Soul Harvest: The World Takes Sides (Left Behind #4)

This book picks up where the last one left off. There is a massive, worldwide earthquake that leaves untold tens of thousands dead. This should lead to an exciting book, but after the earthquake that takes up about part of the last chapter of the previous book and the first chapter of this book nothing really happens.

Most of the book is spent with the two main characters jumping back and forth as seen in the previous books looking for their respective wives. The book tries to include some excitement, particularly with the Buck Williams character breaking his wife out of her hospital and then breaking the Hattie Durham character out of a family planning clinic, but those moments are few and far between. Other than that, the book primarily consists of people talking about where they should go or what they should do and how much they hate the Nicolae Carpathia character.

Other than that the book, as the three previous ones, pushes ham fisted statements of the evangelical Christian worldview. There is lots of talk of abortion with Hattie still considering whether she will go through with it (Since the book series begins with all children being raptured to spare them the horrors of the tribulation, it seems unconscionable that the God of these books would enable people to get pregnant at all during this period).

The book continues the time honored tradition of blatant sexism exhibited in the three previous books. The female characters are still given nothing to do except sit and wait to be rescued by the male characters and provide moral support. It goes even further with the Chloe character telling Buck that she is his wife and it is her duty to obey him. The book makes no attempt to mask the authors’ perception of women and their place in the world.

The book also enters a new area of the authors’ thinking that even I was not expecting: bald faced racism and Islamophobia. The Islamophobia does not surprise me, as the book is written by evangelical Christians who view Muslims as, at best, funny tubes who do not know the truth, and, at worst, backwards and violent savages. The book introduces a character simply called “Albie” and he is called that because a character named Mac knows him as “Al B…” and he cannot pronounce his name after that. The book then describes him with some of the least flattering descriptions a book could use for a character, and is not shy to specifically make note of Albie’s nose.

Following this the book describes the Rayford character feeling nauseated by walking through a busy marketplace in Basra. Giving lots of negative descriptions of the smells that permeate the place. The book choose to not make mention of this being an effect of the earthquake. The Rayford character then gets food from a vendor in the marketplace and describes the food as causing him absolute revulsion, but he eats it purely because of how hungry he is. This whole scene spells out in explicit detail how the authors feel about Arabs and Muslim culture. They view them as disgusting savages who live in filth and eat revolting food.

The book also makes mention of Albie being “turbaned.” This is important to show just how little the authors know about Arab culture and Arab fashion conventions. It is doubtful they cared to even bother learning about it as well.

Another element of note, though not for being engaging or exciting. Is a series of scenes where Rayford complains about the titles that the villainous characters have adopted for themselves. It comes off as extremely pedantic and petty. This exhibits the authors’ worldview more than anything so far. The problem they had was not that members of a governmental organization adopt certain titles and ways they wished to be addressed. The authors, seen through their scenes with Taino Ben-Judah and Bruce Barnes, clearly believe in hierarchies. They simply hold highest esteem for the Christian church and believe that only members of clergy should hold positions of esteem and respect in society.

All in all, this book was a slog. When it wasn’t expressing bigoted and hateful sentiments borne from fundamentalist and nationalist ideology, it was being extremely boring. Its characters are one dimensional caricatures meant solely to be mouth pieces of the propagandistic message the authors wished to put forward. They wanted to fill an entire book until they could get to the next big event they say the Bible predicts during end times. This meant lots of unnecessary filler.

Great read.

great series looking for whole series on cd

Extremely good bood

I have read this book before. I enjoyed rereading it.

Each book in this series is incredible.

Great

Received in good condition. Really loved the book and plan on reading again and again. Thank you for your as always great service.

Please review my reviews in all these series of the Bible.
God Bless.

Well written and interesting but questionable.