Roni Alsheikh, the Israeli Commissioner of Police, announced last week that his department of law enforcement personnel is preparing for the arrival of the Messiah in a truly unique way. Alsheikh was filmed at a celebration held by Chabad Hasidim in his neighborhood of Givat Shmuel, not far from Tel Aviv, in honor of the 19th of the Hebrew month Kislev.
Earlier this month, an Israeli organization with a mission to connect Israeli Jews to God, released a dramatic video, purporting to describe what will happen in the final three hours before the arrival of the Messiah and the construction of the Third Temple.
The 30-minute video is narrated by a 31 year-old Haredi (fervently Orthodox Jewish) woman named Caroline who explained that, “I experienced a sort of out of body experience.”
While most understand the sukkah, the temporary booth Jews build on the holiday of Sukkot, to be a physical manifestation of spirituality, End Times expert Rabbi Pinchas Winston revealed in a recent interview that the sukkah is actually deeply connected to the coming of the Messianic age, helping Jews to prepare spiritually for what is to come. This Sukkot, which began last Sunday, the message is clearer than ever as the chaotic “birthpangs” of Messiah become visible to the world.
Amidst the shofar blasts, this Rosh Hashana will include a mitzvah (Biblical commandment) that hasn’t been performed by the Jews in almost 2,000 years: counting the Jubilee. It is a simple mitzvah, reciting just a few lines, but performing this mitzvah is a declaration that the prophesied return of the Jews to Israel has been fulfilled, thereby establishing a basis for the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple.
Unbeknownst to all but a few witnesses, as Rosh Hashana ended eleven months ago, the nascent Sanhedrin concluded months of deliberation by ruling that certain conditions had been met requiring the Nation of Israel to begin counting the Jubilee cycle. Rabbi Avraham Dov Ben Shor recited the blessing and the 49-year cycle began again.
Though it is impossible to say with absolute certainty when the Messiah will come, in an ancient synagogue in Jerusalem’s Old City, a shofar and jug of oil are patiently waiting on a high shelf for his arrival. They are replacements for the originals, supposedly rescued from the Second Temple amidst Roman destruction, which disappeared in the heat of the 1967 battle for Jerusalem. Legends and mysteries surround the simple items.
One of the landmark holy sites in Jerusalem’s Old City, the Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakai Synagogue was built at the beginning of the 17th century. The synagogue is believed to stand on the location of the original study hall of Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakai, a major rabbinic and scholarly figure in the Second Temple era, quoted throughout the Talmud.
Sometimes incredible stories are actually true, and in this case, experts agree that a small onyx stone, claimed to be given to a Knight Templar over 1,000 years ago and handed down through one family from generation to generation, is actually what the present owner claims: a gem from the breastplate of the High Priest in Jerusalem.
A significant step was recently taken towards reinstating the Temple service when the nascent Sanhedrin selected Rabbi Baruch Kahane as the next Kohen Gadol (high priest). The selection was made as a precaution for Yom Kippur. If the political conditions should change, allowing the Jews access to the Temple Mount, they will be required by Torah law to bring the sacrifices. Rabbi Kahane is confident that if that should happen, Temple service could begin in less than one week.
Last week, Rabbi Amram Vaknin of Ashdod, Israel, who has become well-known for receiving spiritual messages from Heaven, was given a strong warning for the Jewish people.
Rabbi Vaknin routinely prays for the safety and security of the Jewish people with a group of his followers in holy places throughout Israel. Last week’s prayer gathering, the thirty-first the group has undertaken, was held at the cave of Elijah the Prophet in Haifa in northern Israel.
According to filmmaker and Jewish lecturer Yuval Ovadia, “God did not create the world in order for us to have fun, to travel, to get entertained. This is not His goal. The world was created in order to worship Hashem (God), to fulfill all the mitzvot (commandments) given to us on Mount Sinai.”
Yet, we live in a world increasingly overwhelmed with material excess and immorality.
Whether you call it Planet X, Nibiru, a comet or a star, the forthcoming disturbance in the solar system is still hotly contested.
NASA claims, “Nibiru and other stories about wayward planets are an Internet hoax. There is no factual basis for these claims. If Nibiru or Planet X were real and headed for an encounter with the Earth in 2012, astronomers would have been tracking it for at least the past decade, and it would be visible by now to the naked eye. Obviously, it does not exist.”