Given: July 9, 2016
Addendum: Putin and Jewish Survival
This week was just incredible. The first thing that I want to do is share an article that I read which was recommended to me. It was in last week’s Jewish Magazine dated June 30th 2016. In the last class, I spoke pretty extensively on Putin, that what he's doing is remarkable. The article is entitled "Putin Explains the Secret of Jewish Survival to Yitzchak Yosef“ who was the chief Rabbi of Israel. This is what it says:
Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rav Yitzchak Yosef, recounted that when he recently attended a rabbinical conference in Moscow, he was invited with other rabbis to attend a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. According to a report in the Israeli Haredi press, Rabbi Yosef said, “I thought he would shake our hands and that would be it, but the meeting lasted for an hour and a quarter.” Rabbi Yosef quoted Putin as saying “The Egyptians with their magicians are gone, as are the Greeks with their culture, [and] as are the Romans. The only ones who survived are the Jews. Can you tell me why this is?”
Now that’s Interesting. Putin understands that everybody's gone, that only the Jews survive. The article continues: “Putin is said to have added: 'Permit me to respond’.” So, Putin will answer his own question! You've got to hear his answer. The article recounts Putin as having said, “ ‘You [Jews] survived in the merit of your Torah and your rabbis’.”
They ought to make Putin the Chief Rabbi of Russia. Putin didn't just say, “You survived.” He said, “You survived in the merit of your Torah and your rabbis!” That's incredible! He recognizes that the Torah is what kept the Jews alive. I mean, could you imagine Brezhnev saying this? He's the guy who tried to stamp out the Torah. This is an article that I thought would be interesting to cap what I said last week about Putin. There's no question that something is going on here and the world has no inkling.
I want to continue today with the same current events because there's something very, very important which was revealed this week, something which may or may not happen, but there's a possibility and I will explain that.
Indicators of Mashiach’s Imminent Arrival
Having spoken about recent events, I want to touch on the various signs of mashiach’s pending arrival. There are many such indicators that the Redemption is near. Let’s begin.
* State of Israel. The first of these signs is the establishment the State of Israel, the fact that the Jews have their land back after two thousand years. It's never happened that a nation was exiled for two thousand years and came back to its (original) land.
* Hebrew Language. The second sign is the revival of the Hebrew language, a language that was dead for two thousand years. For years, nobody spoke Hebrew, with the exception of a few academics. That Hebrew is now a living language is exceptional. Does anyone speak Latin anymore? Latin had its basis in the Roman Empire and there are academics and church personnel who dabble in Latin but it is not a living language. Hebrew is a living, resurrected language and it was revived in a relatively short time. It’s unheard of; it’s nothing short of miraculous.
* Ingathering of the Exiles. The ingathering of the exiles is a conspicuous sign. The exile is no longer what it used to be. Almost half of world Jewry has come back to Israel so that itself is a powerful sign that the exile is ending. Moreover, a noteworthy number of nations that persecuted Jews for many thousands of years have either released Jews (i.e., Russia) or the Jewish population of those countries managed to escape (i.e., from Arab lands). The power of non-Jews (essentially invested in Edom and Ishmael) to force Jews to remain is gone. This is the prophetic “Ingathering of the Exiles," as recorded in the Book of Deuteronomy:
“Then the Lord your G-d will restore you from captivity, and have compassion on you, and will gather you again from all the peoples where the Lord your G-d has scattered you. If your outcasts are at the ends of the earth, the Lord your G-d will gather you from there. He will bring you back. The Lord your G-d will bring you into the land which your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it; and He will prosper you and multiply you more than your fathers.”
Well, we're looking at it, but it's not just that the Jews have been able to return. The remarkable feature is the fact that no longer is there any political force that prevents the Jews from going.
The Internet. Another sign that mashiach is on the way is the existence of the internet, believe it or not; most people overlook this. Put it this way: The internet is a way of communicating globally such that, through its pervasive and ubiquitous nature, a messianic figure can easily communicate with the entire world. So even though, from our perspective, the internet is now in the hands of what's called the “klippa of tuma” –-shell of defilement, it is, nevertheless, a device that enables and stimulates global communication.
In fact, the worldwide web is an example of “hispashdus ha’chochmah – proliferation of knowledge which the Zohar predicted thousands of years ago. If you recall (from my lectures on the 20th Century), it is written that, in the six-hundredth year of the sixth millennium---1840 in the Gregorian Calendar---there will be a surge of knowledge which, in 1840, manifested as the Industrial Revolution with great strides made in science and technology.
