When looking at the spine of a TFI novel, something that stands out to non-TFI members is the publishing logo. It’s a picture of an open book with the words “Heaven’s Library”. The idea of Heaven’s Library is something very TFI. Since I was a very little girl, I remember loving the Heaven’s Library stories, whether they came in magazines or novels or book collections, because that was where the stories came from. I first loved the series Fairyland, which was about a bunch of fairies in heaven who went down to Earth as spirit helpers to help little kids with varying problems. This series was first published in magazines, then later bundled together with many other Heaven’s Library magazines into one of the Heaven’s Library books.

However, Heaven’s Library also had actual novels, like the one I analyse here. Warriors: At the Edge of Time is a good general example for one of TFI’s Endtime novels. The novel starts in 1970, then halfway through the novel there’s a time jump to the early 2000’s. The novel deals with the conversion of a variety of characters to TFI’s Christianity, and then shows how these characters deal with the beginning of the Endtime and the Rise of the Antichrist. This is the first book of a duology, and the second book deals with the actual Endtime and a period after the Breaking of the Covenant. If you don’t know what that’s supposed to mean, that’s okay – that’s what this article is for! The Endtime events will be explained in the Apocalypse 101 section below.

Figure 1. Our Heavenly Home

But let me explain what Heaven’s Library actually was. According to TFI, members received visions of what Heaven looked like, so I grew up with posters and pictures of heaven. There were even 3D models that kids could build as art projects, which had all of Heaven’s buildings. One of these buildings was Heaven’s Library. So all these stories were supposed to come from an actual location in heaven. The reason we were able to read these stories in a material form was because a TFI member received them through prophecy. Some people would pray and get a prophecy from Heaven’s Library, which was then written down and published in TFI. The name of the prophet or storyteller was not always given, sometimes the story was just credited to Heaven’s Library, but sometimes the prophecy was received from a specific author in Heaven. In the case of Warriors, the first page tells us, “As told by John Steinbeck”. This story was received from John Steinbeck through prophecy.

• I do realise how ridiculous this all sounds. And I must admit that I felt a little bit insane while writing this, but I did truly believe this with all my heart when I was a little kid. It was just so normal to receive messages through prophecy, so well, why not entire books? And I didn’t realise there was anything weird about these books supposedly being from famous authors until I was 18 years old and read a TFI novel that was “As told by Ernest Hemmingway”. It was the first time I’d read the novel after having actually read one of the Hemmingway’s actual novels, and the style was so different that it immediately struck me. Funnily enough, this was one of the first discoveries that led me to realise I’d grown up in a cult.

One TFI book is “As told by Edgar Allen Poe”, which is ridiculous, because Poe’s stories are so dark, they never would have been accepted by TFI. Therefore, I researched Steinbeck a little to see if it at least made TFI-sense for him to have written this novel. Timeline-wise, it could check out – the book was “written” in 1999, and John Steinbeck died in 1968. And at least Steinbeck seems to have been some sort of a religious Christian, so this is one author where it makes some sense that TFI thought he would send down stories from heaven.

There are a few other things I would like to note before delving into the themes of this novel: prophecies, endnotes/footnotes, and the writing style. Being a TFI novel, there are of course lots of interactions with the Spirit World, including numerous prophecies. I’m not sure whether these were real prophecies people received and added to the novel – that is one possibility, because I know they did that with a different TFI novel. More likely however is that the prophecies are fiction from “John Steinbeck”. Nevertheless, some endnotes/footnotes hold actual prophecies that talk about the characters in the novel as through they’re real people, which blurs the lines between reality and fiction and makes things confusing. This is however very in the style of TFI.

• When I was a kid, I really struggled with knowing the difference between reality and fiction, because those lines were constantly blurred in TFI. If I asked whether faeries existed, the answer I got was, “Everything is possible in Heaven”. Theoretically, all fantasy creatures did exist and many are mentioned in TFI stories. Particularly Endtime novels were treated, especially by the footnotes and endnotes, as true stories. I’m still unsure whether Warriors was meant to be a prophecy about the future of some real TFI members, or whether it was supposed to be fully fiction.

Concerning the footnotes, the first thing I thought when I read Warriors’ footnotes was that they reminded me of foreign-language books we read in Gymnasium. The footnotes explain colloquialisms, drug names, complex words, brand names and just about any word a TFI teenager might not know, since we had no contact with the outside world. The endnotes then delve into further detail, but also contain prophecies and other details which are less relevant to the story, like information about Nietzsche or witchcraft stars.

• The endnotes and footnotes are written with such serious intent that it truly made me laugh. Much of their information is either incorrect (the information about ankhs) or irrelevant (Nietzsche apparently had a friendship with Wagner). Yet by being so unique, the endnotes and footnotes demonstrate TFI ideals very well.

Finally, I would like to discuss the writing style: the style is, in a word, special. There are many questionable style choices from a creative writing point of view, like characters acting unrealistically or the writer’s choice to depict accents (a little too overzealously, in my opinion). There is also one instance in the novel where a character breaks the fourth wall and speaks directly to a reader, which was just weird (especially since it only happens that one time). Also, the novel has some basic continuity issues – most glaringly, the passage of time is completely messed up over the chapters. In any case, the writing is not what I would call “good”, and I could write an entire separate essay critiquing choices and especially commenting on the dramatics of the style. The novel is very dramatic, in that certain descriptions represent extremes of positives and negatives. The System, or just non-TFI, things and people are dramatically bad, while TFI things and people are dramatically good. This matches the strong us vs. them mentality taught in TFI.

• Overall this use of words to paint TFI as better than the System is what I personally find quite detrimental concerning these books (only the sexism was worse for me). These repetitive descriptions border on a language of brainwashing which was used to get a variety of TFI values across under the “guise” of a fun novel. I used to wonder how I learned certain TFI beliefs, since I didn’t recall being actively taught them, and rereading these old novels has opened my eyes to how underhandedly dangerous these novels were for spreading TFI propaganda.

Now that you the reader know basic information about where the novel was supposed to come from and how it was written, I’m going to delve into my theme analysis. The main overarching themes I examine are sexism and The Endtime. Due to the amount of content belonging to these themes, I’ve divided them into subcategories. In the section on sexism, I analyse the difference in character descriptions of men and women; age, sex and age gaps in the novel; how TFI vs System women are depicted; Flirty Fishing in the nvoel; and finally Spiritual Sex. In the Endtime section I break down each of the Endtime events, analysing the ones that take place in the novel in more detail; then I write about the Antichrist and his depiction in the novel; finally, I write about TFI and how its members were supposed to be the heroes of the Endtime.

Figure 1. Our Heavenly Home.

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