War Will Usher in Israel's Redemption? Messianic Fervor Is Gaining Popularity Beyond Religious Fanatics
Disasters are a fertile ground for purveyors of apocalyptic prophecies
Israel's national missions minister isn't alone in thinking that we are living in a miraculous time. Increasing numbers in right-wing circles have lately joined Orit Strock in identifying the war in the Gaza Strip with the War of Gog and Magog, and the ongoing disaster of October 7 with the birth pangs of the Messiah and the advent of redemption. Some, like Rabbi Eliezer Kashtiel, from the Bnei David yeshiva in the Eli settlement in the West Bank, draw on the words of the founder of religious Zionism, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935), who said, "When there is a great war in the world, the power of the Messiah awakens." War has a purifying power, Rabbi Kook maintains, because it arouses the divine in humanity and helps overcome the selfish instinct. "The greater the destruction and the more systems that have fallen part… the greater the anticipation of the Messiah's footsteps."