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Babylon Rising
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$ 22.10
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$ 26.00 |
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$ 3.90 (15%) |
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| Item Number |
739 |
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Item Description...
Tim LaHaye created the Left Behind Series, which has become one of the most popular fiction series of all time. Those novels, with more that 50 million copies sold, presented a unique combination of suspense and substance drawn from his lifelong study of Biblical prophecy.
Now Tim LaHaye has created a new series that begins with Babylon Rising. The novels in this new series are even faster-paced thrillers based on prophecies that are not covered in the Left Behind books and that have great relevance to the events of today.
Babylon Rising introduces a terrific new hero for our time. Michael Murphy is a scholar of Biblical prophecy, but not the sedate and tweedy kind. Murphy is a field archaeologist who defies danger to fearlessly hunt down and authenticate ancient artifacts from Biblical times. His latest discovery is his most amazing--but it will send him hurtling from a life of excavation and revelations to a confrontation with the forces of the greatest evil. For the latest secret uncovered by Michael Murphy accelerates the countdown to the time of the end for all mankind.
Publishers Description
Tim LaHaye created the Left Behind Series, which has become one of the most popular fiction series of all time. Those novels, with more that 50 million copies sold, presented a unique combination of suspense and substance drawn from his lifelong study of Biblical prophecy.
Now Tim LaHaye has created a new series that begins with Babylon Rising. The novels in this new series are even faster-paced thrillers based on prophecies that are not covered in the Left Behind books and that have great relevance to the events of today.
Babylon Rising introduces a terrific new hero for our time. Michael Murphy is a scholar of Biblical prophecy, but not the sedate and tweedy kind. Murphy is a field archaeologist who defies danger to fearlessly hunt down and authenticate ancient artifacts from Biblical times. His latest discovery is his most amazing—but it will send him hurtling from a life of excavation and revelations to a confrontation with the forces of the greatest evil. For the latest secret uncovered by Michael Murphy accelerates the countdown to the time of the end for all mankind.
Dr. Tim LaHaye is a renowned prophecy scholar, minister, and author. His Left Behind® series is the bestselling Christian fiction series of all time. He and his wife, Beverly, live in southern California. They have four children and nine grandchildren.
Greg Dinallo is a veteran suspense novelist. He lives with his wife, Gloria, in New York City.
Chapter One
EXACTLY THIRTY-THREE HOURS and forty-seven minutes after he had last been in church, Michael Murphy was hurtling through a terrible dark abyss. Prayer had never seemed more necessary to him than at that moment. In pitch blackness, with the only sound the whoosh of his body falling through the air, Murphy had no idea where he was heading.
Except down. Quickly. All six feet three inches of him.
Just a moment ago, Murphy had been standing on the rooftop of what appeared to be an abandoned warehouse on a desolate street in Raleigh, North Carolina. It was an unusual place for him to be on a Monday night during the university semester, when he normally would be preparing for his next day's lecture.
Yet it took only one word to make him drop all normal activities and race to this dank and deserted height. Granted, that word was in Aramaic, one of the many ancient languages Michael Murphy could read with some fluency.
The Aramaic letters had been penned with elaborate style in a bright blue ink that had seeped deeply into a thick, expensive ivory-tinted paper stock that had been wrapped with great care and tied up by a translucent ribbon around a heavy stone.
A stone that came crashing through the lower window of Murphy's campus office late that afternoon.
Whoever threw the stone into his office had disappeared by the time Murphy got to the window. As he unwrapped the paper and translated the single word that appeared there, he first stared, then began to count.
Thirty seconds until his office phone rang. He knew what voice he would hear at the other end of the line, although he had never seen the face to go with that voice.
“Hello, Methuselah, you old scoundrel.”
There was a high cackling laugh in answer, a sound Murphy would recognize anywhere. “Oh, Murphy, you never disappoint me. I take it I've piqued your interest.”
“And cost me a replacement window.” He looked down again at the single word on the paper. “Is this for real?”
“Murphy, have I ever let you down?”
“Nope. You've tried your weird best to kill me several times, but let me down, never. When and where?”
The cackling now was replaced by a tongue-clucking. “Now, don't rush me, Murphy. My rules. My time. My game. But trust me, this will be the best ever. For me, anyway.”
“Then, I assume that, as before, no sane man would take you up on this challenge?”
“Only an eager lad like yourself. But as always, you have my word. You survive, you get what you came for. And trust me, you'll want to survive for this prize.”
“I always want to survive, Methuselah. Unlike yourself, to me life is a precious thing.”
