LESSON 47: With Perfect Clarity
 
For the redemption from Egypt to be a physical success, God could have had a simple, natural plague destroy Egyptian society, as He did to the army of Sancheriv during the siege of Jerusalem in Chizkiah HaMelech’s time. After all, four-fifths of the Jewish people died in the Plague of Darkness anyhow, so what difference would it have made had they died from a plague instead? However, for the redemption from Egypt to be a spiritual success, there had to be no doubt, at least in the minds of the Jewish people who finally went free with Moshe Rabbeinu, that God, and only God had saved them. The redemption from Egypt was not about freeing a broken and embittered nation, it was about building one whose entire existence is clearly dependent on its relationship with the Creator of the Universe. Given the nature of man, for that to happen, every other means of escape and survival had to fail — completely. Kotzer ruach meant that the Jewish people had given up on every other “natural” form of redemption. After Moshe Rabbeinu failed to free them the first time, and after the slavery was increased as a result, they saw that they had no where to place their hope and trust in the physical world. It was into this intellectual and emotional void that the light of God flowed, rejuvenating the broken Jewish nation, gradually rebuilding them spiritually and physically. Each plague, as it subsequently destroyed the Egyptian nation and its will, re-built the Jewish people, and their confidence. As a result, by the time the tenth plague of the death of the firstborn began, not one surviving Jew had any doubt whatsoever Who was responsible for their survival and salvation. That is the way it will be at the end of history as we know it as well — On that day, God will be one and His Name, one. (Zechariah 14:9) — which means that the events leading up to the Final Redemption, as was in the case of Egypt, will promote such a perception. As in Egypt, over time, all false sources of security will probably fail, or disappear, until we have no one to rely upon except for our Father-in-Heaven. At this stage of history, though many may already know this message, few have been able to integrate it. While our mouths may articulate the words, our actions and lifestyles may not quite be expressions of such a belief, since many are overly dependent upon secondary sources of survival, at the cost of relying solely on the Primary Source Himself. Preparing for the Final Redemption is about becoming real with this concept. It is about developing as clear an understanding and appreciation of what it means and its importance now, so that when God perfects that clarity through the events of history, we’ll have done most of the work on our own, already.
Sunday, February 17, 2008