This time around, things are completely different.
That’s what I told my daughter, who was lying in bed with a stress headache brought on by worrying about ‘the 4th lockdown’ that they’ve just instituted in Israel.
Really, it’s just an extension of the 3rd lockdown, but the Israeli government excels at the art of psychological warfare, and they know that ‘changing the goalposts’ is one of the single best ways of doing that.
So, the 2 week lockdown became the 4 week lockdown, and now it’s morphed again into the 6 week lockdown….
And it’s starting to feel like there is no end in sight.
But that’s not true.
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First, let’s state something obvious, that most of us are maybe forgetting, in this crazy time we live in.
Life is actually still pretty good.
Most of us still have a roof over our heads and food on the table.
Personally, I’m sitting here learning how to play the guitar – a lifelong dream! – and day to day, life is actually still good.
What makes is ‘less good’ is the worry.
And the stress and anxiety about ‘what will be’.
Which brings me to something interesting I remembered yesterday, when I was talking to my daughter.
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A few years’ back, when I was gorging myself on ‘geula stuff’, I read somewhere that this third stage of the war of Gog and Magog was going to be completely different.
(Maybe it was the autistics who said this?)
In the first 2 ‘wars’ of Gog and Magog, i.e. WW1 and WW2, a ‘good’ person could find themselves in a place where bad things were happening, and sadly still get caught up in the web of destruction.
But with ‘WW3’ – the last battle of Gog and Magog – it wasn’t going to be like that.
A ‘good’ person who was clinging on to Hashem and the true tzaddikim would still make it through in one piece, even if chaos was raging around them.
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When I first heard this a few years back, it seemed incredible to me.
What, you can drop a nuke on a city and the ‘good people’ are going to survive it?!
You can have a full-scale war happening outside your front door, and you’re going to survive it, just because you are ‘good’ and holding on to God and the true tzaddikim?!
I just couldn’t see how that was going to work.
But today….
It’s starting to become obvious.
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I keep seeing these quotes attributed to Henry Kissinger that it’s easier and cleaner to decimate populations via bio-weapon vaccines than by yucky, destructive wars.
Whether or not that evil guy actually said it, the idea holds true.
And we know that the ‘war of Gog and Magog’ has already started, because Rabbi Eliezer Berland told us that, back in June 2019.
You can read that post HERE – and see the Rav speaking (in Hebrew) below:
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I mamash have goosebumps writing this.
June 2019 was a year and a half ago.
It must have been exactly when the ‘Covid plot’was actually being actioned in the world.
According to this story, scientists in Spain ‘retroactively’ found Covid-19 in waste water samples dating back to March 2019.
So, by the time the Rav was speaking, Covid-19 was already circulating all over the world, and the war of Gog and Magog (part 3) had started in earnest.
Just we didn’t realise back then what it really entailed.
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Let me just quote the Rav’s words, before we move on:
“Today is the 4th of Sivan [5779], and Gog and Magog will be in [the month of] Heshvan. All the nations will gather together against Israel. Moshe will blow on the Shofar HaGadol (the Great Shofar), and the whole Torah will be heard from one end of the world to the other.
THEN, ALL THE NATIONS OF THE WORLD WILL COME. THEY WILL COME ON SHIPS.
It’s written in the Zohar (at the end of Parshat Ki Tavo) that the whole sea will be filled with [war] ships. Then the sea will split, and open. In the month of Heshvan, there will be the apex of wars. Sivan 4th is the beginning (of Gog and Magog), and in the month of Heshvan, the Third Temple will be built.
“WE NEED TO NOT GIVE UP. EVERYONE REPEAT, ‘IT’S FORBIDDEN TO GIVE UP’. AND THEN, THE TEMPLE WILL BE BUILT THAT WILL NEVER BE DESTROYED EVER AGAIN.”
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It’s that last paragraph that I want to focus on.
Right now, we are in the middle of a ‘war’ that is primarily being fought with psychological manipulation and propaganda.
It’s ‘gaslighing’ on steroids, where we’re told again and again and again that what we ourselves experience as ‘true’ – i.e., no-one dropping dead in the streets from Covid-19, nothing really unusual going on that requires ‘lockdowns’ and ‘untested experimential vaccines’ and ‘facemasks – is wrong.
The media is full of fear porn.
