An excerpt from Frank Schaeffer’s soon-to-be released book, Patience with God, gets to the root of why millions are praying for End Times.

Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind series of sixteen novels (so far!) represents everything that is most deranged about religion. If I had to choose companions to take my chances with in a lifeboat, and the choice boiled down to picking Tim LaHaye, Jerry Jenkins, or Christopher Hitchens, I’d pick Hitchens in a heartbeat. At least he wouldn’t try to sink our boat so that Jesus would come back sooner. He might even bring along a case of wine.

The Left Behind novels have sold tens of millions of copies while spawning an “End Times” cult, or rather egging it on. Such products as Left Behind wall paper, screen savers, children’s books, and video games have become part of the ubiquitous American background noise. Less innocuous symptoms include people stocking up on assault rifles and ammunition, adopting “Christ-centered” home school curricula, fearing higher education, embracing rumor as fact, and learning to love hatred for the “other,” as exemplified by a revived anti-immigrant racism, the murder of doctors who do abortions, and even a killing in the Holocaust Museum.

No, I am not blaming Jenkins and LaHaye’s product line for murder or racism or any other evil intent or result. What I am saying is that feeding the paranoid delusions of people on the fringe of the fringe contributes to a dangerous climate that may provoke violence in a few individuals. And convincing folks that Armageddon is on the way, and all we can do is wait, pray, and protect our families from the chaos that will be the “prelude” to the “Return of Christ,” is perhaps not the best recipe for political, economic, or personal stability, let alone social cohesion. It may also not be the best philosophy on which to build American foreign policy! The momentum toward what amounts to a whole subculture seceding from the union (in order to await “The End”) is irrevocably prying loose a chunk of the American population from both sanity and their fellow citizens.

Read more: Why Republicans Are in the Grip of an Apocalyptic Rapture Cult Centered on Revenge and Vindication

Thanks Steven Otero!

Evidence of end times? Scroll down one post.

what this country needs is a religion based on science & solipsism. one that demonstrates “Armageddon” is a psychological event so people will calm down and embrace change . one that coins the term “quantum pantheism” oh wait, that’s the religion i invented!! WHAT A COINCIDENCE!!

As is the custom, this article fails to answer the question posed in the headline, and it gets entirely off base by ending with a discussion of Chegal of all things.

I wish they would pray harder and bring about their rapture sooner. They’ve done enough to eff up the world already, good riddence. They can’t be gone soon enough.

I’d pray as hard as any of them, but as an athiest I just don’t see the point…