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Recap / Left Behind Book 1: Left Behind

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It was on a midnight flight from Chicago to London where Pan-Con airline pilot Rayford Steele and Global Weekly news reporter Buck Williams witness people disappearing from the plane, leaving their clothes behind. Soon they find out that the phenomenon is global, that various people everywhere have disappeared from their clothes, to be taken...somewhere. As people panic and scramble to find answers, Rayford discovers that his wife and his son were also among those who were taken. A video message given to him by the New Hope Village Church's acting pastor Bruce Barnes reveals that this event is the Rapture, as foretold in the Scriptures, and that this is preceding the appearance of the Antichrist, who will usher in the seven-year period called the Tribulation, after which Jesus will return to the earth to set up His Father's Kingdom. Realizing that time is short and that his eternal destiny is at stake, Rayford prays to God for salvation and eventually gets his daughter Chloe to believe the message and be saved. Meanwhile, the person that would become the Antichrist, Romanian president Nicolae Carpathia, makes his first appearance at the United Nations, where he wins over the entire security council and the world in his takeover of the organization to become the world's ruler.

This story provides examples of:

  • Alien Invasion: One of the theories mentioned by one of the characters about the disappearances that took place in the Rapture.
  • And Knowing Is Half the Battle: At the end, Buck confirms to Bruce, Rayford, and Chloe that Nicolae Carpathia is in fact the Antichrist foretold.
  • Artistic License – Biology: The woman whose stomach deflates when her unborn child has been raptured from the womb. In real-life, such a loss wouldn't necessarily cause a stomach to deflate, as it takes time for it to deflate after the delivery of a natural pregnancy.
  • Bad Boss: The climax of this book centers around Nicolae shooting two of his financiers and then brainwashing everyone in the room into forgetting what they just saw. Sure, they were loose ends that needed clearing up; Stonegal was trying to use him as a meal ticket and puppet, Todd-Cothran was behind the conspiracy trying to kill Buck behind Carpathia's back, and Carpathia altered their wills so that he'd get all their money. But there was other ways he could do that. He's a sadist.
  • Brainwashing: Nicolae Carpathia does this to the people present at the appointment of his new Global Community security council after his murder of both Jonathan Stonagal and Joshua Todd-Cothran, telling them that they have just witnessed a murder-suicide. The only one not affected by this was Buck Williams, who was protected by God, though in the process the people's memories were rewritten so that they don't remember Buck actually being there at the meeting.
  • Caught Up in the Rapture: The event which kicks off the whole plot.
  • Children Are Innocent: Young children get an automatic ticket to heaven in the Rapture, answering, in universe, the Real Life question of whether children are innocent.
  • Conspiracy Theorist: Buck's friend Dirk Burton, who was killed during the events of the story.
  • Driven to Suicide: A few examples of this take place in this book, but notably Rayford Steele's co-pilot Christopher Smith, who killed himself after finding out his children have disappeared and his wife was killed.
  • Empty Piles of Clothing: What the people caught up in the Rapture leave behind, along with glasses, hearing aids, and any prosthetics.
  • Et Tu, Brute?: Jonathan Stonagal, The Chess Master behind the creation of Nicolae Carpathia, gets this from his own creation when he and Joshua Todd-Cothran were simultaneously murdered by Carpathia during the appointment of the ten regional subpotentates.
  • Evil Is Not a Toy: Gee, Stonegal. You'd think that trying to create the Antichrist was a bad idea or something. Downplayed in that he probably didn't realise that he was being manipulated by the devil, but was approaching the genetic and political experiment from a more secular perspective.
  • External Combustion: Alan Tompkins was killed by a bomb planted inside his car, and Buck Williams is framed for it.
  • Frame-Up: Buck Williams is framed for the murder of his associate Alan Tompkins, who was killed by a car bomb. Nicolae Carpathia helps clear Buck's name from the incident by ultimately having the architect of the crime Joshua Todd-Cothran murdered along with Jonathan Stonagal.
  • He Knows Too Much: At the climax of the book, Nicolae executes his two co-conspirators right in front of a UN meeting, with Buck present. He then brainwashes everyone to imagine that it was a murder-suicide by one of them, and that Buck was never there. This should send up alarms in the heads of normal men, as the last reporter to cross Nicolae only took the ferry halfway to Staten Island.
  • Hide Your Children: Every child under 12 or so vanishes in The Rapture. In a better-written book, even if nothing else happened, the trauma from this alone would probably cause the collapse of every government on Earth. This also extends to children in the womb.
  • Inconvenient Summons: The Rapture itself (which also takes place in The Rapture) could be considered this, as Christians are pulled out of whatever they were doing at that moment to be with the Lord, and in certain cases inadvertently putting other people into danger.
