SAN DIEGO, CA (AP) — The author of the best-selling “Left Behind” novels about the return of Jesus and the rapture has died.

A publicist for the Rev. Tim LaHaye says the novelist died Monday in San Diego, California, days after suffering a stroke. He was 90 years old.

LaHaye and his partner Jerry B. Jenkins wrote 16 volumes in the “Left Behind” series, which sold more than 80 million copies worldwide, bringing Christian prophecy and the apocalypse into mainstream bookstores.

LaHaye was a Baptist minister who started an Atlanta-area church and several Christian schools, and wrote dozens of non-fiction and advice books. He was active in conservative political groups and instrumental in the creation of the Moral Majority.

No funeral plans were announced. He is survived by his wife Beverly and four children.