In Friday’s installment of his ongoing examination of Left Behind: The Movie, Fred Clark points out some gaps in the movie-Antichrist’s plan, where it departs from the loopy prophetic cosmology of the Left Behind books. He then notes how they could’ve done better:
If Team Nicolae had really done their homework, they’d have consulted with groups like the Canaan Land Restoration of Israel, Inc., to make sure they had all their ducks in a row before trying to launch their apocalypse. The frustrating thing for Nicolae at this point has to be that it’s already too late for him to get in touch with these folks. Once all the real Bible prophecy experts have been raptured he’s stuck relying on people like Stonagal and, as the glaring omission of a red cow demonstrates, such people just aren’t reliable.
What Nicky really should have done was to conscript people like Bruce Barnes or, for that matter, Gershom Gorenberg — people who have some expertise in the details of PMD prophecy check lists but who, for one reason or another, wound up among those left behind. That might’ve made for an interesting story, too, a complicated game of mental chess in which these imprisoned experts in their library dungeon tried to sabotage the Antichrist’s plans by giving him oracular misinformation. “The prophecies are very clear,” Bruce could say to Nicolae. “You must start a land war in Asia and invade Magog this winter.”
Actually, I think it might be even more interesting to have them consulting with PMD prophecy experts who weren’t “left behind.” They could leave a series of instructional DVD’s, or set up a web site that would periodically serve up videos letting the Antichrist know what to do at critical junctures. Sort of like the “Seldon crisis” videos in Foundation.
After all, these “prophecy experts” have supposedly used their magic decoder rings to discover exactly what will happen, according to the Bible. And the temporary success of the Antichrist is as essential for the ultimate victory of God as the temporary success of the messianic Jews that PMD organizations cynically back in hopes that they’ll rebuild the Temple.
So, really, giving the Antichrist prophetic guidelines would be doing God’s work. You wouldn’t want him to forget a critical detail like a red cow, and derail the whole apocalypse.
Somebody could probably make a decent book out of this, or at least an amusing novella.