NICOLAE is the third novel in the LEFT BEHIND series. Written by Jerry Jenkins with theological assistance provided by co-author Tim La Haye, the entire LEFT BEHIND series (NICOLAE included) tells of life after the Rapture, an event which involves the disappearance of what turn out to be millions of Christians of the Protestant fundamentalist persuasion.
Rayford Steele is still working for Nicolae Carpathia, the man who provides the title for the third volume in the LEFT BEHIND series, and the man who turns out to be the Antichrist. Steele is piloting Global Community One (Air Force One in earlier incarnations) at the beginning of NICOLAE, but is given a Condor 216 a while into NICOLAE. The Condor 216 - the number comes from Global Potentate Carpathia's office suite number in his New Babylon office complex - is a built-from-the-ground-up plane designed to be operated by someone certified to fly the 757, as Rayford Steele is. What Carpathia doesn't know is that this new Global Community One incarnation is equipped with a secret bug; everything said in the body of the fuselage is radioed without Carpathia's knowledge into Steele's specially-equipped earphones, and only Steele knows how to access the material provided by the bug.
Midway into the book, Steele discovers something Buck Williams found out in LEFT BEHIND - that Carpathia can tell the most blatant of lies and have those who heard the truth believe the lies. (Willams was an eyewitness to a double murder, committed by Carpathia himself, but all record of his presence at the scene of the crime was obliterated from the memory of other eyewitnesses by Carpathia, who spread the lie among those present that it was a murder-suicide. Steele hears something through the bugging device that is equally horrifying.)
Chloe Steele has married Buck Willams, who actually started courting her in LEFT BEHIND. The two spend much of NICOLAE apart, first because Buck is busy elsewhere, then because he is rescuing the fourth member of the Tribulation Force, Tsion Ben-Judah, a Messianic Jew who converted to belief in Jesus as the Messiah toward the end of TRIBULATION FORCE. (He is the person who succeeds the late Bruce Barnes as a Tribulation Force member, and who has to go into hiding due to his having been framed for the murder of his wife and stepchildren.)
A member of the church attended by Chloe's mother and Rayford's first wife (by now, he has remarried) has provided a safe house for the Tribulation Force. Loretta, introduced in LEFT BEHIND and virtually ignored in TRIBULATION FORCE, was one of two New Hope Village Church staffers left behind after the Rapture (the other being the late Bruce Barnes, whose memorial service is described in NICOLAE). Unfortunately, she is written out of the LEFT BEHIND series at the end of NICOLAE, although the safe house continues to stand.
NICOLAE covers the time period of the Tribulation during which Seal Judgments 2 through 6 - the Red Horse of War, the Black Horse of Famine and Plague (according to La Haye and Jenkins), and the Pale Horse of Death, the martyrdom of the saints comprising the fifth Seal Judgment, and the earthquake and blood-red moon comprising the sixth Seal Judgment and the Wrath of the Lamb.
I have recycled the title to my review of TRIBULATION FORCE advisedly, because I have a number of problems with the way in which these Seal Judgments are written. First of all, I can say the same thing about the Black Horse that I did about the White Horse of Peace in my review of TRIBULATION FORCE. If one reads Revelation well, one finds that the Black Horse is ridden by a horseman carrying a scale and quoting prices for barley and wheat. In other words, I found the description of the Black Horse of the Third Seal Judgment (one of the famed Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse)to be much more open-ended than that provided by La Haye and Jenkins. If I were writing NICOLAE, I would have perhaps included inflation and the Depression-era apple stands as modern versions of this Black Horse, reflecting my personal belief that the Black Horse of the Third Seal Judgment has something to do with economic disaster.
My point, however, is not what my personal interpretation of the Black Horse of the Third Seal Judgment might be. It is that one can hardly derive the idea of famine and plague - an interpretation properly left for the Pale Horse of the Fourth Seal Judgment, if one truly reads Revelation correctly - from an image of a horseman on a black horse which, if one is reading the text correctly, is apparently selling foodstuffs and trying to protect the oil and the wine he has. Revelation correctly attributes famine, plague and death to the Fourth (or Pale) Horse of Famine, Plague and Death, at least in certain translations. The Black Horse of the Third Seal Judgment can be interpreted in any number of ways; famine, plague and death are not among them. I repeat my criticism of TRIBULATION FORCE at this point: If Tim La Haye were "on the ball" as a theological adviser, this misinterpretation of the clear wording of Revelation would not have happened.
