Ironically, in today’s marketplace successful nonfiction has to be unbelievable, while successful fiction must be believable.
The uninitiated have real questions and valid concerns over how the things of God appear to them.
Left Behind takes what to some people may be unbelievable predictions from the Bible and shows how they might play out. It makes the events of biblical prophecy understandable and thus believable.
SOON was the first novel where I used a rough outline. Usually I have characters and an idea and write as a process of discovery. Like working without a net.
While writing my first 90 books, I was magazine editor, publisher, book publisher, executive, etc., so I was established in publishing. three of my seven or so books were biographies of sports stars and really opened doors for me in that area.
Books that do a tenth of what Left Behind has done are smashing successes.
My dream remains to inform and entertain through fiction in the form of novels and movies that compete in the marketplace of ideas.
Good fiction must be entertaining- but what makes fiction special- and True- is that the realness of a novel allows it to carry a larger message.
Christianity is not a religion, it’s a relationship with God through Christ.
No life is messier than one in ministry.
Fiction has a unique role in conveying Truth. In fact, only fiction that is Truth with a capital T is worthwhile.
You can’t understand where someone’s going unless you understand where they’ve been.
When you come to Christ as a real young person, I think when you become a teen-ager either you rebel or you search, doubt, and wonder.
When I was a junior camp counselor and it was my job to tell the campers a bedtime story or devotional, I would tell them a rapture story.
I’ve written enough books with real celebrities, such as Walter Payton and Hank Aaron and Billy Graham, to know that fame looks good only to people who don’t have it.
I love inventing worlds and characters and settings and scenarios.
The man gave Westin two.
I call writing a sacred profession because I believe God chose the written word to communicate with man.
When I rise in the morning and go to sleep at night, I will think of you, O King. For you are great and powerful and majestic and full of splendor. The entire kingdom is yours. Truly you are lifted high above everything.
As it has always been, so shall it ever be. The King is on his throne and is in control.
A life of following God is not easy, but when we give our lives to him, he gives us the power to live and the promise of eternal life. What.