It was Back home, the war was everywhere: on television, in the paper, shaped in rough paint on picket signs. Salem, his wife Mary and their five children attended services at the evangelical Church of the Open Door, in a suburb of Philadelphia.
Salem sang in the choir. They talked it over at the dinner table. Her voice was bright and boisterous. Church was just what you did, a part of the routine.
Things began to change in Vietnam bothered him. It became personal when Dennis went over. On July 12th, , a fourteen-inch advertisement appeared on an interior page in the Washington Post.
The President never appeared. He met with a Japanese progressive journalist with ties to the Vietnamese communist party, attended a briefing from General Westmoreland and traveled all around war-torn Vietnam, talking to soldiers and priests and mortuary attendants. His happiest days, however, were spent in Nha Trang, with Dennis. Upon his return, he wrote a book on the subject. Goodbye Mr. President was published before the end of the year, by a private press. In it, Kirban argued that the official stories about Vietnam were lies; conditions there were worse than anybody let on.
Responses to the war were also a problem. Neither addressed the fundamental issue. In it, he repurposed many of the photographs and first-hand reports employed in Goodbye Mr. This time, however, he saw a pattern running through them all. The children ravaged by napalm, the refugees in rags, the wall of aluminum caskets sitting matter-of-factly on a Saigon airfield — all had been foretold in the book of Revelation.
It was evidence that the current age, or dispensation, of biblical time was ending. Soon, Kirban predicted, the last few faithful Christians would disappear in the Rapture. After that, the faithless churches that remained would join together into a one-world religion.
There would be global government, too: a dictatorship, with the Anti-Christ at its head. His books, which he sold by mail-order, did respectable business. The novel, , was released in In it, Salem rendered his interpretation of current events and biblical prophecy through a globe-spanning adventure story, set in the not-too-distant future. As the reign of the Anti-Christ wears on, and conditions grow more dangerous and bizarre, Omega, along with two of his children, is born again.
A selection of those headlines:. Like Doreen I caught her on the phone. In some ways, she remembered her father differently from her sister. Faith was a bigger part of her life. After dinner, she said, Salem would read to the family from the Bible and talk about current events. He spent a lot of time working, putting together projects about the end-times.
The Rapture was taken for granted in their household. As Bill walks up the steps to the guillotine, looking out at the mob of Americans calling for his head, he reflects about the state of the world. Its reality is fluid: a whorl of surprise remembrances and snap alternations of setting and character.
At another, he travels to the moon for the span of a few sentences. The effect is disorienting. As in any fitful sleep, is suffused with elements from more conventional reality, presented in disguise or in random order.
The newspaper clippings at the start of the book are all accounted for: even the monkey brains make sense, once the Anti-Christ is shot and his scientists have to remove his brain to keep him alive. To him, the four horsemen of the apocalypse must, naturally, ride horses. You might wonder where the hope part comes into play amid the many-headed monsters.
He also suggested that we buy copies and give them to non-Christians who might not read The Bible but who would surely eat up his novel. Everyone else will stay behind and likely wander around, surprised at all of the empty cars. Next up: All hell almost breaks loose. As the fundamentalist interpretation of Revelation unfolds, God allows Satan to do what he wants to the earth and the earthlings. The seven years of tribulation have begun. Then Jesus comes back and rules in peace for 1, years, which is called the millennium.
Kirban takes these ideas and goes to town. To set a realistic stage, opens with what appear to be newspaper articles. The rest of the book is full of passages from the Bible, futuristic collages, and photographs with fictionalized captions. The prose style is, well, peculiar. And forced. As an author, Kirban comes across as a man who would have been just as happy carrying a sign proclaiming that the end is nigh but has figured we might pay more attention if he told us a story instead.
The plot is baffling, even as a companion to the inscrutable Book of Revelation itself. The action picks up as the plane takes a sudden lurch. One hundred passengers have disappeared. Omega is one of the passengers left behind, and chills run up and down his spine twice in the first 14 pages alone.
Meet the Antichrist. Kirban continues mirroring elements of the fundamentalist interpretation of Revelation as he works his way toward the apocalypse. Society crumbles. Evil reigns. The Antichrist is a highly charismatic fellow with a history that includes a head wound. One currency, one set of laws, lots of protein cakes, no escape. How could such a church exist you ask? With passages like these, Kirban keyed into an existing conspiratorial undercurrent.
No thanks! I grew up hearing that John F. Kennedy , our first Catholic president, might be the Antichrist. I mean, it was just a theory, but I was urged to consider the signs. Charismatic leader, check. Slippery modern morals, check. Social programs that appealed to the masses, check. Alleged interest in God, check. Head wound, check. Lots of questions surrounding his death, check.
Kirban piqued our sensitivities, and not just about Catholicism. He pushed all the evangelical buttons, which does more to explain his popularity than his sci-fi plot twists. Kirban masterfully riled us up with those details.
Secularism was making our fellow citizens complacent. Satan was so tricky he would even quote The Bible as he lured us to hell. Denominations espousing liberal interpretations of Scripture were leading their congregations astray.
We knew those things to be true, and Kirban shocked us into believing the stakes were even higher. At the end of , just before , we see an image straight out of Revelation, with some modern artillery added. The two-books-in-one-volume spectacular concludes with an infographic that features two arrows pointing up for the Rapture alongside descriptions of five of the crowns you may earn on your way up to heaven.
My father was usually the one reading to us, but my mom took her turn, too. I occasionally offered, but I mostly preferred to sit nearby and listen. Also, I liked having inside information about what was going to happen when the world ended.
We viewed the book as informed speculation. I wanted to be raptured. He and Conner had both received care from a Georgia doctor with unconventional methods that Kirban documented in the book. I stopped believing at some point—well into my adulthood, I should admit—but Salem Kirban never did.
Over the years, Kirban would become more specific in his prophecies, writing a book called I Predict , which claimed that the guillotine would be introduced in America to frighten people and automobiles would be banned. Then it seems he started losing credibility and segued from authorship, to begin selling blue green algae to his fans by mail. When more than 80 percent of evangelicals voted for Trump, it seems they looked beyond his obvious flaws and anticipated the policy miracles that were sure to follow.
During the time my family was reading his books, I remember being excited to know that God had a plan and that I was part of it. Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons. Susan Gray Blue lives in San Francisco and is writing a book about fundamentalism. She's written previously for Buzzfeed, the Hairpin, and elsewhere. You can find her on Twitter susangrayblue. This is so fascinating! I just read the featured part of the book you wrote.
Because we are not meant to go through all the trial and The Great Tribulation. That we are spare from it because the Rapture takes us up to Heaven in spirit until Jesus comes back to battle the devil and his evil angels. We will come back from Heaven and meet up with our earthly bodies being instantly changed to immortal bodies and be with Jesus to fight against satan.
Then we enjoy ruling and reigning with God for a millennium…. Susan, an excellent essay and quite frightening example of child abuse. It sounds like you came out of it with great insight and wisdom despite the trauma. Child abuse? Reading a story that is outlined in the Bible? Read the essay properly and go away Tori. Peace and humanism come from a level deeper than the bizarre horror stories from the bible. It is really simple.
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