Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Progressive Christian
LBCF: The missing children

LBCF: The missing children

Last updated on: March 6, 2026 at 7:00 am by Fred Clark

0 Comments

LBCF: The missing children 2026-03-05T15:58:19-05:00 Fred Clark

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

(A Left Behind series re-run originally posted in March, 2007.)

Left Behind, pp. 255-256

In describing his “electromagnetism” theory* for the mass disappearances, Nicolae Carpathia said:

… certain people’s levels of electricity made them more likely to be affected. That would account for all the children and babies and even fetal material that vanished.

Give the Antichrist credit for this: he is the first person in the book — 255 pages in — to make any attempt to “account for” all these missing children and babies and fetuses. His theory may be flimsy, but at least — unlike the roomful of assembled journalists — he has the sense to realize that the world’s newfound childlessness is worth remarking on.

As the first political leader to address this, Carpathia could gain the attention and support of the hundreds of millions of traumatized and grieving parents, but that’s not why the authors have him say this. His mention of the missing children, after all, is little more than an aside, and it is included here only so that Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins can make a political point they know will appeal to their target audience. Carpathia doesn’t just make the signal distinction between “babies” and fetuses — he callously refers to the latter only as “fetal material.” This is, for Left Behind’s intended audience, the equivalent of cackling fiendishly while fingering the tips of his waxed mustache.

We read earlier about this aspect of the disappearances — every pregnant woman in the world instantaneously became unpregnant. This worldwide spontaneous abortion is an act of God, but it’s presented here as an argument that abortion is evil. (We’ll see much more of this in the next chapter, as Hattie describes how the Divine Abortionist has put the earthly competition out of business, so more on that later.)

After Nicolae’s speech, we are told:

Broadcast commentators urged that he be named an adjunct adviser to the U.N. secretary-general and that he visit each headquarters of the various U.N. agencies around the world.

One of those agencies, of course, is UNICEF — the United Nations Children’s Fund. L&J don’t mention this, or speculate on what that agency might be up to in this new world without children. It just doesn’t seem to occur to them.

If it seems I’m being picky here, singling out their neglect of UNICEF, note that they also never explore what’s going on with parents, grandparents, schools, day-care centers, nurseries, orphanages, toy stores, or Nickelodeon. Even New Hope Village Church hasn’t given any thought to what it means to have church without Sunday school. The only thought the authors give to the ramifications of this sudden childlessness is to note that abortion clinics would be out of work.

This is a very strange way of thinking about children and the meaning and value of children. Their disappearance — their presence, absence or existence — only seems to matter in this book insofar as it involves some political point. Thus we go for chapters at a stretch in which it seems that the authors have forgotten this earth-shattering aspect of their premise, and then suddenly they mention it again, in passing, as part of some political aside.

Many of the errors and contradictions in Left Behind are likely due to simple shoddy craftsmanship. Jerry Jenkins has said that he only spent about a month typing this book, and he just doesn’t seem to care much about taking much care. But I think the strange forgetfulness about their childless world stems from something else. I think it has to do with the difficulty of simultaneously believing and not believing the same thing, with the herky-jerky mental repulsion and attraction of cognitive dissonance.

Fast forward to the end — all the way to the end, to the 13th book in the series, Kingdom Come. They’ve posted an excerpt from the beginning of this book at LeftBehind.com.

I would warn against “spoilers” here, except that if you’re intent on reading this entire series of books, there’s little anyone could do to further spoil that experience.** In the interest of preserving whatever suspense there might be, though, I’ll just point out that Kingdom Come is set in the earthly paradise of a literal millennial kingdom, and that just because a given character appears in this book doesn’t tell you whether or not they might have died before then.

In the preview excerpt posted by the authors, Chaim Rosenzweig says “half a billion or more” disappeared at the Rapture. LaHaye and Jenkins present this as an accurate accounting, part of Chaim’s the-story-so-far exposition at the beginning of Book 13 in which he presents the authors’ point of view.

That “half a billion” represents the Real True Christians, the truly elect of the elect, which L&J apparently believe comprises at most a fourth of the roughly 2 billion nominal Christians worldwide. Roman Catholics and mainline Protestants are probably not a part of this remnant of a remnant, and the Eastern Orthodox and the Coptic faithful don’t have a prayer.

