His Kingdom Come [2063]

I was raised in a conservative Christian home that treated the Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins as an inevitable future happening (and most likely within our lifetimes). Since I've grown up, traveled the world, became a secular person with Buddhist leanings, I have come to realize Left Behind for what it is: Biblical Fanfiction. 

That said, this is a Skeptic's take on the world of "Left Behind:" 

Map #001. His Kingdom Come

In 1991, after years of research in the Amazon Rainforest, Israeli scientist Chaim Rosenzweig synthesizes a compound, Edenium and puts it into industrial level production. Edenium, acting as a fertilizer, makes virtually any soil arable. The compound is intensely guarded as a state secret. The compound makes Israel one of the region's most productive centers of agricultural growth and development, exporting food to markets around the world. In 1993, Chaim Rosenzweig is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. 

In 1994, jealous and eager to use Edenium on the Siberian tundra, negotiations between Israel and the young Russian Federation break down, and a short invasion, entirely air based, takes place, and is quickly destroyed and rebuffed before the UN can step in establish peace between the two countries. 

And then in 1995, it happens. A third of the world's population vanishes into thin air. "The Rapture," as it's come to be called in both Christian and secular circles, seems to be indiscriminate: taking people seemingly at random. Though the Christians of the world point to it as the rapture: the coming of the end of days. 

The trauma that grips the world seems to spiral out of control until a former Romanian President and new UN Secretary-General Nicolae Carpathia comes to power. He is young, handsome, eloquent, and highly intelligent. He's certainly no saint, as mysterious bank leaks slowly come to light, but the world is so eager for a strong, calm, steady hand, that they quickly coalesce around Carpathia and his easy answer of some sort of quantum interaction regarding lightning and nuclear weapons. 

What follows is a series of world-wide disarmament treaties. The sticking point being, of course, Israel. "How can we stand in peace if Israel exists?" says everyone, still. Carpathia, who happens to share connections to Rosenzweig through mysteriously dead bankers, negotiates personally with the Israeli chemist and the UN Security Council and together signs a seven-year treaty consisting of unrestricted access to Edenium, followed by preferential trade agreements, and a percentage of agricultural revenues from countries that take part in the opportunity. 

Slowly, this unrestricted growth of the UN, and the shift to unified global finances under the dollar begins to tank the economy of the global north to the benefit of the global south. The UN - now renamed the Global Community - sees its largest successes in Africa. It puts its Israeli treaty to work re-fertilizing the Sahel, federalizing west African states, and stabilizing the Congo and Great Lakes Region (funny how LaHaya and Jenkins never mentioned the massive civil war happening in Africa at the time of their writing about unchecked growth of the UN contemporary with the largest buildup of UN Peacekeepers in all history). 

This leads to GC-Skeptics led by Far Right movements in the global north. The United States is at the forefront of this movement, and makes allies, most notably in Egypt and the United Kingdom. Their goal - blitz the GC, secure remaining armories and weaponry facilities in the GC and key allies, transfer Edenium factories and rights to Washington, London, and Cairo - fails spectacularly. Informants to Carpathia tipped him off about the war (it was Carpathia's old banks who funded Far Right movements in the US and UK) and he struck at the Allies only minutes before the blitz was scheduled. The UK is torn apart, the US is weakened: all non contiguous islands are stripped from her sovreignty, and the overseas bases outlined in the old Lend-Lease act are transferred to Sarajevo (the administrative capital of the GC). 

Israel, China, and Russia are all too happy to feed the beast at the expense of the Atlantic Allies. Carpathia's uncheck world dominance feeds into his personality cult (he's The Nicolae, only he looks more like Brad Pitt and less like a sun-dried tomato), his narcissism, and his eccentricity. It culminates during a victory celebration with Carpathia's assasination. An even he survives, but loses all touch with reality. He expands the centralization of his government, and begins a bizarre series of actions, from issuing global identity cards (that religious extremists are SO eager to publish numerology books about) to legitimately creepy ceremonies blasphemously slaughtering a pig on the steps of the rebuilt Temple of Jerusalem, to moving the capital of the Community to Babylon, to the detriment of archeologists as well as policy-making experts, the powers benefitting from the Global Community (mostly Africa, followed by Russia and China) are willing to indulge his bizarre obsession with the Middle East so long as they keep the supply of Edenium flowing. 

