Q&A with Jerry B. Jenkins

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A conversation with “Left Behind” author Jerry B. Jenkins
BY JAMES FULLER
jfuller@dailyherald.com

Estimates say about one in eight Americans have read at least one book of the “Left Behind” series of Christian novels about the end of the world.
That means a lot of people know how the series ends, but maybe not much about how it began or the men be-hind it.

Jerry B. Jenkins wrote the words. Tim LaHaye provided the Biblical background and context.

Jenkins returned to some of his local roots Thursday night when he spoke at a fund-raiser for Wheaton Christian Grammar School. The cam-pus will soon relocate to a new, $20 million expanded facility.

Jenkins spoke on behalf of the value of a Christian education. Before his appearance, he took time out for some questions with Daily Herald Reporter James Fuller.

Q. There are at least 65 mil-lion readers of the “Left Be-hind” series. Out of those, how many of them becoming Christian believers would it take for you to feel fulfilled by your work?

A. Well, any would’ve been great. We don’t know how many, but between Dr. (Tim) LaHaye and me we’ve heard from more than 3,000 who tell us. And that’s personally. They tell us either by phone, or in person, or by e-mail. And we assume that repre-sents a lot more who just never have a chance to tell us.
We’ve never apologized for the fact that, it’s fiction, but we believe it’s really going to happen some day. It is a mes-sage.

Q. “Left Behind” has spurned a lot of the ancillary marketing gimmicks like mugs and pens. But you guys did decide to go ahead and do a video game. It’s got all sorts of reactions, some negative. I’m wondering if you wish that you’d just stayed out of it.

A. We had the fear that people would think it was frivolous. One of the things that we always said anytime people came to us with ideas they wanted to do candles and mugs and pens. If it doesn’t have the message in it, we’re not doing it just to get more royalties. For one thing, we don’t need that, and that’s not what we’re about.

The game manufacturers said they would make sure they got the message in there.
I suggested at one point that you can’t have too tame a video game. I’ve got kids and grandkids and I know that those games are about shoot ‘em ups and who are you going to kill in this game. My suggestion was I think people would accept it if they shot demons and sent them back to Hell. As it turns out, they used the anti-Christ forces. But then this rumor came out that anybody that disagreed with the Christians or didn’t become a believer got killed.

Q. People who had never played the game?

A. Obviously. And it was just asinine. We’d never be involved with something like that. But that has been an impossible rumor to kill. I still hear it. All you can do is say, ‘Read the books, and check out the game.’

Q. How does it feel to leave behind “Left Behind.” Is it really over?

A. Sometimes you wonder. We were afraid that Tyndale (House Publishers) would ask for a book for every year of the millennial kingdom. The first one came out in the fall of ’95. So after 12 years, it was sort of a melancholy thing to write the last one and be done with it. But it was time to move on. It’s been great. It totally changed my life.

Q. You’re a sports fan. You’ve written several auto-biographies with athletes. I know you’re a local guy, so I’ve got to ask you. Are you a Bears fan?

A. I’m a Bears fan, and I’m a Cub fan. I figure any team can have a bad century. Now you’ve heard the rumor that they’re going to move the Cubs to the Philippines, and call them the Manila Folders, right?

Q. Of all the athletes you worked with on those books, who impressed you the most?

A. It’s hard to decide. I got to work with so many impressive people, Hank Aaron and Walter Payton, (Orel) Hershiser, (Nolan) Ryan.

Mike Singletary is pretty impressive. He’s such a quiet guy, and not as huge as you’d think. He wasn’t that huge, but so intense. One of the things that I didn’t realize about Mike is that he’s hard of hearing and uses hearing aids. So to interview him I had to sit next to him instead of across a desk like you normally would. It sort of changes what questions you ask when you’re sitting right next to a guy that intense. He’s one of my favorites.

Q. Was it your love of sports that also got you involved with the comic strip Gil Thorp?

A. It was. In fact, I did that for about eight years. I don’t do it anymore. The guy that did that (Jack Berrill) read some of my kids sports books, and he called me. I think he actually wanted me to write some Gil Thorp books. It never came to that, but he would call every few months. I never met him. We would just talk about Gil Thorpe, and I had been reading it since I was a kid in Kalamazoo, Mich.

