These are the thoughts of Buck Williams as he is in Jerusalem during the Great Tribulation after the Rapture, told in the book of Revelations in the Bible. Buck is one of the believers who is in hiding from the forces of the Antichrist, and is in Jerusalem waiting to witness the desecration of the temple in Jerusalem by the Antichrist. Buck, along with Rayford Steele and his daughter, and Buck's wife, Chloe, are the leaders of an underground organization called the Tribulation Force, who work to help other believers and do as much damage to Nicolae Carpathia's, also known as the Antichrist, regime. The Mark begins shortly after Carpathia is resurrected and is indwelt with the devil, and deals with many of the events that come to pass after he is resurrected and decrees that every citizen of the Global Community, the world order set up by Carpathia, must receive a mark of loyalty, like it says in the Bible. Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins' The Mark is a very good book, painting an extremely realistic picture of how the world would be in the time after the Rapture. The situations the characters go through could easily happen tomorrow and will make the reader wonder what they would do in a situation like this.
The setting is a major factor of the book, and helps the book to become very believable. From the safe house of the Tribulation Force in war ravaged Chicago to the eerie details of the Global Community mark application sites, the environment is always very well thought out and fits the time and location in history perfectly. One page of the book may be at the Global Community headquarters in New Babylon and a couple of pages over, the view will switch to the safe house in Chicago. The authors did a great job of showing the reader how the actions of someone in one corner of the world may affect someone else in a completely different location. The setting helps to tie the whole book together and show how the world will be during this period of history.
The characters are also another aspect of book that I thought the authors did a great job on. Carpathia just makes you disgusted with the way he rules the world, especially during his speeches when he tells the public what he wants them to hear, but the reader knows that he actually caused the disaster to happen. As the main characters in the Tribulation Force go about on their missions, the reader just can't help but root for them to succeed and get home safely. The character dramatics are what help to make this book just so realistic, like actually reading the real account of someone who went through this. The way the characters contrast and still have everyday problems, like uncertainty and fear, that people go through everyday, even without a mission from God, and how they manage to get through them, shows how deeply the authors thought about the characters before creating them. Poor character choices or uninteresting characters are often why books lose the readers interest, but The Mark has plenty of characters to entertain the reader.
Number eight in the Left Behind series, The Mark is another great book in a series that seems to get better with each book. Full of terrifying realism, apocalyptic scenes, and an engaging storyline, The Mark will keep the reader hooked on the book and wanting more. My only advice though is to read the first seven books first. This one won't make as much sense as it should if you choose not to read them beforehand. Other than this one hitch, this is a good read.
381 pages
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