Revisiting the Creation Clock All these factors (and other signs such as the increase in spiritual darkness, and so on) are indicators that we are in the beginning of the messianic era. If we look at the Creation Calendar/Clock that I’ve spoken about, we further remind ourselves of yet another indicator that we are at the end. We know that there are six days of Creation, each day paralleling a thousand years. According to the Talmud, this world will last six thousand years and, after that, a different dimension of existence commences. Moreover, jumping ahead, we noted that “Thursday night, 6pm” is equivalent to the year 1240 (which was endowed with its own unique messianic events) and that another significant period was c. 5570 (1740 in the Gregorian calendar) with its surge of scientific progress.
However, of significance to our discussion now is that Thursday night, according to Jewish tradition, marks the beginning of Friday, the onset of the Jewish Sabbath. This pre-Sabbath period is the beginning of the end. Most important in terms of our current period is that, since 5750---or 1989---the world has not been the same. This time on the Calendar is “chatzot” --midday Friday when the sun begins to set, never to rise again because it is literally the last period of time before the mashiach. Remember our discussions about the collapse of the Berlin Wall, that hallmark event among other miraculous and incredible events, that began to unfold at chatzot. And we have further discussed the notion that, as evening approaches, “there will be light.” That is how close we are!
Messianic Advances and the Blood Moons
I will refer now to another occurrence or phenomenon in very recent years, this time in the realm of interplanetary space. A year ago, I spoke about the blood moon, the concept of a lunar eclipse when the moon appears red. That's a rare event. It happened in 2014-15. When that happens four times consecutively, it is called a “tetrad,” and that occurrence is incredibly rare. For a blood moon to happen on the holidays of Pesach (Passover) and then Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles), and then again on Pesach and then again on Sukkot---four times in succession---is just incredible! Actually, this planetary event has happened but four times in five hundred years, and it just happened last year on those specific nights. What does it say in the prophetic book of “Joel” ? In the third chapter, fourth verse, it reads: “I will blot out the sun and I will turn the moon to blood before the great and awesome day.”
Columbus, Israel, Jerusalem
In those five hundred years, the first time this phenomenon was recorded was in 1492 when Columbus sailed off to discover the New World on behalf of Spain. That’s messianic. Why? ---Because Columbus weakened the ability of Edom to destroy and oppress the Jews by locating a new geographical location, an alternative haven, to protect them. This weakened Europe’s hold on the Jews. From our perspective, it was a messianic advance. The next time it happened was in 1948, the year of the founding of the State of Israel. The time after that was 1967 when Israel got back Jerusalem following the Six-Day War.
This rare sequence of events occurred again last year, so the question is: what's the messianic advance? I believe it could be Trump. Trump is now the one who's in a position to change America and to defend Israel. Additionally, last year were the Shmitah and Jubilee years, times when “you will call liberty throughout the land." So when you add it all together, all these are very significant signs!
Revisiting Gog from the Land of Magog: Various Messianic Happenings Over the Centuries Regarding the Last War
We have spoken at length about “Gog from the land of Magog.”* He was predicted in the book of “Ezekiel” 38: Gog from the land of Magog will gather the nations of the world and fight to take Jerusalem in a war against Mashiach ben Yosef. It will be a messianic war and, ultimately, Mashiach ben David arrives and destroys Gog and all his armies and ushers in the true messianic era. The gematria (numerological value) of “Gog u’Magog” is “70.” Why so?---because he gathers the seventy nations of the world, or rather the seventy “roots” of all the nations. That is to say, even though there are over two hundred nations currently in the world, there are only seventy “roots.” Many nations are derived from a single root.
Let us recall one aspect of this war of Gog. Looking back to ancient Egypt, we recall that Egypt was completely destroyed by the plagues, vanquished. Nevertheless, Pharaoh ran after the Jews in a second attempt to rein them back in and enslave them. In other words, when evil realizes that its power is over, it makes an attempt at resurgence, to try once again to dominate “good.” This resurgence, this second attempt of Pharaoh, serves as a prototype of what happens even after the klippa, the barrier to good, is destroyed. This is the parallel to the war of Gog from Magog.
