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FamilyChristian.com Exclusive Interview
Jerry: I felt pretty good about the first one. Tyndale said when they saw the first chapter that they could sell a half million of them. I was hoping for a hundred or two hundred thousand and a bestseller in the Christian market. I thought maybe we had a shot at that. As you may know, the first book in the series, Left Behind, sold a million and three quarters in 1999 alone. It's just blown us away. We had no idea. Tim: We can hardly
believe that one of our books is selling [an average of] 100,000 copies per
month. I've got books that haven't sold 100,000 copies yet! Jerry: I have. They probably wouldn't be the same as Tim's, since his are on prophecy. I think I have books that are still in print because of this: family titles, marriage titles, things like that. FamilyChristian.com: I thought the series was originally going to be three books. Jerry: It was just going to be one. We naively thought that we could do the Rapture and seven years of the Tribulation in one book. I got halfway through the writing of the first book and realized that I'd only covered one week. So then we went to three, and shortly thereafter six and then seven. And then we settled on twelve. Really the big change came with book four, Soul Harvest, when we were a little over two years into the Tribulation. The publisher asked if we could get almost five more years of the Tribulation in just three books. I said I thought I could, except it would change the pacing and it wouldn't be as character driven; it would be more action driven. They thought part of the secret of the success was the pace. They figured out how long it would take at the same pace and figured out twelve. FamilyChristian.com: You mentioned that Dr. LaHaye writes the guts and Jerry kind of fills it in. Now that you know the characters and how they've developed, does that become part of the process of writing a new book?
Tim: If you could see the instructions that I gave Jerry to begin with, I'd be embarrassed. I hope he's thrown those away. But, as we've grown, we've become more sophisticated, more direct in planning. Slowing it down has been a real help, because there's a world of material that's going to happen during these seven years and what makes it so exciting is that there's more space in the Bible, more material on the seven year Tribulation period than anything but the life of Jesus. There must be a reason for that. During that awesomely important time, the Lord is going to be winning people, drawing people to Himself. And He does such outlandish things: He seals 144,000 witnesses; He pours out His Spirit; He sends out an angel with the everlasting Gospel. Nowhere else does an angel preach the Gospel. It shows the loving compassionate heart of God. We've fallen in love with the characters and the people and we're dreaming about what's going to happen to them. It's really a fun experience. FamilyChristian.com: Which character is most like you? Jerry: In looks, Rayford-about 6'4" and gorgeous. Just kidding. I suppose I identify most with Buck, as he is a journalist and writer. FamilyChristian.com: There's been some discussion about a prequel after the series is complete. Is this being seriously considered? Jerry: A prequel has tremendous possibilities. While we haven't formalized anything, I believe we all see the potential. FamilyChristian.com: What angle do you anticipate taking? Jerry: I would be interested in the childhood and maturation of Nicolae and the backgrounds of the other lead characters. The story would probably end where Left Behind started, with the rapture. FamilyChristian.com: What kind of opportunities have you had to present the gospel to mainstream America? Jerry: Probably the most exciting was being on Larry King Live and having him ask, in essence, who goes and who gets left behind. We had the opportunity to tell what the gospel is (salvation by grace through faith) and what it isn't (based on our own efforts). FamilyChristian.com: How do you respond when people say they look at the book of Revelation through the lens you've created with this series?
Tim: We're hopeful that they will, and that they look at the facts and the events. One of the comments that we've heard that has really blessed us is people have been driven back to the book of Revelation to prove us wrong only to find that what we said was there. After having seen it through Jerry's eyes, it's almost like a verbal moving picture. People have said, "you can't have horsemen who are up in the air?" They go back and read it in the book of Revelation and there it is. Even with the title to one of our books Apollyon, [we were asked], "where did you get that title?" [We got it] right out of the Bible. Jerry: What we're finding is that people are saying, "Is this exactly what's going to happen?" Obviously not. We've made up names. We've made up characters. We try to make it realistic. What we're saying is that we believe that this is going to happen to somebody someday and the part of it that's Biblical is going to be as close to the literal interpretation of Revelation as we can make it. That's all we're saying. We do hear from dozens of people who say that they just haven't read Revelation for years, and now they're intrigued by it. [There's] nothing better than having people going back to the Bible. Tim: You have to take Bible prophecy literally, just like everything else in the Bible. You have to teach people not to take [the series] literally just because it's in print. What we do is flesh it out with real life characters and they see how a literal experience could happen from this. They love it. Jen
Abbas, a writer in Grand Rapids, Mich., originally conducted this interview
for a Family Christian Stores' catalog.
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