April 25, 2004 by s.z.

Hastening the Second Coming

This week's LA Times Magazine has a very interesting article about Tim Lahaye, co-author (in that he comes up with the Biblical "End of the World" storyline) for the Left Behind series.  Here are a few selections from it:

LaHaye sees evidence everywhere of the end of the world as we know it and three of his 10 Bible prophesy books focus on the end times. He even contributes to his publisher's online newsletter, "The Left Behind Prophesy Club," to reassure evangelical Christians that things are proceeding right on schedule and that they should be happy about it. "These are easily the most exciting days to be alive," he wrote in "Are We Living in the End Times?" which he also co-authored with Jenkins. "We 21st century Christians have more reason than any generation before us to believe that Christ will return to take us to His Father's house."

For one thing, he is absolutely convinced that the turmoil in the Middle East is a sign that Jesus' return is imminent. Asked about the newsletter's report that "Saddam's removal clears the way for rebuilding Babylon," LaHaye smiles as he explains that this was indeed one of the clearest signs he had seen. So President Bush is bringing the Second Coming closer by rebuilding Iraq? "Totally inadvertently, yes."

Yes, Bush is bringing the Second Coming closer, by bringing to pass the wars, destruction, plagues, etc. foretold in the Book of Revelation.  So, he's doing God's will.  Albeit inadvertently, of course.

Still, signs of the end times would be of little relevance outside of fundamentalist churches, except for one thing—Tim LaHaye wants the whole world to believe as he does. Apparently, he'd also like them to vote that way.

Spend a few hours talking with the soft-spoken, grandfatherly LaHaye, and you begin to understand why he continues to write and speak at a furious pace, and is even helping lead a Left Behind prophesy tour and cruise to Greece with prices ranging from $2,800 to $3,000, depending on the point of origin. What drives him is that he wants everyone in the world to go to heaven.

Wow, a Left Behind Prophesy cruise!  That's almost as good as the National Review Bermuda Triangle Cruise (which is just a couple of weeks away -- and they're still looking for speakers, per the cruiseline).  

But let's review how LaHaye is trying to get everyone to vote like him, so they can go to heaven. 

It seems that when LaHaye was 12, he got fired from his job selling Grit (or some publication like that), "because child labor laws were passed in Michigan."  This began his hatred of the kind of government that is always poking its nose into other people exploitation of children.  Later, he became a minister.  But when the city wouldn't give him permission to expand the church complex (they said it was due to concerns about preserving a wildlife habitat, but he knew it was because they were hostile to religion), he got even with them by becoming a Christian political activist.  He REALLY showed them when he started the Moral Majority with Jerry Falwell. 

Falwell remembered the organization's heady first days in a recent phone conversation: "Within months we had 7 million laypeople on our mailing list and helped elect Ronald Reagan president. It was the most explosive thing in American politics. George W. Bush would not be president without that fallout of the organizing of religious conservatives."

And don't think that Bush's brain, Karl Rove, isn't ever mindful of this.

Anyway, in 1981 LaHaye left the ministry and moved to Washington, D.C. so his wife could found Concerned Women for America.  After LaHaye was let go as co-chair for Jack Kemp's presidential campaign when people figured out he was an intolerant kook, LaHaye decided to reform the world through Christian fiction. 

Jerry Falwell approves.

LaHaye's novels are reaching "an audience heretofore unreached," Falwell said, and "his impact subliminally is probably greater than it has ever been, such that if you were to ask him he would tell you that he's no longer crusading, he's evangelizing." He added, "Once his converts get in our churches, we pastors have a tendency to tell them how to vote."

And by writing books which get people into Falwell's churches where pastors can tell them how to vote, and through his large donations to groups that promote his views, LaHaye, like Bush, is doing his part to keep people from being left behind for voting Democratic.

Of course, LaHaye can't actually write, so he teamed up with Jerry Jenkins, a guy who had already written dozens of tepid Christian novels, and so could be trusted with getting LaHaye's vision of the manly Rayford Steele on the page.

Does Jenkins, a lifelong evangelical Christian, feel he was inspired by God to write runaway bestsellers when he had never experienced sales on this level before? Not directly. "I don't want to imply that I'm writing [God's] words," he says. But "when I get a computer glitch or unexplained fatigue, I know that [Satan] is trying to stop me. It's a nuisance, and it seems to be only these books."

Yeah, I know just what Jenkins means.  In fact, Satan is trying to stop me right now with that fatigue thing.  So, I'm going to bed -- I'm no match for Satan.  More later.

2:08:17 AM