The governments and their ‘spokespeople’ are churning out scare stories, and concocting horrible statistics (out of thin air…) and manipulating the public with measures that amount to psychological torture.
And the doctors and nurses and scientists (most of them….) are also in on the game, either because they know what’s going on and are totally corrupt; or they don’t know what’s going on, but their training in Western medicine has taught them to bury their consciences, and to not question things that really don’t make sense.
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It’s a ‘war’ for hearts and minds, make no mistake.
They are trying to wear everyone down, so that we all wave the white flag, give up, and let them inject whatever poisonous concoction they want into us – no questions asked – so we can get back to ‘life as normal’.
Despair is our biggest enemy right now, which is why the Rav gave us such a clear message back in June 2019:
DON’T GIVE UP!!!!
Don’t let yourself be ground down by what is going on at the moment, because really, God is behind it all, and it’s all leading to something very, very good!
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Here’s how a ‘good person’ who is hanging on to God and the true tzaddikim can avoid the worst ravages of the war of Gog and Magog, wherever they happen to live:
That war is psychological.
The people who are far away from truth; who have put all their trust in the medical establishment; who aren’t willing to question things that ‘feel wrong’; who aren’t willing to stand up for what’s right, and to feel some inevitable discomfort from bucking the trend – those people are running to get their shots right now.
They are ‘selecting themselves’ to the left, if you can say that.
There is no point wasting your breath in arguing with those people, or burying them in ‘information’, because the problem has a very deep spiritual root, and their ears are literally being blocked and their eyes blinded from seeing the truth by shemayim.
(It should be obvious that this category includes ‘externally religious’ people, too.)
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Then, there’s the category who are trying to hold on, but who are being buffeted by gales of propaganda and despair.
Some of my extended family members are in that first category, described above, and some of them are in this second category.
I had a chat with [someone] a few days ago, who asked me what they are meant to do, because the government is soon going to force people to take the shots to even go shopping, or to travel abroad.
I told him:
HOLD ON!!!
Don’t do anything until that scenario actually occurs – because so much can and will change, in the meantime, that could totally disrupt the ‘plan’.
When people start dropping dead en masse, lo alenu – as is already starting to happen here, as the side effects of the ‘vaccine’ start to really kick in – everyone else who is isn’t automatically buying into the fear porn will start to pushback.
So just hold on!
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Of course, that’s easier said than done.
People’s anxiety levels are shooting through the roof, and it’s getting to the stage where many people who are naturally ‘anti’ the idea of Covid-19 ‘vaccinations’ are starting to crack under the strain.
They just want some relief from the internal pressure.
From the non-stop worrying about tomorrow.
And some of them are being won over by the idea that vaccination = ‘back to normal’.
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So, for those people, here’s a suggested plan of action, to help you navigate the coming weeks and months.
- Stop arguing with brainwashed people who ‘believe’ in Covid 19 and getting the shot.
There is no point, you won’t change their mind, and all that will happen is that you will emotionally exhaust yourself and start to feel very despairing.
Your life comes first, and those people will have to take responsibility for themselves and their own decisions.
2. Start talking to God for at least 5 minutes every day.
Yes, I know you have 5 zillion kids at home, and no koach, and all you want to do is eat chocolate cake and watch Youtube videos, to ‘run away’ from the depressing reality – but if you do 5 minutes of talking to God a day, I guarantee that you’ll start to feel better, and calmer, and less anxious and more able to ‘deal’.
Try it!
At the bottom of this post, I’ll link to some posts here on the blog about how to get started doing hitbodedut.
3. Get with the Rav, Rabbi Berland.
I am noticing a direct correlation in my own family between the level of attachment to the Rav, and the level of anxiety about ‘Covid’ and the state of the world, etc.
This is all midda kneged midda.
The more we believed the lying media, and it’s lying reports about the Rav, the more we are now caught up in the lies and propaganda about Covid 19.
I guess that’s the teshuva required, that God is putting us back into the same situation, and this time we have to dig deep and know that it’s all lies.
Again, that’s easier said than done.
In the meantime, I’m trying to ‘smooth the path’ as much as possible by paying small pidyonot nefesh over to the Rav, via the website HERE – and again, I see INSTANT improvements in people’s mental health when I do that.
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Two weeks ago, after one kid got slapped in the face on the bus for not wearing a mask, I paid a pidyon for her.
She is currently doing better, emotionally, than at any other time in the last 4 years.
