Children of Ezekiel

Are Miltons Paradise Lost, Ronald Reagans Star Wars missile defense program, our cultures fascination with UFOs and alien abductions, and Louis Farrakhans views on racial Armageddon somehow linked? In Children of Ezekiel Michael Lieb reveals the connections between these phenomena and the way culture has persistently related the divine to the technological. In a work of special interest at the approach of the millennium, Lieb traces these and other diverse cultural momentsall descended from the prophet Ezekiels vision of a fiery divine chariot in the skyfrom antiquity to the present, across high and low culture, to reveal the pervasive impact of this visionary experience on the modern world. Beginning with the merkabah chariot literature of Hebrew and Gnostic mysticism, Lieb shows how religiously inspired people concerned with annihilating their heretical enemies seized on Ezekiels vision as revealing the technologically superior instrument of Gods righteous anger. He describes how many who seek to know the unknowable that is the power of God conceive it in technological termsand how that power is associated with political aims and a heralding of the end of time. For Milton, Ezekiels chariot becomes the vehicle in which the Son of God does battle with the rebellious angels. In the modern age, it may take the form of a locomotive, tank, airplane, missile, or UFO. Technology itself is seen as a divine gift and an embodiment of God in the temporal world. As Lieb demonstrates, the impetus to produce modern technology arises not merely from the desire for profit or military might but also from religious-spiritual motives. Including discussions of conservative evangelical Christian movements, Reagans ballistic shooting gallery in the sky, and the Nation of Islams vision of the mother plane as the vehicle of retribution in the war against racial oppression, Children of Ezekiel will enthrall readers who have been captivated, either through religious belief or intellectual interests, by a common thread uniting millennial religious beliefs, racial conflict, and political and militaristic aspirations.