Just a warning: this is a long post.
The Left Behind books are fiction but are read as truth by a lot of evangelical christians. Or if not truth then a very plausible telling of how the world will end when Jesus Christ comes back to earth. Tim LaHaye is the author. He and his wife wrote a sex advise book in the 70's or 80's geared towards young married evangelical christians. It was actually scarier than the Left Behind books. Imagine a world without oral sex.
Anyway, the Left Behind series is based on a doctrine of the second coming of Christ first espoused by a guy named Nelson Darby. Then this other guy, Cyrus Scofield, made it very popular by writing a study bible that made various and sundry claims about things like the rapture, the tribulation, the Anti-Christ, the Great Tribulation, and a wonderfully apocalyptic Armageddon. Good times. A large portion of the christian evangelical community holds to this doctrine known as the Pre-Tribulation Rapture of the Church. Most mainline Protestant denominations do not and neither does the majority of the Catholic Church.
The idea is that Christ actually makes a pre-return in which he raptures or wisks "believers" up into the sky in a secret type way. The entire world will be very surprised at the large minority of people who were here one second but disappeared the next. Then with all the "believers"
gone the anti-christ will appear and get everyone to follow him and make him the president of the world. After this he will direct all his energies towards destroying Israel. Seven years fits into all this some how. Just as the anti-christ is about to destroy all Israel Jesus will make his real second coming and destroy all the anti-christ's armies, save Israel and those who have converted and fought against the anti-christ, and set up his kingdom on earth for 1000 years, otherwise known as the Millennium. After the 1000 years of perfect peace and harmony are over people once again rebel against God and Jesus has to destroy them. Then everyone goes to heaven. The End.