The old man snorted. “Not so precious that you won't come sniffing like an eager dog after this bone I've just tossed you. But enough chatter. Tonight. Nine-seventeen. Be on the roof of the warehouse at Eighty-three Cutter Place in Raleigh. And take my advice, Murphy boy. If you do come, and I know you will, make the most of these last few hours.”
With another cackle, the line went dead.
Murphy shook his head, put down the receiver, and picked up the paper. He double-checked his translation. This time, the name he read set his mind racing even faster than before.
For Michael Murphy, a scholar who could not confine himself to library stacks of dusty, ancient tomes, an archaeologist dedicated to hunting and rescuing artifacts that could authenticate events from the pages of the Bible, this was the name of the prophet who was guaranteed to intrigue him more than any other:
D A N I E L
For the rest of the day, Murphy could think of little else besides speculating about his nighttime rendezvous with Methuselah. It had been approximately two years since Murphy had first been contacted by this eccentric figure. Each time, without warning, and without ever showing his face, Methuselah would get a message to Murphy, always a single word in an ancient language that would turn out to be the name of one of the books of the Bible.
This would be followed within a minute by cryptic directions, always to some deserted location, where Methuselah would watch from a secure hiding place and taunt him while Murphy would try to survive some very real, very deadly physical challenge.
The risk of death was very high and very real each time. Methuselah was seemingly as serious about his sadistic games as he was about the scholarship behind his finds. And apparently he had enough money not only to sponsor the acquiring of the artifacts but to indulge his wildest ideas to lure Murphy into the most elaborate death traps. Would he actually allow Murphy to die if it ever came to that? So far, each time Murphy had come extremely close to losing his life, and each time he had no doubt that Methuselah would have let him die.
Yet, despite two broken ribs, a fractured wrist, and too many scars to recall, Murphy had so far somehow managed to muster all of his considerable abilities to stay alive long enough to claim his prize.
And what prizes they had been. Three artifacts Murphy never would have seen in any other way. Each proven with laboratory tests to be genuine, yet Methuselah never uttered a word about his sources. There were lots of issues that plagued Murphy about these mad, whirlwind chases, but each time Murphy went public with the artifacts, no organization, government, or individual collector had come forward to claim they had been stolen.
So, however and from where Methuselah was getting his occasional treasures, they had proven to be just that.
Methuselah remained a complete mystery to Murphy. To say he was eccentric would not begin to explain his actions. The man was clearly a scholar of ancient artifacts, yet Murphy could find no trace of where he came from or how he found these artifacts that any archaeologist would drool for. It was especially mystifying why Methuselah did not keep these treasures for himself, or for a museum, or why he chose his really strange games to give Murphy a chance to claim them.
As a man of high integrity, Murphy believed he could overlook some potential gray areas regarding the source of these artifacts. Some wealthy, connected, but truly mad collector was as close as Murphy could come to an explanation of who Methuselah was. However, there was the troubling religious aspect.
Methuselah was clearly not a religious man. Quite the opposite. A good deal of the pleasure Methuselah seemed to get from these challenges was to taunt Murphy about his faith. So far, Murphy had been up to every challenge, and he had to admit that in addition to getting the artifacts, part of what drove him was the chance to defy Methuselah's nasty verbal insults about Murphy's faith.
Which was hardly a justification for his risking his life, Murphy realized. However, pride, temper, stubbornness were all high on the list of Michael Murphy's imperfections. Probably Murphy's greatest reservations about his Methuselah adventures were a result of his deep religious faith, which made it far more difficult to justify the extreme risk to his life and limb.
Justify the risk not merely to himself, but to his wife, Laura.
So far, his passion for the quest for artifacts had been a real test of Laura's passion for Murphy. It certainly helped his cause that she held a degree in ancient studies herself. However, there were many arguments after the fact, many pledges that he would try to resist the next Methuselah temptation, but Laura knew there would always be another insanely dangerous Methuselah trap. All he had to do was to dangle another artifact before her husband.
It was that understanding that caused Murphy to dash off a quick note to Laura before he left for Raleigh that evening. She was at a conference in Atlanta and would not be home for another night, and Murphy wrote down what little he knew about where he was going. He left the note on the mantel in their living room. Just in case.
Murphy kept a touch light on the accelerator all the way from Preston to Raleigh to make sure he did not get a speeding ticket. That was one risk he could definitely avoid for the night. The address Methuselah had barked at him was for an eight-story building on an empty street in a deserted neighborhood. When he got to the rooftop, Murphy looked for some sign for a next move.
Without warning, the very roof beneath his feet opened, and that was when he found himself dropping through the building.
Free-falling.
