Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth's Last Days (Left Behind No. 1) (Paperback)

~ (Author), (Author) "Rayford Steele's mind was on a woman he had never touched..." (more)
Key Phrases: senior flight attendant, New York, Hattie Durham, Nicolae Carpathia (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Piloting his 747, Rayford Steele is musing about his wife Irene's irritating religiosity and contemplating the charms of his "drop-dead gorgeous" flight attendant, Hattie. First Irene was into Amway, then Tupperware, and now it's the Rapture of the Saints--the scary last story in the Bible in which Christians are swept to heaven and unbelievers are left behind to endure the Antichrist's Tribulation. Steele believes he'll put the plane on autopilot and go visit Hattie. But Hattie's in a panic: some of the passengers have disappeared! The Rapture has happened, abruptly driverless cars are crashing all over, and the slick, sinister Romanian Nicolae Carpathia plans to use the UN to establish one world government and religion. Resembling "a young Robert Redford" and silver-tongued in nine languages, Carpathia is named People's "Sexiest Man Alive." (This reviewer, a former People writer, finds this plot twist plausible.) Meanwhile, Steele teams up with Buck Williams, a buck-the-system newshound, to form the Tribulation Force, an underground of left-behind penitents battling the Antichrist.

Ex-presidential candidate Pat Robertson briefly outsold Michael Crichton with his apocalypse novel The End of the Age (now available on audiocassette), and the similar The Third Millennium sells well, but the Left Behind series is the absolute champion in the race to make the Book of Revelation into racy thriller reading. --Tim Appelo

From Library Journal

On a flight from Chicago to London, several passengers aboard Capt. Rayford Steele's plane suddenly and mysteriously disappear. When Steele radios to London to report the situation, he discovers that the incident on his plane is not an isolated phenomenon but a worldwide occurrence. As Steele begins his search for answers, he learns that the Christ has come to take the faithful with Him in preparation for the coming apocalyptic battle between good and evil and that those who have been left behind must face seven dark and chaotic years in which they must decide to join the forces of Christ or the forces of Anti-Christ. Jenkins, writer-in-residence at Moody Press, and LaHaye (A Nation Without a Conscience, Tyndale, 1994) have written a gripping thriller that captures the anxiety and fear that interpretations of Revelation often inspire. For most libraries.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.; 1 edition (January 29, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0842329129
• ISBN-13: 978-0842329125
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2,221 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #4,881 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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  #2 in	Books > Religion & Spirituality > Authors, A-Z > ( L ) > Lahaye, Tim
  #2 in	Books > Religion & Spirituality > Authors, A-Z > ( J ) > Lahaye, Tim & Jenkins, Jerry B.
  #3 in	Books > Religion & Spirituality > Authors, A-Z > ( J ) > Jenkins, Jerry

• This is item 1 in The Left Behind Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

357 of 377 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great series, July 29, 2009

By	M. Jarret "scfimtj" (Philadelphia, PA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is a review of the entire series, not an individual book.

Here's a detailed review of the series.

WARNING: SPOILERS
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Essentially this series is about world domination. An advanced alien civilization is trying to enslave the human race with minimal physical effort over a long period of time (2000+ years or so.) They appear to humanity and demonstrate acts of "magic" which is obviously technology advanced enough to seem like magic to undeveloped civilizations. They tell the humans that they're going to take away a portion of humanity to signal their return after an undetermined period of time, at which time they would rule the world. They also go in to detail about some other events to signal their return, such as temporarily distorting the sun's visible light spectrum. They then disappear, but not before they put some sort of genetic marker on a portion of the human population. Humanity progresses with some societies passing down stories of the amazing magical being. Fast forward to present day and the aliens return to abduct the descendents of the humans that received the genetic marker, now numbering in the millions, thereby fulfilling the "prophecy."

This is where the science loses me a bit. The marked humans disappear completely, leaving clothes & jewelry behind. I'm assuming this is some sort of teleportation system that locks on using the genetic marker, but I'm not entirely sure because the authors didn't go in to detail. Regardless, the humans are transported to a storage facility (another planet or dimension?) and held for use later in the series.

The disappearance sparks a world-wide civil war, pitting those that believe the aliens are some sort of deity against those that don't. Many of the alien prophecies come true, the Sun's light disappearing, etc., which makes sense since they planned it all along.

Nuclear civil war destroys the infrastructure of the world, much like why Skynet planned in the Terminator franchise. At the end the aliens finally reappear and bring back the millions they've had in stasis. They use some sort of neutron bomb/weapon to obliterate one side of the civil war--I can't remember which. The surviving side now worships the aliens as deities and they assume complete control over the Earth.

I hope there's a few more books planned describing the after effects of this enslavement. What do the aliens want? Breeding ground, resources, slave species?

312 of 340 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Good "End-Times" Book for Christians, February 5, 2001

By	"zakvta" (home reading.) - See all my reviews

The idea of the book is great, though done before. The way this book is written though, basically, chronicals the events that take place in the "end-times" as described in the Bible.

The book revolves around some central characters. They all are involved with the church in one way or another. Eventually you see most of them "converted" into Christians. As they are they feel that their "mission" is to convert others. There also is some romantic "tension" thrown into the mix. The characters aren't all developed too well but I still felt a connection with them.

I enjoyed this book and think that many others will too. Although this book, I feel, was written mainly for Christians. There is no subtlety in the message. Everything is taken almost verbatim from the Bible. It doesn't give you a lot of "food for thought". For that I recommend James BeauSeigneur's "The Christ Clone Trilogy". "Left Behind" is pretty straight forward and a great beginning to the series. Highly recommended for Christians.

152 of 163 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Made-for-Television Apocalypse, December 5, 2000

By	J. Creamer (Perpignan France) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I tend to side with those reviewers who found the book rather light. With the exception of Rayford Steele, most of the characterizations lack depth and consistency. The authors occasionally drop off into mini-sermons that clash otherwise with the flow of the story. And as the events of Revelation unfold, the good and bad become too transparent, too black and white, and too obvious. As suggested by another reader, I read the first of the Christ Clone Trilogy and was much more impressed. In the end, Left Behind comes across as the basis for a television miniseries than a fully fleshed novel. I'm not as harsh as some critics, so I give it three stars for being readable, not too preachy, and interesting in its way.