The Gog war is the last battle. The nations sense the end of their existence, as they have always known it with its ungodly values dominating the world. This is the war in which they will attempt to recreate that paradigm, the domination of “evil” and the destruction good, a paradigm in which evil is defined as the preponderance of values that are anti-G-d in nature. What is the manifestation of that evil? Can we identify who or what this is? Well, normally, evil is classically represented by Amalek, as we have discussed.
Examples Beyond Egypt: Assyria, Hezekiah, Sennacherib
I want to give you further insight beyond those exemplified by Egypt. We get hints about possible wars of Gog and a messianic redemption in other periods of Jewish history. For instance, at the time of the righteous King Hezekiah, the 13th king of Judah, who witnessed the destruction of the Northern Kingdom and the siege of Jerusalem at the hands of Sennacherib in 701 B.C.E., a miracle occurred. King Hezekiah and Jerusalem were surrounded by 185,000 Assyrian troops. The situation was hopeless, so G-d performed a miracle. During one night, all the Assyrians died. Not even a plague can do that. They were warriors; they were all healthy. If they hadn’t been healthy, then what were they doing in the army? There is nothing that can kill 185,000 people in one night. Even Ebola takes several days. In this case, an angel of G-d wiped them all out.
Now, what is the significance of this narrative? It is written that G-d intended that the war against Sennacherib and his army was to have been the War of Gog and, therefore, Hezekiah would have been Mashiach ben Yosef. If that was to have been the final war, what happened?
Following that miraculous event, King Hezekiah failed to sing shira---a song of gratitude to G-d. When the Jews left Egypt and the sea parted, the Children of Israel sang in gratitude for the awesome display of Divine providence. But Hezekiah’s failure to do so constituted a tremendous prosecution against him and, consequently, messianic status was denied him.
One can object, thinking: But, wait a minute! How could that have been Gog from Magog? Doesn’t that war have to involve the entire world or, at least, a majority representation of mankind? And doesn’t mashiach have to be alive? And not only that; Sennacherib was not Amalek; he was Assyria.
Amalek’s Various Guises What this shows you is that the hallmark characteristics can have variations. It was a missed opportunity for the advent of the mashiach. We recognize this because the ingredients were there. Although Assyria did not represent the entire world, it was the greatest nation on earth at that time under Sennacherib. He invaded the entire Middle-East which, at that time, was the entire dynamic world. So, with this, the seventy nations were represented and the mashiach would have been Hezekiah. This idea is ratified in the book of “Psalms,” chapter two. There, King David asks: “Why do the nations conspire and the people plot in vain?” Why is the entire world agitating and trying to make war to destroy the Jews? Why do the nations conspire against G-d and His anointed? That sounds like a messianic war and the psalm clearly shows you what the components were.
Persia: Haman and Achashverosh (Xerxes)
Did a War of Gog happen any time after that? Yes. It’s described in the story of Purim. The Amalekite, Haman, attempting to kill the Jews in Persia is yet another example of what could have been a messianic war. The Persian king ruled over no less than 127 provinces, a vast Eurasian empire. That was, ostensibly, the entire world. And this time you also had an Amaleki, Haman. That's a classic Gog War scenario. What country are we looking at? Yes, Persia, what today we refer to as “Iran.” That scenario would truly have been a Gog War because the Jewish hero of the story, Mordechai, was from the tribe of Benjamin, the brother of Joseph, and Joseph is a messianic figure. So, Mordechai had an aspect of the Mashiach ben Yosef in him. The events panned out such that the Jews repented of their iniquitous behavior and were redeemed. Because of their remorse and return to tradition, the flow of assimilation was halted and G-d, at that time, hastened the Jewish victory over its enemy. G-d activated the concept of “achishena,”---hastening Redemption ahead of schedule.
Ezra
Who was Mashiach ben Yosef at that time? The root soul was Ezra the Scribe (and not Mordechai). Ezra brought the Jews back to the Land of Israel and was responsible for the revival of Jewish study and observance that had become so lax at that time. So enormous was Ezra’s contribution to the revival of Jewish tradition that the rabbis said that, if Moses hadn’t taught the people the Torah, Ezra would have been that person. Indeed, Ezra could have been Mashiach ben Yosef who is charged with educating the people (Jews and non-Jews alike), that is to say, charged with bringing the awesome Messianic Light. So, why wasn't he?
