NRA: We’re on a mission from Gahd

Nicolae: The Rise of Antichrist; pp. 258-265

Now we get a car chase. Sort of. It’s more like a word problem from a middle-school math book. A school bus leaves point X, heading west at 50 miles an hour. An hour later, a police car leaves point X heading west at 90 kilometers an hour. Will the school bus reach the airport before the police car catches up to it?

No, readers aren’t given sufficient information to calculate that problem, but that’s not the point here. The point here is that this is the s-l-o-o-o-o-w-e-s-t car chase since Al Cowling crawled down the 405 in O.J. Simpson’s white Bronco.

That gives Jerry Jenkins time to focus on what’s really important — more prayers, reminders of the importance of proper nutrition and exercise, phone calls, and phone calls about phone calls.

The beginning is actually somewhat promising:

Buck, clutching and shifting, said, “They might be able to overtake this old bus. But if we can make it to Al Arish, we’ll be on that Learjet and out over the Mediterranean before they know we’re gone.”

For the next two hours, the road grew worse. The temperature rose. Buck kept an eye on the rearview mirror and noticed that Tsion kept looking back as well. Occasionally a smaller, faster car would appear on the horizon and fly past them.

That’s not bad. The geography is a bit confusing in that Arish is only about 50 miles from where Buck crossed the border south of Be’er Sheva, so it doesn’t sem like this trip should take two hours. But this is a Christian book, so we’ll cut some slack to a plot point that involves aimless wandering in the Sinai.

The important thing is that Jenkins gives us a concise sketch of Buck’s goal, and then a serviceable sense of the basic tension he’s shooting for in this scene. It’s not quite this —

— but we get the general idea. We understand Buck’s anxiety as he nervously studies the rearview mirror, uncertain if they’re being followed. We can imagine the knot in his stomach every time a set of headlights appears behind them.

But sustaining that tension would be, you know, hard. So Jenkins quickly abandons the effort to make this suspenseful:

“What are we worried about, Cameron? God would not bring us so far only to have us captured. Would he?”

That’s backwards. Buck is the one driving, so he should be Elwood, and he should be the one saying, “They’re not gonna catch us. We’re on a mission from God.”

Meanwhile, Jake Tsion is getting hungry:

“Cameron, you know I have had to force myself to eat up until now, and I have not done a good job at it.”

“So eat something! There’s lots of stuff in here!”

They chat for another page or so about what sort of snack each would prefer. Buck asks Tsion to find him something “with lots of fiber and natural sugar” (maybe some dry white toast, nothing on it?) and Tsion gives him “several fig bars that reminded him of granola and fruit.” This fruit-like fruit hits the spot:

Buck had not realized his own level of hunger until he began to eat. He suddenly felt supercharged and hoped Tsion felt the same. Especially since he saw flashing yellow lights on the horizon far behind them.

The chase is on! The arithmetical word-problem begins!

The question now was whether to try to outrun the official vehicle or to feign ignorance and merely let it pass. Perhaps it was not after them anyway. Buck shook his head. What was he thinking? Of course this was probably their Waterloo. He was confident that God would bring them through …

Buck and the authors don’t quite seem to grasp what “Waterloo” signifies.

Tsion asks Buck what he plans to do when the car catches up to them.

“I am trying to think of a strategy now.”

“I will be praying,” Tsion said.

Buck nearly laughed. “Your praying has resulted in a lot of mayhem tonight,” he said.

Buck drives on, pushing the bus to “over 80 kilometers an hour, which he guessed was in the 50 mile-an-hour range.” He’s got his metric conversion down, but he still doesn’t have a plan, so a page later, Tsion repeats his question:

“What is your plan? What will you do when they overtake us, as they surely will?”

“Well, I’ll tell you one thing, I’m not going back to that border. I’m not even sure I’ll let them pull me over. … I will holler at him from the window and urge him to deal with us at the airport. There’s no sense driving all the way back to the border.”

That’s not much of a plan, but the basic idea is sound: Airports are home-turf for the Tribulation Force.

Buck guessed they were 30 kilometers from the airport outside Al Arish. If he could even keep the bus close to 60 kilometers per hour, they could make it in half an hour. The border patrol car would surely overtake them before that. But they were so much closer to the airport than to the border, he was certain the officer would see the wisdom of following them to the airport rather than leading them back to the border.

And Buck still has one card left to play — the one thing he can always rely on in any situation:

“Tsion, I need your help.”

“Anything.”

“… find my phone in my bag and get it to me.”

Awww yeah. It’s dialin’ time.

But, first, an awkward conversation about Tsion Ben-Judah’s fitness regimen:

“Sir, how old are you?”

“That is considered an impolite question in my culture,” Tsion said.

“Yeah, like I care about that now.”

“I’m 46, Cameron. Why do you ask?”

“You seem in pretty good shape.”

“Thank you, I work out.”

“You do? Really?”

“Does that surprise you? You would be surprised at the number of scholars who work out.”