And a good thing it exists, too. Edenium helps, but a long series of natural disasters (global flooding, earthquakes, two asteroid impacts, nuclear winter, volcanic eruptions, bizarre infestations of previously unknown insects and plagues) did their best to cause global institutions to collapse as best they could. Only the steady hand of local administrators and the human desire for order amidst chaos keeeps the world on the brink of collapse. 

But don't get excited, it's still the apocalypse. 

World War III is over, but Christian Extremism is still seeing a meteoric rise in all nations. Massive rebellions cause the United States, still reeling over their loss in the war, to declare martial law. Russia and China basically end up abandoning vast tracks of their central Asian possessions. The breaking point occurs when Israel elects a Far Right Christian government into the Knesset. The new government immediately withdraws from the GC, rescinds the Edenium Treaty, and declares the "Great Crusade" against "the demon realm of the anti-christ," (the Global Community). Carpathia assembles an army to rival pre-Barbarossa Wermacht and then assaults Israel. The war lasts for three days. Victory for the GC seems apparent, until the Angelic Host, the Army of Righteousness attacks Carpathia and his army from the rear, slaughtering millions. 

The Angelic Host, believed by its supporters to be divine, is led by a man calling himself "Jesus Christ." Here on earth, it can be traced from Christian rebels and exiles escaping the United States and Canada, crossing into Russia, and gathering support and steam from countries as they went. They crossed inner Asia on a mystical and certainly troublesome journey, picking up abandoned weaponry, and old supplies. When they arrived in Israel, they were millions strong. 

World War IV over, Carpathia and his lieutenants are captured, judged by King Jesus to be guilty of idolatry, and banished to an eternity in the lake of fire. King Jesus establishes the "Kingdom of Jerusalem" set to last for a millenium until the last of the Earth falls to the Angelic Host, and the dragon is released from hell one last time. 

The world that is left behind in 2002, Seven Years after the Rapture and the signing of the Edenium Treaty, is not familiar in any way. The population has been cut down by 2/3. Roving gangs of religious extremists, including former navy captains who've taken their ships and gone pirate, roam the earth. Loyal only to themselves, they serve as a roving possible Jerusalemite navy. 

King Jesus, for being a delusional mystic leading an army of religious extremists, proves to be a capable and peaceful ruler. He stood on the steps of the temple after the Trial of the Antichrist, and recited the entire Old Testament, New Testament, and (to the surprise of many) the Qur'an. And then he... promptly shut up. They would be the last words King Jesus would ever speak, leaving the day-to-day running of the Kingdom to his Council of Twelve, representing the twelve major schools of religious thought in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, inflated and constantly changing via immigration. Mostly in the form of Mormon, Watchtower Society, and Evangelical immigrants to the Kingdom. 

Jerusalem, for all its dark history, is reborn with culture and theological development. Turns out having hundreds of languages, cultures, and ideas isn't such a bad thing in one city. 

Not everything is fine and dandy, though. Russia and China have collapsed into civil wars rivalling the worst moments of the Twentieth Century. Pro-Jerusalemite rebellions and violent factions supporting Jerusalemite annexation plague every habitable continent, and global inequality is at an all-time high. 

The Global Community, shed of the insane Carpathia, is actually stronger for it. The new Potentate (quietly renamed to Secretary-General) is a South African economist who is more interested in the steady, guiding, hand rather than an active, aggressive force obssessed with pet projects. 

Everything slowly stabilizes until 2063. King Jesus, sacred, holy, beloved by the people, is gray and frail. He can't die. He's immortal. He said his reign would last a thousand years. Yet it's impossible to hide the developing arthritis, his snow-white hair, and the stroke he barely survived a decade earlier. It's impossible not to notice. And yet... the future has never seemed to uncertain. 

My first map in seven years! Credit to LaHaye and Jenkins for their... fanfiction. And to Michelangelo for a slice of his "Last Judgment."