Christmas in Hell

Actually, it was a chain reaction of answered prayers that turned Shrader into a committed Sheffield member. He asked Jesus what he should do with himself, and Jesus told him to go back to school. Then a benefactor stepped up to pay for Shrader's books and tuition for personal-evangelism classes at Sheffield. Proof that Jesus was working in Shrader's life came when he prayed for a van to drive to his house-painting jobs.

"When I first sobered up, I didn't have the money to get a work van," Shrader recalls. "And the Lord knows I like old-school stuff anyway, so I prayed, 'Oh, by the way, Jesus, help me find a good deal on a van.'" Shortly after that, the owner of a house he was working on offered him one for free. "And I got this 1967 Scooby-Doo Mystery Machine van. It's so cherried out -- " He stops, then corrects himself. "Well, not cherried out. I mean, it's neat. You don't see those no more. So I prayed, and I got this van with a clean title, and my school paid for, within a month, from nothing but the joy in my heart, my faith, my trust in the word. I was about to have my utilities shut off, but I kept my faith until it turned around, and now everything is starting to flow."

After so many blessings, Shrader looks forward to portraying the man who made it all possible. At first he was reluctant; he didn't want to appear as though he were taking the part just to be popular among the congregation. He says such games were common at a church he used to attend in Liberty, where he felt left out. But no more.

Looking out toward Sheffield's stage, Shrader says, "It's a trip. I gotta put the little suit on and go, like, three stories up. I'm glad I'm not scared of heights, 'cause I'm a painter."

The plot of Tribulation Christmas would sound familiar to anyone familiar with the Left Behind titles by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, a publishing phenomenon that has sold more than 60 million copies of books in several different series, has spawned two movies and, surveys show, reflects the end-times views of more than 100 million Americans (or nearly half the country).

A Cliffs Notes version might go something like this: The prophesy says that in the rapture, millions of true Christians will instantly disappear off the face of the earth, scooped up by Jesus. Everyone else, including Christians who didn't make the cut, will face seven years of persecution and "tribulation," forced to endure earthquakes, famine and plagues. During this time, they will witness the rise of a charismatic leader, who will unite the nations of the world in peace, abolish divisive world religions, set up shop in a rebuilt temple in Jerusalem, and require his followers to take an identifying mark. It turns out that he is the Antichrist, his mark is the "mark of the beast," and he and his followers are hell-bound after Jesus' second coming.

Sheffield's drama revolves around the plight of a couple, Dave and Lisa, who are running from the Antichrist's soldiers near the end of the Tribulation. They hide out in the cave of another refugee, a survivalist type who doesn't believe in God. There, they reflect on their predicament, flashing back to a scene before the rapture in which Lisa's mom, her wheelchair-bound grandfather and their local pastor all begged Lisa and Dave to become believers before it was too late. Lisa sings a song: "I Wish We'd All Been Ready." Another flashback recalls how the Antichrist came to power, seducing the masses, ascending to the head of the United Nations and decreeing that everyone allow an electronic chip -- UPC code No. 666 -- to be implanted in their hands or foreheads and used to track individuals and their purchased goods. The Antichrist is assassinated at a press conference but comes back to life with Satan's help and declares himself God. Lisa and Dave are captured by soldiers, but Jesus intervenes and banishes Satan, the Antichrist and the cave-dwelling nonbeliever to the Lake of Fire.

The original Tribulation Christmas was written in 1974 by Mike Brown, an evangelist at a church in St. Joseph, Missouri. He and Sheffield's Horne were friends then. When Horne took over as Sheffield's youth pastor in 1980, he remembered Brown's old script. Horne reworked some parts, and his youth groups began performing it in the early '80s.

That was before the Left Behind books took off. "I read it, and I was, like, you know what? This is Tribulation Christmas," Horne says of the lucrative series.