Years after he helped create the mega-popular Left Behind novels about the end times, Jerry Jenkins is back with a new novel about the beginning times written with Dallas Theological Seminary President Mark Yarbrough.
The Battle for Heaven and Earth, out Nov. 3 from Thomas Nelson, offers a fictional treatment of the first three chapters of Genesis, including the rebellion of Lucifer, the Creation, and the fall of Adam and Eve.
“Jerry started at the end and now we’re going back to the beginning,” Yarbrough said in an interview.
Mark Yarbrough
“This story pulls back the curtain on spiritual warfare, the consequences of rebellion against God, and the hope that remains even in the midst of darkness,” said Jenkins, whose 200-plus books have sold 73 million copies. “We pray it resonates with believers while also engaging readers who may have never opened a Bible before.”
Yarbrough hopes the novel sends readers to their Bibles. “Our ultimate prayer is to get people back into the book,” he said. “We want them to wrestle with Genesis and with the Bible’s claims.”
The book has a major marketing campaign designed to cut through the chaos of contentious midterm elections. The authors have done dozens of media interviews, recorded 21 author videos, and an upcoming soundtrack recording will feature Christian artists singing some of the novel’s heavenly songs. The novel’s four first chapters are available for free download.
If the campaign works and the novel is a success, the authors are ready to write seven more novels that will continue the series through the book of Revelation.
Echoing the first words of Melville’s Moby Dick (“Call me Ishmael.”), The Battle for Heaven and Earth opens with: “Call me Michael.”
The archangel serves as the novel’s primary narrator and speaks in contemporary English. “I still can’t wrap my head around that,” he says as he ponders God’s eternal nature.
Jerry Jenkins
Lucifer comes off as a moody, evasive teenager. “Are we done?” he says at one point in response to Michael’s persistent questions. “Sometimes Michael annoys me,” Lucifer admits.
Early on, the novel shows Lucifer’s desires to rebel against God and take other angelic beings with him. “I am no longer the mere servant of the Most High. … Rather, I am his equal.”
“He hasn’t looked the same recently,” says Gabriel of Lucifer, who has seemed “more distant” of late as he explores the possibilities of free will.
For Yarbrough, the new novel is just the latest in a series of books designed to make the Bible accessible to readers. His earlier books include Jonah: Beyond the Tale of a Whale and How to Read the Bible Like a Seminary Professor.
He calls The Battle for Heaven and Earth “grounded but accessible” and says it’s an extension of his role as the sixth president of Dallas Theological Seminary and a means to market the seminary to a broader audience. “Everything I do as president reflects on the seminary,” he said.
In September, DTS reported its “highest fall enrollment in seminary history,” with 2,657 students, up slightly from 2023. DTS is the nation’s fourth largest seminary based on 2025 enrollment figures, which showed DTS with a full-time-equivalent enrollment of 1,378 students. One-third of DTS students are Baptist.
Yarbrough leads a DTS-affiliated ministry called “The Story of Scripture” and his new book with Jenkins is billed as “A Story of Scripture Novel.”
Yarbrough read the Left Behind novels “back in the day” and praises them for popularizing DTS’s dispensational eschatology. “The theological basis of that series is where DTS stands,” he said. “Our understanding of eschatology is very connected to that series.”
Yarbrough says he outlined the novel before approaching Jenkins, then drafted each chapter before letting Jenkins do his thing. “I gave Jerry junk and he made it brilliant,” he told Publishers Weekly.
Jenkins insisted on brief chapters for attention-challenged readers, resulting in a 374-page book with 131 chapters averaging just under three pages.
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