Joel C. Rosenberg
The Ezekiel Option
Publisher's Note
Dear Reader,
One morning over a decade ago I walked into my office as I’d done a thousand times before. But that morning something was in my office that every publisher dreams about but few publishers get to experience, something that literally changed the future of our company and shook the very foundations of the publishing industry. What caught my eye as I threw my coat across the chair was not the proposal resting in my in-box — I see those every day. No, what grabbed my attention immediately was the title of the proposaclass="underline" Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth’s Last Days.
What a great title, I thought to myself. But can the content deliver? I jumped on that proposal and pushed every button at our publishing house to get the deal done and the book to market. The rest is history and still making history — a series of novels that has sold an astonishing 62 million copies and will sell millions more. The last seven books all have been #1 best-sellers on the New York Times, USA Today, Publishers Weekly, and Wall Street Journal lists.
Why do I write this here? Because I want you to know, dear reader, that recently I had a very similar experience — a real déjà vu. Not many months ago my fiction director, Becky Nesbitt, sent me a proposal for a new novel by an author named Joel Rosenberg. I walked into my office one morning and there it was — something every publisher dreams about but few get to experience, something I now believe can once again shake up the publishing industry. This time it wasn’t the title that caught my eye, nor was it Becky’s note that told me to lock the door until I’d finished reading the proposal; it was the manuscript’s first two sentences, which read:
Boris Stuchenko would be dead in less than nineteen minutes.
And he had no idea why.
What a great opening, I thought to myself. But can the rest of the book deliver? Deliver it did! I sat down with that manuscript, and was instantly propelled into a ride I’ll never forget. Becky and I jumped on that proposal and pushed every button at our publishing house to get the deal done and the book to market. Now it’s your turn. Fasten your seat belt because this is not just a page-turner, it’s a page-churner. You’ll churn through the pages with the same heart-stopping intensity of viewing a great thriller movie for the first time. When you get to the end, you’ll be a different person than you were at the beginning.
I have the same gut feeling about this novel as I did about Left Behind. That novel is a thrill ride bringing to life the prophecies of the book of Revelation. The book you hold in your hand is the same kind of thrill ride, but bringing to life the biblical prophecies leading up to the events of Revelation. So turn the page, and enjoy the ride of your life. Where you’re going, there’s no turning back.
RON BEERS
Publisher
Dedication
This book is dedicated to the Rosenberg family,
who escaped czarist persecution of the Jews in Russia
in the early years of the twentieth century;
and to my parents, Len and Mary Rosenberg,
who taught me by their love and example
the true meaning of faith and freedom.
Cast of Characters
James “Mac” MacPherson
William Harvard Oaks
Marsha Kirkpatrick, National Security Advisor
Jack Mitchell, Director of Central Intelligence
Burt Trainor, Secretary of Defense
Nick Warner, Secretary of State
Jon Bennett, Senior Advisor to the President
Bob Corsetti, White House Chief of Staff
Ken Costello, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs
Erin McCoy, Senior Advisor to the President, on loan from the CIA
Indira Rajiv, Director of the NAMESTAN Desk, CIA
Chuck Murray, White House Press Secretary
David Doron, Prime Minister of Israel
Dr. Eliezer Mordechai, Former head of Mossad
Grigoriy Vadim, President of the Russian Federation
Aleksandr Golitsyn, Russian Foreign Minister
Andrei Zyuganov, Director of Presidential Administration (Chief of Staff)
Sergei Ilyushkin, Deputy Speaker of the Duma; Protégé of Vladimir Zhirinovsky
Yuri Gogolov, Russian Cofounder of Al-Nakbah Terrorist Movement
Mohammed Jibril, Iranian Cofounder of Al-Nakbah
Mustafa Al-Hassani, President of Iraq
Ruth Bennett, Mother of Jon Bennett
Salvador Lucente, European Union Foreign Minister
Ibrahim Sa’id, Palestinian Prime Minister
Ifshahan Kharrazi, President of Iran
Author’s Note
The journey that follows is fiction.
The prophecy upon which it is based is true.
The cryptic vision of a Hebrew scribe — writing twenty-five centuries ago — foretold one of the most horrific periods in the future of mankind.
Yet even today it remains one of man’s great unsolved mysteries.
Its central premise was once discussed in a speech before the U.S. Congress, and was believed to be both true and increasingly close at hand by one of America’s greatest presidents.
Its central characters surface throughout history, in the Tanakh and the book of Revelation, in the journals of Marco Polo and the writings of Voltaire, in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the histories of Josephus, in the works of Russian authors like Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol, and in the writings of Nobel Prize winners like Elie Wiesel and Isaac Bashevis Singer.
How soon will this prophecy come to pass? Some believe that even now there are signs that the board is being set, that the great game is about to begin. Some believe that among those signs are the fall of Saddam Hussein and the death of Yasser Arafat.
Winston Churchill once called Russia “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”
It is unlikely that he understood the full magnitude of what he was saying. But it is here that our story begins.
JOEL C. ROSENBERG
Moscow, Russia
September 2004
Epigraph