Well, sadly, out of all the Jews spread across the entire Persian Empire, only 70,000 came back with Ezra to Israel; that was all. The remainder of the Jews, the vast majority, decided to hang out in Babylonia or Persia and enjoy the perks. The well-known Torah commentator, Rashi, explains that since it was not yet then the End of Time, the Jews failed to utilize that messianic opportunity. But again, we should ask, how could Ezra have been the mashiach if there was no Gog from Magog?
Well, the answer is that there was, in fact. Haman and the Persian king, Achashverosh (Xerxes), represented Gog from Magog. So, we see again that the War of Gog from Magog can take on various guises and forms, as can potential messiahs, over the course of history.
Germamia, Edom, Germany
The next candidate to represent the War of Gog from the Land of Magog against the Jews is, of course, Germany. I’ve described Germany’s profile and role in our series on the 20th century. I’ll review it briefly here. The Talmud, compiled 2000 years ago, speaks of a barbaric nation called Germamia shel Edom that is associated with Ashkenaz, which is Germany, a nation so incredibly militaristic that, when united, has the potential to destroy the entire world. Bismark, you may recall, united three hundred principalities that “co-incidentally” happened to match the three hundred tribal chieftains of ancient Germamia.
Do we think that the War of Gog is going to start sometime in the future? No, not at all; it has already started! It began, as previously analyzed, in stages. Stage 1: WWI destroyed hundreds of Jewish communities in Europe. Stage 2: WWII involved the entire world after which time, Jewish life was never the same but still intact. Hitler's only purpose really was to destroy the Jews so he was selected by G-d for his blind, delusional obsession with the destruction of the Jews. It was messianic: Hitler was, if anything, a reincarnation of Amalek; his ten chief sidekicks were hanged just as Haman and his twelve sons of the Purim saga were hanged. That’s no coincidence! Indeed Hitler was simply a modern-day replica of Haman. This will be explored more deeply next time.
We also noted that because of the immense suffering endured by Jews during the Holocaust, and because of the suffering that the mashiach himself has to endure (another topic to be gone into later), G-d mitigated the brutality by splitting it up into three parts.
Where is Mashiach?
Phases one and two of the War of Gog absorbed most of the horror. The only missing element is the mashiach. I realized this in 1987 but, later on, came across an extraordinary proof of my thesis. It was recorded in a collection of writings of the saintly rabbi, Rabbi Eliyahu Lopian (1876-1970). Around 1938-39, the rabbi visited London from Kovno in Poland and was delivering a learned discourse to a group of congregants in one of the synagogues when, during the discourse, the audience begged the rabbi not to return to Europe where, for certain, he would be rounded up and killed. But the rabbi refused to stay in London because he didn’t want to forsake his students, adding something to the effect of you guys are making a mistake. I heard from the Chofetz Chaim (the sage who we identify as the father of the halachot---laws regarding loshen ha’ra---evil speech, slander) that the war of Gog of Magog is divided into three parts. In other words, he was warning them not to think themselves safe in London. The Chofetz Chaim had adduced that WWI and WWII were the first two of three stages of the War of Gog, that these stages absorbed most of the brutality, and that the last stage will involve Mashiach ben Yosef’s conflict with Gog on behalf of the collective Jewish people, klal Yisrael. But he didn’t say when this would happen.
I read this account and I thought to myself: Wow! What I had figured out was already expressed by these great sages years ago! The Rabbi was challenging his audience; this war, he asserted, is going to spread throughout the world, and he was right. They bombed London and, had it not been for G-d’s mercy on England, London would have been finished.
Current and Future Events
I’ve given you several versions of the Wars of Gog: Hezekiah is one. Purim is two. Germany is the third, and we're now looking at what's about to come up. We recall the midrash I cited which says that, in the week (not to be taken literally) that Mashiach Ben David comes, Paras, which is Iran, is going to incite a war against Arav, which is Arabia, and Arav will seek council with Edom. That is to say, Iran begins to destroy the world and the world is frightened and Israel will say: we don't know where to go. It is then that a Divine Voice says, “Higia z’man geulatchem”----the time of your Redemption has arrived.
