Senior Analyst,
Political Research Associates (author info)
Tim LaHaye sees the earth as a battleground between the Godly and the Satanic, facing an approaching confrontation prophesied in the Bible's book of Revelation. The master plan of the Satanic conspiracy, according to LaHaye, is Secular Humanism.

LaHaye is not referring to an actual existing group of secular humanists, mind you, but his fantastic idea of a vast socialist utopian conspiracy hatched back in the 1800s.

It was just a matter of time before mainstream media started to pick up on the controversies surrounding the video game, Left Behind:  Eternal Forces. A nationally syndicated story by Religion News Service sumarizes the critcisms of the game raised by conservative Christian attorney Jack Thompson, who is a prominent critic of violence in video games.  While this was certainly newsworthy, there are many more major concerns about the game.

Click on picture, below, to watch short uTube clip of Frischner  touting his game:

background / resources : For a bestiary of quotes from "Left Behind Games" company representatives on the nature of the "Left Behind: Eternal Forces video game, see "Fascinating Coffee table Discussions On mass Killing ?"

Talk To Action contributor Chip Berlet, Senior Analyst for Political Research Associates, has an ongoing series on Tim LaHaye's theology that undergirds both the "Left Behind" series and the "Left Behind: Eternal Forces" video game that Talk To Action contributor Jonathan Hutson has written about in his popular 7 part Talk To Action series on the Left Behind: Eternal Forces game

One would have to assume that Tim Lahaye - who is quoted in a recent LA Times article, on the new video game "Left Behind: Eternal Forces", as commenting "We hope teenagers like the game." - apparently has missed Jeffrey Frischner's video plug, as a key selling point, of the fact that the game allows players to command "both the good side and the bad side" - that would seem to teach the sort of "moral relativity" that LaHaye has long inveighed against.

Senior Analyst,
Political Research Associates (author info)
In the Left Behind video game and book series, who is really behind the gigantic global end times conspiracy against Christians? It's a trilateral plot by liberals, secular humanists, and the devil! And don't forget the allies of the troika of terror.

According to LaHaye, the devil installed President Roosevelt to assist the takeover of America by a conspiracy of Godless secular humanists (who now control the media, the courts, the universities, and the entertainment industry) plotting to turn the "American constitution upside down" and "use our freedoms to promote pornography, homosexuality, immorality, and a host of evils characteristic of the last days." (LaHaye, PTP, April 2003, p. 2).

One of the main reasons why the Rev. Jerry Falwell co-founded the Moral Majority in 1979 was to decry the corruption of America's values. For decades, the Southern Baptist pastor has hectored Hollywood, trash-talked TV, been het up on hip hop, and spouted vitriol about video games. But this once bold, big lion who strode the stage popping off about pop culture lately has been reduced to a peewee church mouse. On his claim to fame, Rev. Falwell's got no more game. When it came time to denounce Left Behind: Eternal Forces -- a Christian supremacist video game that one Republican attorney has characterized as "the worst example to date of how the corrosive pop culture has conformed the Church to its image" -- the broken down old culture warrior has cut and run. And he's not the only one to show such cowardice. But now he's being called out in public for the first time by a fellow culture warrior.

When Bible publisher Tyndale House licensed a video game that exploits 9/11, and teaches children that New Yorkers who don't convert deserve to die, conservative Christian leaders sat silent - all but one. Now, a 20-year veteran on the front lines of the culture wars is challenging his brethren and sisters to protest the game, Left Behind: Eternal Forces. So far, he's called out Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, PhD, Southern Baptist pastor Rick Warren, and Southern Baptist pastor Jerry Falwell. In the past, all three have warned parents to keep their children away from other violent video games. But since Christian supremacist hate literature has been turned into a children's game, the No Comment Chorus has shucked and jived, ducked and covered, cut and run.

Senior Analyst,
Political Research Associates (author info)
In the Left Behind video game, why is it necessary to kill the figure next to the UN Humvee who is working for the same boss as the Global Peacekeepers?

Because the figure (reveals Jonathan Hutson) is a "goat-footed, horned demon" in league with the evil antichrist.  It all traces back to John Dewey subverting public education so that Satan could rule the Earth.

Having trouble following this explanation? Not a problem. Tim LaHaye has already explained it all in his newsletter, Pre-Trib Perspectives, a "Publication Ministry of the Pre-Trib Research Center." This chatty newsletter features articles and commentaries by LaHaye and his colleague Thomas Ice, where they are more candid about their actual beliefs.

