The street is of a decidedly mixed quality. Here and there buildings are under repair and you can see a few updated spots up the block -- a cafe, an apartment building, a neighborhood church -- but other buildings in the area are shabby, either unoccupied or uncared for. In front of one of these more decrepit structures a guitarist is strumming his instrument. He's at least as scruffy as his surroundings, looking like a refugee from the punk movement, and all his playing produces is a few discordant thrums.

From down the street a small group of men approaches. They're dressed more cleanly than those around them, with most in crisp new workshirts. The leader of the group is an unassuming fellow in a sweater vest. The leader approaches the musician and offers him a moment of uplifting spiritual enlightenment, but the rocker shows no interest. His negativity and hostility is unchanged. At that point the others move forward as a group, surround the musician, and quickly beat him to death. Afterwards they kneel on the sidewalk to pray. One of them shouts, "praise the Lord."

Fortunately, this scene isn't taking place in reality. The brutality is restricted to the digital domain of the video game version of one of the most popular book series ever published-- Left Behind by Tim Lehaye and Jerry Jenkins. Together the 16 books of the series sold have sold over 65 million copies. If that's not enough, there's also a 40 volume young adult series -- because it's never too soon to start warning the children against the threat posed by the United Nations.

The Left Behind game follows a scenario common to many strategy games. The player begins with limited resources and must gather the means to combat opposing forces. The mechanics of recruiting an army and destroying enemies might be wholly unremarkable except for the layer of Christian eschatology that's been applied to each situation. Enemies in the game may be rockers, men in Arabic dress, or soldiers of a U.N.-like organization. They are enemies because they simply refuse to believe. Despite a background story that includes millions of believers disappearing in an instant of rapture, and despite the increasing numbers of horned giant demons wandering the streets, many of the game world's inhabitants refuse to adopt proper beliefs. And the choices you, as represented by the sweater-vest guy, are given really boil down to convert or kill.

The makers of the game, Inspired Media Entertainment, point out that there's no requirement to kill characters like the rebellious rocker, and that there are penalties to murder. However, those penalties are abated by a quick in-game "prayer." Soon enough the player sees that aggression is often the easiest path and a moment of digital regret obliterates any downside. So why not blast away? Besides, by the time those one-world government goons show up and start start to harass your forces, you'll need trained soldiers of your own to return fire.

If the nature of the game strikes you as violent, it's not a patch on the books. By the third volume, many US cities have been blasted apart by nuclear weapons -- which eventually turns out to be one of the milder events of the series. Though the authors of the books claim that the series is based on a "literal interpretation" of biblical prophesy (chiefly the Revelation to John), if there are any genuinely literal events from the Bible, you'd have to squint hard to find them. Instead the details of the story have been filled in from a grab bag of conservative hobgoblins.

See if any of this sounds similar to something you might have heard on the AM dial: The books feature a US president (played by Louis Gosset Jr in the film version) who takes office after George W. Bush.  He presents himself as a peaceful pacifist -- which you can read as weakling collaborator -- and begins to turn over more and more power to the leader of the United Nations. When militias spring up in response to this surrender to one world government, the president helps put them down. The president is a non-Christian who misses out on the rapture express elevator to heaven. Israel (though blessed by miracles and able to reach Middle East peace on their own terms) is forced to buckle to the UN after its allies abandon it. Christians are a highly repressed minority, with highly restricted rights of speech and assembly and Bibles are outlawed. To defend the US, Israel, and believers everywhere, militia forces must assemble. The president realizes too late that he's been played for a fool (and dies).  

That last bit is something of a pattern in the books. Anyone who isn't willing to pick up a gun and join the fight? Weak, evil and soon to be dead. Anyone who has questions about the evangelical interpretation of Christianity? Dead and evil. Anyone who stubbornly hangs onto some other faith? Oh so dead and super evil (this includes the Pope, who leads the evil one world government church).

This may make it sound as if the core of this series is an extremely violent revenge fantasy in which a highly selective reading of biblical passages is used to justify killing foreigners, liberals, and anyone the authors didn't like. But that's not quite it. It's a hyper-violent revenge fantasy that finishes with graphic planet-wide destruction, enemies writhing in agony, blood flowing in rivers, and billions (with a 'b') of people consumed by fire.

None of which seems all that compatible with this.

You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.' But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. (Matthew 5:38-42)

How did a religion that was founded around radical notions of peace become the instrument for unequaled expressions of violence? And does the bible literally predict a coming period of destruction? As it turns out, what was in the Bible was less important than the motivations of those reading it.

The idea that the world was soon to end was a central feature of the first century Jesus movement. In fact, Jesus makes a statement that certainly seems to imply that the end times are going to happen within a few years of his own ministry.

And he said to them, "I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God come with power." (Mark 9:1)

There are unequivocal predictions of end time events in the Gospel of Matthew, in Paul's letter to the Thessalonians, and in the letters of Peter. After Jesus' death, his followers lived in expectation that the end would come soon, suddenly, and with little warning.

But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up. (2 Peter 3:10)

Jesus' earliest followers didn't just expect the end of the world to come eventually, they expected it very soon, certainly within their lifetimes.

This kind of prediction was not a new thing limited just to Jesus' followers. Many of the Old Testament writings predicted a period in which God would directly lead Israel, other nations would recognize His authority, and a period of peace would begin.

In the last days the mountain of the LORD's temple will be established as chief among the mountains; it will be raised above the hills, and all nations will stream to it. Many peoples will come and say, "Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths." The law will go out from Zion, the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. (Isaiah 2:2-3)

Traditionally, the timing of these events was vague. The Talmud implies that the end will come before the year 6000 on the Jewish calendar -- 2240 CE. Which, even today, seems a bit far off to worry about. But in the first century, turmoil and disappointment led many rabbis to predict that the Lord's day was approaching, and that the injustice of the present order was soon to be put right.

Following the destruction of the Jerusalem temple by Roman forces in 70, Judaism was thrown into chaos. Though already a complex, philosophical religion where many followers embraced the contradictory nature of its history and writings, first century practices remained strongly anchored to activities at the temple. When that spiritual center was gone, Jews could no longer practice their religion as they had for centuries. Something new would have to be created if the religion and culture was to survive.

One of the first groups to get organized after the temple's loss were the followers of Jesus. Though they had begun to reach out to non-Jews, they were still an essentially Jewish group who saw Jesus as ushering in a new phase of God's covenant with Israel. Their ideas of salvation for believers and the approaching end of Roman control were appealing. However, this group was not without rivals. Other Jewish groups were working toward changing the core practices of the religion in a different way, placing much more emphasis on textual study. It became a struggle over the direction of Judaism, a rivalry reflected in many of the early church writings, where Pharisees and scribes were made out to be either villains or dunces.

Not only was there a struggle to define what it meant to be a Jew, as the followers of Jesus attempted to codify their beliefs, it was difficult to determine what Jesus' followers should really believe. There were schisms in the group, even as they waited in expectation of the end. In John's letters (a different John than the author of the Revelation) a phrase appears that's found no where else in the Bible.

Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us. (1 John 2:18 )

The term "antichrist" means simply "against Christ" or "in place of Christ." It's used five times in John's letters as a way to condemn those whose beliefs don't fall in line with those in John's group. John wasn't the only one to use this term as a general condemnation, early church leaders also used it against those whose teaches about Jesus were viewed as radical or simply wrong. It's clear at this point that "antichrist" isn't a specific person, but an alternative for "heretic."

But when the world failed to close down during the first and second centuries, Christian began to reexamine these letters in the light of Jewish scripture, looking for clues about when their wait might be over. By the third century, connections were already being drawn between the term antichrist, an "abonation" mentioned in the Book of Daniel, and the Beast mentioned in the Revelation. Bishop Irenaeus of Gaul went so far as to name the tribe of Judiasm that the antichrist must come from and even make a prediction of his name. And of course, Irenaeus thought that the biblical prophecies pointed to the legions of Rome, that all the signs and portents had been fulfilled, and that the end was coming very soon.

For the next fifteen centuries, the biblical prophesy pot boiled. Antichrist was used to describe corrupt emperors and outcast leaders of the Church. The Revelation was interpreted as a description of the fall of the Temple, as a prediction of the fall of Rome, and (by many church fathers) as a book completely lacking in divine inspiration that should not be included in the testament. Statements from a variety of Old Testament books were stirred into the mix, and characters were recast as members of a new play.

Only one thing remained constant -- the end of the world was coming soon. The first century followers of Jesus believed it. The second century members of the early Christian church believed it. Jerome believed that everything was in place for the second coming in 380. Rebellious archbishops accused the Pope of being the antichrist as they waited for the second coming with the end of the millennium. William Tyndall, who translated the Bible into English and was burned for the crime, believed that the Catholic Church was the antichrist and the end times were on them -- a position shared by Martin Luther and John Calvin. This belief was a popular one for centuries, and the directive that the Papacy should be interpreted as the antichrist was stamped into the commentary of the Geneva Bibles that the Pilgrims carried with them to America.

By the time William Miller was assembling his theories about the rapid approach of world's end in 1844, generations of predictions had already come and gone. Though the end results of Miller's biblical interpretations were particularly spectacular, what he was doing at the time wasn't all that special. Hundreds of clergy and thousands of laymen were involved in the same pastime of sifting biblical prophesies and applying them to current events. Across the United States there had been a growing movement to reject the cool, analytical deism / unitarianism of the founding fathers and to replace it with something more passionate and vigorous. A big part of that movement turned into renewed interest in biblical prophecy, and an obsession for trying to ferret out "hidden meanings" in the text. In the first half of the 19th century, these textural searchers created what's known today as evangelical Christianity, a home grown reaction to ideas as diverse as supporting westward expansion and horror over the events of the French Revolution, with expectations that the end times were coming very soonwritten into the foundations of the movement.

The exact mix of prophecies that went into the stew pot was an open question until the 1890s. That's when evangelist John Nelson Darby put together the recipe of Old Testament scriptures and New Testament statements that has congealed into the accepted view among many protestants. From 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17 "we who are still alive.. will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air" was developed the idea of the "Rapture." The same verses in Daniel that Miller used to plot his end times were used to establish a period of "Tribulation" in which horrible events occurred.

"Seventy 'sevens' are decreed for your people and your holy city to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy. "Know and understand this: From the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven 'sevens,' and sixty-two 'sevens.'

From the Revelation story of the struggle between Lamb and Dragon was drawn the 1,000 year period in which Jesus would rule the earth and the climactic battle to follow. Finally, the antichrist -- by then a stand in for every black hat in the Bible -- was brought in as the agent of evil on earth and the central actor in end time theater. And finally bits of Daniel, Isiah, and several the Gospels were merged in a definition of the "last judgement."

The rapture of believers, followed by the tribulation of those who remain, which ends in a thousand years of Jesus' kingdom on earth, a final confrontation with evil, judgement day, and a remaking of earth as God's kingdom. That order of events -- the "dispensational view" -- is so widely accepted today that few people realize that it's a fusion of ideas from disconnected books and themes (quick: ask a friend if the antichrist appears in the Revelation). There's nothing "literal" about either how it's assembled, or how it's been used. None of the popular books, films, or video games indicates multi-horned beasts stepping from the sea, or metal grasshoppers shuttling through the sky. The interpretations are vague and fanciful, stretched to fit whatever the author wants them to fit.

Just as the first century writers saw their opponents in the movement as "antichrist" and early members of protestant groups were quick to lend this accolade to the Pope, modern authors have applied the term to bogeymen of the right -- the UN, the European Union, and liberals of all stripes.

Just as with other forms of end times predictions, the only thing consistent about this prophecy is how consistent its adherents have been about the predicted timeline. When Hal Lindsey wrote The Late Great Planet Earth in 1970, he followed the typical pattern. He pegged the then six member European Confederacy as the beast with ten horns (Lindsey anticipated growth, but since this is now the 27 member European Union -- someone should inform the beast he'll be needing a new hat). He pointed to the founding of Israel as the triggering event for the approaching rapture. Like every end times predictor since the first century, he made a selective list of earthquakes and famines to show that the signs pointed to the end of the world... probably in the 1980s.

What Lehaye and Jenkins did in their books is no different than what Lindsey did, or what a long line of predictors going back to the first century did -- they assigned the events taking place in their own times as the most critical events of all times. On the surface, there's nothing wrong with that. After all, your own lifetime is the most important period for you (even if Jesus refuses to go by your clock).

But there's a problem with always living in the "end times." If the world is going to end any minute, why bother to plan for the future? Why bother to clean up the air, protect a national park, or balance a budget when it's all going up in smoke Real Soon Now.

The problem with Christian eschatology as it's understood today, is that it puts the whole planet on death row. And that's a very unhealthy way to live.