Long before “The Chosen” became a global streaming sensation with over 280 million views and a passionate international fan base, its creator, Dallas Jenkins, was a young filmmaker trying to find his footing. Behind him, quietly encouraging and occasionally financing his early efforts, was his father, bestselling novelist Jerry B. Jenkins.
“I had helped him get started in his career, way back in the day, back when Left Behind was pretty popular,” the 75-year-old author told The Christian Post. “I had the means to help finance his movies and stuff like that. But ‘The Chosen’ was really his own.”
Though Jenkins had long believed in his son’s creative gifts, this time, he quipped, “I was right.”
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Jenkins — best known for co-authoring the Left Behind series, later turned into films starring Kirk Cameron and writing more than 200 books — has taken on the task of novelizing each season of “The Chosen.”
His latest work, The Chosen: Not My Will,draws from the fifth season of the series now streaming on Amazon Prime, and captures the emotional intensity of Holy Week, beginning with Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem and culminating in the anguish of Gethsemane.
“I said, ‘Can I play too?’ And [Dallas] was happy to let me write a novel for each season,” Jenkins said.
According to Jenkins, the “Chosen” novels have allowed him to slow down and enter the emotional and spiritual heartbeat of the Gospels. In Not My Will, Jenkins walks readers through the final days of Jesus’ ministry, balancing biblical accuracy with plausible imagination.
“The title obviously comes from [Jesus’] prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane,” Jenkins explained. “Where He’s asking His Father, ‘If there’s any way out of this … but not my will, but thine.’”
It’s a scene Jenkins not only wrote but also watched come to life on set, on a day already filled with personal significance. “I remember going down [to Texas] on Dallas’ birthday,” he said. “Every time he has a birthday, I remember the day of his birth … and then he asked me if I wanted to stand behind him while he’s directing a scene in the Garden of Gethsemane. I jumped at the chance.”
Jenkins recalled watching his son direct a fictional father-son interaction, an invented but plausible moment between Jesus and Joseph’s memory, while remembering Dallas’ own birth decades earlier. “I’m a blubber,” he said. “So I had to put my hand over my mouth so I wouldn’t whimper on mic.”
The bestselling author reflected on the similarities between his and Dallas’ careers; both, he said, were at the same age when their phenomena hit.
“I was in my mid-40s when Left Behind became big. And when ‘The Chosen’ hit, Dallas was in his mid-40s. That helped me be able to advise him a little bit,” he said.
“[I told him] ‘you need to not get distracted by the success of this thing.’ Who knows, maybe in our 20s, we would’ve been pretty proud of ourselves, or thought we had something to do with it. But by that age, you realize this is such a God thing that you just sort of get out of the way and hang on for dear life.”
While most film adaptations begin with the book, Jenkins is writing in reverse; he explained his stories are drawn from the vision already on screen. “’The Chosen’ series is Dallas and his two co-writers’ vision, based on Scripture,” he said. “But then my novels are based on the TV series, so we’re sort of back-loading.”
“I found that I was mirroring everything that was on the screen. I didn’t want people to go, ‘Wait a minute. That didn’t happen,’” Jenkins said, adding that Dallas and his team encouraged him to expand, to add dialogue, inner monologue and even new characters. “They said, ‘We want you in this so you can add value.’ That really freed me up.”
As someone who “loves the Scriptures,” the author said he’s careful to maintain the integrity of its words in his work. “‘The Chosen’ was created by somebody — my son — who believes the Bible is the Word of God, is inerrant, doesn’t need any help. But we can flesh it out with plausible imaginings.”
Take, for example, the well-known story of the paralytic lowered through the roof. “There’s no indication one of those friends was a woman or that she had seen Jesus heal a leper. But it’s plausible. It could happen.”
The disciples’ confusion and grief in the face of Jesus’ foretelling His death reminded Jenkins of the fragile faith that often defines the life of a Christian.
“They believe He’s the Messiah … but why so anger both the Romans and the Pharisees? They’re like, ‘He can’t mean that He’s actually going to die.’”
“I can identify with Simon Peter in the garden,” he said. “Trying to stay awake, trying to stay faithful, trying to pray for his friend and being caught out three times for falling asleep.”
Jenkins has spent much of his career writing about the unknown, most famously in Left Behind, which imagines a world following the biblical Rapture. Now, writing about events that happened more than 2,000 years ago, he reflected on feeling both the weight of history and eternity.
“It’s really fun to do the research on that,” he said. “I had to find out: If they’re walking from Bethany to Jerusalem, how long would that take? What would they wear? What would they eat? What would the temperature be?”
Jenkins said that whether he’s writing about the end of days or Jesus’ final days, the method is similar: keep Scripture at the center, but let the imagination explore how ordinary people might have experienced extraordinary events.
“It’s plausible to put fictitious characters in the way of these actual events and say, ‘This is what it could look like. What if it was you? What if it was me?’”
He has also written a series based on each Gospel — Matthew’s story, Mark’s story, Luke’s story, and John’s story — using a similar technique.
With decades of experience and over 73 million books sold, Jenkins said he’s eager to pass on what he’s learned to the next generation. He now teaches thousands of aspiring writers online and offers this counterintuitive advice: don’t start with a book.
“A book is not where you start, it’s where you arrive,” he said. “Start with blogs, start with articles, start with short stuff. Learn to work with an editor. Learn the business. Get the quarter-million clichés out of your system. Take the process slow. You’ll get there. But go through the steps and learn the business.”
While he remains prolific, writing novels and mentoring writers, Jenkins said his proudest role is not as bestselling author, but as a father watching his sons walk in the same story of faith.
“You really can’t have a greater hope for your children,” he said. “We have three grown sons, and they all love the Lord. But to see Dallas have this happen … it’s kind of amazing that this sort of lightning strikes the same family twice.”
Leah M. Klett is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: leah.klett@christianpost.com
