Sid: My guest is red hot for the Messiah. I think anyone would be red hot for the Messiah if they came out of nowhere. A Jewish believer in the Messiah, a total unknown, he writes this first novel and he just happens to hit things before they happen. Some of the top people in America are calling him, they’re calling Joel Rosenberg a modern Nostradamus, no he’s not! He’s just a Jewish believer in Jesus that has read the Bible, has inside information on what’s going to happen. I mean his first book “The Last Jihad” for 11 weeks was on the New York Times Best Seller list. It became number one on Amazon, his 2 books there are over 1 million in print, and he is so excited because God has now given him the platform and the book, it’s called “The Ezekiel Option.” It reads like todays newspaper, it involves countries that are doing things although when did you write this book, it sounds like you wrote it yesterday Joel?
Joel: [Laughing] Well I wrote it last year. In the publishing world it just takes a while for it to come out. You are there are events even now that are happening that make it feel like I just ripping right out of the headlines.
Sid: Tell me a little bit about the book. Just kind of whet our appetite.
Joel: Sure.
Sid: But I have to mention this Mishpochah, if you weren’t listening on yesterday’s broadcast he works the gospel into this secular book. Endorsed by some of the top secular radio talk show hosts in America, but go ahead.
Joel: Well that’s the whole reason I wrote it, but I’m trying to write political thrillers that draw you in on an exciting adventure story then the spiritual temperature goes up and you get the gospel. In this case, somebody specifically makes the decision to receive Christ and the prayer that the person prays is right there. They’re supposed to be New York Times Best Sellers with the gospel woven throughout. “The Ezekiel Option” this is a story I really set out to write several years ago this is the book I wanted to write and finally felt like I had the skill and the information to do it. The American president is pressuring Israel to make a peace deal with the Palestinians. Saddam is gone, Arafat is gone and he believes now is the time to make a peace deal, but a dictator, a fascist dictator, starts rising in Russia and builds a nuclear alliance with Iran, and builds a coalition and says to Israel “You have to give up all your weapons of mass destruction including your defensive nuclear weapons in 30 days, or Russia and Iran their coalition will do to Israel what the US, the British, and our coalition did Iraq.” It’s a worst case scenario but it’s a scenario that’s consistent with the prophecies of Ezekiel chapter 38 and 39 which says that a dictator with the title of Gog from the land of Magog, which is Russia…
Sid: One of the villains his name is Gogolev. Did you do that because of Gog?
Joel: The first book, two books ago, knowing this is where I was going to go with this.
Sid: Ha.
Joel: And so this Gogolev character builds an alliance with Iran, at just very similar to the alliance that’s being built right now between Vladimir Putin and with the Muahs in Tehran. I wanted the book to feel as real as it could for contemporary, and yet as Rush Limbaugh said “This book feels like an episode of the thriller show 24, but with a supernatural twist.” I like that insight from him because this book does have a supernatural twist in that in Israeli nuclear doctrine if the Israelis ever find themselves where they’re about to be all wiped out; 6 million Jews destroyed, the decision of the Israeli government has been to call their nuclear doctrine the
“Sampson Option.” In other words, just as Sampson in the Bible he said “God if I’m going to die let me take everybody with me.” If the Israelis feel that they ever get to the point where their country will be annihilated that they will fire their nuclear weapons out at their enemies and take everyone with them. That’s the “Sampson Option.” The “Ezekiel Option,” again I don’t want to give too much away in terms of the details, but just to say that…
Sid: Listen you’re going to have so many millions of people reading this book. We’ve got listeners right now that are looking for exciting reading that isn’t going to be the trash that they normally have available. That it’s going to be so riveting but it’s based on Biblical things with current events I can’t wait for our Mishpochah to get this. Go ahead Joel.
Joel: If a person spends some time reading chapter 38 and 39 of Ezekiel they will find it to be at times a little complicated because there’s strange names of countries that will arise in the future; it’s hard to know exactly what those names mean, but as you read “The Ezekiel Option” it would be as though this Biblical prophecy were to happen tomorrow. What would that feel like? What would happen if the world turned against Israel? That the United States itself was tending to abandon Israel, and Israel had no option either the “Sampson Option,” or what Ezekiel says will happen, which I won’t give away here on the air right now. What’s interesting to me Sid is that when people say “Well Ezekiel 38 and 39 that’s sort of an obscure prophecy, and who knows when that’s going to happen.” Okay fair enough we don’t know exactly, but what’s fascinating…
Sid: Many prophetic people I know say “It’s right on the horizon.”
