Tyndale House, the evangelical Christian publisher of the best-selling Left Behind series of novels, said over the weekend that bookstores had already bought all of the initial print run of 1.9 million copies of the 12th and last book in the series, three weeks before it goes on sale March 30.
The advance sales indicate that the book, "The Glorious Appearing," by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, will be one of the top-selling books of the year as well as a major subject of discussion in church groups and in the news media. The series is based on Dr. LaHaye's reading of the Book of Revelation in the Bible.
As the final novel opens, it is the seventh anniversary of a covenant between the Antichrist and Israel and the armies of the Antichrist are overtaking Jerusalem. It concludes with the "glorious appearing" of Jesus.
"Those who hold on to the end are not disappointed by the remarkable and miraculous coming of Jesus," the publisher said in a statement.
The Left Behind series have rivaled Harry Potter as the biggest surprise success of the last decade in the book business. Some Left Behind books have overtaken John Grisham novels in sales.
Coinciding with the success of Mel Gibson's film "The Passion of the Christ," the publication of the final volume ensures that dramatic, violent interpretations of the Bible will be one of the most noteworthy phenomena in American culture this year.
Tyndale House said it was printing another 50,000 hardcover copies, bringing the total in print to nearly two million before publication. The company plans to print more if bookstores sell their initial orders.
A spokeswoman for Tyndale, based in Wheaton, Ill., said it ultimately printed a total of two million copies of the previous Left Behind novel, "Armageddon: The Cosmic Battle of the Ages."
Two million copies is less than a third the number of hardcover copies of the last Harry Potter book sold in the first few weeks after it appeared, but is far more than the 1.2 million copies of Hillary Clinton's memoir sold in the first six weeks after its publication last year.