Timothy Francis LaHaye (April 27, 1926 – July 25, 2016) was an American Baptist evangelical Christian minister and political activist who wrote more than 85 books, both non-fiction and fiction, including (with co-author Jerry B. Jenkins) the Left Behind series of novels depicting apocalypse events after a pre-tribulation rapture.

He was a founder of the Council for National Policy, a conservative Christian advocacy group. LaHaye opposed homosexuality, believing it to be immoral and unbiblical. He was a critic of Roman Catholicism, and a believer in conspiracy theories regarding the Illuminati. LaHaye has been called "one of the most influential evangelicals of the late twentieth century" and, along with his wife Beverly LaHaye, he helped shape the beliefs and organizations of the Christian right.

Born in Detroit, Michigan, he experienced the early death of his father, which he later cited as a formative spiritual moment. LaHaye served in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II and later earned degrees from Bob Jones University and Western Seminary. He pastored congregations in South Carolina, Minnesota, and California, spending nearly 25 years at Scott Memorial Baptist Church in San Diego. He co-founded Christian Heritage College (now San Diego Christian College) and the Institute for Creation Research, and authored The Act of Marriage, a Christian guide promoting marital sexuality within a complementarian framework.

LaHaye was heavily involved in conservative political activism, founding groups such as Californians for Biblical Morality and the American Coalition for Traditional Values, and encouraging the creation of the Moral Majority. He supported several Republican presidential campaigns. His views included premillennial dispensationalism. He was recognized as one of the most influential evangelicals of his era, with numerous awards and tributes, including from Time Magazine and Liberty University.

Timothy Francis LaHaye was born on April 27, 1926, in Detroit, Michigan, to Frank LaHaye, a Ford auto worker who died in 1936 of a heart attack, and Margaret LaHaye (née Palmer). His father's death had a significant influence on LaHaye, who was only nine years old at the time. He had been inconsolable until the minister at the funeral said, "This is not the end of Frank LaHaye; because he accepted Jesus Christ, the day will come when the Lord will shout from heaven and descend, and the dead in Christ will rise first and then we'll be caught up together to meet him in the air."

LaHaye later said that, upon hearing those remarks, "all of a sudden, there was hope in my heart I'd see my father again."

LaHaye enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces in 1944, at the age of 18, after he finished high school. He served in the European Theater of Operations as a machine gunner aboard a bomber. Then he studied at Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina, where he met his wife, Beverly, and obtained a Bachelor of Arts in 1950. LaHaye held the Doctor of Ministry degree from Western Seminary.

He served as a pastor in Pumpkintown, South Carolina, and after that he pastored a congregation in Minneapolis until 1956. After that, the LaHaye family moved to San Diego, California, where he served as pastor of the Scott Memorial Baptist Church (now called Shadow Mountain Community Church) for nearly 25 years.