Published over a twelve year period, the books have drawn praise from Evangelical Christian leaders, and brought the end-of-the-world prophecies in Revelation to the mainstream.
The Left Behind books take the events in the Book of Revelation and apply them to a contemporary setting, with the Anti-Christ being the U. N. Secretary-General.
The Devil’s Island (Thomas Nelson, 2001 ISBN: 0785267875) tries to explain the circumstances surrounding the revelation intertwined with the strife faced by a family who refuses to worship Caesar in ancient Rome. The book tries to explain the circumstances surrounding the creation of the Book of Revelation, while also having a separate Dumas-esque story of oppression, imprisonment, escape and redemption.
John Hagee?
The author of the book is John Hagee, a mega-church pastor known for his Left Behind like depictions of the apocalypse. He’s also known for endorsing John McCain for President and then McCain rejecting the endorsement two months later because a tape surfaced in which he said Hitler was an agent of God sent to drive the Jews back to Israel.
The book is rife with instances of things that could be read as bigoted in this symbol-rich culture of ours. The main character, Abraham, is a Jew who converted to Christianity (Jew for Jesus!) who owns his own merchant business which has made him one of the richest men in the Empire.
Characters are Manichean
Like the Left Behind books, the characters in The Devil's Island are props for a larger purpose. Hagee may be happily married, but the women in the book are not enduring. Abraham’s daughter Naomi is proud, vain selfish and not much else, while his other daughter Rebecca just sits around and cries for most of the book. The men, on the other hand have nuanced personalities and experience a much wider range of emotions. The women are also not put into situations that challenge their beliefs, unlike the men. Rather, they are given a personality and allowed to carry them out to extremes.
Hagee's John
Hagee’s John the Apostle, the author of Revelation, is a kind old man who writes Revelation like he’d dictating a letter, rather than writing an angry rant about how all will die a spectacular death.
There are also academic questions related to John that Hagee does not address, such as the debate over whether John of Revelation is the same John who wrote the Gospel of the same name. For the purposes of this novel, Hagee decides that they are the same.
General Audience vs. Christian Audience
But maybe the book was not written with ordinary readers in mind. The book was most likely written with the expectation that Christian readers like those who read the Left Behind series were meant to see it and not the average reader. Ulysees is not written for a beginning reader, and trade publications are not written for ordinary people.
Robert O'Connor - I am a professional amateur. Everything I do, I do it out of love, not money. I'm also flat broke.
