The Pop Prophets

The many critics of the series see a resonance between its apocalyptic scenario and the born-again President Bush's apocalyptic rhetoric and confrontational Mideast policies. And they see LaHaye's far-right political agenda behind having fetuses Raptured from pregnant women's wombs, and making the Antichrist the secretary-general of the United Nations. Roman Catholics aren't happy that the Antichrist's assistant is the pope, and while "Left Behind" shows the common evangelical sympathy for Jews, they exist to be converted and to fulfill Christian prophecy. (For Jenkins and LaHaye, of course, so does everyone else.) And minorities may find the books' attempts at multiculturalism condescending. "I ain't seen no Bible for years," says one character, a "heavyset Latina." "What got me was that it wasn't fancy, wasn't hard to understand... All them Scriptures sounded true to me, 'bout being a sinner."

The other principal critique comes from some of Jenkins's and LaHaye's fellow Christians, who find the books more interested in God's wrath than God's love--as well as scripturally questionable. "It's pulp fiction, based on a particular reading of the Bible," says Randall Balmer, chair of the religion department at Barnard College. "It diverts attention from the mandate of the New Testament to love God with all your heart and soul and mind and to love your neighbor as yourself." According to Tyndale's research, more Jews, agnostics and atheists read the series than mainline Protestants, and back in 2000 even the president of the Lutheran Church's conservative Missouri Synod denounced the "Left Behind" series as "an unbiblical flight of fancy." Most establishmentarian Christians agree with Tina Pippin, a professor of religious studies at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Ga., in saying "Left Behind" "encourages people to see the world in terms of black and white, good and evil, with us or against us."

Certainly LaHaye and Jenkins promulgate what might be called outsider theology. But they are outsiders: they grew up that way, and they're proud of it--much as they might also like to be insiders. And they do see the world in terms of good against evil: isn't that what their reading of the Bible tells them? "The liberals have crafted a Jesus that's unscriptural and to their liking," LaHaye says. "They want their God to be a big, benevolent grandfather who lets them into heaven anyway. The worst thing a person can do against God is to deceive people about the Bible. That's satanically inspired."

LaHaye won't be along next month when the genial Jenkins appears at the secular BookExpo America's first-ever Religion Day. They may not be quite ready for LaHaye. With Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, he was one of the most divisive figures of the 1980s religious right, and he's still a loose cannon. He can't resist an opportunity to get in a dig about school prayer, the United Nations, homosexuals or "libertine living"--or to question a NEWSWEEK reporter about his personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Jenkins, too, is an evangelical Christian, and if pressed, he'll acknowledge he's a pro-life conservative. But he's neither a proselytizer nor a polemicist. He says he's "not blind to the mistakes this country has made" over the years, has Christian pacifist friends and harbors no regrets that his weight kept him from serving in the Vietnam War. ("Too fat to fight," as he puts it.) During a taping for "60 Minutes," when Morley Safer accused the series of promoting American triumphalism, Jenkins kept out of the line of fire. "He hit a hot button with LaHaye," Jenkins recalls. "And so LaHaye says, 'If Jerry and I were cut, we'd bleed red, white and blue,' and I'm like, 'Oh, man, I know that's gonna be on TV'." Still, he and LaHaye share more than a faith, a father-son bond and a fortune: the call to help you to salvation.

Tim LaHaye greets you at the entrance to his building, in a lush, green country-club condominium off Rancho Mirage's Frank Sinatra Boulevard. "He lives on a golf course," says his old friend Ed Hindson, assistant chancellor at Falwell's Liberty University, "and he plays maybe twice a year. He's too busy thinking, writing and praying." He's come armed with a quotation to break the ice: not from Scripture but from Winston Churchill. " 'Writing a book is adventure'," he reads. " 'It becomes a mistress. Then it becomes a master... The last phase is that... you kill the monster and fling it to the public'." Did he just say "mistress"?