The author of the best-selling “Left Behind” novels about the return of Jesus and the rapture has died.
A publicist for the Rev. Tim LaHaye says the novelist died Monday in San Diego, California, days after suffering a stroke. He was 90 years old.
LaHaye and his partner Jerry B. Jenkins wrote 16 volumes in the “Left Behind” series, which sold more than 80 million copies worldwide, bringing Christian prophecy and the apocalypse into mainstream bookstores.
LaHaye was a Baptist minister who started an Atlanta-area church and several Christian schools, and wrote dozens of non-fiction and advice books. He was active in conservative political groups and instrumental in the creation of the Moral Majority.
No funeral plans were announced. He is survived by his wife Beverly and four children.
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Obligatory plug for the Slactivist blog, whose author, Fred Clark, an evangelical Christian of the best kind, has spent years expertly taking down Tim LaHaye specifically, and anti-Jesus rightwing “Christians” in general. His chapter-by-chapter critique the Left Behind novels, both in terms of theology and literary merit (or lack thereof), is brilliant.
Here’s his comment on the passing of LaHaye, an event which disproves everything Timmy himself claimed was true while bilking millions from people who he convinced to believe his particular brand of bullshit.
I tried reading the first book in the series since they were all the rage when first published, but couldn’t get through it. I could deal with the right wing theology – you knew that going into it – but the writing was sophomoric at best with one dimensional characters and shoddy plotting.