“’Behold, I am going to send My messenger, and he will clear the way before Me. And the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to His temple; and the messenger of the covenant, in whom you delight, behold, He is coming,’ says the LORD of hosts. But who can endure the day of His coming? And who can stand when He appears?” (Malachi 3:1)
The Messiah is “standing at the doorway” and it is up to each one of us to usher in his arrival, a leading spiritual leader of the Jewish nation was quoted as saying.
Rabbi Chizkiyahu Mishkovsky, the spiritual adviser for several distinguished yeshivot (religious learning centers) in Israel, told a gathering at a Lev L’Achim event in Bnei Brak earlier this week that, speaking in the name of Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, the arrival of the Messiah is close.
“My dear brothers, I would like to tell you something very interesting. One of those who is very close and dear to Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky came to me recently and said that Rabbi Kanievsky told him to go out and tell the people, ‘We are in one of the most critical hours for the nation of Israel. We are on the threshold of the Messiah, and the Messiah is standing just outside the door, and the only way to be saved is through learning Torah, and through works of loving kindness.’”
Rabbi Mishkovsky’s statement, recorded and posted on YouTube, attracted a great deal of attention since Rabbi Kanievsky is one of the leading figures in Haredi Jewish society today. The announcement was well received by those at the gathering.
Rabbi Mishkovsky also revealed that Rabbi Kanievsky also gave him a startling mission. He was told in no uncertain terms to begin to announce to all of Israel the imminent arrival of the Messiah.
“When his dear grandson, Yanki Kanievsky, was by his side, he wrote him a note saying, ‘Let it be known to all the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, even to those who are secular, let it be known that the only way to be saved is through Torah and works of loving kindness, and there is no other way.’”
The rabbi even gave instructions as to how to carry out his mission. “I asked the Rabbi, ‘How will I let it be known? Yell it into a loudspeaker?’ And the Rabbi said, ‘Yes, take a loudspeaker and go around the whole country to tell this to the people. Yell it out loud.”
The latest revelation is consistent with various statements made by the spiritual leader lately. Recently, Rabbi Kanievsky related a teaching in the Talmud, a central rabbinical text in Judaism, that explicitly states that the Messiah will come the year following a shmittah year. The rabbi hinted that this year was ripe for the arrival of the Messiah upon the conclusion of the shmittah year one month ago.