In the fleeting seconds after he started his descent, his multitasking mind flashed on how beautiful Laura had looked yesterday afternoon before she left for her plane, he offered up a quick prayer, and he forced himself to focus on his years of martial arts training, specifically on the best position for his body to be in when he finally landed.
Assuming he had to land eventually, it would not be pretty.
He settled on the combination he had come to call Cat's Last Gasp, his own poor interpretation of a Tibetan landing maneuver. He thought of it as the moves a cat in its ninth life would make to land safely. Murphy loosened every muscle, fighting the natural instinct to tense up in anticipation of what was bound to be one fearsome impact.
Instead, he bounced. In the pitch-black space his body hit what felt like a huge net, and Murphy bounced up and down, rapidly making him more disoriented than the falling had.
Feelings that were intensified by a blast of bright light that completely blinded Murphy.
“So good of you to drop in, Murphy.”
Methuselah. Though Murphy still could not see, there was no mistaking the cackling laugh that filled the space. Murphy also knew that even if he could see clearly, Methuselah would be well hidden, as he always was.
“You're probably still getting your bearings, eh, Murphy, so you can't appreciate what a great old building this is. They built that chute to go through all the floors so they could drop things from the roof down to the main work floor here. I had my people set this up especially for you, but I took pity on you at the last minute and provided the net. I'm getting soft. Let's hope you're not.”
Murphy finally stopped bouncing and rolled himself to the edge of the net. His sight was beginning to normalize, but there did not seem to be much to see inside this building. There were white walls enclosing one giant floor space. The ceiling, if there was one, must have been several stories high, but the combination of gloomy darkness and now the piercing glow from spotlights mounted on the walls made it impossible to be certain.
The netting was strung up at one end of the floor space. It was made of thick rope in a crosshatched pattern. The net had been stretched between four heavy wooden poles that were bolted to the floor and stabilized by heavy bags of what Murphy guessed was sand. At the opposite end of the vast room, what looked like a sliding door of shiny silver corrugated metal stood closed.
Surrounding the floor was a raised work area that was protected by heavy glass. That was where Methuselah must be, Murphy thought, but he could not make out any specific figure up there. His head was clearing and his breathing was starting to normalize.
“That was certainly worth the trip from home, Methuselah. Now, may I claim my prize and get back there?”
“You call that earning your keep, Murphy? That was just my special way to get you inside the tent. Get ready for the real show. Right now.”
For the first time, Murphy heard an ominous sound, a low rumble that filled the empty space, but he was not sure what he was hearing. “Aaah, I see, Professor Murphy, by your perked-up ears, that you are ready to meet your match.”
Murphy sighed. So, now it really begins, he thought. Then came a second, much more ominous sound. Something crashed against the metal door from the other side. Something that Murphy suddenly realized was about to come shooting out that metal door, heading directly for him. “Say, um, Methuselah, aren't you going to tease me first with a look at your latest artifact? So I at least know what it is that will make you try so hard to kill me.”
“Yes, you do know I love to have my sport with you, Murphy. I actually wish you could live to get this one. It's hot stuff. Tell me, what made you so excited about seeing the word ‘Daniel' from me today?”
Before Murphy could answer, there was another, even louder banging against the door. Murphy could not help but flinch where he stood and looked anxiously at the rattling metal.
“Up to now you've put into play some amazing artifacts from Biblical times, Methuselah. I don't know how you got them, but I never would have found them on my own. And Daniel, well, you know he was the most important prophet of all. I have studied him for years. Let me at least get a good close look at whatever Daniel artifact you've gotten your hands on.”
“No. Enough talk, Murphy. You're about to get a closer look than you'll want. Because tonight you're not going to study Daniel, you are going to be Daniel.”
With a metallic clang, the sliding door at the other end of the room was raised. |
Item Specifications...
Pages 400
Dimensions: Length: 1.25" Width: 6.25" Height: 9.75"
Weight: 1.45 lbs.
Binding Hardcover
Release Date Oct 21, 2003
Publisher Bantam
ISBN 0553803220
EAN 9780553803228
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Availability 1 units.
Availability accurate as of May 27, 2012 04:40.
Usually ships within one to two business days from La Vergne, TN.
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About this Author/Artist Dr. Tim LaHaye is the creator and co-author of the<i> Left Behind</i> series and is also a noted scholar of Biblical prophecy, the author of more than forty nonfiction books, a minister, and an educator. He is the founder and president of Tim LaHaye Ministries. Dr. LaHaye and his wife, Beverly, live in southern California. <br><br>Greg Dinallo is a veteran suspense novelist. He lives with his wife, Gloria, in New York City.