Yes, we have lockdowns and all the rest of it, and she’s doing school by zoom – but she’s still feeling happy, and is even now thriving in the situation, and growing up in all sorts of fun and useful ways.
Ditto for other people in my household – I pay a pidyon to the Rav, and ‘the problem’ – especially its emotional and mental component – resolves pretty fast.
This war we are in is mostly psychological, so doing a pidyon nefesh is the ‘biggest gun’ you can use to fire back with.
But only if you believe in it.
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4. Look for nice, fun things you can still do for yourself, and with the members of your household.
For myself, that meant buying a small, second-hand Jeep and going off-roading as much as possible over the last 8 months; it meant buying a guitar (and an online course, to learn how to actually play it).
It means sometimes cooking strange new stuff – and sometimes not cooking at all, and just eating cereal for supper without putting myself on a guilt trip.
If I find an interesting book online, I get it now.
Carpe diem!
This world isn’t going to last for much longer, and I want to go into the next stage with very few regrets about not doing something, or trying something, I always wanted.
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5. Shut ‘the outside world’ out, as much as possible.
That doesn’t mean going into denial, but unless you are someone who has a VERY STRONG grip on reality right now, you should be avoiding news sites, and ‘fear porn’ – and the people who amplify it and churn it out socially, too – like the plague.
Just work on developing your connection to God, and to the real tzaddikim, and trust that God will make sure that whatever information you need to really have right now, you will get it.
Again, this is just teshuva for being too connected into soul-destroying stuff like Facebook and Whatsapp and smart phones.
Minimise all that stuff as much as possible, find a good book, develop a constructive hobby, learn something new, begin a fun project, take a walk every day – whatever.
The hour I spend playing guitar gives me so much joy, and I look forward to it all day.
In turn, that also gives me a lot of koach to continue doing whatever I need to be doing, to keep the wheels spinning for myself and my family.
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I was going to end this list with something like ‘work on your bad middot’, but on reflection, that’s what this whole process is all about, isn’t it?
Fear and anxiety are also bad middot.
Feeling despair, anger and ‘stress’ is also bad middot.
This whole situation is just one big test of our middot, isn’t it?
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So, let’s circle round and bring this back to the starting point, about how the war of Gog and Magog can affect one person while totally bypassing another.
That person who has zero emuna, doesn’t really believe in God, runs to doctors for every little thing, has lost touch with their own soul and humanity, can’t deal with stepping out of the world of lies…
Sadly, that person will run to impale themselves on the tip of a syringe.
And there is nothing you or I can do about it.
It’s a spiritual process of self-selection.
But the people who are staying away from the news…. and working on overcoming their anxiety and despair… and who are sacrificing themselves, mamash, to deal with sometimes overwhelming feelings of fear without trying to take the ‘easy option’ – they will probably make it through this process in one piece, albeit it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
And then those people who are sticking close to the Rav, and the other true tzaddikim, and who are talking to God for an hour a day, and who have spent the last little while ALREADY working on their fear and anxiety and anger and despair, and all the rest of it.
They will have it the easiest.
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Remember this:
Doing a pidyon nefesh with the Rav is a shortcut to the easier option.
It’s literally ‘blood for money’.
So, take your pick, what you prefer.
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And the last bit of chizzuk I wanted to share has to do with the greatness of God.
There’s a passage in Rav Natan’s writings that has always puzzled me.
(It’s alluded to in a footnote on page 192 of the book Tzaddik, connected to one of the discussions where Rabbenu is emphatically warning people to stay away from doctors.)
There, it says this:
“Rav Natan added: “God is so great, He can help a sick person even if he already called a doctor.” –
(Alim LeTerufah 176.)
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To put this in different language:
God is so great, He can even help a sick person who already went to a doctor and got ‘vaccinated’ with COVID-19.
God is running the world.
And even if someone DID get the shot already, that doesn’t mean all hope is gone.
If someone was pressured into it, had a moment of weakness, or maybe was vaccinated against their will – that’s still not game over.
God is so great, He can even turn things around at that point.
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There is no despair in the world!
This ‘war’ is psychological, mental and emotional.
But there are ways (some of which are described above) that we can get through the next few weeks and months without cracking under the pressure.
Just sit and wait for these forces of evil to blow themselves out, without doing anything dumb.
Because their time is very nearly up.
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