The Call of the Hour

You are standing on Har Carmel.  To your left are four hundred and fifty prophets of the Ba’al and to your right is Eliyahu HaNavi.  The false prophets cut up a bull and place it on wood that is arranged on an alter.  They then proceed to make a big tumult as they call upon their idol to answer them and choose their offering.  Eliyahu HaNavi then begins to mock them.

They begin to cut themselves with swords and spears,  but still nothing. 

So you look over to the right where Eliyahu HaNavi is busy building twelve stones into altar for Hashem.  He then arranges wood on an altar, and then cuts up a bull and places the pieces on the wood.   He then stands off to the side next to his sacrifice and beseeches Hashem to validate his authority as the chosen Navi of Hashem by sending down fire to consume his offering.

You pull yourself away from this scene and wait.

Everyone knows what happens next, even those who attended a Reform Sunday school for only a year or two.

Rabbi Moshe Wolfson says that every generation has its mitzvah, and that ours is emunah.  This is where the battle lines will be drawn between every Jew as an individual and the Satan/Yetzer Hora in whatever form it chooses to manifest himself at any given time.

Emunah, as it relates to non-Jews, refers to their acknowledgement of Hashem’s active suzerainty over the entire world.  That acknowledgement, even without the laws of the Torah, has throughout the generations always been enough to keep the nations from the worst excesses of moral degradation.  Individuals, yes, but on a collective level, be it tribal, regional or national, there was always a modicum of restraint even amongst the worst peoples.

In this world of current confusion one of the few points of clarity is how the Satan has decided to play His final hand in these last few hours before Moshiach.

The only thing interposed between the will of the Satan and his desire to abandon the world to total hefkerus is the existence of emunah, with its root and driving force being in Klal Yisroel.  Rav Wolbe states in his sefer, Ali Shur, that emunah is a reality, not a concept.  It is the purpose of creation and the foundation of existence.  It’s our life preserver to which we cling with a vice like grip, and therefore the only way for the Satan to eliminate emunah from the world is to uproot it from the Jewish People, chas v’shalom.  And he knows that he’ll have to rip it out of our hands because we won’t let go easily.  

In this last generation before Moshiach, Chazal have not left us in the dark as to what to expect in the run up to the Geula.  For starters, chutzpah will be off the charts.  Score one for the Sages because the chutzpah of our generation is unrestrained, beyond bold, and it’s in our face.  It’s so pervasive that rather than being but a crude aberration of civility it has utterly replaced it in large segments of society.  And it didn’t start yesterday.  Those of us old enough to remember the 60s already had more than a taste of it back then, and it has progressively intensified ever since.

Chazal have also told us that everything will be expensive.

I can remember, in my youth being asked for a dime for a cup of coffee.  That was one zero ago because today a cup of instant coffee is a dollar in some yeshiva coffee rooms.  As for commercial coffee shops, you don’t want to know.  If we’re still here in golus a few years down the road, will anyone be surprised to see Starbucks tack on a second zero to the first one and bump the price of a cup of coffee up to ten dollars?  In the spirit of Chazal they could offer it as the Moshiach special.

These simanim and many others are well known, and are only mentioned in passing to make manifest the clarity with which Chazal saw the course of history.

The Gemara in Sotah also says that prior to the coming of Moshiach, in the era known as the Footsteps of the Moshiach, the government will turn to Apikorsis.  This is already more than a siman of the impending Geula.  It is the template of the Satan’s aforementioned battle plan.

There are no accidents in this world, and therefore it is not a coincidence that a number of very serious seforim on emunah in English have been published in the last few years by some very great people.  One of the common threads running through all of these works is the sensitivity of their authors to what they perceive to be the call of the hour.  All of them, including Rav Wolfson, as articulated in his shiurim on emunah, concur that the tenacity of the Satan’s thrust at the emunah infused jugular of every Jew will put us to the same challenges with which Hashem tested Avraham Aveinu.

They have independently come to the conclusion that it is a matter of pikuach nefesh for this last generation before Moshiach to seriously strengthen its emunah in order to stay the course for what’s coming our way.

And just what might that be?

You are standing on Har Carmel.  To your right is Eliyahu HaNavi who is arranging wood on an altar.  He moves with alacrity to the sacrifice he has prepared, and lays it on the wood which is upon the altar.  He then stands off to the side next to his sacrifice and beseeches Hashem to validate his authority as the chosen Navi of Hashem by sending down fire to consume his offering.

You pull yourself away from this scene and look to your left where four hundred and fifty prophets of the Ba’al are cutting up a bull to be sacrificed.  They make a big tumult as they call upon their idol to answer them and choose their offering.

The holy Rabbi Yisroel of Ruzhin says that before the coming of Moshiach there will be a script change and the fire that descends from Shomayim will burn up the offering of the prophets of the Ba’al instead of Eliyahu's offering r"l.

We are being told that events of similar magnitude will test our emunah.  The Satan/Yetzer Hora will try to weaken our emunah in front of our eyes so that he can snatch it away from us.

How tight will your grip be?