In the US, evangelical Christians are stoking an obsession with the apocalypse - but before the end of the world, George Bush wants their votes, reports Shane Hegarty.
'God is foreign policy," insists Michael D. Evans. The American evangelist believes that 9/11 was God's way of punishing the US for turning its back on Israel, that it must stop appeasing Arabs in return for oil or face greater catastrophe, and that George W. Bush might be doing God's work on Earth. Evans also believes that all this was predicted in the Bible. And there are plenty of people interested in his theories. Evans's book, The American Prophecies: Ancient Scriptures Reveal Our Nation's Future, reached No 4 on www.amazon.com's all-important sales chart and is No 4 on the New York Times's hard-cover "how-to, advice and miscellaneous" bestsellers list.
Evans was already a popular writer. His previous book, Beyond Iraq: The Next Move - Ancient Prophecy and Modern Conspiracy Collide, sold well. He argued that Islam is "a religion conceived in the pit of hell" and called on the power of prayer to summon angelic intervention to defeat terrorism. In The American Prophecies he tells the American people that "we are in the eye of the prophetic storm", that the choice is ruin or salvation, and that God wants acts of war. The US, he writes, should invade Syria and Israel should attack Iran's nuclear reactors. "God is foreign policy." If the US does not comply, according to Evans, it faces worse than 9/11 - and time is running out.
Time may be running out, but the books aren't. Evans's work is part of a growing genre which ties in the war on terrorism with biblical prophecy and the second coming of Christ. Other titles include From Iraq to Armageddon: The Final Showdown Approaches, Iraq: Babylon of the End Times? and Is America in Bible Prophecy?.
The books might not be seen being read on the metros of the urban centres, but in middle America they have found a market. A Time magazine/CNN poll last year found that 59 per cent of Americans believed in the end-of-the-world prophecies in the Book of Revelations, and almost one in five that the world would end in their lifetime.
Before the world comes to a fiery conclusion, however, the Republican Party wants the votes of these people. In a Public Broadcasting Service poll taken in April, 71 per cent of evangelical Christians said that they would vote for Bush. His election strategist, Karl Rove, believes that the four million evangelical Christians who didn't vote in 2000 almost cost Bush the election. They are now being targeted either directly, through membership lists from church groups, or indirectly, through policies and rhetoric that appeal to what the Economist has identified as the US's largest religious group.
It's an obvious tactic, given that Bush is Born Again. He is a Texas Evangelical Christian, part of the Methodist church. The evangelical movement contains many strands, including Mennonites, Lutheran confessionalists, Pentecostals and Presbyterians, but a common feature is a belief in the literal truth of the Bible.
Among the questions raised in the speculation over how much Bush's faith guides his policy has been that of whether he too believes in the literal truth of the Bible. Regardless, religious commentators have noted how the focus of his rhetoric has increasingly moved away from his personal transformation and closer to the suggestion of divine intervention.
"This call of history has come to the right country," he said in his 2003 State of the Union address. "May He guide us now."
Bush has spoken in the stark religious terms of good and evil, tapping into the millennial language of a conclusive battle between the two.
And while it wasn't too visible, there were those at Madison Square Garden this week who reciprocated. "George W. Bush is a man sent by God to lead this nation in challenging times," declared Florida Republican chairperson Carole Jean Jordan.
Such views are echoed in church halls across middle America. And across the church halls of the US, if there isn't always be the belief that Bush is a leader sent by God, the war in Iraq and the troubles of the Middle East are increasingly invoked as proof that the end is near.
There is now an appetite for the apocalypse. After 9/11, Desecration: Antichrist Takes the Throne, by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, was the biggest-selling novel of 2001, unseating John Grisham after seven years. It was the ninth in the blockbuster series, Left Behind. It begins with the Rapture, in which a third of the world's population is whisked to heaven while the rest suffer seven years of the Tribulation, including the accompanying seas of blood, locusts, darkness and nuclear war. This year's 12th and final book brought the story to a close with Jesus killing the last unbelievers with words that stab through them like swords. The Left Behind series has sold 62 million copies, with most going straight to the top of the New York Times bestseller list.
Jenkins delivered the prose but LaHaye, who provided the plot, has become one of the most influential figures in the evangelical movement, giving lectures and selling pamphlets that answer the question: "Will I get left behind?"
His books are fiction, but he believes that the core events will transpire. After the Rapture, the city of Babylon, in modern-day Iraq, shall be rebuilt, along with the first temple in Jerusalem on the Dome of the Rock (now one of Islam's most sacred sites). Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and atheists will have been either killed or converted.
LaHaye believes that the antichrist has already been born. He refuses to identify him, but in his books it is the United Nations secretary general. For him, the fall of Saddam is the clearest sign yet of the imminent apocalypse. President Bush, he has said, is bringing the world a step closer to the Second Coming, although, he says, he has done so "totally inadvertently".
So, if Bush wants to target evangelicals he should act soon.
A popular online "Dow Jones for the apocalypse", the Rapture Index, keeps track of "end-time activities". The Rapture Index currently stands at 149. When it goes above 145, it recommends that you fasten your seat-belt.