The war with Iran is coming. They swear they're going to kill the Jews and they're talking about nuclear weapons. That's how they intend to do it. That is the final Gog from Magog War. But what about the whole world? The whole world will identify with Islam and join Iran. the UN will stand behind Iran because Israel, in that war, will be killing Arabs both across the border and within Israel which will drive the world crazy. So, you can see how these conditions clearly qualify as the Gog from Magog War. We now see how the whole world will be involved and, if that's true, then Mashiach ben Yosef has got to be right around the corner.
Also, in the world of conjecture, it’s even possible that Saudi Arabia will throw its support behind Israel because they realize that Iran, which is Shi’ite, wants to dominate the entire Arab world. As you may know, the Sunnis and the Shi’ites hate each other, and it’s possible that Iran will try to placate and appease the Sunnis in order to destroy Israel. This doesn't mean that all the Arabs will attack the Jews; they're not all bad people, but there are many who will attack the Jews: Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Hamas, Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and so on, because they will all recognize this conflict as the great war between Ishmael and the Jews, assuming this is their last attempt to rid the world of the Jewish people. And you'll have the UN siding with them because all the nations will be looking to cash in; they are all anti-Semites anyway.
To reiterate, all these (potential) developments contribute to the reasons why I believe that Trump and Putin are established as they are, namely, to protect the Jews.
What you also see is G-d weakening many nations so that Israel will be victorious. Britain is the greatest military power of Europe and the second greatest economy. Thus, Britain's exit from Europe severely weakens the European Union. Moreover, while Europe’s overall population growth rate is less than its replacement rate, the Moslems continue immigrating to Europe without assimilating into the European culture. What does that tell you?
Preparation
With all this going on, the Jewish people and Israel have to be ready. What I am going to tell you now sounds totally outrageous and not of this world. This is it: If the Jews cannot accept the presence of this messianic Ohr – the awesome Light and the arrival of the mashiach, what will happen? The mashiach will destroy the Jews! I know it sounds outlandish, but you have no idea what the mashiach is going to do. The Jews would all die because their consciousness couldn’t process that spectacular Ohr, that unbelievable spiritual enlightenment that mashiach will bring. Remember, according to the midrash, that's exactly what happened at Sinai during the revelation, the process of the Jewish nation receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai. Everyone was so overwhelmed that they died and were immediately resurrected.
And it's not just the Jews; everybody would drop dead. To illustrate my point, think about this: Consider guys from New Guinea. The first time they ever saw a white man was in 1953, I believe. Imagine taking a guy from New Guinea – they go around naked and I don't think they have a number system that goes past four. That’s how primitive their society is. Imagine taking such a guy and whisking him off to 5th Avenue, Manhattan. He would have a heart attack; he could never assimilate what was going on---the architecture, the smartphones, computers, cars, the glitz, and so on. To expose him to this civilization would traumatize him. And this is nothing compared to what the mashiach is going to reveal.
In this case, how could the mashiach possibly come? Aha! So this now answers our original question: How come Obama gave Iran fifteen years? The reason is that there has to yet be a delay before the mashiach’s arrival.
One Last Idea About Hillary
This week, something has happened which is profoundly disturbing, but I suspected it would happen. Hillary was exonerated; you know that, right? If you realize what that means, you realize that there has taken place an incredible corruption of justice, and everybody sees that. I mean this guy, James Comey…It's astounding what he did. He's corrupted judgement to a monumental degree for everyone to see.
He laid out a case of gross negligence, possession of top-secret information which Hillary had and didn’t secure. She had over one hundred classified documents and at least eight of them were top, top secret, sitting on her unprotected servers. It’s beyond belief! He called this “gross negligence” but also said that it doesn’t prove that she intended to endanger the security of the information. How a Secretary of State could not know that she would be hacked is unbelievable. I mean you couldn't even make this stuff up, namely, that a Secretary of State doesn't know that an unprotected server, her private email server, would be vulnerable. Of course, she knew. But she didn't care because that's who she is.
Comey laid out a case that makes her a felon, yet he doesn’t recommend indictment. Of course, it’s not even his job to suggest that. After all, that task belongs to the Justice Department. He said that nobody's going to convict her. But that’s insane; any first-year law student could indict and convict her. Recently, Rudy Giuliani said that Hillary’s guilty of at least twelve to fourteen felonies, based on what she did. Anybody would have been fired and put in jail for what she did. It is terrible to watch an FBI guy who had a reputation for integrity pull this kind of stunt. In any case it's “none of his business” if the Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, would prosecute or not. It’s his job to investigate, not to show the evidence.