Death, being a natural consequence of war, is obviously assumed in NICOLAE. Graphic descriptions of death are, therefore, wisely left out. However, I would have appreciated a clearer linking of the death of war with the Pale Horse of the Fourth Seal Judgment. Similarly, I would have appreciated a clearer linking of famine and plague with both the Red Horse of the Second Seal Judgment and the Pale Horse of the Fourth Seal Judgment (medical help and food being in naturally short supply during a period of war). I would also have appreciated a clearer linking of Nicolae's philosophy of assisted suicide and abortion with the Pale Horse of the Fourth Seal Judgment.
At this point, I must digress and mention that philosophy. Nicolae Carpathia is a vocal advocate of assisted suicide (in which one euthanizes those deemed to have a low quality of life, often without their consent) and therapeutic abortion, especially of those fetuses deemed (through chorionic villi sampling, amniocentesis and other methods) to have a low quality of life if they were to come into this world. No matter what the potential reader of NICOLAE might think of this philosophy, the presentation of Nicolae Carpathia's views of euthanasia, assisted suicide and abortion would certainly be offensive to those who share his views. These people who currently share his views in real life are portrayed, implicitly, as being in league with the Devil, due to Nicolae Carpathia's eventual coming-out party as the Antichrist.
The co-authors' views on these subjects are further dramatized by the situation Hattie Durham, Rayford Steele's original senior flight attendant, finds herself in. She is pregnant with Carpathia's child, believing herself (erroneously, as it turns out) to be engaged to the Potentate himself, and (without her knowledge) about to be fired from her job as Carpathia's personal assistant, a job she managed to land in LEFT BEHIND. It turns out Carpathia has a - shall we say - fidelity problem, and Hattie and her unborn child/fetus are about to be left out in the cold. (Rayford Steele, due to his pre-Rapture professional connection with Hattie, is assigned by Carpathia to break this news to her.) La Haye and Jenkins are fond, as are many other conservatives, of referring to fetuses as unborn children. In my opinion, both ways of referring to what pregnant women are carrying are politically-loaded terms, and the simple act of saying "unborn child" or "baby" instead of "fetus" or "the products of conception" tells the reader all he or she needs to know about where La Haye and Jenkins stand on abortion. (For those of you unaware of such distinctions, those who are against the use of abortion under most circumstances will tend to say that a pregnant woman is carrying an unborn child, while those who would prefer to keep abortion legal tend to call what a pregnant woman is carrying either a fetus or the product of conception, especially if the pregnant woman is intending to have an abortion.)
Pontifex Maximus Peter, leader of the Enigma Babylon One World Faith, is back, presenting views (in the context of an interview with Buck Williams for one of Carpathia's house organs) consistent with those who oppose Christianity and Judaism as being too exclusive. Peter's former leadership position in the Roman Catholic Church (as the Pope, before he got tapped on the shoulder to be the head of Enigma Babylon One World Faith) is mentioned within the context of that interview, making it seem as if the Catholic Church, in real life, endorses views similar to those of the Enigma Babylon One World Faith. My instinctive response to this is, "Not as long as Cardinal Ratzinger is head of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - not in a million years!" I still feel Tim La Haye would have been better off advising Jerry Jenkins to use the Baha'i Faith as the quintessential One World Faith.
There are two relatively minor bloopers as well, in NICOLAE. Earl Halliday, the man who developed the Condor 216, is alive when he gives a tour of the 216 to Capt. Steele, but somehow just disappears and is referred to as being dead later on in the book, with no explanation (or no satisfactory explanation) for his disappearance. Amanda Steele, Rayford's second wife, is portrayed as having had Ray's son in TRIBULATION FORCE; however, there is no evidence of that son anywhere in NICOLAE, a disappearance which puzzled me. (You'd think continuity gaffes like these wouldn't be so noticeable.)
The best aspect of this book is also another fault, or could be considered to be one, in my opinion. La Haye and Jenkins are so intent on presenting the characters in depth that they really do manage to ignore the theological aspects of their story to a larger degree than is necessary. I would have appreciated maybe two or three hundred extra pages in both NICOLAE and TRIBULATION FORCE so that the characters are not ignored, but the theological aspects of the Tribulation are talked about in the detail they deserve. I feel that Jenkins and La Haye still could have achieved best-seller status if they had done so. It's hardly a crime to have values, but you look like a sellout if you ignore your values so you can hit the best-seller list.
I would recommend NICOLAE primarily for fans of the series. If you haven't read TRIBULATION FORCE or LEFT BEHIND, however, you might be a bit lost if you start with NICOLAE. You might also want to avoid the LEFT BEHIND series entirely if you have no intention of being converted to the religious philosophy of La Haye and Jenkins. (Please take a look at my review of LEFT BEHIND for the reason why I feel that way.)
Recommended:
No
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