Jerry B(ruce) Jenkins (1949)

Jerry B. Jenkins describes himself in interviews as "the most famous writer no one's ever heard of." Indeed, by 2000 Jenkins could claim book sales of more than ten million, putting him in the company of such publishing giants as John Grisham and Stephen King. But if Jenkins's name is not well known, his line of fiction certainly is. Jenkins, along with the Reverend Tim F. LaHaye, are co-creators of the Christian apocalyptic thrillers known as the "Left Behind" series.

A native of Michigan, Jenkins worked as a journalist and publishing executive before turning to authorship in the 1970s. He wrote in a variety of nonfiction genres, but all his books were grounded in his evangelical Christian faith. The author also earned a reputation as the writing talent behind celebrity memoirs; his "as told to" autobiographies include those of sports heroes Henry Aaron, Orel Hershiser, and Brett Butler. But Jenkins told a Marriage Partnership interviewer, "fiction was always my first love. I wrote nonfiction to pay the bills, in the hopes that the fiction would hit."

The fiction did hit—first with a set of youth-oriented mysteries, then with the debut of the "Left Behind" books. The books were conceived by LaHaye, a well-known evangelical minister who left the pulpit in 1981 to devote time to writing and politics. According to a People article by Thomas Fields-Meyer, LaHaye developed the idea for the series during his travel days: "Sitting on airplanes and watching the pilots," he commented to Fields-Meyer, "I'd think to myself, 'What if the Rapture occurred on an airplane'?" LaHaye searched for three years for someone to shape his idea into a novel, and fellow evangelical Jenkins was his selection. Though nearly twenty-five years apart in age, the two were comfortable working together. "It's like a fatherson thing," Jenkins said in People. Jenkins is the author of the novels; LaHaye serves as consultant for prophetic accuracy.

In 1995, Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth's Last Days was published by Tyndale House. True to LaHaye's vision, the novel opens on an airplane en route to London. Pilot Rayford Steele, who is contemplating an extramarital affair with flight attendant Hattie Durham, is surprised when Hattie bursts into the cockpit with startling news: several of the passengers have disappeared in an instant, leaving only their clothes and other possessions piled on their seats. Making an emergency landing in his hometown of Chicago, Rayford returns home to find his wife and son, both recently born-again Christians, vanished as well. The conclusion: Christian true-believers have been spirited to heaven (the Rapture) while those back on Earth are faced with the biblical prophesy of war and pestilence leading to the Apocalypse, as heralded by the rise of the Antichrist.

Among those "left behind" is crusading journalist Cameron "Buck" Williams, who takes on the story for his magazine. His investigation leads to a charismatic Romanian politician, Nicolae Carpathia, who quickly rises to power by advocating a one-world government. Nicolae, appointed Secretary General of the United Nations, reconstructs the nations of the Earth as the Global Community and plans to reign supreme over the world. When it becomes apparent that Nicolae is the Antichrist incarnate, it is up to Rayford, Buck, and their band of believers, who dub themselves the Tribulation Force, to defend their world. As the last line of Left Behind puts it, the rebels' task was clear: "their goal was nothing less than to stand and fight the enemies of God during the seven most chaotic years the planet would ever see."

Left Behind was followed by a steady stream of sequels, one every six months, all advancing the apocalyptic plot. While few mainstream critics praised the stylistic aspects of the novels, many acknowledged that Jenkins's tales had value as thought-provoking page-turners. "I found [the first novel] rattling good reading, professionally terse yet fluid," commented J. C. Furnas of American Scholar. "Suppose the late Ian Fleming [of James Bond fame] had got End-Times religion and built on it a portentous Scripture-based epic in 007 style, only with a certain paucity of toothsome women." While Atlantic Monthly reviewer Joseph Gross noted Jenkins' reliance on easy characterization—"everyone in the books is above average. The characters' brains and physical beauty are sometimes described with clumsy cultural references"—National Review contributor Matthew Scully had a different view. He thought Jenkins had "a gift for plot and dialogue" which would serve the author well through the book series.

Some criticism of the "Left Behind" books focused on the way non-evangelicals were portrayed. "The authors' perception of the Jews as a great people gone wrong streaks the books with a queasy, forced amiability teetering on contempt," stated Commonweal writer Richard Alleva. The Catholic church "takes its lumps, too," Alleva continued. "The latest pope is raptured, but that is because he had stirred up controversy in the church with a new doctrine that seemed to coincide more with the 'heresy' of Martin Luther than with historic orthodoxy." "Catholics' chances of making the Rapture are slim," noted Teresa Malcolm in a National Catholic Reporter piece, but in her opinion, the saving of the fictional pope reflected that "overt anti-Catholicism was deliberately toned down to give the novels a wider appeal."

But the books' severest barbs are aimed at the United Nations, "which practically hands itself over to the Antichrist and becomes the arm of his will," according to Alleva. "And what is his will? A world government, a world capital called New Babylon, a world army, and a world religion—all the usual suspects placed at the service of Satan's minion. In a country like ours, where fear of centralization and government interference has led to bombings, mass slaughter, and the creation of various thug militia-groups, how could the 'Left Behind' series fail?"

The timing of a tale about the Rapture coincided with the end-of-the-millennium mood in the United States. Worldwide political unrest and "Y2K" technological concerns fueled the interest in end-times literature, and the "Left Behind" series played into that interest. Jenkins and LaHaye's books, promotional items, and Web sites have drawn massive attention, leading a Publishers Weekly editor to tell People's Fields-Meyer that the stories comprise "the most successful Christian-fiction series ever." "Left Behind is truly newsmaking stuff," remarked Alleva.

Still, Jenkins maintains that money is not the primary force propelling the series. "Neither [LaHaye] nor I grew up in families where success was defined by money," he said in the Marriage Partnership interview. His ministry, he said, was always more important. And he takes pleasure in writing the novels: "Discovering what happens is as much fun for me as it is for readers. I don't kill my characters off; I find them dead."