The Left Behind book series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins was the first of a powerful genre of Christian fiction that portrayed contemporary characters and events based upon Christian beliefs. The Arrival of the Prince by James Rutledge is the newest addition to the Christian fiction genre that explores a genetic link between God and humankind and the battles with Lucifer for the control of human genetics!
 
Based on dispensationalist interpretation of prophecies in the Biblical books of Revelation, Isaiah and Ezekiel, Left Behind tells the story of the end times, in which many have been "raptured," leaving the world shattered and chaotic. As people scramble for answers, a Romanian politician named Nicolae Jetty Carpathia rises to become secretary-general of the United Nations, promising to restore peace and stability to all nations. What most of the world does not realize is that Carpathia is actually the Antichrist foretold from the Bible. Coming to grips with the truth and becoming born-again Christians, Rayford Steele, his daughter Chloe, their pastor Bruce Barnes, and young journalist Cameron "Buck" Williams begin their quest as the Tribulation Force to help save the lost and prepare for the coming Tribulation, in which God will rain down judgment on the world for seven years.
 

Along with some other rapture fiction novels, the Left Behind series demonstrates a different understanding of the Gospel and the Christian life from that taught within the historic orthodoxy of evangelical Protestantism which denies the key eschatological beliefs underpinning the plotline[. The books have not sold particularly well outside of the United States. Dispensationalism remains a minority view among theologians. For instance, amillenial and postmillenial Christians do not believe in the same timeline of the Second Coming as premillennialists, while preterist Christians do not interpret the Book of Revelation to predict future events at all. Brian McLaren of the Emergent Church compares the Left Behind series to The Da Vinci Code, and states, "What the Left Behind novels do, the way they twist scripture toward a certain theological and political end, I think [Dan] Brown is twisting scripture, just to other political ends. But at the end of the day, the difference is I don't think Brown really cares that much about theology."  John Dart, writing in Christian Century characterized the works as "beam me up theology".[
 

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James Rutledge
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