rapture

Just a few months ago, I wrote about Hal Lindsey's 1980s: Countdown to Armageddon. Little did I know that an even sparklier gem was waiting for me in the Batavia Library's dusty shelves: Blood Moon, Lindsey's one and only work of fiction.

According to the back cover, "Hal Lindsey's Jeremy Armstrong is an all-American hero for the new millennium. Another literary triumph for America's own Jeremiah, Hal Lindsey. The best selling author of the decade has broken new ground with his first work of fiction. Hal Lindsey has done it again!" That isn't a list of quotes from reviewers, mind you -- it's publisher's the copy on the back of the jacket.

I'm going to be as gentle as I possibly can and say that those who read the back cover may be disappointed.

Much ink, physical and virtual (including on this site), has been spilt discussing, making light of, or just plain despairing over the modern American obsession with the "end times". An obsession American evangelical Christianity seems intent on infecting the rest of the world with.

Even if one discards the recent theology or paradigm of dispensationalism, it's still easy to get hung up on, well the end of all things.

Whether or not the issue is even applicable to Christians can boil down into another one of those interesting divides of what we believe versus what we say we believe. One of the most profound experiences for me of the past year is coming to grips with the implications of things I had supposedly professed all my life.

For those who don't sift through the storied history of apocalyptic fiction like Left Behind, the name Hal Lindsey might not mean much. He's an important guy, though -- in the 1970s, he wrote a relatively influential book entitled The Late Great Planet Earth that laid out his vision for a grim post-Christian future. It was a critical bridge between old-school rapture-watching movements like the Jehovah's Witnesses, and the post-hippie Jesus Movement that was starting to transition into broader American culture.

It probably comes as no shock that I collect Christian Kitsch Fiction. During the years I wrote my zine, I secured review copies of hundreds of books and chewed through them at an earnest, prodigious rate. While quite a few genres had their cliches (Historical Romances Featuring Heroines Of Faith! New Age Murder Mysteries! Teen Dramas About Almost Kissing!) there's no competition for King Of The Wacky. Rapture fiction -- apocalyptic novels that revolve around Biblical prophecy and literal interpretation of the book of Revelation -- will always reign supreme.

Most people have only heard of the wildly popular Left Behind and its many, many sequels. But there's more -- so much more -- waiting in the bargain bins and Half.com accounts of the world. The mid 90s were especially good to the genre, and dozens of variations on the theme were printed by the Christian publishing houses that dominated at the time. I, naturally, have piles of them.

Seal Of Gaia is pretty representative of the worst of the genre. The plot -- I use the word generously -- involves a freaky glowing New Age Messiah, a selfish television producer named Steve, a giant missile called the TR6, and more We Told You So predictions than you can shake a stick at.

And, adjectives. Oh, the adjectives.