Last week, I did not write about Glorious Appearing, which makes me feel the task all the more necessary, if unfortunate.  Firstly, the overall structure of the book must be noted: I felt like I had whiplash from the constantly changing storylines, one moment with this person, next page with another, then a third introduced, then full circle and back to the first character.  It would not be so bad if the characters did not have the most contrived names a human mind could think, nor if these names were not mentioned ad nauseum—every chapter division, it seems, it littered in names, weakening what little structural integrity the novel had by making it feel as though one long character list, with brief interludes of death, sermonizing, and destruction.

Not only is the writing amateurish at best, but the core message, of course, is rather obscene.  In reading the novel, I assume, possibly in a misguided way, but I believe accurately, that the novel is speaking mostly of the division of believers and nonbelievers in the here and now, Rapture excluded.  The book may center on a time when the Antichrist has already come to power, and the motions of Apocalypse have been set into play, yet in my reading, each page felt more and more an indictment of the present day, and of those in opposition to believers in evangelical or fundamentalist belief, than a guide to a world to come, or a means of getting there.

Perhaps the passage which best illustrates this characterization of peoples and obsession with believers and non-believers as diametrically opposed comes on pages 178-9, as Leah ponders the condition of those afflicted with ailments because they were “spiritually undecided” which she believes to be a “lesson for all” (this calls to my mind such “ailments” as HIV, but perhaps I’m taking an overly cynical reading in assuming this is what LaHaye and Jenkins are evoking).  Leah ponders how it could be that people could see the mighty works of god and evil doings of the devil and still not believe.  Then she thinks, well, maybe they’re insane, but, hmm, no they are “self-possessed, narcissistic, vain, proud. In a word, evil.  They saw the acts of God and turned their backs on Him, choosing the pleasures of sin over eternity with Christ,” (178).

It is hard, in that passage, to not find a reading on the present day, and that reading is one in which nonbelievers do not only oppose those who believe, but are fundamentally evil in their character, having rejected god’s ample warning.  And this supposed merciful god, which Leah conjures up in the next paragraph, has run out of patience, and though he really is so merciful and gives lots of warnings, the hour has come to blast them all to hell—presumably mercifully.  Perhaps this passage illustrates best my contention with fundamentalist Christianity, and also the reason I doubt that people adhering to these beliefs could ever be effective political (small ‘p’, as in politics writ large) partners: theirs is a worldview in which anyone not like them has been warned to be like them, and so must be fundamentally evil, and furthermore, they believe that a merciful being, a merciful deity, can mass-execute his creation, in an act of mercy (emphasis mercy, after all).  These beliefs, of course, are pre-reqs for Apocalyptic belief, and they certainly surface quite often in our overall national discourse.