Popular Fiction

In a nervous world, a series of apocalyptic thrillers continues to dominate bestseller lists.

The Left Behind Series:

Left Behind; Tribulation Force; Nicolae;

Soul Harvest; Apollyon; Assassins; The Indwelling;

The Mark; Desecration; The Remnant;

Armageddon; Glorious Appearing

By Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins

Tyndale. 12 titles, 2001-2004

Because he is a Romanian citizen, the Antichrist will not be voting for president in November. But there's no doubt about which side he'd favor, given his advocacy of causes such as peace, disarmament, global cooperation, aid to Third World countries, interfaith dialogue and environmental treaties. Nicolae Carpathia, as he is named, is the secretary general of the United Nations and the primary evildoer of the wildly popular "Left Behind" novels, by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. His creators have endowed him with progressive opinions whose political overtones are hard to mistake: The Antichrist is also the anti-Bush.

Tim LaHaye, who supplies the theological message of the books, helped found the Moral Majority. Jerry Jenkins, who does the writing, is the author of some 150 books, including biographies of sports figures, marriage manuals and fiction for children and adults.

This 12-volume series of apocalyptic thrillers confronts present-day characters with a string of blood-curdling judgments prophesied in the Book of Revelations. With their melodramatic clashes between good and evil, the Left Behind books have been widely dismissed as Born-Again beach reading, scarcely worth a look. In fact, the series offers an instructive if unsettling 5,000-page tour of the alternative universe of Protestant fundamentalism and its dominant belief system, a convoluted doctrine called premillennial dispensationalism.

(Although fundamentalist and evangelical are often used interchangeably, evangelicalsm is a much broader category, encompassing a multiplicity of religious views, including premillennialist fundamentalism.)

Followers of fundamentalist doctrine hold that the Bible is infallible and that salvation comes through personal faith and not good deeds. They interpret the world through biblical prophecy and are famously encouraged to read with a newspaper in one hand and the Bible in the other.

Premillennial dispensationalism is no obscure religious byway. In the anthology Rapture, Revelation and the End Times, Bruce David Forbes, a professor of religious studies at Morningside College, points out that the same conservative Christians who are a major portion of the Left Behind readers constitute "a significant base for President George W. Bush, who numbers himself among them."

The White House won't disclose whether the president has read the Left Behind books and, although President Bush is proudly Born Again, he has been careful about professing specific religious beliefs. Whatever his personal theology, however, many of the policies of the Bush administration "strike prophecy believers as perfectly in harmony with God's prophetic plan," according to Paul S. Boyer, a scholar at the University of Wisconsin, writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education.