When he died, (in 1996) his wife left word with the Tribune Company that he wanted me to take it over. I thought that was a mistake. I had thought he wanted me to write books. I remember asking him about it, how he did it and what the philosophy was. Of course I don’t draw. They had to have somebody else draw it. But I was really honored to be asked. It was a fun period to write those.

Q. You spent more than a year working with the Rev. Billy Graham working on his autobiography. How did that change you?

A. He’s probably the most impressive person I’ve ever met. That was the privilege of a lifetime. It really was. And he’s the same behind closed doors as he is in public. He’s a fantastic man.

Q. His wife, Ruth, recently passed. Obviously he’s get-ting on in years and had some poor health recently. What do you think the impact will be to the Christian faithful when he passes?

A. I think it’s going to surprise the secular world. They’re going to have to have memorials in various cities like Wheaton, Minneapolis, Charlotte. And I think they’re going to be incredibly at-tended, like for a president. I think it’ll really surprise the press and secular world. He’s just been a giant. Anytime you raise his name, some-body in the crowd will tell you they became a believer through Graham somehow.

Q. It takes you six to eight weeks to write a book. What are your daily writing goals when you’re working on a novel?

A. I do work fairly quickly because I got my start in newspapers and you didn’t have time to mess around. I create at the keyboard. I only write when I’m on deadline. I don’t write everyday of the year like Stephen King does.

When I have a deadline, I figure out how many days I have and how many pages per day I need to write. Usu-ally it’s between 10 and 20 finished pages per day, which is pretty fast. And yet I never turn in a manuscript that I’m not totally happy with.
So I write my 10 or 20 pages, the next day I do a real heavy edit of those and write the next 10 or 20. And then when I’m done I go through the whole thing again until I’m happy with it. So I do work fast, but I tend to compartmentalize. When I’m writing, that’s all I’m doing. I get away in the mountains in Colorado, and I only write.

Q. Religion is always a touchy subject. People have differing beliefs. How do you respond to people who think that you’ve just gotten Jesus’ message wrong?

A. Well, the only time it bothers me is when they question our motives. There are people who disagree, and there are people that we ad-mire and respect, and people who we believe are believers who disagree with us. And that’s OK.

We live in a free country, and we’re just competing in the marketplace of ideas. Our feeling is if you disagree, write your own book, and get it out there, and see what the market decides. I know my motive, and I know Dr. LaHaye’s motive, and it’s simply to try to tell people what’s coming.

If people disagree, or scoff, or laugh, or reject it, that’s their right. And we’re not going to fly airplanes into buildings because people disagree with us. We’re not going to kill people. We’re supposed to love people, even our enemies. So my goal would be to say, ‘Look, we’re just sharing this, and what you do with it is up to you.’

Q. Nicolae Carpathia is your favorite character in the Left Behind series. Why? And do you think that would be shocking to fans of the series given his character’s role?

A. He’s the ultimate villain. You can’t have a better villain than the anti-Christ. I think the most fun part of him was, for the first three-and-a-half years, until he showed his true colors, he’s going to be so impressive that people will think he’s God incarnate.

I remember one of my sons was in high school, and I’d finished the first manuscript. He’s reading the manuscript and he’s about halfway through and he said, ‘I hope this Carpathia guy isn’t the anti-Christ because I really like him. And I thought, well then, we really nailed him because he has to be that impressive.

I clearly don’t like the anti-Christ, what he’s up to, but it’s a novelist’s dream to write with a villain like that.

Q. There’s a lot of people out there who read the Bible and struggle with various parts of it. What are the parts of the Bible that you struggle with, and what are the parts that strengthen you?

A. I get a lot of strength from the Psalms and Proverbs and the New Testament, a lot of writings of Paul and the Gospels. But Revelations was always the toughest one for me, too, because it always seemed like it was so symbolic and figurative. Any time I’d ever heard anybody speak of it, they always tried to do it allegorically.
When I met Dr. LaHaye, he said, ‘Look, I’m not a wooden literalist. I don’t believe everything that it says is literal like Jesus will slay people with a sword from his mouth. Clearly that’s the word. But where you can take it literally, do it, and see how it makes sense.’

Using that, I wrote the nov-els that way. When John the Revelator, instead of com-paring and saying like unto or as unto, he just says I looked, and I saw this, and it was hail and fire and blood from the sky. We used that, literally, and put the characters in the way of that. And millions of people said it just came to life for us for the first time. In-stead of trying to figure out 200 different ways to inter-pret it, just take it literally where you can.