52 - This Present Darkness (feat. Scott Benson)
Added 2022-09-14 07:00:06 +0000 UTCScott Benson (Night In the Woods) joins the lads in demonic combat as they battle the evils of satanic prophecy and New Age philosophy in Frank E. Peretti’s sophomoric superhit: This Present Darkness. Topics include the evils of carnivals, Peretti’s truly vile prose, and the lasting ramifications of This Present Darkness on the modern Christian fiction landscape.
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Theme by Brendan Dalton
www.brendan-dalton.com
https://brendandalton.bandcamp.com
Media Referenced in this Episode:This Present Darkness (Unabridged):
Part One: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6rhuJB68BM&t=2s
Part Two: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VINkS29eGRM
This Present Darkness (Abridged):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRnUSravKkU
“Singer’s Plug Puts ‘This Present Darkness’ in Spotlight : Fundamentalist Novel Finds Wide Appeal”
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-09-23-me-550-story.html
Comments
Seeing that cover is going to require 4 1/2 therapy sessions to recover from the PTSD.
Erin Rierson
2025-01-04 05:05:25 +0000 UTCOmg is this just shitty American Gods or Good Omens?
John Her
2024-07-07 23:45:28 +0000 UTCI grew up pentecostal! Assembly of God, baby! One larger church we went to had a yearly big budget play about the... End Times! Loudly binding spirits by various names was a fairly regular thing I heard. Peretti's adult books were basically my "discovering Stephen King in middle grade." Even King never wrote anything as scary as "a John Hagee sermon on demons when you're 12" though.
Dergon
2023-11-21 15:35:44 +0000 UTCpilgrim's progress is definitely on the list. gonna have to look into spirit flyer because ghost bicycles sounds like a good time
The Worst of all Possible Worlds
2022-09-20 07:28:35 +0000 UTCThe much more completely batshit series of Christian children's novels I vaguely remember, though, is the _Spirit Flyer_ series, which is about the Holy Spirit coming in the form of... bicycles? IIRC there are also evil bicycles—because of course—and over the course of the series it's basically _Left Behind_ except somehow even weirder. (I only remember reading the first book... I got the summary of the rest from my brother.)
Elsie Hupp
2022-09-20 02:25:27 +0000 UTCThe Frank Peretti books I remember reading as a kid were apparently from _The Cooper Kids Adventures_: https://www.goodreads.com/series/40888-the-cooper-kids-adventures I remember reading _The Door in the Dragon's Throat_: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/365047.The_Door_in_the_Dragon_s_Throat And _The Tombs of Anak_: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/199155.The_Tombs_of_Anak And I specifically remember liking the latter one. But then again I was probably a seventh-grader myself at the time! Maybe Frank Peretti is better at YA than grownup novels? (Probably not.) As best I can remember this series was basically an Evangelical Indiana Jones with kid protagonists. In other words it actually had interesting pulp shit going on. (So idk it might actually be enjoyable to read, though it'd be pretty low on my list personally.) _This Present Darkness_ kind of sounds like a joyless version of _Good Omens_, though it was published several years prior. Speaking of weird Evangelical novels, do you think you'll ever do _Pilgrim's Progress_? My main exposure to it was a low-budget slideshow narration movie we watched in Sunday school, and mainly I remember it being depressing lol. Though _Pilgrim's Progress_ is also a bit odd in that it's significant in the history of English literature more generally, rather than just the history of religious literature. (As far as "the first novel in X language" goes, _Don Quixote_ is probably a lot better lol.)
Elsie Hupp
2022-09-20 02:22:11 +0000 UTC😳
BrianAlflordIsGoodActually
2022-09-15 15:47:30 +0000 UTCI think you'll find that if you play a lot of the ads backwards, you will find many fun little Easter eggs.
The Worst of all Possible Worlds
2022-09-15 15:43:39 +0000 UTClollll is that music from the social network in the ad break
BrianAlflordIsGoodActually
2022-09-15 15:36:10 +0000 UTCso much content
Genevieve R
2022-09-15 02:34:42 +0000 UTChe WATT??
Bruce
2022-09-14 18:50:40 +0000 UTCthe music to the arcade scene was 🔥
IranIraqIkea
2022-09-14 17:14:34 +0000 UTCSeeing that cover art exhumed a long-dead memory of my mom giving me this book as a gift ~20 years ago. I never ended up reading it because it just didn't seem interesting.
Korax
2022-09-14 15:41:08 +0000 UTCwould appreciate a content warning if the episode is going to attack me with takes like "'This Plum is Too Ripe' is the only good song in The Fantasticks"
Addison Stumpf
2022-09-14 14:24:24 +0000 UTC
