I don't entirely accept the idea of the Christian church being the only Israel in the modern age. I do believe that God will not be finished with Israel until the Second Coming. The Old Covenant has passed away but not God's plan for the ancient nation of Israel.
Your comments on the prophecy hucksters were dead-on. Someone loaned me the first
Left Behind book. My eyes rolled back in my head when the hero was in such turmoil over whether he should focus on the spiritual welfare of the new woman in his life or just exploit her sexually (since his wife was already raptured and he could consider himself a widower of some sort). Real soap-opera material there. The book was laughable. One might almost suspect the authors of trying to ridicule the Bible and evangelical Christians in general. I seem to recall that at the end of the book, they were getting ready to assemble a "Tribulation Force" to fight the Antichrist.
The whole miserable spectacle even outdoes Hal Lindsey's attempt to turn Daniel and Revelation into a nuclear warfare manual. One might as well turn to
The Omen as Bible study material.
One of the strange things about the book and the series generally is that they make being "Left Behind" much more interesting and more desirable than being raptured with Christ, almost as though it would be better not to be raptured and instead to suffer the Tribulation period. Very odd when you think about it since the traditional thrust of this genre is escaping the Tribulation.
For more comedic relief, visit
rapture-ready.com.
IF all the prophecy books--errors and all--even "merely" pique interest in the Scriptures, they will have served a wonderful purpose.
If they sober some pleasure seeking, self-centered folk up enough to consider more fundamental issues of life, they will have served another wonderful purpose.
I don't particularly feel thrilled about LaHaye's books. I haven't read them. But I might give them to someone I thought would be tweaked enough to check the realities involved out.
Given that God has used a donkey, using a bunch of well intentioned prophecy books would be easy for Him.