The Vanishings (11 page)

The four kids sat there, each grieving in his or her own way. Judd had been humbled. Vicki felt a fool. Lionel felt a sadness so deep he didn’t know if it would ever go away. Ryan was puzzled. Raymie had told him all this, and Ryan had thought it was stupid. He didn’t think so anymore.

As they watched the video of the senior pastor, now in heaven, telling what was going on and how they could come to Christ, each felt a sudden closeness to the other. Bruce told them that if they became believers, they would be brothers and sisters in Christ. They could become each other’s family.

They would discover their connections later. Judd would one day realize that Ryan was the best friend of the son of the pilot of the plane he had been on. Vicki knew Lionel through his sister, but she didn’t know that his mother had worked for the same magazine as a man who had been on the plane with Judd.

For now they were simply four kids from the same town who shared a common horror
and grief. Bruce seemed to have in mind for them a future as a small group. That sounded good to each, especially in their gnawing loneliness.

When the video ended, each sat stunned that the pastor had known in advance all that was now taking place. Clearly this was truth. Certainly this demanded their attention and a decision. Each sat staring as Bruce posed the question of the ages.

“Are you ready?” he said. “Will you receive Christ?”

Jerry B. Jenkins
(
www.jerryjenkins.com
) is the writer of the Left Behind series. He owns the Jerry B. Jenkins Christian Writers Guild, an organization dedicated to mentoring aspiring authors. Former vice president for publishing for the Moody Bible Institute of Chicago, he also served many years as editor of
Moody
magazine and is now Moody’s writer-at-large.

His writing has appeared in publications as varied as
Reader’s Digest, Parade, Guideposts,
in-flight magazines, and dozens of other periodicals. Jenkins’s biographies include books with Billy Graham, Hank Aaron, Bill Gaither, Luis Palau, Walter Payton, Orel Hershiser, and Nolan Ryan, among many others. His books appear regularly on the
New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal,
and
Publishers Weekly
best seller lists.

Jerry is also the writer of the nationally syndicated sports story comic strip
Gil Thorp,
distributed to newspapers across the United States by Tribune Media Services.

Jerry and his wife, Dianna, live in Colorado and have three grown sons.

Dr. Tim LaHaye
(
www.timlahaye.com
), who conceived the idea of fictionalizing an account of the Rapture and the Tribulation, is a noted author, minister, and nationally recognized speaker on Bible prophecy. He is the founder of both Tim LaHaye Ministries and The PreTrib Research Center. He also recently cofounded the Tim LaHaye School of Prophecy at Liberty University. Presently Dr. LaHaye speaks at many of the major Bible prophecy conferences in the U.S. and Canada, where his current prophecy books are very popular.

Dr. LaHaye holds a doctor of ministry degree from Western Theological Seminary and a doctor of literature degree from Liberty University. For twenty-five years he pastored one of the nation’s outstanding churches in San Diego, which grew to three locations. It was during that time that he founded two accredited Christian high schools, a Christian school system of ten schools, and Christian Heritage College.

Dr. LaHaye has written over forty books that have been published in more than thirty languages. He has written books on a wide variety of subjects, such as family life, temperaments, and Bible prophecy. His current fiction works, the Left Behind series, written with Jerry B. Jenkins, continue to appear on the best seller lists of the Christian Booksellers Association,
Publishers Weekly, Wall Street Journal, USA Today,
and the
New York Times.

He is the father of four grown children and grandfather of nine. Snow skiing, waterskiing, motorcycling, golfing, vacationing with family, and jogging are among his leisure activities.