Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #78001 in Books
• Published on: 1998-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Synopsis
After millions of people around the world vanish in one moment, in what many claim to be the Rapture, Rayford Steele begins a search for the truth amidst global chaos.

Customer Reviews

Poorly written and bad theology
This book was a terrible read. I have enjoyed Tim LaHaye's non fiction works, so I feel I gave these books a fair go, but the characters seemed quite one dimensional to me, the plot pondering and long and the whole thing based on some very bad theology.

I do not entirely understand the fixation many American Christians have with the secret rapture. It seems that the doctrine was invented in the 19th century among a group known as the Irvingites, who disintegrated following the failure of their prophecies to come to pass, but one of whose leaders had influence in another group that then proceeded to produce the Darby study bible that became very widely used in the US. Because of the ubiquity of this Bible, the notes in it became widely assimilated as a dsitinctive American orthodoxy, and one of these doctrines was that of the secret rapture, that this book uses as its theme.

That being the case, no one should read the book with any idea that its events would actually unfold as described. Read it as a work of fiction.

But with this in mind, I read the book as a work of fiction and still I hated it. Perhaps I am too close to the errant orthodoxy that informs the storyline, because it then held no surprises for me - and the quality of writing did not save it.

My best recommendation is to non American readers - read this to get into the mind set of one popular strand of American Christianity.

Just awful
I must admit first that I have read almost but not all of this book. I just couldn't bear to finish it. I read small parts of some others in the series.

If you would like a badly-written book/series in which Christianity is mixed with loony US beliefs about raptures and american exceptionalism, with a good dose of neocon "Killing is good. Killing works" added, fine. Personally I think it would have been more use published in roll form.

Great idea. Great exploitation.
I picked up this book when it first came out in the UK in 2000. The premise was exciting and promised a lot. However after skipping merrily through the pages I realised it was basically a lot of vacuous nonsense. The standard of literature was poor and sometimes the prose simply made me cringe.

The fact this has sold millions in the US is no surprise. This is just another crude bit of exploitation of evangelical America by a few individuals who can write rubbish and make alot of money out of it. Was I tempted to buy anymore of their books (I would have been parted with the best part of a 100 pounds if I'd bought the rest of series)? Surpringly, no.