Left Behind' end-time novels co-author Tim LaHaye passes on after a stroke

Who remembers Tim LaHaye?



The Reverend Dr. Tim F. LaHaye,  partnered with Christian writer Jerry B. Jenkins to create the “Left Behind” series whose 80 million books according to reports, possibly had a “greater” impact on modern Christianity that anything other than the Bible, died on Monday, only days after suffering a stroke.

With partner, Jerry B. Jenkin

He was 90 and had just celebrated his 69th wedding anniversary with his wife Beverly, the creator of Concerned Women for America.

LaHaye, whose work included founding churches, founding schools and supporting the biblical proposition of a Creator and a creation in numerous ways, was the son of a Detroit autoworker who grew up to be a pastor and evangelical leader.

According to a profile on his own website, TimLaHaye.com, he was born in Detroit on April 27, 1926, to Frank and Margaret LaHaye.

Tim Lahaye was born in Detroit, Michigan, on April 27 1926 into a working class family. His father Frank, a machine repairman, died of a heart attack when he was nine and his mother then went out to work in a Ford factory to support her three children. His father’s death was a catalyst for his religious beliefs. “I thought the world had come to an end,” he told an interviewer. “But the minister said, 'This is not the last we will see of Frank LaHaye.’ Suddenly in my heart a great hope was born: I will see him again.”

After serving as a machine gunner aboard a bomber in the Second World War, LaHaye attended Bob Jones University, a college in South Carolina known for its culturally conservative and fundamentalist religious position. He began his ministry while he was still at university, becoming a pastor at a small church in South Carolina. He went on to receive a doctorate from Western Theological Seminary in Michigan and served a Minneapolis congregation until 1956 when he became head of the evangelical Scott Memorial Church in San Diego, California.

During his 25 year ministry in San Diego, LaHaye’s church grew to three separate congregations. He also founded 10 Christian schools, a Christian Heritage College, set up Family Life seminars, co-founded an Institute for Creation Research and designed a self-improvement scheme called the LaHaye Temperament Analysis (based on the medieval theory of the four humours). He wrote dozens of books – including self-help manuals like How to Win over Depression (1974), Anger Is a Choice (1982), Why You Act the Way You Do (1984), I Love You, But Why Are We So Different? (1991) and the best-selling The Act of Marriage (1976) in which he claimed that religious wives have sex more often and enjoy it more than non-believers.

In the 1990s he turned to fiction, enlisting the help of Jerry Jenkins, a former journalist and born-again Christian who had ghosted Billy Graham’s memoirs. Their first novel, Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth’s Last Days topped the Christian book charts in 1995 and stayed there for three years. Soon the Left Behind books became a household name around the world.

Left Behind merchandise included a board game in which players earn 'redemption tokens' that can be cashed in for eternal life.

The Left Behind series spawned a full-blown merchandise industry with CDs, DVDs, calendars allowing the chosen to count the days until Rapture, clothes sporting a Rapture logo, a board game in which players earn “redemption tokens” that can be cashed in for eternal life, even a book for those who miss the great event, called Oops, I Guess I Wasn’t Ready (what to do if you miss the Rapture).

LaHaye and Jenkins became millionaires many times over, but unlike some others in the fundamentalist movement, LaHaye was not motivated by money. Most of his fortune was donated to religious institutions such as the Pre-Trib Research Centre (dedicated to detecting signs of the imminent apocalypse) which he set up in 1993.

A skinny man with dyed brown hair, LaHaye was said to be surprisingly soft-spoken and patient given the virulence of his views.

Tim Lahaye married, in 1947, Beverly Davenport, a fellow student at Bob Jones University. He is also survived by their two sons and two daughters.

The Reverend Tim LaHaye, born April 27 1926, died July 25 2016.

What an impactful life!

Sources: WDN, Telegraph