The Terrifying Parts Are True

The speaker Rosenberger. This is the program for you as a family caregiver for so glad that you with this hope for the caregiver.com caregiver.com to learn more about the program feel the program for this note through the website will call you if you want to from the program.

Whatever's on your heart to us.

Let us know what you think about what's going on with you. You know you've heard me on this program a lot talk about the importance of doing things. As you care.

Give that you don't put your life on hold that you're constantly advancing who you are as a person, whether it's whatever you love music, guarding your work.

Whatever you don't put your life on hold.

You may have to be creative and you may have to suspend a few things and that's okay but you don't put you on hold and I am always encouraging people to find out what makes their heart saying what they enjoy doing and that I like to find interesting stories of people who have done just that, and are living it just doing it. That brings me to my guest today. He is an award-winning author named Ethan Burroughs and he's got a book he published in 2021 called messianic reveal and the second one has just come out. It's called writ reveal he's had a thorough stomach about next year's part of a trilogy. We went to the same high school same small town of South Carolina, so I thought inviting Mann's little bit of a departure from what I normally do, but it's off a read the books there fascinating books and so I wanted to have him on the program since we both are from South Carolina you you know, we can understand each other. We don't need subtitles for each other but I am glad to have him here with this, Ethan. Welcome to the program to be here. I'm really delighted.

Be on your show will this book you sent me.

You sent me copies of this book and poured through them and read them just gripping stories and their nonfiction books are novels that is there their thriller actions by all of the above but you have a different twist on this. This is why I felt like it was interesting and I like to read and I love books like this and I like history.

This book brings something different you have a very extensive background overseas in the Middle East things in some things we can't talk about that so we will talk about them, but very extensive background and you decided to use that background and write a story more than just a fun story in detail: in a spy novel.

You also had some things you wanted to accomplish this would give us a little bit of the background of what brought you to even write this book of the series of books.

Well thank you made a great intro and I'm really excited to be here as you reference that you know some people have their life on hold. My life is been on hold on for 25 years I spent I am former military I worked in military intelligence as an Arabic linguist back in the 90s and then and that open up a lot of doors for me as a civilian management some serious time, living, traveling and raising my family in the Middle East countries ranging from Saudi Arabia to Jordan to Tunisia, Kuwait and then also a lot of time in Israel. The Palestinian territories Syria before the war broke out there and even even some some tough time in Iraq and that's really fed a sense of wonder in and me wondering like what is the connection one of the connection that we as Americans have to the region regionally gave us our faith.

The reason that the region that we've invested so much political capital in over the last 7080 years, and in the loop.

In the last few decades.

A lot of blood and treasure is gone into this region through wars and and through you know, our engagement, and I've had the great great pleasure of being in the region and meeting with mayors and kings and influential businessmen and women and entrepreneurs and Islamic clerics Christian clerics Jewish clerics and and even some refugees. I spent time in refugee refugee camps in that they change your heart to change your mind a change who you are. Once you've seen how the other side lives and when you seen how what the impact whether positive or negative of US policy on on people in an embrace art hotspots in the world and even have a habit of having met a terrorist. I didn't know it at the time if I if I know that three days later, the young man I met in Iraq.

Up until I think or Iraqi soldiers. I get out alive. I would love to go back in time and and say something to him to change his mind. I didn't, but all of that. My experiences my expertise my my engagements, my interviews, that with hundreds of people had in my homes or people with whom I've dined with in their homes in a breaking bread.

It is is a real thing in the least and and all that fed into Connor again a sense of wonder and I really want to kind of understand this is the political diamond dynamic that we that we have in the Middle East, but also where the intersection of faith and politics is with religion and where where where religion and politics actually you don't called the greatest friction will fixes I got it done through your books as I was stunned by the scope of history that you covered in these books that I haven't read your third when yet that comes out ones that come out. I'm hoping it will be released in the spring early spring of next year 2020. Babylon will and got a surprise for you. There's prophecy reveal is nearly complete as well so that 40 something trilogy to we have four books in progress to this astonishing wealth you it open my eyes a lot to the historical scope of what you are bringing to this.