  • I Need a Freaking Drink: Rayford Steele indulges in some alcohol to help him deal with the loss of his wife Irene and his son Raymie when they were Caught Up in the Rapture.
  • Laser-Guided Amnesia: Due to God protecting Buck Williams from being brainwashed by Carpathia, the memories of those who have attended the secret United Nations security council meeting were rewritten so that they have no memory of Buck ever attending the meeting in the first place. This unfortunately gets Buck demoted to a desk job as a Global Weekly reporter at the Chicago office since nobody has a record of Buck's attendance of the meeting, but it all works out as Buck is united with Rayford, Chloe, and Bruce to form the nucleus of the Tribulation Force.
  • Laser-Guided Karma: An example occurs in this book, when Rayford refuses to ride on a bus the airline sent to pick up the pilots from the plane to the terminal, because he couldn't accept such a favor while his passengers have to walk maybe a mile at most. Rayford's co-pilot does accept and very slightly mocks Rayford for refusing. He dies so soon afterwards, Rayford has barely had the time to accept, without question or hesitation, two other privileges the airline gives to pilots: Avoiding the line for the pay-phones, when everyone wants to call their families to see if they didn't vanish, and a helicopter ride home to avoid the total gridlock on the roads that the book describes to such detail.
  • Murder-Suicide: What Jonathan Stonagal's and Joshua Todd-Cothran's murders by Carpathia were made out to be through Nicolae Carpathia's brainwashing the participants of the United Nations meeting, except for Buck Williams being protected by God. Chaim Rosenzweig later learns the truth when he becomes a believer.
  • Never Got to Say Goodbye: How Rayford feels about Irene after the Rapture.
  • No One Gets Left Behind: Averted, painfully.
  • The Nudifier: Hinted at in the book when people are removed from their clothes during the Rapture.
  • New Powers as the Plot Demands: In the book, Buck manages to escape Carpathia's hypnosis at the UN by praying to God, who also conveniently rewrites Carpathia's memory to erase any instance of Buck not behaving exactly as intended.
  • Offscreen Villainy: Jonathan Stonegal is not a random financier, but was working with Viv Ivins to get Carpathia created in the first place. He provided the technology to create the child and the money and influence to get him started in his political career, with the intention that he can control Carpathia once he'd taken over the world. But you'd only get that from reading the prequels. Todd-Cothran, the other financier killed by Carpathia, was the one behind the conspiracy that was trying to silence Buck, but that isn't really made clear either.
  • Raptured At The Wedding: The Rapture takes place at the same time that a couple is getting married, and the groom (who is a Christian) is the one who gets taken up, leaving the bride without her husband. Technically he's only Ascended To A Higher Plane Of Existence, but imagine how crushed she would feel to see her husband mysteriously vanish leaving only his tuxedo behind, not to mention confused if she didn't know there was such a thing as the Rapture.
  • Robbing the Dead: Some opportunists have been doing this to the graves of those who have been resurrected in the Rapture.
  • Straw Feminist: Chloe in this book:
    RAYFORD: ...I want to see when Hattie can join us for dinner. That's all right with you, isn't it?"
    CHLOE: As long as you don't expect me to cook or something sexist and domestic like that."
  • Super-Senses: Being Born Again gives Buck a kind of Truth-O-Vision at the end of the book; he, and he alone, can see through the Antichrist's veil of deceit with the shooting incident at the United Nations, and knows what really happened.
  • Worst News Judgment Ever:
    • Every child on the planet has just disappeared, along with a great many Christians. The planet is plagued by horrific plane crashes and car accidents as a result. What stories do Global Weekly consider the most important to cover? A convention of Jews in New York, and a recent recall election in Romania. This stuff wouldn't be front page material on a slow news day.
    • "Ladies and gentlemen, we have an urgent news bulletin! A minor reporter from the midwest who you have never heard of and who nobody but his 3 friends really care about, is feared dead following a "mysterious car bombing"! In other news, all children in the entire world vanished last night, experts say it was likely the result of "excess electromagnetism" or some shit, so in other words we have no idea and it could happen again to all of us at any second. In sports news..."
  • Video Will: The message left behind by New Hope Village Church's previous pastor Vernon Billings, which outlines the whole situation and calls for the person watching to receive salvation before it's too late. (In the original printing, this was done through video cassette tape; in the updated rerelease, it was done through a DVD.)
  • Villain with Good Publicity: Nicolae Carpathia, beginning with this story.
  • You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: If taking the prequel stories into account, Nicolae Carpathia does this to Jonathan Stonagal as well as Joshua Todd-Cothran to remove them from the equation of who's taking over the world, since Stonagal according to the prequels is responsible for Carpathia's birth and upbringing.

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