[ editorial ]: "....this tremendous game that has it all; great graphics, strategy, depth and meaningful messages worthwhile of fascinating coffee table discussions." - Troy Lyndon, CEO of "Left Behind Games", describing the new "Left Behind: Eternal Forces" video game. The makers of "Left Behind: Eternal Forces" were so eager to make their new video game realistic that they photographed an entire sector of New York City - apparently inch by inch. Why not help them out ?

If you live in New York City, send the "Left Behind Games" company your photograph so they can amend their game to include a digital NYC resident who looks just like you ! That way, the teenagers the video game is targeted at will be able to see quite precisely who they are killing. Oh - and if you do this, why not ask the "Left Behind Games" company to add some blood ? After all, shooting people - even blowing them to bits - is a messy business.

Imagine: in one hand, you hold cold pizza or your favorite caffeine-loaded cola, while with the other, you command a Christian militia battling the forces of the AntiChrist. Times Square is ablaze with video billboards and piled high with the bodies of New Yorkers. A goat-footed, horned demon, (controlled by your 13-year-old Christian gamer buddy Mikey) emerges from a United Nations Humvee to feast on one of your snipers. But then one of your tanks gacks the demon in a big fireball -- along with three nurses from the U.N. Now in a gnarlier game, there might be demon and nurse giblets hanging from the lamp posts, but in Left Behind: Eternal Forces, there's no blood and guts, just dead bodies. (As Mikey might say, it's kinda wack but whatev.) Apparently this cleanness makes the slaughter of New Yorkers who refuse to convert, somehow more Christ-like, just as when the Christian commandos shout "Praise the Lord!" after a fresh New Yorker kill.

But for now, the apocalyptic battle lulls. Across the battlefield, you spot a gold sportscar that crashed into a delivery truck for your favorite pizza parlor. Pizza boxes have spilled out, and cola cans are rolling around (time out: Mikey is hungry again). And on one of the Times Square digital billboards, there's a mesmerizing video clip playing. It's a promo for a PG-13 movie. The graphics are wicked good: flash video with radio sound. And it's stupid funny. Your voice cracks as you laugh at the video billboard playing in Times Square above the gigantamongous pile of bloodless, dead New Yorkers. You watch the video play through its 15-second loop, unaware that this in-game ad is also watching you.

Senior Analyst,
Political Research Associates (author info)
When White supremacists post websites demonizing Jews and gay people, they are condemned for the hatemongers they are.

When leaders of the armed citizens militias and their allies in the Patriot Movement in the 1990s urged their followers to form anti-government underground cells and battle global cooperation and the United Nations, they were condemned as dangerous guerrillas spreading divisive conspiracy theories.

When Timothy LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins write the Left Behind series of novels containing the same type of bigotry, they sell 70 million books and are interviewed by clueless journalists who use a double standard by not confronting LaHaye and Jenkins for spreading hate and conspiracism as well as promoting religious violence as a heroic duty.

Some fellow bloggers and I are pinch-hitting for Bill Scher, the proprietor of the excellent national political blog site Liberal Oasis, while he is on his honeymoon.  When I asked him what kind of thing he would like me to do, he said what I would usually do at Talk to Action.  I said OK. But when I got to writing, I realized the usual audiences are naturally somewhat different. So, for my first post, I decided to introduce the Liberal Oasis audience to the growing controversy over the Left Behind: Eternal Forces video game. Here is how I went about it:    

The politics of video game violence promises to make some very strange bedfellows for the next few years. The issue promises to defy easy political categories -- so as this unfolds -- be careful who you climb into political bed with! Issues once framed one way, may be changing as fast as you can say mass marketing of the ideology of religious warfare in America. Sound far fetched? Read on.

Senior Analyst,
Political Research Associates (author info)
The real scandal involving the violent video game Left Behind: Eternal Forces is that the demonization of enemies, bloodthirsty dualism, and murderous rampages on the computer screen are accurate reflections of the apocalyptic theology espoused by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins in their Left Behind series of novels which have sold more than 70 million copies.

Few in the mainstream media have dared confront the fact that the best-selling Left Behind series is a primer valorizing bigotry, paranoia, and guerilla warfare against those who promote tolerance, pluralism, and global cooperation. Almost four years ago, however, author Gershom Gorenberg, blasted the Left Behind series for its open "contempt for Judaism," making a "fanatic killer" a hero, and general rejection of tolerance and democratic civil society.