This is not just a spy novel that we see kind of compiled from the outside looking in your from the inside looking out and looking in at all at the same time you you backslid it. I asked you one point I said what is true, not true in this book is as a novelist meant to be entertaining us, but to be a fun story to tell you wanted to tell a story which you had something she wanted to accomplish this, and I said what's true and what's not, I could figure out what which part was fixed and that I remember what you told yet what is the true part is the true parts of the most terrifying and and and they are just like wow in it. I didn't know this but you you you dug into stuff that that nobody's ever written about Lisa not anybody from the West and I think that was cut your point wasn't that's exactly right. I mean I guy. Do you like my protagonist the book Clayton Haley. I write him with a sense of wonder that like the Connecticut Yankee must've had in the proverbial court of King Arthur, but what I do is I take Clayton Haley back through some history and in the first book some fairly recent history. In the second book some ancient history and the third book even more ancient history. That's another conversation for another day.

But one of things that came to me as I started doing some research and I did not intend to sit down and write a novel.

I'd never written a novel before what I intended to do is kind of built upon a chronology that I can share with my children about NLD, the very region that they grow up, but as I started with dates. I studied history I went to the University of South Carolina said he history love history and I would. I just started keeping track of days they said people are familiar with the 1917 1918, roughly the end of over one the fall of the Ottoman Empire and their grip on on the, the greater region for 400 years in the past 4 to 1948 the establishment of the state of Israel go tonight seven the Six-Day War of the Munich Olympics and 72, 73, you know, and you got to 1979 and and you have the ransacking of our our embassy in Tehran by a bunch of living to me stop you. Because this is what gripped me is that you don't.

We we tend to have a very short memory here in our country mean it's it's hard for us to remember two years ago, much less 200 years ago, but in the Middle East of the memory is long and you've connected the dots from all of these events in a novel and a fictional work, but all the events are real and you connected the dots historically accurate mean it's not like you just made all these things up. All of these things are connected. All of this leads us to where we are as a country and why this is still on the front page of every paper and on the evening news of every evening news is something to do with the Middle East is that a fair assessment. So I think that we tend to come up with convenient answers in silos where we we keep the silo for this issue this title for this issue, the site of another issue and we don't naturally connect them and I wanted to connect them in this book, especially messianic rebel.

I wanted understand. I like writing the book like those in the front seat watching.

This does happen and you know as we get to 19 I give you perfect example in a week and I think people have a rough understanding of this new world versus the shield world when it comes to Islam. I think people have a general understanding that you know when you talk about the Arab Muslim world you're talking about 300 million people be talking about the greater miss most about 1.5 billion Muslims outside of the Arab world, and are in the parable, and and and I wanted to connect some things really surrounding two signature events and I just mentioned the ransacking of our embassy in Tehran, 1979 traumatic event for the Americans and we have neatly packaged that it all and we had this grudge match with the Iranians. Ever since 1979 they held our people for 444 days while what people don't know is it two weeks later two weeks after they ransacked our embassy in Tehran there was a messianic colt and this is where I get the name.

The name of my book messianic rebel comes from the arrival of the messianic colt led by guy by the name of Mohammed of the little Connie and his cousin/brother-in-law to have another baby and they let a cold of former national guardsmen from Saudi Arabia and they took over the holiest site of us of Islam. They took over the grand mosque in Mecca and again this is important one half billion people prostrate themselves every single day, five times a day and pray to this place as part of the tenants are the pillars of this law okay anybody. I mean, they held this for two weeks leave the Saudi National Guard had to rip them out of there with the help of Pakistani commandos and French commandos had to hastily convert Islam because you could not have nonbelievers on the holiest ground of Islam. So they went in they rousted him out of the Vatican of the Muslim world was brutal. You had done fired machine gun fire sniper fire grenades. Chemical warfare using some 500-1500 people died in this melee.

This chaos and will hold that thought because we were up against the heartbreak and this is what set the table for you. First book correct and these are all real events that happened and so talks about the author of messianic VLANs is an American family radio Rosenberg landed here with this caregiver was program just filled out a note tell me what's on your mind what's on your heart and would love to hear from you. That is my wife Gracie and Russ Taft from her CD, resilient, and you can go to hope for the caregiver.com and learn more about that you hold that CD for yourself. I again you've you've heard me say this often about how important it is to not put your life on hold as a caregiver and we tend to do this at various times thinking that no will will do this later will do this later, but sometimes just get a week we get a moment of clarity will realize you know what their leader is not promised to us.

Let's do what we need to do today.

Right now, and whether it's being a musician or pursuing this or whatever within reason. As you navigate your journey of my guest today is Ethan Burroughs. He is a novelist.