But as Carpathia pointed out, the Rapture also included “children and babies and even fetal material.” At the time the first book was written, there were roughly 1.2 billion children age 9 or younger in the world. Even if we set the age of accountability much lower — age 4 or younger — that’s still more than 600 million kids. Add to that the 100 million or so who were raptured in utero*** and it’s clear that L&J’s “half a billion” estimate is way too low, even before we count a single RTC adult.

They haven’t entirely forgotten about those 1.2 billion+ children. In the literal kingdom, Rayford Steele even meets his raptured-and-now-returned son, Rayford Jr. Like all the heavenly children, post-Rapture Raymie is “suddenly full grown.”

So the raptured children return, along with all the raptured adults, but still the authors through Rosenzweig tell us that they total only “half a billion” or so. This could, again, just be a matter of carelessness — the authors may simply not know or care to know that their figures are ridiculously low. But consider who else is missing in this scene.

L&J’s post-Rapture roll call strives to be comprehensive. Much of the excerpt reads like a rip-off of Hebrews 11 or of Dante, a long litany of the pre-Christian righteous and of all the saints of history. Yet one group they assured us would be there seems to be missing.

Where are those 100 million who were raptured from their mother’s wombs? One would expect, following the premise of the series, that these unnamed millions would, like Raymie, be walking the streets of the New Jerusalem “suddenly full grown.”

Those possessed of the slightest imagination will see here the potential for countless questions and endless speculation. What would it mean to make the leap — in the twinkling of an eye — from blastocyst to full-grown adult? What would it mean to be “full grown” without development, without experience, without choice, without memory, without the passing of time that we call “life”? In the hands of a thoughtful writer (i.e., not LaHaye or Jenkins) such questions could be the stuff of fascinating storytelling (it’s not all that different from the fascination with artificial intelligence in sci-fi).

But our authors keep their distance from all such questions.

Maybe they avoided this discussion because they simply realized they weren’t up to the task. Maybe they realized that any discussion of these sudden-saints would be as baseless and speculative as a discussion of angels on the head of a pin and thus they decided that it would be irresponsible to subject their readers — who tend to treat the series as Gospel truth — to such speculation.

Or maybe they saw the flashing red warning lights of cognitive dissonance and reflexively turned away from Things We Mustn’t Think About.

– – – – – – – – – – – –

* We referred earlier to Nicolae’s “electromagnetism” explanation as technobabble. The Buffy writers coined another term for this sort of thing, “phlebotinum,” which John Rogers describes as “The placeholder word for the magic thingie/spell/hoo-haa needed in a script, used until the internal logic of the magic/sci-fi setting can be applied.”

Carpathia’s supposed explanation for the disappearances might have been more convincing if L&J had just left a placeholder word in place and had him say “phlebotinum” instead of “electromagnetism.”

** Plus, even though this series is fiction, the authors and many of their readers regard these books as realistic and accurate descriptions of what they call “prophecy,” which is to say actual events that will occur very soon at the imminent end of human history. The entire series, in other words, is presented as one big “spoiler” for all of life as we know it.

*** We can assume that L&J would also count among the raptured the frozen embryos stored at fertility clinics, but I’m not including them in this ballpark tally. (I would call these the “frozen chosen,” but Presbyterians already have dibs on that name.)

Uncategorized

Previous Post

March 5, 2026

Recent reads (03.05.26)

Next Post

March 8, 2026 The copy-editors in chief

Recent Comments

0 | Leave a Comment

"The second one is specifically a reference to the legend of the Grand Inquisitor in ..."

Turcano

The purpose-driven labor priest

"I mean, these days, would Lois necessarily view it as a problem? https://uploads.disquscdn.c..."

Jon Maki

The purpose-driven labor priest

"Like, for instance, how one major theme in Prince Caspian is that Lewis was determined ..."

lowtechcyclist

Daughters of Adam and Sons of ..."

"I like his style overall - though everyone does always look a bit greasy to ..."

Jon Maki

The purpose-driven labor priest

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category class warfare evangelicals Iraq Left Behind Mammon music Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What is the name of the first book in the New Testament?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Luke Matthew Mark John