Pros: Interesting fleshing out of Carpathia's character
Cons: Explanation for the 18-month gap doesn't mesh with Revelation
The Bottom Line: TRIBULATION FORCE has a number of problems. I am recommending that you read the book and see if you agree with me about those problems.
Kidnykid's Full Review: Tim Lahaye and Jerry B. Jenkins - Tribulation Forc...
TRIBULATION FORCE picks up where LEFT BEHIND left off. Nicolae Carpathia has managed to finagle his way into the office of Secretary-General of the UN, and he has hired Hattie Durham to be his personal assistant. It is entirely fair to say she has slept her way to the top. Rayford Steele is still on the payroll of Pan-Continental Airlines for most of the book, until about 3/4 of the way through TRIBULATION FORCE, at which time Carpathia manages to steal Air Force One right out from under the nose of the American government, claiming that it was a gift. Steele is hired to pilot the newly-renamed Global Community One.
Buck Williams, meanwhile, is handpicked by Carpathia to lead the Chicago Tribune, which Carpathia claims to have "bought" from the Wrigley family. This is the biggest blooper I spotted in TRIBULATION FORCE, named after the four people who got together at the end of LEFT BEHIND (they chose to call themselves the Tribulation Force). Anyone aware of Chicago journalistic history would know that the Trib was owned by the Medill family; the confusion might come from the Tribune's parent company having bought the Chicago Cubs from the Wrigley family (hence the eponymously-named Wrigley Field).
In addition to his duties on the weekly newspaper called Global Weekly, Williams is finding himself increasingly interested in a certain Chloe Steele, the daughter of Capt. Rayford Steele. Introduced in LEFT BEHIND, she has decided to drop out of Stanford (where she had been attending classes at the time of the Rapture), and has accepted a job doing research for the fourth member of the Tribulation Force, Bruce Barnes. Barnes inherited the job of pastor of New Hope Village Church, located in the Chicago suburbs, after the rest of the pastoral staff was lost in the Rapture. (Barnes' reason for being left behind is that he was actually faking it all these years - he talked a good game but didn't have true faith in Jesus, as he says.)
TRIBULATION FORCE also introduces us to the concept of the one-world religion. Carpathia is eager to start such an enterprise, and so has started talks with religious leaders such as Archbishop Peter Mathews of Cincinnati, apparently a leader in the ecumenical movement of the Antichrist. The parallels between Mathews and the late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin - who served in Cincinnati before he became the Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago - are so clear as to make it seem as if Tim La Haye and Jerry Jenkins have committed identity theft. Conservative Christians tended not to like Cardinal Bernardin's attempts at reconciling the various Christian denominations, largely because they feared losing their clearly-defined and, to them, very precious faith. I wish that La Haye and Jenkins hadn't developed a character so closely resembling Joseph Cardinal Bernardin; instead, it would have been more appropriate to have developed a potential one-world-faith leader who would have come from a fictional version of the Baha'i faith. (The Baha'i faith shares many of the one-world government ideals of the New Age movement, which is why it would make a fabulous role model for the one-world religion.) But then, it must be understood that many in the subculture inhabited by La Haye and Jenkins are so focused on being anti-Catholic that no other candidate for the leader of the one-world religion registers on their radar screen.
It is interesting to note that they refer to the leader of the one-world religion of Antichrist - which eventually turns out to be Peter Mathews, elected to the task in a fairly standard papal conclave the likes of which is familiar to virtually every Catholic reading this review - as Pontifex Maximus, a title inherited by the Pope when he moved to Rome. (It was originally a title held by what amounted to the chief priest of the Roman state religion, and held a position relative to his underlings very similar to that held by the current Pope. He was the leader of all the Roman state-religion priests.) I regarded this as yet another sly anti-Catholic dig. It is widely known that much of Catholicism is indeed borrowed from pagan religions, often because the powers that be wanted to convert native peoples, and they felt that borrowing their customs (including the names of their religious leaders, which seems to have occurred in the case of our Pope) would help this process along. But was it really appropriate to use an alternate title of the Catholic Pope, in the belief that they'd convert to fundamentalist Protestant ideas of Christianity solely because they "saw the light" of the pagan origins of some Catholic customs? I don't believe it was.