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 | Silly... Mar 21, 2007 |
I bought this book after hearing all the great things about the Left Behind series (which I have not read). I am fascinated by Biblical archaeology, and thought this would be a great read.
My mistake. Lahaye is trying much, much too hard write Indiana Jones. The characters are flat, and I didn't care about Murphy right from the start. He was just not engaging. The plotlines are implausible yes, but I don't view that as a fault in and of itself - that kind of implausibility, in a plucky, believable, FUN character is a joy to read. In Murphy's case, I couldn't have cared less whether LaHaye killed him off and gave his long-suffering wife a break.
The enjoyable part about characters like Indiana Jones is that the reader understands that it's all in good fun. This book contains the same type of events and situations, but without any of the tongue-in-cheek insanity. Instead, LaHaye tries deperately to force us to believe that things like that actually happen.
For example - in one scene, Murphy's wife is startled by something in a small cave, stumbles backward, and manages to fall directly into a narrow, vertical crevice that neither of them had noticed before. Sound familiar?! It's Dr. Jones all over again.
My main mistake was buying this book along with the sequel assuming that I would love it. | | |  | Babylon Rising Series Feb 27, 2007 |
| I am quite surprise by the many negative reviews of this series. I just completed the fourth book and have found the series highly enjoyable. Reviewers discount the storyline as unplausable. Well, no kidding. This is a fiction series written for entertainment. Perhaps, those reviewers are the type of people who will criticize every little detail in an action movie. Get over it and enjoy the story. I find the series very entertaining, filled with action and adventure and sprinkled with accurate biblical doctrine. Sure, it's frustrating to see Dr. Murphy's archaeological "prizes" being snatched from his grasp time and time again but this is the direction the authors chose to go. I find no "filler" pages boring nor uninspired. I applaud the series and look forward to future installments. Bravo for a job well done! | | | | Disappointing Beginning to LaHaye's New Series Jan 15, 2007 |
Babylon Rising is Tim LaHaye's first post-Left Behind fiction venture. Itself the start of a new series also called Babylon Rising, this book is the beginning of what Dr. LaHaye hopes will be another Left Behind-like phenomenon. In the introductory author's note, he writes, "I am more excited about Babylon Rising than any of my previous books. My prayer is that it will have the same effect on the lives of readers as have the Left Behind books." Unfortunately, he's not off to a very good start.
Babylon Rising is an adventure book featuring Michael Murphy, an Indiana Jones-like hero who is part archaeologist, part Bible scholar, part professor, and all man's man. The author is enamored enough of his character to write that he is "one of the real appeals of this series for me. I like Murphy so much, I named him after my son-in-law." Like an Indiana Jones movie, the story begins with Murphy engaged in an impossibly unlikely scenario involving a life-and-death struggle to obtain an archaeological artifact. Unlike an Indiana Jones movie, Murphy is not struggling against the elements or ancient tribes in a distant jungle or international terrorists; he is risking life and limb in a challenge issed by a mysterious and unlikely figure who is evidently intent on killing Murphy using the archaeologist's own desire to unearth prizes that help prove the truth of the Bible. As the story unfolds, Murphy, first accompanied by his amazingly gorgeous (of course) wife and later by an amazingly gorgeous female colleague, travels to Israel, Egypt, Iraq, and back again in his quest to discover an item of incredible power.
As an adventure story, Babylon Rising is reasonably acceptable, even though the writing by "co-author" Greg Dinallo (Tim LaHaye doesn't do any of the actual writing) is less than first rate. The story, though less than credible in the real world, is not beyond the bounds of what could fit within the world LaHaye has created for his characters. The real problems arise when one remembers that this is not just an adventure tale but an end-times prophecy story. The authors are not just writing down a plot created in their imaginations but presenting a scenario they feel could realistically become reality in the near future. Where the book nominally succeeds as an adventure fantasy, it fails miserably as a story of prophetic intrigue.
Probably the main reason the book doesn't work as a prophecy story is the lack of clear biblical foundation. In the Left Behind books, even if one disagrees with Dr. LaHaye's interpretation of the scriptural accounts, no question is left as to the specific passages from which the authors derived their timeline. In Babylon Rising, on the other hand, hardly any mention of specific Scripture passages can be found, except as they relate to the artifacts Murphy is searching for.
Another weakness of the book as a prophecy story has to do with the object of Murphy's quest. This particular artifact is mentioned only twice in the Bible and once in an apocryphal book, and it is never referred to as having any apocalyptic significance. Again, the lack of sound biblical foundation severely undermines the story's prophetic intent.
