They were a good "what if" but after that they stunk, no real Gospel in there, more about selling books than anything else.
BigMack
Could be. At first I would have disagreed with you. Seeing best-selling fiction books for sale at Price Club and knowing that they at least speak of the things of Christ and give a basic Gospel message at least a couple times in each book made me feel pretty good. Now I think you are right. The author is just playing out the hand and Tim LaHaye has found that there isn't enough Revelation to account for a dozen books of fiction. They made the mistake of thinking that it was their writting skills that made the books attractive when it was the story line. I'm part way into the latest book in the series, and the connection to God seems much more tenuous (I think they ran out of ideas a couple books back).
I didn't see the series until the third one came out and I saw them on the best-seller shelves at Zondervan's (or whatever they're called now). So I picked one up on Saturday afternoon. The guy at the checkout counter said "you better get the other two now." I asked why and he said: "Because sometime tomorrow you're going to want the next book and we aren't open on Sundays." I decided to wait until I had read the first.
By four in the morning I had finished the book and realized he had been right. Now, of course, you can get them anywhere and I've had this one since Christmas and only started it yesterday since I was laid up in bed.