Tim LaHaye’s End Times scheme is entirely dependent on his replacement theology. In LaHaye’s scheme, Jews are damned and deserve only damnation unless they say the magic prayer and convert to real, true Christianity. The character of Tsion Ben-Judah is the personification of this theology, but it’s not just Tsion and it’s not just the awkward plotting and incoherent world-building of Jenkins’ border-crossing set piece. It’s everywhere in these books. [Read more...]

Let’s all watch the new trailer for the “Left Behind” reboot. Oh, and also too, let’s plan on getting back to poor Buck and Tsion in the magic school bus and resuming our journey through the neverending story of the Last Days. [Read more...]

Rapture ideology, I believe, is a product of anxiety about death. It’s a way of coping with the fear of death by denying its inevitability, inventing a way that some special few of us will get to escape it. [Read more...]

“You go see the Transformers movies, and you’re like, ‘So … the world has experienced massive robot battles and invasion ships in multiple American towns, and then every time a new Transformers movie starts, they’re just back to where they started.’ … They’re aware that it happened, but they haven’t changed their lives in any way [Read more...]

The filmmakers don’t seem to be expecting much of an audience apart from those already well-acquainted, or exclusively acquainted, with its End-Times, Rapture-mania ideology. For all their hopes that casting Nic Cage and a bunch of other semi-famous “real” movie stars might draw a larger audience, the producers don’t seem to be trying to reach that larger audience here. Instead they seem to be begging the Real True Christian fans of the books to find that audience for them by inviting their “unsaved” friends as a form of witnessing. [Read more...]

“The Leftovers” looks interesting. Whether or not it turns out to be any good, it’s an HBO show, so it’s going to generate some buzz. People will be talking about it — and talking about the questions it raises — all through July, August and September. What would that be like? What would you do? How would you react? What would happen to …? [Read more...]

It’s an odd form of consolation: “Perhaps the Lord spared him from the bombing” by killing him with an exotic virus first. Or perhaps the Lord spared him from the virus by killing him with the bomb first. This makes sense to Buck and Tsion and the authors because it’s the same logic at work in their death-denying belief in “the Rapture.” [Read more...]