The spiritual blindness of today’s Israel was on display in a recent report of the words of one of the most revered present-day Jewish scholars. The report, I think, is strong evidence of Paul’s words about Israel’s condition until Christ returns—a condition brought about by Israel’s rejection of Him when He first offered Himself as Messiah.

What then? Israel hath not obtained that which he seeketh for; but the election hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded (According as it is written, God hath given them the spirit of slumber, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear;) unto this day. (Romans 11:7–8)

This is what the article reporting the scholar’s words gave as his credentials:

Rabbi Mendel Kessin is a respected Torah scholar and lecturer with semicha (rabbinical ordination) and a PhD in psychology from Fordham University. He is best known for his teachings on Jewish mysticism, history, and the Messianic era, often weaving together Torah sources, world events, and deep spiritual insights. His lectures are widely followed in both the Jewish and broader spiritual community.

While his religious and academic credentials certainly exceed my own and those of most Bible prophecy scholars I’m familiar with, he displays the great spiritual blindness the Apostle Paul said will be Israel’s plight until the Lord Jesus returns in power and great glory at Armageddon.

He addresses, through that human-conceived purported acumen, what the evil perpetrated by Hamas and other perennial anti-Israel actors against the Jewish people means:

In a recent lecture delivered just days after the Trump-brokered ceasefire that resulted in the release of Israeli hostages from Gaza, Rabbi Mendel Kessin offered a deeply spiritual—and provocative—interpretation of current events. Far from being merely a geopolitical turning point, Rabbi Kessin argued that the hostage ordeal is part of a larger divine accounting, a cosmic reckoning unfolding in real time.

“Everybody’s got it basically all wrong,” Rabbi Kessin declared. “Let me try to explain what the whole idea of the hostages is, based on the Divine plan.”…

“So what we clearly see, this is a divine assistance that the Arabs are on the way out militarily and so on. The Arabs are on the way out, militarily and otherwise,” Rabbi Kessin said. “According to the divine plan, they are losing influence and the ability to harass Israel. This is what’s happening, and it’s being done miraculously. It’s almost like Israel doesn’t fail.”

“So the question as we approach the Messianic era, because that’s really what it means. The last enemy of the Jews, basically, is Ishmael, the Arabs. They are the last enemies of the Jews, and their reign ends at the end of time, and this is what we’re seeing. You see, that’s very important to understand now when that happens.”…

Rabbi Kessin framed the hostages not as random victims, but as spiritual representatives—“volunteers,” in his words—chosen by God to bear suffering on behalf of the Jewish people.

“As we approach the Messianic era, God must accelerate the process. This is the problem, therefore, the hostages now become the solution. The hostages are in the hands of the Arabs, and it’s not just 250 people, the hostage pains the Jewish people all over the world in many ways, God chose 250 people as what He calls ‘volunteers’ to represent the ability of the Arab people to dominate the Jews… to pain the Jews,” he said. “They don’t realize it, but their reward will be infinite.”…

“We have been released from [the Arabs’] claim that we have done to them for thousands of years.”

Rabbi Kessin connected the suffering of the hostages to the suffering of many Jews today—through illness, poverty, family crisis, or doubt—arguing that these too may serve the divine plan.

“Righteousness is losing. Many people are becoming apikorsim—heretics—because evil has a claim,” he explained. “God has to use this to level the justice claim of what goes on.”

“This hostage event, which was terrible for two years, is part of the Divine plan to remove the weight of error against the Jews and to continue the Messianic process.” (“Rabbi Kessin: ‘The Hostage Crisis Was Part of a Final Divine Reckoning,’” by Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz, Israel365 News)

Rabbi Kessin, like all who maintain forms of Orthodox Judaism, views Israel’s Messiah as still to appear to bring all of Israel’s problems to an end. Jesus Christ, in their view, is still considered an imposter to the title “King of the Jews.”

All that’s happening now with things seeming to go more and more against the Arabs (Ishmael’s progeny) is, in his view–and those of like mind in Judaism—a divine bringing-about of prophetic fulfillment. The four thousand years of perceived wrong Ishmael’s offspring have considered as Israel’s evil against them has now or is rapidly coming to an end, he believes. All will now be “good,” as the rabbi puts it.

What a monumental misunderstanding!

Their Messiah will soon come to Israel’s rescue, but it will not be His first visit to them–a visit Jesus accused the Jewish religionists of hypocrisy for not understanding the Messianic time in which they stood.

But before that “understanding” is attained, there must come the time of Jacob’s trouble (Jeremiah 30:7). It will be a time of God’s wrath being poured out against the left-behind rebels of earth and a causing of the whole house of Israel to accept their True Messiah–Jesus Christ, their King and the King of all kings.

So, the “divine reckoning” the rabbi looks for is far different than he knows. His is a monumental misunderstanding of the True Messiah and His coming to bring a remnant of Israel into His eternal Kingdom.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!