When Left Behind Games launched its convert-or-die videogame Left Behind: Eternal Forces in mid-November 2006, its stock traded at a peak price of $7.44 per share. Breathless boosters at RedChip issued a "strong buy" recommendation and predicted that within 18 months, the stock would soar to as much as $18.70 per share. Really?

In fact, Left Behind Games' stock chart looks like a ski slope. Not a gentle bunny hill, but a World Cup grand slalom course, groomed for a world-beating downhill run. Today, you could buy a share of Left Behind Games for a quarter -- with change left over. On March 21, 2007, the stock closed at 18 cents a share.

It is unprecedented for conservative and progressive Christians alike to close ranks in condemning a Bible publisher. It is unheard of for Christians to call for a boycott of a Bible publisher for licensing a real-time strategy videogame that caricaturizes Christianity as a crusade, puts modern military weapons in the hands of children, sends them on a mission to convert or kill infidels, and even lets children role play commanding the armies of the AntiChrist, unleashing demons that feast on Christians.

"Does it sound like fun, or does it sound like the way homicidal Muslims think?" asks Marvin Olasky, editor of the conservative Christian World Magazine in a blog post dated August 21, 2006, and titled Convert Them Or Kill Them? That's Not Christianity. His piece links to a recent Washington Post article, "Fire and Brimstone, Guns and Ammo." But the Post and World Magazine have barely touched the hem of the garment, in terms of understanding and exposing the game for what is truly is. Yet word is getting out, and a boycott is picking up steam.

It is unprecedented, and to date unheralded by the mainstream media. But it is happening. It is sparking, sputtering, glowing and growing like a prairie fire. There is a growing movement among conservative and progressive Christians alike to boycott Tyndale House, the Christian publishing house that publishes the Living Bible and Tim LaHaye's Left Behind novels and also licenses the controversial videogame Left Behind: Eternal Forces, along with any chain stores or megachurches that plan to distribute the game.

One of the main reasons why the Rev. Jerry Falwell co-founded the Moral Majority in 1979 was to decry the corruption of America's values. For decades, the Southern Baptist pastor has hectored Hollywood, trash-talked TV, been het up on hip hop, and spouted vitriol about video games. But this once bold, big lion who strode the stage popping off about pop culture lately has been reduced to a peewee church mouse. On his claim to fame, Rev. Falwell's got no more game. When it came time to denounce Left Behind: Eternal Forces -- a Christian supremacist video game that one Republican attorney has characterized as "the worst example to date of how the corrosive pop culture has conformed the Church to its image" -- the broken down old culture warrior has cut and run. And he's not the only one to show such cowardice. But now he's being called out in public for the first time by a fellow culture warrior.

When Bible publisher Tyndale House licensed a video game that exploits 9/11, and teaches children that New Yorkers who don't convert deserve to die, conservative Christian leaders sat silent - all but one. Now, a 20-year veteran on the front lines of the culture wars is challenging his brethren and sisters to protest the game, Left Behind: Eternal Forces. So far, he's called out Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, PhD, Southern Baptist pastor Rick Warren, and Southern Baptist pastor Jerry Falwell. In the past, all three have warned parents to keep their children away from other violent video games. But since Christian supremacist hate literature has been turned into a children's game, the No Comment Chorus has shucked and jived, ducked and covered, cut and run.

Imagine: in one hand, you hold cold pizza or your favorite caffeine-loaded cola, while with the other, you command a Christian militia battling the forces of the AntiChrist. Times Square is ablaze with video billboards and piled high with the bodies of New Yorkers. A goat-footed, horned demon, (controlled by your 13-year-old Christian gamer buddy Mikey) emerges from a United Nations Humvee to feast on one of your snipers. But then one of your tanks gacks the demon in a big fireball -- along with three nurses from the U.N. Now in a gnarlier game, there might be demon and nurse giblets hanging from the lamp posts, but in Left Behind: Eternal Forces, there's no blood and guts, just dead bodies. (As Mikey might say, it's kinda wack but whatev.) Apparently this cleanness makes the slaughter of New Yorkers who refuse to convert, somehow more Christ-like, just as when the Christian commandos shout "Praise the Lord!" after a fresh New Yorker kill.

But for now, the apocalyptic battle lulls. Across the battlefield, you spot a gold sportscar that crashed into a delivery truck for your favorite pizza parlor. Pizza boxes have spilled out, and cola cans are rolling around (time out: Mikey is hungry again). And on one of the Times Square digital billboards, there's a mesmerizing video clip playing. It's a promo for a PG-13 movie. The graphics are wicked good: flash video with radio sound. And it's stupid funny. Your voice cracks as you laugh at the video billboard playing in Times Square above the gigantamongous pile of bloodless, dead New Yorkers. You watch the video play through its 15-second loop, unaware that this in-game ad is also watching you.

Talk to Action's three-part series on the Left Behind: Eternal Forces video game, in which Christian militias wage physical and spiritual warfare using the power of prayer and modern military weaponry to convert New Yorkers and kill those who resist, has set forth some provocative positions and boldly stated views. And for that, a web site on Christian apologetics, called Christian Cadre, has organized a campaign against Talk to Action and its series. In this piece, Talk to Action researches and rebuts criticism from the leader of this campaign, a blogger who uses the handle Layman. But first, let's review how the series has been received elsewhere in the media.

"Sit down, pour yourself a cup of Holy-CRAP-These-People-Are- Insane and read this," advises Father Dan, in a post titled "Schlock Fiction Left Behind Series Now a Bigoted Video Game." The San Francisco Chronicle's Mark Morford read it and spread it through his column, "Jesus Loves a Machine Gun."