“The problem with this idealism is that humanists have a basic misunderstanding of the nature of man. They consider man inherently good, whereas the Bible pictures humanity as fallen, sinful, and untrustworthy. Humanists naively envision a utopian world millennium, when all countries renounce war and man is engulfed by peace, prosperity, and brotherhood,” ( p. 92).

Oh, heavens, not that! Notice that there is only a subtle hint of the apocalyptic millennialism that surfaces later in the book where the Tribulations are discussed openly. Christian evangelicals, however, catch the code, because they know that the "utopian world millennium" is the End Times reign of Satan's henchman, the Antichrist, who urges that "all countries renounce war and man is engulfed by peace, prosperity, and brotherhood,” as part of a plan to trick Christians into letting their guard down and the Devil in. This is one reason fundamentalists like LaHaye are suspicious of global agencies such as the United Nations.

The "Battle" LaHaye refers to is with the vast sinister web woven by the secular humanists and their agents:

Humanist Organizations

• American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
• American Humanist Association (AHA)
• Ethical Culture Society (ECS)
• National Education Association (NEA)
• Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS)
• National Organization for Women (NOW)
• Unions

The Media

• News Networks
• Television
• Radio
• Newspapers
• Hollywood Movies
• Magazines
• Porno Magazines

Foundations

• Ford
• Rockefeller
• Carnegie

Education

• Public Education
• Colleges & Universities
• Textbooks
• Government

Federal Government

• Supreme Court
• State Government
• Government Bureaucrats

(from charts on pp. 141, 183)

This conspiracy theory by LaHaye is similar to the one spread for decades by the John Birch Society.

According to LaHaye, it is a mistake for Christian to sit around and wait for God to punish the wicked and unbelievers in the Tribulations that herald the End Times. In a section titled "Is Humanist Tribulation Necessary?"

"Most knowledgeable Christians are looking for the Second Coming of Christ and the tribulation period that He predicted would come before the end of the age. Because present world conditions are so similar to those that Bible prophesies for the last days (see 2 Timothy 3:1-7; 2 Peter 3:1-15; Matthew 24:6, 7, 37,38), they conclude that a takeover of our culture by the forces of evil is inevitable; so they do nothing to resist it. This is unscriptural! We are commanded to resist the devil and to put on the whole armor of God, that we may be able to withstand the evil day (see Ephesians 6:13)," (p. 217).

Tim LaHaye has been a professional Christian Right activist for over 25 years. According to the website of Beverly LaHaye's Concerned Women for America, her husband Tim "holds a Doctor of Ministry degree from Western Conservative Theological Seminary and has been awarded the Doctor of Literature degree from Liberty University." The small Western Conservative Baptist Seminary in Portland, Oregon later shortened its name to just "Western Seminary." Tim’s website states that “LaHaye holds a Doctor of Ministry degree from Western Theological Seminary.” That’s a bit of a fib, since “Western Theological Seminary” is the name of an older, more prestigious, and far more mainstream theological seminary in the Midwest .

Tim LaHaye graduated in 1978 and gained national attention with a series of two-day seminars built around family counseling. LaHaye quickly became a player in the emerging Christan Right of the late 1970s, becomming a board member of Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority, founded in 1979. Another early board member was D. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Florida. 1979 was also the same year Beverly LaHaye established Concerned Women for America, a large national organization that networks and trains Christian women as grassroots political activists.

The Moral Majority was cooked up by a coalition of Christian Right activists and ultraconservative political strategists who planned to take over the Republican Party. In 1979 Christian Right activist Robert Billings of the National Christian Action Council invited a popular televangelist, Jerry Falwell, along with Ed McAteer of the Religious Roundtable to a meeting with ultraconservative political strategists. The strategists were direct-mail wizard Richard Viguerie; Paul Weyrich (an agent of Joseph Coors, Weyrich helped create the Heritage Foundation in 1973, and later founded the Free Congress Foundation); and political organizer Howard Phillips, a 1962 Harvard graduate (and founding board member of Young Americans for Freedom in 1960) who Nixon had appointed in 1973 to gut social welfare programs at the Office of Economic Opportunity. Phillips founded the Conservative Caucus in 1974.

These godfathers of the New Right were looking for a way to link political activism with the emerging Christian evangelical subculture being networked through the medium of televangelism. They decided that abortion could be used as a wedge issue to mobilize voters in a way that would split the Democratic Party. This was the meeting where the idea of a “Moral Majority” was cooked up, and Jerry Falwell was picked to lead the new organzization. Billings became the executive director of the Moral Majority. The next year LaHaye urged Christian evangelicals to battle the secular humanists by building a Moral Majority (pp. 182-185, 200-203). LaHaye went on to help found the Council for National Policy, which Billings, McAteer, Falwell, Weyrich, Phillips, and Viguerie also joined. LaHaye was named the first president of the CNP.

So Tim LaHaye's 1980 book, The Battle for the Mind: A Subtle Warfare, developed the script for LaHaye's fictional Left Behind book series, and the video game, both of which see mortal combat for God in the approaching End Times as needed to crush the Satanic secular humanist conspiracy.

Sources:

Russ Bellant. 1994. “The Council for National Policy: Stealth Leadership of the Radical Right,” Front Lines Research, Planned Parenthood, 1:2 (August 1994), online archive.

Sara Diamond. 1989. Spiritual Warfare: The Politics of the Christian Right. Boston: South End Press, p. 60.

Jean V. Hardisty. 1999. Mobilizing Resentment: Conservative Resurgence from the John Birch Society to the Promise Keepers. Boston: Beacon Press, pp. 79-84.

David D. Kirkpatrick, “Club of the Most Powerful Gathers in Strictest Privacy,” New York Times ( August 28, 2004): 10, online archive.

Tim LaHaye. 1980. The Battle for the Mind: A Subtle Warfare. Old Tappan , NJ : Fleming H. Revell.

Jeremy Leaming and Rob Boston, “Behind Closed Doors: Who Is The Council For National Policy And What Are They Up To? And Why Don’t They Want You To Know?" Church & State, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, (October 2004), http://www.au.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=6949&abbr=cs_ (accessed June 14, 2006 ).

Matthew N. Lyons, “Business Conflict and Right-Wing Movements,” in Amy E. Ansell (ed.), Unraveling the Right: The New Conservatism in American Thought and Politics, (Boulder: Westview, 1998), 80–102, p. 91

On birth of the New Right:

D’Souza, Falwell, pp. 105–118;

Martin, With God on Our Side, pp. 200–201;

Diamond, Spiritual Warfare, pp. 49–63;

Berlet and Lyons, Right-Wing Populism in America, 222.

"Left Behind Video Reflects Bigoted Apocalyptic Violence of Original Fiction Series," (6/12/2006)

"LaHaye and Jenkins: Why is the Criticism Left Behind? "

The World According to Tim LaHaye: A Series
Part One: Hunting Down the Enemies
Part Two: Pre-Trib Perspectives
Part Three: Satanic Secular Humanism
Part Four: Secular Humanism as False Religion
Part Five: The Secular Humanist Web
Part Six: The Council for National Policy
Part Seven: Humanists Attack the Family
Part Eight: The Age Old Conspiracy

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