Suffering and Darkness is Ultimately Followed by Messianic and Heavenly Light. We approach it today, slowly but steadily.

Darkness Before Light

David Eidensohn

The Talmud tells us that just before the Messianic Age terrible things will take over the world. Governments will be dominated by atheists, such as Cuomo and Hillary. Indeed, there is a long Mishneh and gemora that begins with the story of the Destruction of the Second Temple and goes up to the imminent arrival of the Moshiach. This was destroyed, this great rabbi died, the world sunk lower and lower and important people were ridiculed. But one central theme in all of this is one ray of light: “We have nobody to turn to except our Father in Heaven.” Rabbi Elchonon Wasserman, the senior disciple of the Chofetz Chaim, said that this is not a call to despair. Because if HaShem is watching us, there is surely hope. And we know that the end of Days and the Messianic Era will result in the entire world worshipping HaShem, with evil erased from the world.

HaShem made a world with a lot of evil, and a lot of darkness. But “from the darkness comes light.” The righteous suffer in this world, plenty, but HaShem is watching. In this world or the next, that watching results in pure kindness, for all eternity, along with the angels and the Holy One blessed be His Name.

The angels were upset when HaShem created people. Man was a sinner. A major angel confronted HaShem and complained about His creating people and a world filled with evil. HaShem asked what is so bad about men. The angel replied that they sin with women not their wives. HaShem replied, “The time will come when you will sin with many women.” He flung that angel into this world. The angel looked around and saw beautiful women. He began to sin.

Later on, Moshe at Sinai went to Heaven for forty days to study Torah with haShem. This resulted in HaShem speaking to the Jewish people and teaching them the beginning of the Ten Commandments. But the angels, who had contempt for human beings, complained to HaShem that a mortal man should not come to Heaven. In Heaven everyone was an eternal and holy person who never sins until HaShem directs them to do something wrong which does happen as there is an angel of evil and a few other such angels.

 HaShem told Moshe: “Answer them.” Moshe said, “HaShem has a Torah which is being revealed to the Jews and which was known to the great founders of the Jewish people Avrohom and his progeny. The Torah commands us to honor our parents. Do you have parents? The Torah commands us not to murder, not to eat non-kosher food, and many other commands for mortals who are human beings of flesh and flood and evil inclinations. Are you like that and are the commands of the Torah appropriate for angels live out eternity singing songs of praise to HaShem and occasionally venturing into the lower world to perform good deeds as Eliyohu the Prophet, the angels Michoel and Gavriel?” The angels accepted Moshe’s answer and befriended him. They realized how important it was for HaShem to create a world of darkness and sin, so that the ultimate pure light of HaShem could be light from darkness, which is much greater than light from light

The angels were greatly pained when the souls of the pious Jews who suffered with evil, sinned and repented, came to heaven, and were seated immediately before HaShem. The angels outside of this inner sanctum cried out bitterly. Light with no darkness is nothing to light from darkness. And only people have a world of darkness which produces HaShem’s greatest light, the light of the Schechinah, which is so close to HaShem. Angels are outside.

We are now in the final stages of the world before the Messianic Age. Many Jews even today live in Israel and devote their lives to serving HaShem and learning Torah in a world suffused by heavenly lights. But the evil force, even there, is active. When the pious struggle with evil, HaShem is watching. Closer and closer to Moshiach the light increases; the struggles of the pious are greater and greater, and many non-religious Jews become religious.

There are many studies now in the Israeli press about Orthodox and non-Orthodox Israelis. One asked the non-Orthodox what synagogue they pray at. Many answered: “The synagogue I don’t pray in is an Orthodox synagogue.” They never said, “Conservative or Reform”.

When the great Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashev zt”l passed away, a senior secular newspaper wrote that he was 102 years old when he died, and left 1,000 progeny. Why did a secular paper write this? Because the Orthodox have many children and the secular Jews, as the quip goes, have a child and a dog. The child goes to Japan and marries a gentile, and the dog doesn’t vote. The Orthodox have many children, and many of them do vote.

When I grew up the generals leading the Israeli army were basically atheists from Mapai and Mapam. They lived in small communities or Kibbutsim. Today these kibbutsim are no longer. The army is now the place for the deeply Orthodox who fight to preserve the Holy Land. This is permitted by the great rabbis of the past generations, as long as the government does not mix women with the men to entice them, which sometimes happens.

There are now four Orthodox women sitting in jail in Israel. Orthodox women are exempted from the army. But these four women were thought to be non-Orthodox, because they came from countries which were not known to have many Orthodox Jews. This resulted in massive strikes in Israel from the huge amount of Orthodox Israelis who let the government know that they will fight to protect the Torah. There was not long ago a public video of Israeli police riding with huge horses into a group of protesting Orthodox boys. One was run over by a huge horse but not badly wounded. But the war goes on, and the government is terrified. Does it want to put five thousand Orthodox Jews in jail? If it did, there would be huge fights in front of the Israeli embassy in New York. There is no hope for the secular control of Israel. A great light is shining more and more, advertising for everyone the arrival of Moshiach and the end of evil.

There was, this month of January, a huge program for Americans sponsored by the greatest scientists in the world, especially biologist Steven Mayer who is constantly on video programs debating with theist and atheist scientists. He and his fellow scientists quote   Einstein who was not religious, and Hubbel whose telescope convinced Einstein that the universe was not an accident but a designed thing. And Dr. Mayer and his many believing scientists are proving this with pure science time and again.

The light is shining, and it is so strong, that the greatest scientists of today are writing book after book proving that HaShem created and guides the universe day to day from the greatest galaxies to the tiniest section of all mortal life. And these books are being debated by people who have no good response.