Novel: Nicolae

Overview
"Nicolae" (1997), the third installment in the Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, pushes the story from covert resistance into open global crisis. Picking up soon after Tribulation Force, it follows the core believers, airline captain Rayford Steele, journalist Buck Williams, and Chloe Steele Williams, as they navigate life under the mounting tyranny of Nicolae Carpathia, the charismatic world ruler increasingly unmasked as the Antichrist. The novel marries political thriller beats with apocalyptic prophecy, widening the canvas from suburban safe houses to war-scorched capitals and the new seat of power in the Middle East.

Setting and Premise
The world has reorganized into a single Global Community with New Babylon (in Iraq) as its capital, national borders subordinated to ten regional authorities loyal to Carpathia. As the early judgments of Revelation unsettle the planet, Carpathia accelerates disarmament and consolidates military power, promising peace while preparing to crush dissent. The Tribulation Force, now a clandestine network anchored in suburban Chicago, commits to evangelism, discipleship, and intelligence-gathering even as surveillance tightens and loyalties are tested.

Plot Highlights
Rayford accepts a perilous role as Carpathia’s personal pilot, placing him in daily proximity to the most dangerous man alive. The proximity offers insight and influence but also spiritual risk, forcing Rayford to balance vigilance, witness, and the temptation to strike back. Hattie Durham, formerly Rayford’s colleague and now ensnared by Nicolae’s orbit, becomes a focal point of moral and spiritual concern as the Force tries to reach her before she is further exploited by the regime.

Buck’s storyline plunges into chaos as Carpathia unleashes a lightning war to stamp out resistance. Major cities are hit, including New York and Chicago, and Buck must navigate scorched streets, collapsed infrastructure, and martial checkpoints to survive and find his way back to Chloe. Their marriage, new, fragile, and tested by distance, becomes a thread of human hope amid the rubble, complicated by miscommunication, near-death scrapes, and the constant need to move unseen.

The spiritual center of the book shifts with the emergence of Tsion Ben-Judah, an Israeli scholar commissioned to identify the Messiah. His research leads him to a dangerous confession of faith in Jesus, triggering a lethal backlash. Buck becomes instrumental in Tsion’s rescue and extraction, and Tsion’s teaching begins to rally a scattered underground of new believers through clandestine broadcasts and online discipleship. As the Tribulation Force reels from devastating losses, including the death of their mentor, Pastor Bruce Barnes, they look to Tsion for scriptural guidance and renewed purpose.

Themes and Tone
The novel blends prophetic inevitability with espionage urgency. Power and deception dominate the public square as Carpathia’s rhetoric of unity masks coercion and bloodshed. Personal storylines underscore themes of calling, courage under surveillance, and sacrificial community. The cost of discipleship rises: characters must decide whether proximity to evil can be redeemed for mission or inevitably corrupts. Grief and perseverance sit side by side, with prayer and Scripture functioning as both strategy and solace.

Place in the Series
"Nicolae" marks the series’ turn from set-up to sustained conflict, closing the era of shocked adjustment after the Rapture and opening the era of organized resistance under an overtly hostile world state. It transitions leadership within the believers’ ranks, broadens the global scope through war and relocation of power, and positions Tsion as a theological beacon for the remnant. The final chapters leave the characters battered but re-committed, with the Global Community ascendant and the next wave of prophetic judgments looming, setting the stage for the escalating stakes and cataclysms of the subsequent volumes.