It\u2019s 1997, baby, and Buck Williams has his eye on a sweet Nokia 6110. \u201cGet five of those cell phones, Chloe, and don\u2019t scrimp.\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nThat war has begun, just as Buck had known it must. And he knows what that means \u2014 knows what will, inescapably, follow. War and famine and death have been \u201c\u2026 given authority over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword, famine, and pestilence, and by the wild animals of the earth.\u201d<\/p>\n
Buck has, with his own eyes, seen the bombs begin to fall. And he knows they will keep falling, as foretold that they must, until one fourth of humanity is dead.<\/p>\n
He knows this. He had known that this war would come, and now that it has arrived he knows that it will continue.*<\/p>\n
Since we know that Buck knows all of this, his behavior in the next few pages seems impossible to explain. For a moment, earlier in this book, it seemed that Buck was going to act<\/em> on what he knows is happening. The very first thing he did when the war began was to race to acquire an off-road vehicle well-suited for fleeing the final moments of civilization. It seemed that at least one of our heroes was finally going to take Jesus\u2019 advice. If you find yourself suddenly faced with an apocalypse, Jesus says in Matthew\u2019s Gospel:<\/p>\n\u2026 flee to the mountains; someone on the housetop must not go down to take what is in the house; someone in the field must not turn back to get a coat.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Yet Buck didn\u2019t flee to the mountains. Here we are in Chapter 3 and Buck\u2019s shiny new luxury-survivalist Range Rover is parked in the lot of a suburban church, just a few short miles from the city of Chicago, which Buck has every reason to expect is about to be obliterated.<\/p>\n
And he isn\u2019t there collecting supplies \u2014 ammunition, canned food, bottled water or holy water. Instead he\u2019s just calmly printing out the contents of Bruce\u2019s hard drive and making hotel arrangements for a longer stay downtown.<\/p>\n
He had packaged pages and Bruce\u2019s computer into one huge carton. As he lugged it out, he told Chloe, \u201cDrop me off at the Chicago bureau office, and then you\u2019d better check with The Drake and be sure our stuff is still there. We\u2019ll want to keep that room until we find a place to live closer to here.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I can only explain this by imagining that Buck is in shock and in denial.<\/p>\n
For her part, Chloe seems to be right there with him:<\/p>\n
\u201cI was hoping you\u2019d say that,\u201d Chloe said. \u201cLoretta is devastated. She\u2019s going to need a lot of help here. What are we going to do about a funeral?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Chloe expects a funeral for Bruce, because that\u2019s what happens when a friend dies. Or at least that\u2019s what happens when a friend dies and it\u2019s not right in the midst of the Great Tribulation, as the seals of judgment are being opened and divine and antidivine wrath are both being poured out to claim the lives of more than a billion people.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re going to have to help handle that, Chlo\u2019. You\u2019ll want to check with the coroner\u2019s office, have the body delivered to a funeral home nearby here, and all that.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Only people deep, deep<\/em> in denial could imagine that any of this was still possible. Unable to cope with the scale of the devastation they have personally witnessed \u2014 the ruins of the hospital, the mushroom cloud they saw rising over the North Side \u2014 they\u2019ve developed a kind of traumatic amnesia, shutting out every thought except that of the death of their friend.<\/p>\nIf they stopped for a second and allowed themselves to absorb all that they\u2019ve seen, or if they glanced at all those charts and timelines from Bruce\u2019s notes \u2014 explanations of prophecies that Buck is, at this very moment, carrying in his hands \u2014 then they\u2019d have to realize that there\u2019s no way the Drake hotel or the coroner\u2019s office or a funeral home could still possibly be functioning normally, or at all.<\/p>\n
They must<\/em> be in denial. They must have forgotten about all those other casualties.<\/p>\n\u201c\u2026 have the body delivered to a funeral home nearby here, and all that. With so many casualties, it\u2019s going to be a mess, so they\u2019ll probably be glad to know that at least one body has been claimed.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
So much for my denial\/traumatic amnesia theory.<\/p>\n
And I\u2019m afraid that was the only theory I had that could make sense of this. All I can do now is marvel at the strangeness and stupidity of our heroes in these pages \u2014 and at the strangeness and stupidity of the authors.<\/p>\n
Here are two characters who believe that a global, perhaps-nuclear war has been foreordained by God. They have been expecting and awaiting the onset of this war, which they know will continue until it claims a fourth of the earth. And they have seen it begin, felt the concussive blast of a bomb that they know will only be the first of many, many more.<\/p>\n
