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Writing about Left Behind the other day, I realized that I kept making comparisons to soap operas. And the more I thought about it, the more similarities presented themselves:

Premise
Left Behind: nigh-endless adventure series obsessed with the Rapture.
Soap Operas: nigh-endless drama serial obsessed with romance.

Continuity
Left Behind: you can skip a book and still know pretty much exactly what's going on.
Soap Operas: you can skip a month and still know pretty much exactly what's going on.

Porn Names
Left Behind: Rayford Steele, Buck Williams, Dirk Burton, Nicholae Carpathia, Hattie Durham, Chloe Steele.
Soap Operas: Ridge, Cord, Jax, Stone, Decker, Greenlee, Flash, Kendell, Starr.

Consequences
Left Behind: God punishes those who have sex outside marriage.
Soap Operas: God punishes those who have sex without love. Unless they're really hot.

God is Listening
Left Behind: If you pray for a sign from God, the next person you see will get you out of whatever impossible jam you're facing at the moment.
Soap Operas: If you pray for a sign from God, the next person you see will be your new love interest.

First Impressions
Left Behind: If you take an instant dislike to someone, that's a pretty good indicator that s/he is a minion of the Antichrist.
Soap Operas: If you take an instant dislike to someone, that's a pretty good indicator that you will very soon have sex with him/her.

Family Planning
Left Behind: No one ever uses birth control, and anyone who even considers an abortion ends up a minion of the Antichrist.
Soap Operas: No one ever uses birth control, and anyone who has an abortion ends up in a mental hospital.

Pride Goeth
Left Behind: The good characters are insufferably self-righteous, and horrible things are always happening to them.
Soap Operas: The good characters are insufferably self-righteous, and horrible things are always happening to them.

Finally, a couple of major differences:

The Wages of Sin
Left Behind: The evil characters are pompous, too serious and not much fun.
Soap Operas: The evil characters are way more fun, and generally way more interesting, than the good characters.

The Road Less Travelled
Left Behind: The authors are obsessed with all aspects of travel. Pretty much every major event is told through the lens of people traveling from one place to another. The travel itineraries tend to replace more important and more interesting narrative.
Soap Operas: Distance is meaningless. Every building in town is next door to every other building. It takes a half hour to fly from upstate New York to Puerto Rico. Not a moment is wasted on getting from point A to point B. The only time you see someone traveling is if they're about to have a car accident or plane crash.