Dysfunctional Book Review: The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey

Television ads for the movie version of The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey used to scare the crap out of me when I was a kid in the 1970s.  Looking back on the ad now, it’s really cheesy, but keep in mind that back then there were only three television channels, with no cable/streaming, no internet, and no social media. Kids weren’t exposed to as much as they are now.

The tv ads were on in the afternoon when kids were watching syndicated cartoons after school. Even back then, advertisers were warping the minds of children.

CHEESY MOVIE TRAILER ALERT!!!!

At any rate, I never read the book The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey until this week when I saw an old copy at a used book store, and I decided to face my childhood fears. It’s tough to give a fair review of a book like this, though, because I automatically don’t have a favorable view of it.

In The Late Great Planet Earth, the author interpreted a lot of Biblical verses, including several from the book Revelation, and made a bunch of predictions based on his interpretations. When it comes to interpreting The Holy Bible, I’m not a Revelation kind of guy.  Revelation causes a lot of arguing amongst people who probably don’t even know what they’re talking about, so I stay out of that stuff. 

Instead, I’m a Sermon on the Mount guy.  It’s short, and it’s clear in a lot of ways.  Basically, I’d rather work on myself and not worry about judging others too much.  If these ARE the end times, then I still need to behave properly during them, and I can’t control much (if anything) of what’s going on around me anyway.

Of course, the apocalyptic predictions in The Late Great Planet Earth didn’t come true (or haven’t come true yet). I could just make fun of all the predictions that haven’t come true, but I won’t because I don’t want to jinx anything. I’d feel really stupid if I made fun of The Late Great Planet Earth, and then the next day all of the author’s predictions came true, just 50+ years later.

Now that I think about it, it’s kind of arrogant (or paranoid) to think that you’re the generation that’s living through “the era of the Anti-Christ” (whatever that even means).  Out of all the generations that have lived since the Christ walked the earth, and all the generations after us, WE’RE supposedly the THE generation that will see the… Ugh, I don’t even want to get into it.

I have to admit, though, this book is kind of entertaining, and I can see where Lindsey was coming from because a lot of people think/thought the 1960s and 1970s sucked from economic, social, and foreign policy points of view. A lot was going wrong in the United States when this book was selling millions of copies.  Riots across the country.  Politicians were getting assassinated.  The Watergate scandal added more political instability.  Saigon fell to the communists, making the Vietnam War a giant waste/failure.  Both inflation and interest rates were high.  At the end of the decade, President Jimmy Carter even said the country was in a “national malaise.”  The 1970s was a great decade for a book like The Late Great Planet Earth.

I actually don’t mind a little fear mongering with my first cup of coffee. Times have always had the potential to go really bad, and times will always have the potential to go really bad.  I’m just wary of people who try to make money off that fear, and this book (along with its low budget movie) seem to have been doing that.

Maybe right now is a great time for another book like The Late Great Planet Earth, but I’m not going to be the guy who writes it.

DYSFUNCTIONAL BOOK REVIEW:

I had fun reading The Late Great Planet Earth. And I’m not scared of it or the movie trailer anymore. I have faced my fears!

*****

Here are more more Dysfunctional Book Reviews:

Is This Self-Help Book Still Relevant? How To Win Friends And Influence People

A Time To Kill vs. To Kill A Mockingbird  

Bad Sentences in Classic Literature: The Great Gatsby 

It by Stephen King and The Novel by James Michener: A Conversation 

Literary Glance: The Corrections by Johnathan Franzen

*****

And here is my one novel!

A grammar-obsessed English teacher falls in ‘luuuvvv’ but discovers how chaotic and dangerous ‘luuuvvv’ can be.

Or you can buy a copy here on Amazon!

Not sure? Read a sample chapter of The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy.