Have a Nice Doomsday: Why Millions of Americans Are Looking Forward to the End of the World (P.S. Series) Book

In Have a Nice Doomsday, Nicholas Guyatt searches for the truth behind a startling statistic: 50 million Americans have come to believe that the apocalypse will take place in their lifetime. They're convinced that, any day now, Jesus will snatch up his followers and spirit them to heaven. The rest of us will be left behind to endure massive earthquakes, devastating wars, and the terrifying rise of the Antichrist. But true believers aren't sitting around waiting for the Rapture. They're getting involved in debates over abortion, gay rights, and even foreign policy. Are they devout or deranged? Does their influence stretch beyond America's religious heartland perhaps even to the White House?

Journeying from Texas megachurches to the southern California deserts and stopping off for a chat with prophecy superstar Tim LaHaye Guyatt looks for answers to some burning questions: When will Russia attack Israel and ignite the Tribulation? Does the president of Iran appear in Bible prophecy? And is the Antichrist a homosexual?

Bizarre, funny, and unsettling in equal measure, Have a Nice Doomsday uncovers the apocalyptic obsessions at the heart of the world's only superpower.

Nancy E. Adams - Library Journal

This humorous, first-person narrative details Guyatt's (history, Simon Fraser Univ., B.C.; Providence and the Invention of the United States) exploration of an end-times-obsessed subculture of Christianity in which the words rapture, tribulation, and Armageddonare part of the everyday vocabulary. Guyatt examines the motivations and personalities of some of the biggest names in the end-times business-e.g., John Hagee (Jerusalem Countdown), Tim LaHaye (the "Left Behind" series), Hal Lindsey (The Late Great Planet Earth), and Joel Rosenberg (The Last Jihad)-as well as some smaller names. He exposes the conflicting views of sincere end-times believers, asking, e.g., whether the Antichrist will use Islam or humanism to take over the world and whether political means should be used to postpone or hasten the inevitable. Along the way, he explains the history of apocalypticism in America and the basics of dispensational theology for a popular audience. (Readers can find a more complete treatment of these topics elsewhere, e.g., in the second edition of George M. Marsden's Fundamentalism and American Culture.) Guyatt's skepticism is obvious; nonetheless, he portrays his subjects with fairness and dimension. Recommended for public and undergraduate libraries.