The Rev. David Wilkerson, an evangelical minister and author who founded the Times Square Church to minister to the downtrodden in one of Manhattan’s seedier precincts, but whose later writings included apocalyptic predictions for New York City and beyond, died Wednesday in an automobile accident in Texas. He was 79 and lived near Tyler, Texas.

His wife, Gwendolyn, was seriously injured but is expected to recover, Wilkerson’s brother, the Rev. Donald Wilkerson, said Thursday.

David Wilkerson was known to a broad readership through his many books. His most famous, “The Cross and the Switchblade” (1963), chronicled his ministry among gang members in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he had arrived as a young preacher in the late 1950s.