He's award-winning novelist. His first two books already out. The third was coming out next year. The fourth will be out several years after that he and I went from the same town same high school and he also has parents that are aging and dealing with some very serious realities. I don't share a whole lot of his background simply because I don't think we can you'll know more about that as we listen to him talk about these books and so I'm being a little bit vague on that. But these books bring a great scope of history and and a lot of the things that we see plastered in our media every day, but we don't know how to connect those dots. What he does and he's one of the very, very few who've done the kind of work is done first lonely stud and now he sexy taken time to write about it and I don't know anybody does done like you've done it written from somebody who's actually lived it, and he was shameful and went to the break about what was going on in the connect to the bottom of the dots with the Tehran when then they they had the cult that follows her to take us back into this and then share a little bit more about how to get this with talk about how you move your faith into these books and everything else takes back to that place and into run so yeah I 1979 you had this this hostile takeover of our embassy by a student uprising led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini who just which I had it is glorious triumphant return to to Iran from year in a halfway live in Paris doing collecting political and financial work is his return.

But two weeks later and this is the footnote that no one seems to know about. I spent a lot of time in the Middle East. I spent a lot of time talking a very smart people and collectively, no one seems to know a whole lot about the siege of Mecca. It happened two weeks after the takeover in Iran of our embassy. But this is a brutal hostile bloodied melee where somewhere between 500 and 1500 people died violently and then the surviving militant terrorist messianic colt members column what you will. They were taken out by the Saudi authorities to nine different Caesar all around the country summarily beheaded cover-up. That's it.

Now as I started exploring this story and why no one seems to know much about it. I wondered if the two could be connected somehow and they don't have much on the spot you read my books, you know that Khomeini plan his return to Tehran from Paris. You know where he was before he was into before Paris, he recalled it before. He was in Paris I do's and Paris was in the United States know know you're thinking of Romulus where hundreds of thousands of Iranian exiles live now. He never came to the states. He was in southern Iraq and this was important for all your member now. Yet he was in southern Iraq and recent important and I won't go into a lot of detail for you.

Why won't people write, read the book but the that he was in southern Iraq, which is the holy holiest sites of Shiite Islam and and this is where it connects to US intervention in the region and things are very important for those of us who served in the region, or who have family members who have gone over and and given up their time. In some cases you know paid the ultimate price for the intervention.

There Ayatollah Khomeini spent 12 years in southern Iraq. He was there a cohort in cahoots with the dishy religious establishment. Most people think this year or in Iran.

Yes, Iranians majority, she a country but so is Iraq and Iraq has the holiest like the Vatican for the CFA. Is there and Saddam Hussein could not who was from the Sunni community could not have his arch nemesis in a powerful position next door Enron and and taking with him the fealty and the loyalty of the Shiite community in southern Iraq and so and I think that again if you want to look upon the military perspective, we kind of stepped into this sectarian conflict that was spread out from Saudi Arabia through Iraq and interferon without knowing a whole lot about that and why that matters and why VV stronghold of Sheila Islam is in southern Iraq.

Ellie midweek we bolstered up Saddam Hussein to push them against the Ayatollah Khomeini. That's right that's right and I are able for what happened 30 some years later when Don let me rewind it a little bit very seeing the same things that the colt members a messianic colt members. The claims that they that they were demanding when they took over the Vatican of the Islamic world in Mecca was repeated verbatim by a guy of the name Osama bin Laden in 1989, so the siege of Mecca happened in 1979 when Osama bin Laden starts his Al Qaeda, the foundation, the D. The terrorist group that we know is I Al Qaeda or the South lycée Al Qaeda when he started paying terminology and verbiage and rhetoric that that the messianic colt used 10 years before and his older half-brother was part of that cult and that's 100% true. I took it terrifyingly hard to read this I realized that that is the foundation of where you start in this book with all of the stuff that none of us knew United States remained clueless about for the most part except some people in the intelligence agency and nobody was really connecting those dots is intelligence during a lot of this time was cut a segmented correct well yeah I use the word silo for reason I'm not here to make known to cast aspersions on you know how intelligence was collected, but I do know that it's coming.

It's more convenient to compartmentalize things and I would argue that you need a fuller picture if you're going to understand the region and why it matters to us. It matters to us because you know and are interventions from a great deal of antagonism and antipathy for the United States and yet you know, we kinda need some of these countries when it comes our energy needs that we need to think about them. You think about all the. The blood and treasure that we have spilled that region and how many people really know nothing about what's going on. If it were going because these people in Washington