So put yourself in their shoes, what would you do? Would you book a room in a downtown high-rise?** Head back to the office? Try to make funeral arrangements for a friend who died just as the war was beginning?<\/p>\n
The staggering weirdness of their behavior here is made even stranger by the glib casualness of it all.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re each going to need a vehicle,\u201d Buck says to Chloe. And then, to underscore the point, he adds, \u201cI can\u2019t promise I\u2019ll be around here all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Or in other words, he\u2019s calling dibs on the Range Rover. Chloe seems to have guessed he would:<\/p>\n
\u201cLoretta, bless her heart,*** thought of the same thing in spite of all she\u2019s going through. She reminded me that there\u2019s a fleet of extra cars among the congregation and has been ever since the Rapture. They lend these out for just such crises as this one.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
First let\u2019s commend Jerry Jenkins for finally realizing \u2014 50 pages into the third book of his series \u2014 that all those real, true Christians raptured away in the first book would have left behind empty homes and abandoned cars. Buck Williams has gone car-shopping twice<\/em> since then, paying full price for a new model each time while all along the Rev. Billings\u2019 Buick and Irene Steele\u2019s minivan have sat unused.<\/p>\nJenkins still doesn\u2019t seem to grasp how many millions<\/em> of empty homes and abandoned cars his version of the rapture implies, or the full implications of that. But at least \u2014 belatedly \u2014 he\u2019s realized that he can exploit this previously ignored consequence to solve another of his commuting-logistics conundrums.<\/p>\nThe astonishing bit here, though, is Chloe\u2019s reference to \u201cjust such crises as this one.\u201d She\u2019s not talking about the destruction of the hospital, the church\u2019s loss of its pastor, the death of every church member who may have been at or near the airport, or the onset of war, pestilence and death that will sweep away one fourth of the earth. Those are about other people<\/em> and so those, therefore, do not constitute \u201ccrises.\u201d No, the urgent crisis here \u2014 the priority \u2014 is that Buck Williams and his wife need a second car.<\/p>\n\u201cGood,\u201d Buck said. \u201cLet\u2019s get you fixed up with one of those.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
He called dibs, remember. We all heard him.<\/p>\n
Chloe asks Buck about the 5,000 pages of file-dump in the box he\u2019s carrying and his vague plan to, you know, make copies and, like, pass them out.<\/p>\n
\u201cBuck, wait a minute. There\u2019s no way we can reproduce that until someone has read all of it. There\u2019s got to be private, personal stuff in there. And you know there will be direct references to Carpathia and to the Tribulation Force. We can\u2019t risk being exposed like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Buck had an ego crisis. He loved this woman, but she was ten years his junior and he hated when it seemed as if she was telling him what to do, especially when she was right.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This \u2026 this \u2026 thing<\/em> the authors are doing here through Buck, it needs a name.<\/p>\nI\u2019ve heard a thousand variations of this very thing, from pastors, politicians and business executives. This thing, this sick passive-aggressive ritual, is something such men often perform whenever they\u2019re speaking in public with their wives present, usually with a forced chuckle and oozing the same feigned humility that the authors here attribute to Buck.<\/p>\n
The authors would, of course, insist that they\u2019re poking fun at Buck here, and that this \u201cego crisis\u201d is a foible of his. In just the same way all those pastors and politicians always pretend they\u2019re poking fun at their own \u201cegos\u201d rather than flexing them by making all those similarly disingenuous comments at the expense of their wives, asserting a claim of dominance by portraying even common decency and fairness as expressions of magnanimous, benevolent condescension. Such magnanimity is, of course, what every husband owes to the little lady, but silly me, sometimes my ego gets in the way and I forget to show it \u2014 so the joke\u2019s on me!<\/p>\n
That thing needs a name. Maybe if we can figure out what to call it, we can figure out how to kill it.<\/p>\n
Fortunately for Buck here, the authors have kept this bit confined to Buck\u2019s internal thoughts. He didn\u2019t say all that out loud to Chloe, and thus she is spared from having to punch him in the neck. Instead, she says:<\/p>\n
\u201cJust entrust it to me, hon. I\u2019ll spend every day between now and Sunday poring over it line by line. By then we\u2019ll have something to share with the rest of New Hope, and we can even announce that we might have something in copied form for them within a week or so.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