Yet another problem is LaHaye's evident subsciption to what I think of as alarmist, reactionary Evangelicalism. His premise that world events and the media are controlled by a shadowy, all-powerful group of throwbacks to ancient Babylon called "The Seven" is not an unfamiliar theme in stories like this. I was reminded of last year's movie Lara Croft, Tomb Raider, in which an archaeologist hero thwarts the evil plans for world domination of the mysterious Illuminati. But this book supposedly takes place in present-day reality, not a video-game world like Tomb Raider.
It is inevitable that many people will compare Babylon Rising to Left Behind co-author Jerry Jenkins's latest release, Soon. Both are apocalyptic; both are set prior to the Rapture; both involve a Christian hero fighting against evil forces in the world. One important difference is that Babylon Rising is supposed to take place today, while Soon is set in the near but decidedly different future. To me this gives LaHaye's book a degree of extra excitement and plausibility lacking in Soon. The irony is that while the present-day setting of the book works for the excitement level, the LaHaye's overactive conspiracy-theory imagination and underactive biblical storyline detract from that effectiveness.
Another way that Babylon Rising reminds me of Left Behind are some of the practical difficulties in the plot. For example, Murphy and his wife have no trouble getting to Israel and then into the Palestinian-controlled West Bank for an archeological dig. Later, Murphy is able to get into Iraq without trouble, even recruiting a group of U.S. soldiers to assist them with their work. Murphy also travels throughout the Middle East with another scholar named Isis McDonald, an apparent future love interest, who also is unsurprisingly beautiful. There is no concern that a Christian man traveling with a beautiful non-Christian woman might pose any potential problems. Media tycoon Shane Barrington is tough enough to build a corporate empire but somehow submits without a fight to the devilish will of The Seven when they threaten to expose his underhanded financial dealings. Murphy never asks anyone to sign a confidentiality agreement regarding his incredible discoveries and even sends a priceless treasure to a colleague in the mail. These and other lapses in plausibility give the writing a feeling of carelessness that is devastating to a prophetic fiction book.
In spite of its weaknesses, this book does have several strong areas. I really enjoyed the author's back-story device of retelling parts of the biblical story of Daniel. These sections are effective without being overdone, and I only wish they could have been expanded and better connected with the present-day action. I was also very surprised by the skill with which co-author Greg Dinallo treats human tragedy. The emotion is real and does not seem concocted. One particuarly horrific scene actually brought tears to my eyes.
Overall, the book is weak with moments of strength. It is a formulaic adventure tale forced into an apocalyptic mold. The characters are mainly uninspiring; Murphy is likeable mainly because he is so unreal. The desperation of the publisher to sell enough copies of this book to justify their reportedly apocalyptic advance is evident in the rather unprofessional but commercially effective packaging; the dust jacket is designed like a soft-cover, complete with an author message from Dr. LaHaye on the back cover. If I had to guess, I'd say this book might do better in the long run than Jerry Jenkins's Soon, partly because Tim LaHaye is a more recognizable name and partly because the archaeological intrigue is more exciting than Jenkins's futuristic police state. Babylon Rising is enough of a departure from Left Behind that readers may put up with the problems of this book and future books in the series.
The author writes in his introduction, "I have tried to make this a gripping, page-turning novel, a great big adventure filled with important revelations." As an adventure story, this book is less than great but probably still better than average, and certainly interesting and even fun to read. But as a prophecy story, Babylon Rising lacks the revelations the author intended to include and falls far short of the standard that readers of this genre have come to expect. | | |  | Babylon Rising Nov 26, 2006 |
"Babylon Rising" is a Christian adventure novel about a "biblical arhaeologist". Most of the characters are laughable stereotypes. They move from one implausible situation to the next, with a lot of slow, dull filler in between. And the subplot about a conspiracy against all evangelical Chrsitians is perhaps the most ridiculous story ever. I lost interest in the story after about one third of the book.
All of this is written in the style of a story from a cheap adventure magazine. Perhaps the author is trying desperately to appeal to a young audience (but fails) or he's just a talentless hack (and after having read the first two Left Behind novels, that seems very likely).
Don't waste your money or time on this one. It's badly written and dull, with a completely uninteresting story. As if that's not bad enough, it's also preachy. | | |  | A Good and Interesting Book Sep 1, 2006 |
This first book of the Babylon Rising series, like the author's other books in the Left Behind Series, was very informative, very interesting, very thought provoking, and overall a good book. This book was also a little less "preachy/didactic) then those in the Left Behind series. Why, then, do I say good and not great? Well, it is the authors craft, or lack thereof, as a developer of characters. His character development is weak, stereotypichal, and often cliched. Did I still enjoy the book? Yes. Will I read the others in the story? Yes. I just wish he would spend a little more time making us care about his characters.
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