That’s completely out of place, but the inappropriateness is what makes it funny. Is it intended to be funny? I honestly don’t know. What usually passes for humor in these books is, instead, a kind of joyless triumphalism — “International Harvesters,” Hah! Stupid unbelievers don’t even realize that’s a pun! Jerry Jenkins occasionally seems to attempt broad slapstick, or “wacky” hijinks, or clumsily overstated gags that he tends to repeat so no one misses them. The deadpan absurdism we get here is unprecedented in this series.

But I can’t come up with any other way of reading it. Imagine you’re an actor playing Tsion Ben-Judah in this scene. Look at that line: “Thank you, I work out.” Can you come up with any reading of that line that isn’t funny?

So mark this page — page 262 in Volume 3 of the Left Behind series. An apparently successful, possibly deliberate attempt at comedy. Unexpected.

Buck explains that he just wanted to make sure that Tsion would be able “to run if you need to.” Tsion assures him that, yes, like many Bible prophecy scholars, he works out regularly and keeps himself in fine shape. It’s clearly very important to Tsion — or to someone, anyway — that neither Buck nor anyone else has the mistaken impression that Bible prophecy scholars can’t also be remarkable physical specimens.

Buck’s next question gives us an idea of the kind of plan that’s starting to take shape in his mind:

“Can you tell me how much gasoline we have left?”

“The gauge is right there in front of you, Cameron. You tell me.”

“No, I mean in our extra cans.”

“I will check, but surely we do not have time to fill our tanks while we are being chased. What do you have in mind?”

“… Well, let me just give you a hint. While you’re tapping on the sides of those gas cans to tell me how much we have left, I’m going to be checking the cigarette lighter on the dashboard.”

Again, backwards. “Fix the cigarette lighter” is Jake’s line.

(Given the home-town pride Jenkins displays for Chicago elsewhere in these books, I’m starting to wonder if these Blues Brothers echoes might be intentional. An overnight car chase with comically absurdist dialogue, jokes about cigarette lighters, and providential mayhem in service of a divine mission … am I just imagining this?)

Buck’s phone buzzed. Startled, he flipped it open. “Buck here.”

“Buck! It’s Chloe!”

What am amazing coincidence! Buck was about to call her, but she called him first. Either that’s another astonishing example of divine intervention, or just another example of Jenkins typing faster than he can think.

“Chloe! I really can’t talk to you now. Trust me. Don’t ask any questions. For right now I’m OK, but please ask everybody to pray and pray now. And listen, somehow, on the Internet or something, find the phone number for the airport at Al Arish, south of the Gaza Strip on the Mediterranean in the Sinai. Get hold of Ken Ritz, who should be waiting there. Have him call me at this number.”

“But, Buck –”

“Chloe, it’s life or death!”

Chloe accepts this. You get the feeling she’s used to it by now.

“Hey, Buck, while you’re there at the store …

“Chloe! I really can’t talk to you now. I’m already in the checkout line!”

“But, Buck –“

“Chloe, it’s life or death!“

She knew this was part of the deal when she married the guy.

You might think from Buck’s urgency on the phone that Chloe would immediately track down Ken Ritz, and then get to work on the prayer chain. But put aside such impious thoughts — prayer is always the first priority. (Remember: Pray first. Then reach, row, throw, go.) So Chloe’s first step after Buck hangs up on her is to call her dad.

This provides an excuse to cut back to Rayford’s point-of-view for a moment, thereby reassuring the co-author that his fantasy surrogate hasn’t been forgotten.

“That’s all right, Chloe,” Rayford said, “I long since gave up trying to sleep. I’m up reading anyway.”

We’re not told what Rayford is reading. I like to think it’s The Big Book of Earthquake Survival, which would be the only book it would make sense for any member of the Tribulation Force to be reading just now, but I’m afraid it’s probably instead something like The Beginning of the End, or Armageddon, Oil and the Middle East Crisis or some other “Bible prophecy” book that would be completely irrelevant at this point.

I’m a bit confused, though, to find Rayford up reading. He’s awake because Amanda and Loretta called him, begging him to pray like he’s never prayed before for Buck’s safety. But he’s not doing that.

Now Chloe interrupts his reading with another phone call just after Buck has asked her to “ask everybody to pray and pray now.” Yet Chloe doesn’t ask him to pray either:

Chloe told him of her strange conversation with Buck. “Don’t waste time on the Internet,” Rayford said, “I’ve got a guide to all those phone numbers. Hang on.”

“Daddy,” she said, “it’s gotta be a closer phone call for you anyway. Call Ken Ritz and tell him to call Buck.”

Buck has a cell phone, but Ken Ritz doesn’t. It’s apparently possible, but not easy, to find an airport’s phone number “on the Internet or something.” And the expense of long-distance phone rates are significant enough to consider even in a “life or death” situation. You don’t need to check the publication date in this book. That right there is all you need to conclude that it was published in 1997.