tribulation, according to this theory, is a kind of living Purgatory.

LaHaye, of course, does not believe in Purgatory. It is, after all, an extrabiblical innovation now abandoned even by those parts of the church that once accepted the idea. The case for Purgatory was based on a handful of fairly opaque, symbol-heavy passages of Scripture which were magnified through the prism of a complex interpretive scheme that imposed its own cosmology and chronology. It is, in other words, very much like the case for premillennial dispensationalism. Except the case for Purgatory was probably stronger.

Billings next offers his prediction of the events of the second half of the book, and here he proves much more accurate. Perhaps a bit too accurate, as his account of the rise of the Antichrist serves as almost the Cliff Notes version of the rest of the book. Homiletics professors teach preachers in training to "Tell them what you're going to tell them. Tell them. Then tell them what you told them." Good advice for a sermon, but bad advice for a novel, especially one more or less structured as a thriller.

Apart from its place in the novel, though, this next bit from the Rev. Billings is rather important. For PMD Christians — and there are tens of millions of them in America — the rise of the Antichrist is not simply fiction, but a real and imminent event. Billings here offers a useful distillation of what it is precisely they anticipate, await, hope for and fear:

Scripture indicates that there will be a great lie, announced with the help of the media and perpetrated by a self-styled world leader. …

Let me warn you personally to beware of such a leader of humanity who may emerge from Europe. He will turn out to be a great deceiver who will step forward with signs and wonders that will be so impressive that many will believe he is of God. He will gain a great following among those who are left, and many will believe he is a miracle worker.

The deceiver will promise strength and peace and security, but the Bible says he will speak out against the Most High and will wear down the saints of the Most High. That's why I warn you to beware now of a new leader with great charisma trying to take over the world during this terrible time of chaos and confusion. This person is known in the Bible as Antichrist. He will make many promises, but he will not keep them.

There's an ongoing intramural dispute among PMDs divided into two camps: pre-Tribulationists and post-Tribulationists. LaHaye is pre-trib, meaning he believes the church will be "raptured" before the seven-year Tribulation and before the rise of the Antichrist, which is how it plays out in Left Behind. The post-tribbers would point out that it doesn't make sense to talk about the Antichrist wearing down "the saints" if the saints have all already marched in. LaHaye would counter by saying there will be new saints saved during the purgatorial Tribulation, folks like Rayford, Bruce and Chloe.

I really don't care who wins that little argument because I think both factions are heterodox and a bit goofy. I do, however, care about that little swipe at "the media" tucked in there because, A) you can't have democracy or a free people without a free press; and B) I'm part of "the media" and I take this stuff personally.

So allow me to explain where that bit about "the media" comes from. It comes from Revelation 13, verses 14 and 15.

John's Apocalypse here is describing the second beast, who comes out of the earth and is not to be confused with the first beast, who comes out of the sea. The first beast, you'll recall, had 10 horns and seven heads and "resembled a leopard, but had feet like those of a bear and a mouth like that of a lion." The second beast "had two horns like a lamb but he spoke like a dragon." That's a dragon, not the dragon, the one kicked out of heaven in the previous chapter who gave the first beast his power, his throne and his authority.

(If you read Revelation 13 out loud, very fast, it begins to sound like an Abbot & Costello routine on acid — "So is the Antichrist the first or second beast?" "I don't know." "Third beast.")

Anyway, here is where the media comes in:

Because of the signs he [second beast] was given power to do on behalf of the first beast, he deceived the inhabitants of the earth. He ordered them to set up an image in honor of the [first] beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived. He was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that it could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed.

Did you catch that? An "image" that could "speak." This passage is interpreted by LaHaye and his PMD adherents as — and really, I'm not kidding here — a clear reference to television news or "the media."

Thus, since "the media" is destined to be a servant of the Antichrist, it shouldn't be trusted and good Christians shouldn't read the newspaper but instead should rely only on Christian radio (and maybe Fox News) to find out what's really going on in the world.