The final installment of the hugely successful “Left Behind” book series hits stores today and is projected to be a best seller. I haven’t read the books, so won’t comment on their content, but as The Washington Times reports, (without even mentioning the $300 million plus success of The Passion) religious themes are playing big in the culture these days.

The authors’ success reveals an American culture fascinated with the end times, religious prophecy, Bible codes, heaven and the age-old battle between good and evil.
Religion and spiritual intrigue also cross paths in two other current blockbusters: Mitch Albom’s “The Five People You Meet in Heaven” and Dan Brown’s “The DaVinci Code.”
“Glorious Appearing” will also make the best-seller list if sales of the first 11 books are any indication. The “Left Behind” series has generated unprecedented coverage for novels based on biblical narrative, including a cover story in the July 1, 2002, edition of Time magazine and a Feb. 8 segment on CBS’ “60 Minutes.”
“There’s a God hunger on the part of society,” said Mr. Jenkins, 54, of Colorado Springs. “People may not consider themselves religious, but we can tell by the sales that people are looking for something beyond themselves. They hear of fiction based on prophecy and they have this hunger and thirst for it.”

This thirst is quite understandable, I think, only if we were made for something beyond ourselves. America’s hunger for God is just one more eveidence that we were, in fact, made for God. Our souls are restless becasue they were made to find rest in God alone, to paraphrase Saint Augustine. It’s time to face facts – sex, money, fame, power and all the other things we use to try and fill the emptiness are never going to satisfy because they are not what we are missing. We are missing God and until we deal with the alienation causing that void (there is only One Way), the void will remain.

Don Johnson Evangelistic Ministries