Joel: I agree because Ezekiel 36 and 37 are already coming true. The valley of the dry bones is the story of Ezekiel 37, where Israel reconstructs as a country and the Jews pour back in from the nations. This is happening, this is happening. If 37 has happened how far away could 38 be? Now again the great thing…
Sid: But what about Russia the big bear. It talks about that and Russia doesn’t look like it’s ready to take on the world.
Joel: You know I have to say actually I think it does increasingly. I was in Moscow last fall and I took my father whose family as Orthodox Jews escaped from Russia during the pogroms in the early 20th century, 1907 or so. He had never been there, I had to the Soviet Union in 1986 to smuggle Bibles in and share the gospel with young people. So I took my dad there and we met with the top political leaders in Russia, the New York Times Bureau Chief, senior leaders of the American Embassy in Moscow. I asked all of them “I’m not saying that Putin is the Gog character in the Bible, but tell me what is he doing that seems to be turning the clock back to an authoritarian time?” My goodness they went on and on and on telling me all the things Putin has done to roll back democracy. For example, cancelling all democratic elections for the governors of Russia, he now appoints them directly. He’s throwing business leaders who oppose him in jail; he’s taking over the TV stations; he’s building a new nuclear missile called the “Satan” rocket.
Sid: Say that again.
Joel: The “Satan” rocket, SS-19, their refurbishing and advancing a new version…
Sid: Now the devil can’t be that dumb to be so blatant can he? [Laughing]
Joel: I know it’s… that’s what I’m saying where the world is focused on the Middle East right now Putin is becoming a dictator. Now again I want to be very clear to say we don’t know that he himself is the character that Ezekiel writes about.
Sid: But if he isn’t he is sure the forerunner of it.
Joel: What’s interesting now he is building an alliance with Iran. For the first time in all of recorded history since Ezekiel wrote this prophecy 2500 years ago, Russia for the first time has built a military alliance with Iran. They have built Iran’s first nuclear power plant which will come online next year; they are sending nuclear fuel to Iran early next year; they have sold missiles and tanks and submarines to Iran. Why Iran? Iran is the most dangerous terrorist state on the planet, and yet Russia who says they are partner for peace is building an alliance just like the Bible says that they would.
Sid: This is so amazing last year you started on this book and you have all these nations. You have the same things happening that are going on in the headlines today. I happen to believe you really got a prophetic insight to what’s going to happen in the future. I’ve got to ask you this, did you really feel the hand of God when you wrote this book?
Joel: I did. I have to tell you in a way that I never really expected. Starting with the first one “The Last Jihad” and “The Last Days” which this was all a theory, a plan, from the beginning. Now when you write your first novel you don’t know if the plan will be fulfilled. I knew… Iraq is not in the list of nations that Ezekiel says is going to attack Israel. Babylon is never mentioned, and that gave me a difficulty when I wanted to write this book I realized I had to start with a book that would get rid of Saddam Hussein to make it plausible. Because Iraq is not a country that will attack Israel in this war of Gog and Magog, so I had to write a book that would get rid of Saddam Hussein that was “The Last Jihad.” It’s clear that Arafat’s role was not in this prophecy, we probably have the time to get into the details of that but it’s in the book of course “The Ezekiel Option.” So I wrote another book about… how might Arafat leave the scene and what might happen next. Now that set the stage for me to write “The Ezekiel Option.” One of the things that’s fascinating to me Sid is that Ronald Regan both as governor of California and as president was totally intrigued with Ezekiel 38 and 39. I did research in which I found very incredible forces including Reagan’s own official biography that Reagan talked about Russia being the country of Magog, and that Meshech, the city mentioned in Ezekiel 38 was actually Moscow.
Sid: That explains why he was so ferocious against Russia in those early years. You know we’re out of time.
Tags: its supernatural, Sid Roth