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Dr. Tim Francis LaHaye (1926—2016) was an influential American evangelical pastor, best-selling author, and a leader of the conservative Christian political activist movement that began in the 1970s. Tim and his wife, Beverly Jean LaHaye, hosted Christian radio and television programs promoting traditional family values and published numerous Christian growth, marriage, and Bible study books. Tim LaHaye is probably best known for his widely popular Left Behind series of fiction books, co-written with Christian novelist Jerry B. Jenkins.
Tim LaHaye was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Francis T. and Margaret LaHaye. His father died of a heart attack when Tim was nine, forcing the surviving family of four to move in with relatives. Over the next nine years, Tim’s mother worked to support the family while earning a degree at Detroit Bible College. Tim’s upbringing was strongly evangelical. The family attended a Baptist church, where his mother served as fellowship director. Tim’s uncle was also a Baptist minister.
After attending night school and graduating early, LaHaye enlisted in the US Air Force for two years, attaining the rank of sergeant. In 1946, he enrolled at Bob Jones University (BJU), a conservative Christian college in Greenville, South Carolina, and began studying for Christian ministry. Tim met Beverly Davenport shortly after arriving at BJU, and the couple was married within a year, in July 1947.
The following year, while they were both still in college, Tim accepted a pastorate at a rural Baptist church in Pumpkintown, South Carolina. When their first child, Linda, was born, Beverly left college to stay at home. In 1950, after Tim earned his bachelor’s degree, the LaHaye family relocated to Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Tim accepted his second pastoral position at a Baptist church there. Over the next six years, the couple added two sons, Larry and Lee, to their family.
In 1956, the LaHayes moved to California, where Tim had been invited to serve as senior pastor of the Scott Memorial Baptist Church in El Cajon. He held this position for the next two and a half decades. In 1958, his daughter Lori was born.
Once in California, the couple launched a half-hour television program called The LaHayes on Family Life. The ministry-oriented show focused on marriage and family issues and aired weekly until 1959. By the mid-1960s, as their marriage ministry developed, Beverly and Tim LaHaye began offering Family Life Seminars, presenting nearly five hundred seminars to couples in more than forty countries over the next twenty years. They also wrote many books about sexual intimacy for married couples, including The Act of Marriage (1976), a very descriptive practical guidebook that sold millions of copies.
Around this time, LaHaye’s growing concerns over the secularization of California’s state school system led him to establish the Christian High School of San Diego. He later expanded it into the Christian United School System, which was comprised of a primary school and two secondary schools. In 1970, LaHaye co-founded the Christian Heritage College (now San Diego Christian College) with the help of leading creationist Henry M. Morris.
LaHaye and Morris also established the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) in 1970 as the research division of Christian Heritage College. What began as the foremost creationist organization of its time continues to challenge evolutionist teachings through scientific research conducted with a biblical worldview. LaHaye served on the institute’s board of directors until 2007.
Recognizing the need to strengthen his academic credentials, LaHaye earned a doctorate in ministry at Western Conservative Baptist Seminary in Portland, Oregon (1977). He was later awarded a doctorate in literature from Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.
In 1981, LaHaye left the pulpit to encourage the conservative Christian political advocacy movement in its crusade to safeguard traditional values in America. He founded the Council for National Policy, which closely aligned with the Moral Majority in its opposition to abortion, feminism, homosexuality, pornography, and the prohibition of prayer in state schools. In his books The Battle for the Mind (1980), The Battle for the Family (1982), and The Battle for the Public Schools (1983), LaHaye argued against the rising tide of godlessness and secular humanism in American society.
Tim and Beverly moved to Washington, DC, in 1984 to strengthen their efforts and establish the American Coalition for Traditional Values. At this time, they received heavy criticism for going outside their traditional evangelical Christian base by joining Sun Myung Moon’s Council for Religious Freedoms and accepting large donations from the Unification Church.
Throughout the 1990s, the LaHayes continued to promote traditional family values and a conservative social agenda through several radio and television programs, such as Beverly LaHaye Live, Beverly LaHaye Today, Tim LaHaye’s Capitol Report, and a renewed version of The LaHayes on Family Life. Millions of evangelicals supported their views. In 1993, Tim LaHaye helped found the Pre-Trib Research Center to encourage the research, teaching, dissemination, and defense of a pretribulation rapture and other doctrines related to Bible prophecy.
In 1995, Tim LaHaye and fellow evangelical author Jerry B. Jenkins began co-writing and publishing the widely popular and successful Left Behind books, a premillennialist apocalyptic fiction series based on the end-times rapture of the church. By the time of Tim LaHaye’s death in 2016, more than 80 million copies of the sixteen-book series had sold, topping all major bestselling lists.
In 2001, the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals named Tim LaHaye one of the most influential American evangelical leaders of the past twenty-five years. In 2005, TIME magazine designated Tim and Beverly LaHaye “The Christian Power Couple.” The magazine also recognized LaHaye as one of America’s twenty-five most influential evangelicals.
In 2006, Tim LaHaye was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. He died in a San Diego hospital on July 25, 2016, after suffering a stroke. He was ninety years old.
Here are some quotes from Tim LaHaye:
“There is no question that the Lord Jesus Christ is coming again to this earth. It is a prophetic fact, guaranteed by the eternal Word of God. The deity and credibility of God demands it.” (The Rapture)
“Every person in every generation has a choice: to obey God or to do his own thing.” (Are We Living in the End Times?)
“There is something therapeutic about doing for others that lifts a person out of the rut of self-thought.” (Your Temperament Can Be Changed)
“Bible prophecy helps us to better understand the future and realize the urgent need to spread the Gospel. It motivates us to personal purity and gives us hope in a hopeless age.” (Charting the End Times Prophecy Study Guide)
