Apocalypse: Next Right
by Gershom Gorenberg

"O Lucifer, son of the morning! I have worshipped you since childhood," whispers Nicolae Carpathia, the man who has turned the U.N. into a one-world government and brought global disarmament. Carpathia is alone in his office in New Babylon, his capital, after a meeting in which he plotted yet another murder. Now he's praying to the Devil -- not knowing that one of his heroic born-again Christian opponents has bugged his room and is listening. "I shall do all your bidding ..." the world dictator promises the Evil One.

That strange scene comes midway in THE ASSASSINS -- Book Number 6 of Tim LaHaye's and Jerry Jenkins's wildly successful LEFT BEHIND thrillers about the Last Days. Carpathia, a.k.a the Antichrist, is the serialized saga's villain, ruling the earth during history's final years. But he can't prevent the horrors predicted in the Book of Revelation -- war, plague, catastrophic earthquakes. And, readers know, Carpathia will be defeated at the end of the world as we know it, when Jesus returns. That finale is planned for Book 12 of the series. Book 8, THE MARK, was released recently and leapt to the top of bestseller lists; LEFT BEHIND: THE MOVIE brings the popular series to the screen.

Viewed from mainstream culture, all this sounds wacky. Popular opinion assigns belief in imminent apocalypse to offbeat sects and men on street corners with signs saying "The End is Nigh." When I tell friends and journalistic colleagues that I track apocalyptic believers, they assume I'm writing about "crazies."

LEFT BEHIND's immense popularity, however, demands a reappraisal of apocalyptic belief. Millions of Americans have been reading books that portray the end of the world as something that could happen today. Fascination with the End didn't evaporate on January 1, 2000; it is increasing. And crucially, the theology promoted in the LEFT BEHIND books is joined seamlessly with the political vision of the far right. Along with the catechism of apocalypse, the thrillers' readers gain instruction in conspiracy theory, demonization of political opponents, even divine sanction for assassination. The books' anti-Jewish message is exceeded only by their anti-Catholic venom. Expecting the apocalypse today may not be realistic -- but the expectation itself could have a very real impact on society and politics.

LEFT BEHIND, the novel that gave the series its name, appeared in 1995. Jenkins did the writing; LaHaye provided the framework of ideas. That's reason enough for the series to deserve more public attention. For in America's culture wars, the Rev. Timothy LaHaye has served as a general, a lesser-known comrade-in-arms to Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. He headed the mid-'80s American Coalition for Traditional Values, an umbrella group dedicated to boosting the voting clout of the religious right. In 1987, he served briefly as co-chairman of conservative Republican Jack Kemp's presidential campaign -- resigning after THE BALTIMORE SUN reported that he had called Catholicism "a false religion" and had written that Jews' rejection of God was responsible for Jerusalem's troubles throughout history. He's still a member of the arch-conservative Council for National Policy.

That political resume is strikingly missing from LaHaye's bio in his end-of-the-world novels, but I'd venture that they are his most successful efforts yet to promote his views. As of March 2000, the first six novels in the series had sold a total of 11 million copies. By January 2001, two more books had appeared -- and total sales had climbed to 25 million. These numbers are readouts from a cultural weather station, revealing a storm front of apocalyptic hopes across much of America.

LaHaye's and Jenkins's novels flesh out the theology known as dispensational premillennialism, a set of ideas that exerts wide influence among evangelical Christians. And Evangelicals, surveys consistently show, make up 20 to 25% of the American population. What's more, notes Professor Brenda Brasher, an expert on fundamentalism, the average age of Evangelicals is significantly lower than that of mainstream Protestants -- meaning that "in another generation, these people will be American Protestantism." Fervent belief in the End is restricted to the Bible Belt only if you stretch that belt wide enough to include Michigan, Oregon, and southern California.

Nor is such belief the preserve of the uneducated. Indeed, in my research, I've found that apocalyptic faith often has a particular appeal to those with scientific or technological training. The Web site of a physicist I interviewed presents his research alongside essays on the End. Chuck Missler, a prominent promoter of apocalyptic prophecies, is a former high-tech executive. Dispensationalism, it seems, allows such people to read Scripture as the instruction manual for the final, fantastic upgrade of the universe: Here's how history will reach its climax, sinners will be punished, and Jesus will return. That affinity may explain the technophilia of LEFT BEHIND's heroes, who are nearly as fascinated by laptops, exec jets, and bugging devices as they are by the Book of Revelation.

The LEFT BEHIND books took off because expectations of the End were already rife. Passed from friend to office mate to neighbor, the novels have further spread anticipation of apocalypse. This isn't new -- non-fiction works fitting current events into biblical prophecies of the End have long enjoyed popularity, though the tabulation methods of bestseller lists often leave them underrepresented. In 1996, for instance, the major hit for Christian booksellers was Texas preacher John Hagee's BEGINNING OF THE END: THE ASSASSINATION OF YITZHAK RABIN AND THE COMING ANTICHRIST. And in spreading the message, books almost certainly take second place to cassette sermons, cheaply produced and vastly distributed.

The advantage of fiction, notes Brasher, is that it's hard to argue with. Rather than presenting logic, it creates a mood. The LEFT BEHIND books, she says, have succeeded in reaching beyond the evangelical audience; members of mainstream denominations are reading them, and being frightened by their vision.

The books are meant not as fantasy but realism, intended to show readers just what apocalypse will look like if it begins this moment. In the series' first pages, dozens of passengers on a transatlantic airliner vanish in the same instant, leaving their clothes on the seats. Worldwide, we learn, millions are gone. Driverless cars crash; fetuses vanish from wombs. The survivors are clueless. But readers from the self-defined "Bible-believing" audience understand: As predicted by dispensationalist doctrine, God has physically removed true born-again Christians and innocent babes from the earth. Everyone else, left behind, will have to suffer through the seven apocalyptic years known as the Tribulation. The books' heroes are those who belatedly accept Jesus, spread the Word, and battle the Antichrist. Since the Last Days are set in our day, the protagonists drive all-options Land Rovers and live in the burbs, where they build underground survival shelters to protect themselves against the coming evil.