The evangelical writer and activist Tim LaHaye died on July 25, 2016, at the age of 90, according to NBC News (July 25, 2016). LaHaye was best known for the Left Behind series of novels, coauthored with Jerry B. Jenkins, in which he imagined the Apocalypse unfolding according to his premillennialist and pretribulationist understanding of Scripture. In 2005, Time magazine included LaHaye and his wife Beverly LaHaye — founder of Concerned Women for America — in its list of the twenty-five most influential evangelicals in America.
LaHaye was deeply involved with creationist efforts throughout his career. In 1971, he founded Christian Heritage College (now San Diego Christian College), which recruited Henry M. Morris to direct its Creation Science Research Center. After the mother-and-son team of Nell Segraves and Kelly Segraves took control of the center and dissociated it from the college in 1972, Morris reorganized the remaining staff into the Institute for Creation Research, which became autonomous from the college in 1981. LaHaye continued to decry the teaching of evolution in such books as The Battle for the Mind (1980), The Battle for the Public Schools (1983), and Mind Siege (2000, coauthored with David Noebel), according to which a humanist conspiracy is responsible for perpetrating "[t]he biggest hoax of the nineteenth and twentieth century ... that evolution is a scientific fact."
LaHaye was born on April 27, 1926, in Detroit, Michigan. He served in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. He received a B.A. from Bob Jones University in 1950 and served as the pastor of Scott Memorial Baptist (now Shadow Mountain Community) Church outside San Diego from 1958 to 1983, receiving a D.Min. from Western Theological Seminary in 1977 as well as honorary degrees from Bob Jones and Liberty Universities. He was involved in a number of political initiatives of the religious right.