To be honest, I have only a vague and unsure understanding of what evangelicals call “dispensationalsim and premillennialism.” Accordingly, I have purposefully avoided the Left Behind series of end-time thrillers because there’s something spiritually denigrating about those who would suddenly change their “wicked ways” as the apocalypse draws nigh; what philosopher Anthony Flew refers to as a “purely prudential” morality. If God has to end the world to win your soul, perhaps you’ve missed something along the way.

Nevertheless, with that qualifier noted, I did pick up a copy of Joel Rosenberg’s latest novel, The Ezekiel Option, and I couldn’t put it down. This book is his third. The other two: The Last Jihad, and The Last Days, as the blurbs are want to remind us, were rather prophetic in their own right. The Last Jihad opens with a hijacked jet airliner “coming in on a kamikaze attack into an American city,” while The Last Days begins with the demise of Yasser Arafat. Both novels were published before these events actually occurred.

Given Rosenberg’s prescient inclinations I thought I’d see if his latest effort proved revelatory.

Rosenberg’s thesis is that there has been a discovery of a rather large gas and oil reserve just off the coast at Gaza, which establishes a tentative peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis. In a new found spirit of congeniality, both the Palestinians and the Israelis are going to share in the immense wealth generated by this serendipitous discovery. The problem, of course, is that the conflict between the Arabs and Jews is not predicated on money or wealth but rather upon the teachings of Mohammed, the rise of Islam, and its desire for the new caliphate on the one hand, and the return of the Jews to Israel/Palestine following World War II on the other. But, I don’t wish to be too critical because this element of the novel sets the stage for Rosenberg’s rather ingenious interpretation of scripture found in Ezekiel 38-39.

The novel, then, is woven around and through the tapestry of God’s words via the prophet Ezekiel, and Rosenberg has spun a tale within the verse that terrifyingly succeeds. He utilizes familiar characters from his previous efforts, all of which are high officials in the government and definitely neo-cons, while avoiding the temptation of having the United States gallop to the rescue. America isn’t coming to the rescue for the simple reason that it isn’t scriptural.

The most important element of the novel is the author’s faith. He is a Messianic Jew, and he has found in Yeshua HaMaschiach the God of the Universe. His novel is the trumpet of the ancient tribes; he sounds the warning. Modernity has pulled humanity into the murk and mire of depravity. As Soren Kierkegarrd said, “The human race ceased to fear God. Then came its punishment; it began to fear itself, began to cultivate the fantastic, and now it trembles before this creature of its own imagination.”

Rosenberg has succeeded in exposing modernity to the lens of scripture, and in his creativity, has crafted a clever, layered, and nuanced story that reaches across religion and culture. The author is a Christian humanist who understands the meaning of the duality of Christ; of his divine and human nature. And, as G. K. Chesterton wrote, “In the paradoxical meeting of Christ’s two natures is the pattern by which we can begin to understand the many dualities we experience in life: flesh and spirit, nature and grace, God and Caesar, faith and reason, justice and mercy.”

And, it is the destruction of this vision of hope, the Incarnation, by the very evil that is Rosenberg’s antagonist that sets the conditions of his novel. Indeed, it sets the conditions of the very present.

The Ezekiel Option is available on Amazon.com.

Bob Cheeks has written for The American Enterprise, Human Events, Southern Partisan, and The Pittsburgh Tribune Review.

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