It\u2019s a plan, then. Chloe will edit and rewrite 5,000 pages by Sunday, and then, \u201cwithin a week or so,\u201d she\u2019ll have it all retyped and they can then make copies, bind them, and distribute them to all members of New Hope Village Church, each of whom will then have the chance to read through all 5,000 pages at their leisure. Because that\u2019s clearly the easiest way to get the word out.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut where will you do this?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLoretta has offered to let us stay with her. She\u2019s got that big old house, you know.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat would be perfect, but I hate to impose.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBuck, we would hardly be imposing. She\u2019ll hardly know we\u2019re there. Anyway, I sense she\u2019s so lonely and beside herself with grief that she really needs us.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This bears an uncanny resemblance to the usual social niceties involving an offer of hospitality. The would-be guest expresses a reluctance to trouble the would-be host, who in turn insists that it\u2019s no trouble at all, and that she would be glad for the company.<\/p>\n
The slight difference here \u2014 the bit that makes this near-resemblance uncanny<\/em> \u2014 is that both Chloe and Buck seem to interpret Loretta\u2019s social niceties literally<\/em>. Whatever it was she actually said \u2014 we hear echoes of it from Chloe in \u201cthat big old house\u201d and \u201chardly know [you\u2019re] there\u201d \u2014 the couple has decided to take it at face value. They\u2019ve convinced themselves that they really are the ones doing her<\/em> a great favor by allowing<\/em> her to accommodate them.<\/p>\nBut the core thing here is that one sentence: \u201cLoretta has offered to let us stay with her.\u201d However Chloe and Buck want to spin it, that\u2019s the essential fact of the matter. Loretta is extending hospitality to them.<\/p>\n
That sentence is on page 50, about two-thirds of the way down the page. Buck and Chloe exchange a bit of wince-inducing banter (\u201cI keep you around because you\u2019re cute,\u201d she says), and then, on page 51, we come to this:<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve forgotten the shelter under the church.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI haven\u2019t forgotten it, Chloe. I\u2019m just praying it\u2019ll never come to that. Does anybody else know about that place except the Tribulation Force?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo. Not even Loretta. It\u2019s an awfully small place. If Daddy and Amanda and you and I had to stay there for any length of time, it wouldn\u2019t be much fun.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\nEighteen lines.<\/em> That\u2019s the distance from \u201cLoretta has offered to let us stay with her\u201d to \u201cNot even Loretta. It\u2019s an awfully small place.\u201d About half a page separates them.<\/p>\nAt the bottom of page 50, Buck and Chloe are in need and Loretta extends hospitality to them in their time of need. At the top of page 51, Buck and Chloe discuss what they would do to Loretta in her<\/em> time of need and, well \u2026<\/p>\nMonsters.<\/p>\n
Half an hour later, Buck pulled into the Chicago area office of Global Community Weekly<\/em> magazine.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nHey look, the GIRAT suddenly remembers his day job. It\u2019s been a while since he\u2019s checked in at the office, but apart from the destruction of New York, Washington and London and the perhaps-nuclear bombing of airports across the continent, it\u2019s been a slow news week.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going to get us a couple of cell phones,\u201d Chloe said. \u201cI\u2019ll call The Drake and then get down there and get our stuff. I\u2019ll also talk with Loretta about a second vehicle.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGet five of those cell phones, Chloe, and don\u2019t scrimp.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
As if Mrs. Buck Williams<\/em> would ever think to \u201cscrimp\u201d when it comes to telephones.<\/p>\nIn 1995, when Jenkins wrote the first book in this series, cell phones were an exotic luxury item. By the time he was writing this book, in 1997, they\u2019d become much more common. Chloe\u2019s abrupt announcement, above, is how Jenkins went about catching up with technology \u2014 just suddenly inserting cell phones into the world of these books, like Dawn Summers, and then acting as though they had been there all along. A bit jarring, but it solves his problem.<\/p>\n
It raises other, new problems, though, such as why our heroes expect these cell phones to have coverage amidst a nuclear war, why they think they will be safe to use now that Nicolae controls all communications, or how they expect to recharge them once the grid shuts down as war, famine and pestilence seize the earth.<\/p>\n
\u201cFive?\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t know if Loretta would even know how to use one.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not thinking of Loretta. I just want to make sure we have a spare.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
