Left Behind: Soul Harvest Review–Part 1

Soul Harvest by Tim LaHaye & Jerry Jenkins, Tyndale House Publishers, ISBN 0-8423-2924-2, available practically anywhere Christian books are sold:

A plot summary is here.

The “Buck was struck” tally: twice, on pages 78 and 159.

On pages ix-x, I’m confused: Nicolae shows no compassion for his fellow human beings, dying in the earthquake described in the previous book, preferring instead to find a working phone, so Rayford grabs him and says, “You’ve just seen the wrath of the Lamb”?

Two problems: 1) What about saying, “All this death and destruction and all you care about is a working phone?!”  2) Nicolae is no worse here than the deity described (and phone-obsessed Buck, for that matter).

On p. 7, how is it “selfish” to pray that Chloe has not “preceded [Buck] into Heaven”?  Death is a tragedy brought by the Fall, not to be celebrated.  And until Buck’s death or the end of the Tribulation, he’d be without her, a lonely existence.

On p. 15, Rayford is baffled at callous Nicolae, who ignores the people suffering all around him.  Yet Rayford was the same way in Book 1, ignoring the death and destruction all around him at the airport as he rushed to get home.  On page 25, he finds a plane in which most of the people could still be alive–but his heart sinks when he sees it’s not his wife’s plane:

He was struck with such conflicting emotions that he could barely sort them out.  What kind of a cold, selfish person is so obsessed with the survival of his own wife that he would be disappointed that hundreds of people might have been saved on this plane?  He had to face the ugly truth about himself that he cared mostly for Amanda.

It’s about time he realized that!

On page 31, he digs in to help the people, ruining his clothes and realizing that “the shine of his shoes would never return.”  Somehow I think that would be the last thing on his mind.

On page 34, pilot Mac McCullum is musing over the blood-red moon.  I couldn’t help but wonder at his surprise, since red moons are not uncommon.  Is the moon actually scarlet instead of the usual red-orange?

As Mac muses about Nicolae, the Wrath of the Lamb and the various natural disasters and phenomena going on around him, Rayford thinks, Man, this guy is ripe.  Does Rayford look at Mac as some sort of convert fruit ready to be plucked, or has Mac not showered for a while?

On page 55, we get the first hint that Amanda is actually a double agent working for the Antichrist, not the Real True Christian love of Rayford.  I’m impressed by this plot twist, and hope it turns out to be true, because of the potential for a good subplot here and Rayford’s feelings of betrayal.

On page 66, Nicolae Carpathia says to Rayford,

Perhaps you can understand my own feeling of loss over the many lives this calamity has cost.  It was worldwide, every continent suffering severe damage.  The only region spared was Israel….Surely you do not lay at the feet of some Supreme Being an act so spiteful and capricious and deadly as this.

How very odd–Isn’t this precisely the response most people would have to the earthquake supposedly being the Wrath of the Lamb?  Wouldn’t most people recoil rather than running to become Christians?  “Please, sir, may I have another?”

To be continued….