Left Behind: The Kids – The Search for Truth

I was moderately excited to try this series out on my kids during our nighttime reading, and while they were intrigued by the first book in the series and had lots of questions during this second book, by the time we got to the third, everything in the story had turned political. My 8- and 10-year old kids enjoyed the action and shock of these first two installments, but they simply couldn’t follow along with the political intrigue of the Tribulation-era world as is gravitated towards Nicolai Carpathia. For that reason, this is the second and last book in the series we finished as a family.

The format of the first book interested us, as it followed the four main characters down each of their own paths. We got to see their former lives, their terrifying experiences during the Rapture, their realization they’d been left behind, and their almost forced-into-it relationships with each other.

In this book, Bruce Barnes begins playing a more pivotal role in the kids’ lives, much as he did in the lives of the adults in the “real” Left Behind series. The Gospel is as clear as it had been in the first, and we get a sense of the doubt and struggles each character faces in their approach to Christ. As they come to faith and sit under the teaching of Pastor Barnes, they each come face-to-face with the reality that their lives are now on a timer and could end in seven years or less.

Nicolai Carpathia is mentioned in passing here, but mostly this book is about how the four kids’ paths intersect and how they come to share a home together. Each have their own problems, so I got inklings of a teenage melodrama as I read it (which didn’t draw me in), but those issues went over my kids’ heads.

Lionel stands out to me in this book as a real jerk, despite his newfound faith in Christ. The things he endures with his uncle’s murder (or suicide? or something else?) are harrowing and add an unexpected layer to the story. Other personal issues of insecurity and fear are more subtle, but they did spark the occasional conversation in our home after we read.

We’re not going to finish the series anytime soon, which is all right with me. I’m glad we tried it and found that it’s much better suited for a middle-school and high-school audiences rather than for elementary.

©2021 E.T.

Read More from Tim LaHaye and/or Jerry B. Jenkins:

• Left Behind (1995)
• Tribulation Force (1996)
• Crash in Cannibal Valley (1996)
• Terror in Branco Grande (1996)
• Disaster in the Yukon (1996)
• Book 1: The Vanishings (1998)
• Book 2: Second Chance (1998)
• The Mark (2000)
• The Merciful God of Prophecy (2001)
• Babylon Rising (2003)
• Mark’s Story (2007)