How the Best Selling Non-fiction Book of the 1970s (about the Apocalypse, no less) Defined Policy in the 1980s and 2000s

The nuclear arms race offered the prospect of the annihilation of civilization. This created some stress that showed up in odd ways.

In 1970, Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth was published. It had sold 28 million copies by 1990 and was adapted to film and television with an audience of about 18 million.

Lindsey thought that the formation of Israel in 1948 was prelude to major, apocalyptic events foretold in various books of the Bible. One can hardly underestimate the extent to which the USSR and US stockpiles of nuclear weapons made claims that the world was about to plunge into Armageddon credible. He prophesized chaos and war - end times that would include an anti-Christ ruling in Europe and the invasion of Israel by the USSR. Lindsey's sequel was titled The 1980s: Countdown to Armageddon. 1980 was the year Reagan was elected.

Lindsey's ideas were take seriously by many people. Reagan appointed James Watt as Interior Secretary. Like Hal Lindsey, Watt was a Christian millenarian. He thought that conserving resources for future generations was a waste of time because Jesus would probably return before most of those generations would return. This the man in charge of protecting the nation's natural resources.

George W. Bush was trying to enroll French president Jacques Chirac in his effort to oust Saddam Hussein from Iraq. Here is Chirac's account of their conversation as reported by Kurt Eichenwald.
Bush wasn’t listening to him, Chirac thought. Instead, he was jumping all over the rhetorical map in search of the magic words that would win him over. Saddam was lying; the UN had to prove itself; the allies had to work together. Perhaps, but all beside the point if illegal armaments weren’t found. What if, in fact, Saddam was telling the truth? …

Bush veered in another direction.

“Jacques,” he said, “you and I share a common faith. You’re Roman Catholic, I’m Methodist, but we are both Christians committed to the teachings of the Bible. We share one common Lord.”

Chirac said nothing. He didn’t know where Bush was going with this.

“Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East,” Bush said. “Biblical prophecies are being fulfilled.”

Gog and Magog? What was that?

“This confrontation,” Bush said, “is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase His people’s enemies before a new age begins.”

Lindsey's book The Late Great Planet Earth was the best selling nonfiction book of the 1970s. (Personally I find it odd that it gets categorized as nonfiction.) It was still influencing policy decades later.