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It was only later that he realized the reason they had called him, but by then it was too late for the information to do him any good.

Instead of telling this in a direct fashion, Evenson uses the first paragraph not just to foreshadow this first contact, but also to go beyond it and to hint at the meanings embedded with the story: Last Days begins with detective Kline, himself a recent victim to a severing of his right hand, being approached by a secretive religious cult that revolves around the passage of Matthew 5:29-30 referring to if one’s hand causes one to commit sin, that such a member ought to be severed and cast off in order for one to remain righteous. Evenson addresses some of those questions in Last Days, but as it is with trying to grasp the mentalité of those whose very world-views are so alien to ours, there are times where the narrative falters and the reader is left confronted with the raw, visceral “otherness” that has fallen across adherents to such extreme manifestations of religious faith. Today in this world, there are those who take the words of prophets and other religious men so literally that we see such a self-effacement taking place as to make outsiders wonder what could move them to inflict such pain and suffering upon themselves and upon others. Paul, to his visions of how to lead a holy life and especially to his views on the coming end to the world, abound.

Throughout this book, itself an expansion upon 2003’s The Brotherhood of Mutilation (which comprises the first part of this novel), references to St.

These religious celebrations are mentioned here because they inform and add layers of depth to Brian Evenson’s latest book, Last Days. Paul in reference to the “last days.” Pope Benedict XVI has proclaimed the period from Jto Jto be a special jubilee in honor of the traditional 2000th anniversary of St. Paul, in my parish church and they comprise part of the apocalyptic comments of St. The New Testament verses above were read today, the traditional Feast of the Conversion of St. Those using the world as not using it fully.įor the world in its present form is passing away. I tell you, brothers and sisters, the time is running out.įrom now on, let those having wives act as not having them,