Last year's "Extreme Days" was a theatrical release that sought to capitalize on the teenage love of snowboarding. Writer-director Michael Cargile's "Lay It Down," also released in 2001, is aimed at youth groups rather than the wider theatrical audience, but it takes a similar tack, borrowing liberally from "The Fast and the Furious."

"It's not often that Christian filmmakers are cutting-edge enough to have a film out there that's about the EXACT same subject matter as the Hollywood big boys," Cargile writes on the ChristianCinema.com Web site. "We've got our finger on the pulse, and the only thing we're lacking is the financial strength (we had less than 1/100th of their budget) to give the big boys a run for their money."

"Lay It Down" concerns souped-up cars, wraparound sunglasses, techno and grunge music, modern teen lingo ("I guess you're the big dawg now!"), jerky Video Toaster-aided direction that approximates MTV -- and Christian conversion.

"I don't want to go to hell," says street-racer Pete after his brother Ben, mocked for becoming a clean-living Christian, dies in a car crash after returning to the sinful world of hot rodding.

"Then don't," gentle, denim-glad Pastor Gus tells him. "There's only one mechanic in the world who can help you. His name is Jesus Christ."

Movie evangelists are still trying to gauge the perfect balance of hipness and Christian morality. "Lay It Down" balances its thrills with scenes like that in which Ben's pregnant girlfriend is comforted by a mom who tells her she's caught "a disease called sin."

There's a scene in "Tribulation," the third "Apocalypse" film, in which Margot Kidder ("Superman") is telling Gary Busey -- once upon a time, the consummate cop-movie supporting actor -- about the rapture. She's the nurturing mother figure who always appears in these movies, in which cozy living rooms alternate with low-budget dystopias. "What's that thing all you Christians believe in?" Busey wants to know.

But it's not true that every Christian believes in the rapture, let alone the entire end-times scenario promulgated by these movies. Many Lutherans, Episcopalians, United Methodists, Catholics and even a good proportion of Baptists have a tidier view of Jesus' Second Coming. The end-times prophecy that drives the "Left Behind" saga is widely thought to have begun with a 19th century preacher named John Nelson Darby.

Most older interpretations would see God as disinclined to let evil freely wreak havoc for seven years while a tyrant appears in "Matrix"-like virtual-reality visions accompanied by a serpent, convincing everyone to wear "666" tattoos. What's the point of a Redeemer if you get a second chance after the rapture, when the point of faith becomes obvious?

Yet the pop-culture version of the "Left Behind" timeline seems to be spreading. The recent Time cover story about apocalypse fever quotes a Boeing employee who decided against upgrading to Windows XP for fear the antichrist might use Microsoft security features to track e-mails sent between Christians. This is exactly the kind of made-for-TV, Windows-progress-bar intrigue that engulfs Corbin Bernsen in "Judgment" (it's after the rapture, and he's still using Outlook attachments).

The Christian movie world's steadily rising budgets have meant that these films are populated with more-or-less real actors. How easily can players from nominally liberal Hollywood make the leap to becoming pitchmen for the apocalypse? After all, these movies have featured such guest stars as WorldNetDaily columnist John Hagee, the Texas preacher who has declared that Washington is in the clutches of "tree-hugging neo-pagans" and "radical lesbian homosexuals."

Busey, who became a Promise Keeper Christian after a 1995 cocaine overdose, was not available for comment. Neither were Louis Gossett Jr. or Mr. T, who don't seem to consider these roles as career highlights. Kidder, who proclaims in "Tribulation" that everything in the Bible is true, was unavailable; according to her agent, she was on the road performing "The Vagina Monologues."

When "Tribulation" was released in 2000, Busey promoted it on TBN as a "great way to minister." But he'd also appeared in Master P's less-than-pious exploitation flick "Hot Boyz" the previous year, and the gossip columnist for Parade has reported that he was recently seen at a Red Cross fundraiser making passes at women.

Even if the stars aren't talking, van Heerden has his own explanation for how he snares actors for his movies: Even non-religious celebs, he says, are grateful to be promoting Christian goodness. "They say, 'We love this movie because it's something we can show our friends and family.'"

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