The Christian supremacist video game Left Behind: Eternal Forces has drawn the wrath of conservative Christian attorney Jack Thompson. He has denounced and cut ties with Tyndale House, publisher of the Left Behind novels that inspired the video game, and he is now threatening a lawsuit over its licensing of the game. Talk to Action has obtained a letter from Mr. Thompson in which he has urged Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, Ph.D., to join him in repudiating Tyndale House.

Mr. Thompson has charged that in licensing the game, Tyndale House, publisher of his own book against video game violence as well as the Living Word Bible and several of Mr. Dobson's titles on child-rearing, "has now become one of the mental molesters of minors for money."

Talk to Action's three-part series on the Left Behind: Eternal Forces video game, in which Christian militias wage physical and spiritual warfare using the power of prayer and modern military weaponry to convert New Yorkers and kill those who resist, has set forth some provocative positions and boldly stated views. And for that, a web site on Christian apologetics, called Christian Cadre, has organized a campaign against Talk to Action and its series. In this piece, Talk to Action researches and rebuts criticism from the leader of this campaign, a blogger who uses the handle Layman. But first, let's review how the series has been received elsewhere in the media.

"Sit down, pour yourself a cup of Holy-CRAP-These-People-Are-Insane and read this," advises Father Dan, in a post titled "Schlock Fiction Left Behind Series Now a Bigoted Video Game." The San Francisco Chronicle's Mark Morford read it and spread it through his column, "Jesus Loves a Machine Gun."

Mark Carver, a top aide to mega-church pastor and best selling author Rick Warren, has resigned as a business advisor to Left Behind Games, the developers of a video game in which Christian militias wage physical and spiritual warfare using the power of prayer and modern military weaponry to convert New Yorkers and kill those who resist. Mr. Carver's abrupt resignation, announced in a statement e-mailed to Talk to Action by Mr. Warren's Purpose Driven Ministries on June 6, 2006, came in response to a two-part series on Talk to Action that criticized the game's antisocial nature (warriors shout "Praise the Lord!" as they blow infidels away, and players can switch to the side of the AntiChrist to kill Christians). The series also revealed the game developer's links to Mr. Warren's empire and their emulation of his network marketing techniques. For example, Mr. Carver, Executive Director of Purpose Driven Church, served on the Advisory Board of Left Behind Games, a corporation formed in October 2001 (weeks after the attack on the World Trade Center) to develop the violent video game and distribute 1 million sample discs through pastoral networks and mega-churches. And until June 6, the Left Behind Games web site featured Mr. Carver's name and detailed his prominent role in Purpose Driven Church. [Update: here is a screen shot from the Left Behind Games site taken before June 5, showing Mr. Carver's name and invoking the name brand of Purpose Driven Church. -- JH]

Although Talk to Action did not claim that Mr. Warren himself had developed, distributed, or endorsed the game, it held him accountable for the use of the Purpose Driven name brand in the game's web-based marketing material, and asked whether his mega-church and global pastoral network planned to distribute the game. In response, Mr. Carver has requested that his name as well as the Purpose Driven name brand be removed from the Left Behind Games web site (which actions followed promptly), and Purpose Driven Ministries has promised not to distribute or promote the game. In its statement, Mr. Warren's organization criticized Talk to Action's approach, but did not rebut any of the facts or claims presented.

A top aide to mega-church pastor Rick Warren is advising the makers of a children's video game in which characters kill New Yorkers while shouting "Praise the Lord." When children tire of converting or killing New Yorkers, they can switch sides and command the demonic armies of the AntiChrist, and kill the conservative Christians. The real-time strategy game, slated for release in October 2006, is based on the best selling series of Left Behind novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. The web site of Left Behind Games states the involvement of Mark Carver on its Advisory Board. This web-based marketing tool also highlights his role as Executive Director of Mr. Warren's Purpose Driven Church. What appears to be going on here is an old-fashioned business practice called "endorsement by association."

This is the story that Talk to Action broke on Memorial Day, and it has drawn significant interest from the blogosphere. Dozens of sites have linked to the original story, including Pandagon, The Agonist, The Center for American Progress, Air America, and two "Daily Dish" items by Time magazine's Andrew Sullivan.

Links from Crooks and Liars and BoingBoing drove so much traffic our way - we've seen 40,000 visitors in one day alone - that our site server temporarily crashed, twice. But the good news is that we were born again and are now coming back for a second story. There's more tasty outrageousness to bite into, with a surprise in the middle: a marshmallow center of mega-church merchandising.