The Origins of Left Behind

Tim LaHaye says it all started "through a chance discussion with one of our dearest friends, Shirley Peters-whose husband Art was my associate pastor-and she mentioned this idea of the rapture taking place on an airplane. A few days after that I was flying across the country to a prophecy conference, and this handsome 40ish airline pilot stepped out of the cabin and he started flirting with the chief stewardess in the galley there. I looked down and noticed that he had a wedding ring on, and I looked at her finger and she didn't have one on. I got to thinking, 'Oh, these people are pretty friendly.' And then I got to thinking about the story that Shirley had mentioned . . . What if the rapture took place? According to a Gallup poll, about the third of the population is born-again, so about a third of the people on the 747 would be gone. And, she would discover their clothes and pound on the door and say, 'Captain, 100 are missing from our aircraft.' The rest is history."

But the book did not come about immediately. While already a noted author, Tim LaHaye recognized he was not a fiction writer and sought the advice of his agent, Rick Christian, to find one. "So, I prayed, Rick prayed and one day he called me. I'll never forget that. He said, 'Tim, I just signed Jerry Jenkins as a fiction writer. I think he's your man.'"

Jenkins recalls his first meeting with LaHaye:

"It really was an interesting day when our agent introduced us. I was living in the Chicago area at the time. We met at a hotel. We really hit it off almost immediately. Any novelist is looking for an idea for a book that's a big concept--anything that has, like this one does, supernatural elements and the fact that the basis of it is true is just a writer's dream. But, I was struck by Tim's burden for souls. He really cares about people and he has an evangelistic spirit."

In fact, one of the hallmarks of the Left Behind series would become the inclusion in each book of at least one event described by LaHaye as "a believable conversion that's reproducible in the heart of the reader."

Having always written with a focus on his audience, Jenkins was a bit unsure of LaHaye's desire to reach both believers and unbelievers. "So, when I started to write the first book, for the first time in my writing career I was not thinking of one specific audience--I was just trying to do justice to the story and to the dream and to the scripture. As difficult as that was, it proved to be a stroke of genius on his part. What has happened is we have reached both audiences. The church is inspired and excited about their faith--when prophecy is taught the church gets revived and inspired and.many people have come to Christ. That's been the dynamic all along and it's been a great relationship."

Once their mutual literary agent connected Jenkins and LaHaye, they submitted the series to several publishers in 1992. Tyndale Publishing House showed the greatest interest. Mark Taylor, president of Tyndale, saw great potential and even said he felt that Left Behind might sell as many as 500,000 copies, a remarkable number for any book.

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