When Dennis published "The God Who Loves You" in 2001, religion was a hot topic in the media and had been for several years. Depending on who one talked to, either the year 2000 or the year 2001 was the start of the new millennium—since zero is technically not a number, most numerology purists argued that the millennium did not start until 2001. As the millennium approached, some believed that it would signal the end of time. Some Christians, for instance, thought that the new millennium would witness the return of Jesus Christ on Earth. Christian fiction, most notably the bestselling Left Behind series by Tim Lahaye and Jerry B. Jenkins—which depicts life on Earth after the Rapture—became popular in the late 1990s.

As an added wrinkle, scientists and computer programmers were predicting a technological armageddon, in the form of the so-called Y2K bug. The Y...