Introduction
"An airborne Boeing 747 is headed to London when, without any warning, passengers mysteriously disappear from their seats. Terror and chaos slowly spread not only through the plane but also worldwide as unusual events continue to unfold. For those who have been left behind, the apocalypse has just begun." --Leftbehind.com
The Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins is possibly one of the most popular Christian fiction series ever written. It begins with the cataclysmic event Christians refer to as The Rapture, follows it into The Tribulation, a period of God's wrath on mankind, and goes all the way to the Glorious Appearing of Christ, all coming together to make twelve books, three prologues, one epilogue, and an entire kids series.
Review
The storyline is good. Character development is good to start out, and the story, following Biblical Eschatology is great. Summed up, the storyline is really a battle between the "Tribulation Saints", the men and women saved through the Tribulation, and the Antichrist, a figure known as Nicolae Jetty Carpathia. So is the storyline perfect? No. In a lot of ways, the story seems to drag on through the twelve books as we wait for different events to happen.
The books are very slow and dry, as is the dialogue. Later in the books, character development weakens as well, and the storyline gets distracted very easily. For example, one woman becomes pregnant with the Antichrist's baby (which, by the way, is against scripture), and she spends three books considering an abortion while her Christian friends try to convince her otherwise. Things like that become huge distractions to the overall plot of the book.
However, these things don't apply to all the books. Nicolae, the third book in the series, has a very good storyline and moves rather quickly, and will turn out to be one of my favorite books I've read all year.
From a family-friendly point of view, take caution. The books are extremely violent. I don't say that to criticize because it's The Tribulation. Beheadings, war and death, death, and more death are part of what the Bible says will unfold during this time. From the very first book, Buck Williams is almost killed in a car bombing, in the third book, World War III breaks out, leading to quite a bit of violence. Public beheadings become a spectacle and may make some readers uncomfortable. There is also some mature content as well, such as abortion. So basically, young readers should take caution.
Now comes the part where, because it's a Christian series based on Biblical events, we have to see if the books match up to scripture, and much to my surprise, they did well. Nothing, besides maybe what I mentioned earlier, goes directly against scripture or against the foundational Christian beliefs. However, there are additions to the Biblical end times plot. For example, one character becomes a kind of "modern day Moses", an addition made simply because some of the plagues in Revelation are similar to the plagues in Egypt, while I find no real Biblical evidence too support that assumption. Unfortunately, I cannot simply let the fact that there are additions pass by me, because in Revelation 22:18 we are given a strong warning not to "add to these words". And unfortunately, Left Behind does.
Conclusion
The Left Behind writers did a lot of things right. They held true to the foundational Christian beliefs, developed a good storyline, and successfully wrote a fiction series that follows thirty years before the Rapture to Kingdom Come. However, there is much that could've been better, as well. Dialogue is dry, many of the books are slow, character development weakens later in the books, and frankly, in some ways, the books are slightly unrealistic at points.
My opinion? Let's just say from now on I'll look elsewhere for good Christian fiction.
Rating
2 out of 5 stars.