There is an eighteen-month gap built into TRIBULATION FORCE, toward the end of the book. By this point, Nicolae Carpathia has become the ruler of the known world, with a title similar to Global Potentate. He has moved the UN to Babylon - rebuilt from the ground up, using money Carpathia essentially stole from the estate of a banker he killed (and who Carpathia later claimed committed suicide) and renamed New Babylon - while simultaneously claiming that he inherited the wealth (and used some of that wealth to buy the silence of the man's legitimate heirs). Approximately one month after the Rapture, or a little longer (just when this occurs is not made clear in the text), Carpathia signs a treaty with Israel. This covenant signing marks the formal beginning of the Tribulation, in the opinion of co-author Tim La Haye, and the first Seal Judgment occurs at this time.
According to the co-authors, this eighteen-month gap actually represents the first Seal Judgment, an eighteen-month period of peace represented by the First Horseman of the Apocalypse, the white horse listed in Revelation. In their opinions, the Four Horsemen are the Horse of Peace (white), the Horse of War (red), the Horse of Famine and Plagues (black) and the Horse of Death ("pale" - Revelation does not specify anywhere just what color "pale" is supposed to be a shade of, so La Haye and Jenkins don't specify one either).
I have a problem with their analysis. I took the time to read the relevant section of Revelation, and the picture painted of the White Horse of the Apocalypse is different from the one painted by La Haye and Jenkins. Revelation, chapter 6, actually portrays the man riding the white Horse of the Apocalypse as being interested in conquering (or victory, depending on the translation one chooses to read). Although it is theoretically possible for the Antichrist to conquer any number of jurisdictions peaceably, the whole tone of the chapter in Revelation whence this Horseman hails is that this Horseman is bent on conquering and being victorious, and that might also mean war or whatever it takes to conquer whatever the Antichrist wants. This is an extremely serious blooper - La Haye, the co-author who provides the theological background for Jenkins to flesh out in detail, ought to have studied this passage in more detail. If I, a mere part-time writer, can spot this solely by reading Revelation for myself, what was La Haye thinking when he provided Jenkins with the background on this passage?
I will grant that it is extremely difficult to write good fiction about a peaceful time in human history (or the future of humankind, as is the case here). In fact, I understand that once they finish the LEFT BEHIND series, Jenkins and La Haye will likely skip the 1,000-year period when Jesus is supposed to reign supreme over the Earth, in the belief that there will be no fiction-worthy conflict appearing during that time. It may be great to live in times like that, but it makes for boring fiction - no antagonist for the protagonists to react to and interact with. Therefore, if they really feel - erroneously, in my opinion - that the First Horseman of the Apocalypse is the Horse of Peace, they have every right to skip to the end of the eighteen-month period of peace the Horseman initiated at the signing of Carpathia's covenant with Israel.
The problem is exactly as I have stated it is - they got the First Horse of the Apocalypse wrong, big time. Anyone reading this review can verify this for him- or herself, simply by reading whatever translation of Revelation, chapter 6, is handy to the reader of this review. Once you have done that, compare that passage to the actual writing of Jenkins and La Haye and see how different the events they portray are from those implicitly ushered in by the First Horse of the Apocalypse.
In conclusion, TRIBULATION FORCE is a book which fails on several counts to accomplish its mission. In addition to the factual error of misstating the ownership of the Chicago Tribune, there is the more serious problem of the incongruity between La Haye's and Jenkins' portrayal of the First Horse of the Apocalypse and the way this Horse and its Horseman are portrayed in Revelation, chapter 6. The only reason I am recommending this book is so that you might compare the two portrayals for yourself and make your own judgments. I feel you will come to the same conclusions I have, if you read the relevant portions of Revelation properly.
Gods people have vanished from Earth, and antichrist Nicolai Carpathia sits on the throne of power. The six seals prophesied in Revelation are being f...More at Christianbook.com
Tribulation Force is the second installment of the mega-selling Left Behind series. Comprised of the new believers who came to salvation after the dis...More at Barnes & Noble.com
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