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.

A top aide to mega-church pastor Rick Warren is advising the makers of a children's video game in which characters kill New Yorkers while shouting "Praise the Lord." When children tire of converting or killing New Yorkers, they can switch sides and command the demonic armies of the AntiChrist, and kill the conservative Christians. The real-time strategy game, slated for release in October 2006, is based on the best selling series of Left Behind novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. The web site of Left Behind Games states the involvement of Mark Carver on its Advisory Board. This web-based marketing tool also highlights his role as Executive Director of Mr. Warren's Purpose Driven Church. What appears to be going on here is an old-fashioned business practice called "endorsement by association."

This is the story that Talk to Action broke on Memorial Day, and it has drawn significant interest from the blogosphere. Dozens of sites have linked to the original story, including Pandagon, The Agonist, The Center for American Progress, Air America, and two "Daily Dish" items by Time magazine's Andrew Sullivan.

Links from Crooks and Liars and BoingBoing drove so much traffic our way - we've seen 40,000 visitors in one day alone - that our site server temporarily crashed, twice. But the good news is that we were born again and are now coming back for a second story. There's more tasty outrageousness to bite into, with a surprise in the middle: a marshmallow center of mega-church merchandising.