Interview with Detective Fiction Author Randy Alcorn

Q: Randy, many people are certainly familiar with your novels, but they might not know much about your ministry, Eternal Perspective Ministries. If you could, take a moment to share with us how this ministry came about and what its chief aims are.

The key verse that defines our goal is Second Corinthians 4:18: So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

Eternal Perspective Ministries is a Bible-believing Christ-centered nonprofit organization with two goals:

to teach the principles of God's Word, emphasizing an eternal viewpoint;

to reach the needy in Christ's name, calling attention to the special needs of the unreached, unfed, unclothed, unborn, unsheltered, unreconciled, untrained and unsupported, that is, Christians suffering for their faith. All the royalties from my books go to support these causes, so when we get the eternal perspective message out in the books, we also have the privilege of giving the proceeds directly to God's kingdom work.

Q: After so many years in the ministry, what would you consider to be the most memorable, touch stone moment?

My mother's death in 1981. Every day as she was dying I'd read to her the last two chapters of Revelation. This was before I'd written my first book. And though I didn't know it then, God was preparing me to integrate the subject of Heaven, and in particular the New Heavens and New Earth, into all my writing.

The first of two other life-changing events happened in 1985. In the same month that my first book, Christians in the Wake of the Sexual Revolution, was published, I was diagnosed with insulin-dependent diabetes. God used this to remind me of my dependence on Him, in a daily, concrete way. Before that, I knew intellectually that I was dependent on God for every breath. But I was really very independent and self-sufficient. Now I have a built-in reminder every single day when I take my blood tests and insulin injections: "Apart from me you can do nothing" (John 15:5).