If Buck allowed Loretta to have a phone then he wouldn\u2019t have an extra one for himself.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s not thinking of Loretta. He never is, bless his heart.<\/p>\n
\u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013<\/p>\n
* Buck also knows, or should know, that it\u2019s even worse than he may have expected. The shape of this war suggests that his odds of survival are even lower than the 75-percent chance he might have thought he would have.<\/p>\n
The rider on the red horse, war, the second seal of judgment \u201cpermitted to take peace from the earth,\u201d seems to have a narrower focus, with Nicolae Carpathia\u2019s weirdly one-sided World War III confining its destruction to North America, North Africa and Britain. The total<\/em> population of those areas adds up to less than \u201ca fourth of the earth.\u201d If the war remains confined to those regions, and if that war is to kill one fourth of the earth\u2019s population, then no one<\/em> in America should expect to survive.<\/p>\n** Set aside for the moment the whole World War III and mushroom-cloud business. Don\u2019t worry about why<\/em> O\u2019Hare International Airport is now closed in this story. Just consider that much, on it\u2019s own. O\u2019Hare is closed. <\/em>No flights in. No flights out. Now consider what that means for the likelihood of booking that downtown hotel room.<\/p>\n*** \u201cBless her heart\u201d is not a term we\u2019ve heard from Chloe previously, nor is it a term that 21-year-old Chicagoans are likely ever to use. Since Chloe associates the term with Loretta here, I\u2019m going to assume that\u2019s where she picked up the phrase \u2014 although she did so without quite understanding it.<\/p>\n
Loretta, Jenkins said, is from the South. My guess is that Chloe heard Loretta say something like, \u201cSo Buck bought himself a new luxury SUV, did he? Well. Bless his heart,\u201d and that Chloe mistook this for an expression of affection.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nicolae: The Rise of Antichrist, pp. 48-51 Buck Williams knows what is happening. He knows what\u2019s coming. Thanks to more than a year of study with Bruce Barnes, Buck is thoroughly familiar with the details of the End Times check list. He has a schedule for the Great Tribulation and it sets a clear itinerary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[238],"class_list":["post-9982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-left-behind","tag-left-behind"],"yoast_head":"\n
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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. 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Thanks to more than a year of study with Bruce","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/08\/31\/nra-excluding-loretta\/","og_site_name":"slacktivist","article_published_time":"2012-08-31T18:57:14+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/files\/2012\/08\/Nokia-300x200.jpg"}],"author":"Fred Clark","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Fred Clark","Est. reading time":"14 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/08\/31\/nra-excluding-loretta\/","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/08\/31\/nra-excluding-loretta\/","name":"NRA: Excluding Loretta","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website"},"datePublished":"2012-08-31T18:57:14+00:00","dateModified":"2012-08-31T18:57:14+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/32666545e535b697afb93d9848dcfc47"},"description":"Nicolae: The Rise of Antichrist, pp. 48-51 Buck Williams knows what is happening. He knows what's coming. Thanks to more than a year of study with Bruce","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/08\/31\/nra-excluding-loretta\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/08\/31\/nra-excluding-loretta\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/08\/31\/nra-excluding-loretta\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"NRA: Excluding Loretta"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/","name":"slacktivist","description":""Test everything; hold fast to what is good."","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/32666545e535b697afb93d9848dcfc47","name":"Fred Clark","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7083ccd514d4fb8d5043041756d766a0?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7083ccd514d4fb8d5043041756d766a0?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg","caption":"Fred Clark"},"description":"Fred Clark is a graduate of Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary (now called Palmer Seminary), of Eastern College (now called Eastern University) and of the fundamentalist Timothy Christian High School (still fundamentalist and still called Timothy Christian High School, but not really thrilled to have a snarky, liberal, tree-hugging, pro-choice, pro-GLBT, peacenik, commie, evolutionist as such a vocal alumnus). A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9982\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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