Deadline

Author: Randy Alcorn
Located in: Gresham, Oregon
Submitted: May 28, 2011

    Tell us a little about yourself.  I’m the founder of Eternal Perspective Ministries and the author of over forty books, including my fiction books Deception and Safely Home and my nonfiction works The Treasure Principle and Heaven. My wife Nanci and I are the parents of two married daughters and we have four wonderful grandsons. I enjoy hanging out with my family, biking, tennis, research and reading.

    What was your motivation behind this project?  The idea for Deadline just came to me, ultimately I think from the Lord. I wrote it because I wanted readers to see that at the heart of life is the choice of what we believe. Doc and Finney represented two conflicting world views, and Jake would have to choose between them. I also wanted readers to get a picture of eternity, a sense that the afterlife is real.

    What do you hope folks will gain from this project?  A publisher asked me once what my distinctive mission as a writer is. I think it's to probe beneath the surface into the deep longings of people, then to open a door into the invisible spiritual realm so people can see ultimate realities (including God, angels, demons, heaven and hell) with the eyes of faith and imagination. Once you catch a glimpse of the other world, the real world, you are weaned from the illusion that reality is limited to our five senses. You can't help but live differently once you learn to see differently. My life verse is "We look not at the things that are seen but the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are temporary, but the things that are unseen are eternal." (2 Corinthians 4:18). I seek to help readers see the unseen through my writing, both fiction and nonfiction. My prayer is that God would use me as his instrument to represent accurately the truths of His Word and the greatness of his Being, in purity and passion.

    How were you personally impacted by working on this project?  I've learned that writing is hard work. It's energizing and draining, something I love to do and hate to do, something that's never done, but eventually has to be turned in. I've learned that what's easy to read is hard to write, and what's easy to write is hard to read. I'm a steward of words, and I'm accountable to God for how I arrange them. That's the best reason for working hard at rewriting: "work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men" (Colossians 3:23). I need honest critics and careful editors. But above all I need Christ, who said, "Apart from Me, you can do nothing" (John 15:5). When you work this hard at something, you don't want it to amount to nothing. You want it to last forever. You want to hear the Audience of One say, "Well done." No pay-off could be bigger than that!

    Who are your influences, sources of inspiration or favorite authors / artists?  Besides the Bible, the writings of C. S. Lewis have had the greatest influence on me. His space trilogy and Chronicles of Narnia, and his nonfiction Mere Christianity and many other titles are still a source of great perspective and encouragement to me. Lewis is like an old friend to me—he's even a character in one of my novels. A.W. Tozer's books have also affected me profoundly—my favorite is the Knowledge of the Holy, a small and powerful book on the attributes of God. Tozer has a great spiritual depth and a clean crisp writing style that illuminates the reader. Another favorite is Francis Schaeffer whose philosophical and apologetic writings, among them He is There and He is Not Silent, shaped my thinking in the seventies. Ultimately, everything I've ever written has been affected by Lewis, Tozer and Schaeffer. My favorite current author is John Piper.

    Anything else you'd like readers / listeners to know:  My writing is a ministry, because ministry is service, and every aspect of our lives is to be a service that glorifies our Lord: "Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God" (1 Cor. 10:31). "And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. (Col 3:17) Is writing included in the "whatever" I do? Yes. And therefore, I do it with all my heart, to the glory of God, as a service to the Lord first and to others second, aware that I must seek to please the Audience of One, whose judgment seat is the only one I'll stand before, and whose opinion of my life is the only one that matters. I do this service giving thanks to God for the privilege of being his errand boy, his messenger, his servant. By viewing writing as a ministry first and a vocation only second, I remind myself it's not about me, it's about Him.

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