The Indwelling is the seventh book in the wildly popular Left Behind Series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. These two have probably done as much as anyone to make the term "Rapture" familiar to a majority of Americans. Almost upon publication The Indwelling catapulted to the top of the New York Times bestseller list, a remarkable achievement, especially when one considers that the Times does not even count sales from Christian bookstores. What, one must ask, is the major appeal of a work of fiction which promotes an interpretation of the Bible which most readers would find absurd if packaged in any other form?

LaHaye and Jenkins follow a plot which they tell us is simply a dramatization of events foretold in the Bible. In this volume we find ourselves midway through the seven year period which the authors refer to as the Tribulation. It's a chaotic time for the peoples of the earth. Just three and a half years prior to the events described in this book, every born again, Bible believing Christian had been "raptured" directly into heaven. Without these devout, decent, and faithful people around to defend the cause of goodness and truth, control of the world falls into the hands of the handsome, charismatic Nicolae Carpathia, leader of the new world government. Carpathia is a native of Romania, a humanist and pacifist, the former Secretary General of the United Nations. Jenkins and LaHaye would have readers believe that the remaining population of the United States is so caught up in adulation of Carpathia, who has been designation by People magazine as 'the sexiest man alive," that Americans vote this country out of existence and willingly submit to the sovereignty of a world government which the Romanian has set up in a place called the New Babylon, somewhere in the Middle East. This book opens with Carpathia's assassination and it ends with his resurrection. Or so it appears. In fact, the resurrected Carpathia is nothing less than Satan incarnate. Satan, banished from heaven, has come to rule the world as the anti-Christ. For the faithful who dare to resist, the future looks bleak. But a small band of true believers, including Rayford Steele, a former pilot, Cameron "Buck" Williams, editor of the cybermagazine The Truth and a few others, put up a valiant resistance. They fight on, against all odds, inspired by the hope that one day, they too, may be lifted out of the present darkness and distress to be united with the Savior and his loved ones in heaven.

Apparently it does not distract from the popularity of these books that this scenario is not now, nor ever has been, the prevailing view of what happens at the "end of times" within most Christians churches. The Rapture itself is not mentioned in the Bible, nor is it included in the list of doctrines most Christians are taught to believe. In fact, the concept of a Rapture that carries Christians safely away from a world that is about to fall into chaos is a relatively recent development. First conceived by John Nelson Darby of the Plymouth Brethren in 1827, it entered widespread public currency with the publication in 1909 of the Scofield reference Bible. Among the most strident critics of the rapture scenario are millions of evangelical and fundamentalist Christians who find it a fatally flawed reading of the Bible itself. Needless to say, those of us who do not believe that events in the early years of the third millennium are predicted and predetermined by biblical prophecy find such scenarios more fantastic than science fiction. Still, writers like Hal Lindsey and Jenkins/LaHaye have revived the 19th century theory by packaging it just that way, transforming an obscure religious doctrine into a form of entertainment.

Has this made any difference in the thinking of Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins? Not in the least. Rather than lightening up, they have simply found other signs that the end is near. What's in store for the world in the opening year of the millennium? Writing in February, Tim LaHaye put it this way. "You don't have to be a prophet of doom to predict what is going to happen to us as we close down the twentieth century and get ready for the next one. This world of ours is going to become more violent and troublous than any period in history. My prediction ... a wave of unequaled terrorism is about to be unleashed this year."

Check out the full text of Tim LaHaye's prophecy for the year 2000

A period more violent and full of trouble than any in history? Worse than the Dark Ages? Worse than the violent years of the Civil War? Worse than World War II with the holocaust and the unleashing of the atomic bomb? Jenkins and LaHaye have no doubt about it. This scenario is all part of God's plan; we will see it happening this year; there is nothing any of us can do to alter it.

Why then are these novels so wildly popular? Let me suggest one explanation. They are as American as apple pie. They traffic in the currency of one of the most powerful American myths: that of the hero who rescues the damsel in distress. Remember those grade B cowboy movies from the silent movie era in which the heroine is tied to the railroad tracks. The locomotive is already in view, thundering toward her helpless body. Suddenly, from out of nowhere, the cowboy on the white horse, dashes to the rescue. He cuts the ropes, and releases the beautiful girl just in the nick of time. The pair ride off into the sunset to live, we are led to believe, happily every after. This secular myth has been reincarnated of late in such things a television show that featured young women competing for the right to marry a millionaire and multimillion dollar state lotteries that hold forth their promise of instant rescue from the humdrum of daily life and access to the lifestyle of the rich and the famous. The Left Behind Series suggests that you too can be the winner of the great Prize in the Sky. Escape from this world of woe to be with those you love in heaven! The worse one can make the woe of the world appear, the greater the longing for escape, and the greater the hunger for the Savior, whether in the form of the winning ticket in the State Lottery, the handsome millionaire, or the ultimate hero, Jesus Christ.

Ultimately, in being so predictable, these novels are not only bad fiction, they are bad faith. The real strength of Christianity lies not in the offer of a miraculous escape from the troubles of this world, but in the inspiration to resist them. God offers not a last minute rescue for a few believers while the majority of the human race perishes in chaos, but the hope that was expressed so well by Jesus Christ himself in the words of his prayer, that God's will may be done "on earth as it is in heaven." God placed us upon this troubled planet to be its caretakers, not a frightened people who rush for the exit doors at the first sign of trouble.