Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Left Behind: Chapter 3...coming to grips with the rapture

Chapter 2 left off with Rayford trying to land the plane. Chapter 3 picks up with Hattie prepping the passengers for landing. Really, there's no logical need for a new chapter here. I would've continued, as this is yet another chapter with folks trying to figure out what the hell's going on. Buck lands the plane safely in Chicago. O'Hare is hectic, so all the passengers have to walk back. Being the noble Captain, Rayford rejects the idea of riding in a crew bus...he'll walk with his passengers. Why wasn't this great man raptured? The airport's hectic, and Rayford and Hattie both are trying to arrange transportation to the suburbs. More and more stories about the rapture are told...which raises a couple of questions for me. Corpses disappear in the middle of funerals. Why are corpses being raptured? Why does God need the body? I thought the soul was the only thing of importance???? If corpses are raptured, then does God rapture up the remains of anyone that ever lived, indifferent to the state of decay? If someone dies in a horrific car accident moments before the rapture, is their maimed body raptured? If so, then does that person have to live with that maimed body when he's chilling with all the raptured folk? It seems that all children are raptured. Is there an age limit on the automatic rapturability of children? Since not all children develop the same, are the more advanced kids penalized with a narrower window of automatic rapturability? Back to the book....

Rayford and Hattie finally find a helicopter that will take them to the suburbs. The helicopter is crowded, so Hattie has to sit on Rayford's lap. Lahaye goes on and on about how much Rayford had wanted the slut Hattie, but now he feels "no emotional attraction". He mentions this 3 times. On page 53 in describing Hattie, Lahaye writes "She was beautiful and sexy and smart, but only for her age." I'm not sure what to make of that statement. We know that Hattie's young, but her sexiness would be less appealing if she was older? What's Lahaye trying to say here? He does make a big deal about the age difference between her and Rayford.

While all this is going on, hotshot reporter Buck Williams is checking e-mail trying to get in touch with his boss in New York. He gets an e-mail from his boss talking about all kinds of crazy shit...this is where Lahaye interjects all the crazy paranoid conspiracy stuff, to include:

1) "A mysterious Jewish Nationalist conference that has something to do with a new world order government."
2) Conference of Orthodox Jews "giddy over the destruction of Russia"
3) "leaders of all the major religions , from the standard ones to the New Agers, talking about a one-world religious order"
4) UN international "monetarist confab" trying to decide if we should go to one world currency

If you follow conspiracy theory, these are all things that Alex Jones and others try to warn the American people about. After throwing out all the conspiracy, Lahaye gives us some foreshadowing of his anti-Christ...some charismatic Romanian named Carpathia. The name seems a bit over the top.

Check this site out...Kirk Cameron proves there's a God in under 3 minutes without the use of the Bible or faith. Unfuckingbelievable!

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