Moshiach, Moshiach, Moshiach!
A deadly virus has spread across the entire globe. We are all scared, and most of us are currently stuck inside. It’s a very precarious time to be alive, and we all feel it. However, can everyone please stop using this catastrophe to preach about the coming of Moshiach.
There have been plenty of cataclysmic events before, and I’m sure there will be plenty more (assuming Moshiach isn’t coming).
I’m not sure if people are grossly uninformed about history or just so narcissistic that they feels themselves into thinking they’re different. That they stand out in the thousands of years of recorded history. That they are the ones Moshiach is so eagerly waiting to save. I implore whoever keeps spreading this nonsense to please stop. We’re not that special and we don’t know who Moshiach is, nor when he’s coming.
At this point you may be a bit upset at my apparent blasphemy. Perhaps you read one of several articles that have been recently published in which prominent Rabbis supposedly spoke about the imminent coming of Moshiach.
Maybe you read the article entitled “Top Rabbis See Signs of Messiah” or “Israeli Rabbi Says He’s Already Holding Meetings With Messiah”, and you don’t understand why I’m being so negative and pessimistic.
Don’t Rabbis have Ruach Hakodesh (Prophetic Insight)?
Don’t they know everything??
If they say Moshiach’s here isn’t it a given???
The short answer to these questions is “Absolutely Not”.
Let’s look at Jewish history for a second though, just to clarify why I say that.
We all know that Moshiach will be a descendant of David Hamelech so let’s start with him. In the book of Shmuel 1, God tells Shmuel to go to Yishai of Bethlehem (David’s father) and appoint one of his sons as the new king of Israel. Upon meeting Yishai and his family, Shmuel, who was one of the greatest prophets to have lived, thought that Eliab (David’s oldest brother) was the son that he had been sent to anoint. After God tells Shmuel that Eliab is not the intended king, Yishai has 6 more of his sons pass before Shmuel, to no avail. We see that even the great prophet Shmuel clearly had no idea who the intended “Anointed One” was.
Fast forward to the times of Rabbi Akiva, the rabbi whom Moses thought should accept the Torah directly from God in his stead. Such a holy individual surely had prophetic insight beyond our wildest dreams; and yet even he had no idea who Moshiach was. In fact, he thought that Shimon Bar Kochva, the military leader of a Jewish revolt against the Romans, was the intended Moshiach. He publicized his opinion, and was even the one who gave Shimon the surname “Bar Kochva”, which means “Son of the Star” and alludes to The Moshiach.
At this point I could end off with the story of the infamous Jewish personality Shabbatai Tzvi, and discuss the Rabbis who thought he was Moshiach (that is, before he converted to Islam); but I think I’ve said enough.
Maybe the world is indeed coming to an end. Maybe Moshiach is here and everything is about to change.
Then again, maybe not.
Either way we should all try to be our best selves. Not to be saved or redeemed; not to make it through the end of times; but to live a life full of meaning, today.
Because after all, true change comes from within.
