Chilean Miners Herald Moshiach

A recent article by Rabbi Avi Shafran pointed out that one of the lessons we should learn from the Chilean Mine incident is how appreciative we should be every morning, as each of us emerges from our death-like slumber. In fact, this is the reason why we say Modeh Ani.

I once descended into the bowels of the earth, in the abandoned Lackawanna Mine, which now functions as a tourist destination. There is a certain amount of nervousness as the mine car slowly descends. One can really appreciate the daylight and warmth of the sun as one emerges several hours later. Two months of this treatment is almost unimaginable.

What awed me was the super human intervention of peoples from all over the world in the race against time to save the miners. I was amazed that there were over 1 billion people who actually watched the proceedings simultaneously. My faith in humanity was restored, as previously the only time 1 billion ever gather to watch the same event is unfortunately found in insignificant sports matches.

This figure is even more astounding, considering that there are only 2 billion people in the world that are wired to the internet. Assuming that there are approximately 7 billion humans on the planet, that means that one out of seven people were tuned in.

I’ve posted elsewhere about the advent of Moshiach. This is just one more omen that the days of Moshiach are creeping up on us. Years ago, our rabbis told us that when Moshiach arrives, his coming will be a worldwide event, with everyone knowing about it simultaneously. In my opinion, we are at least 1/7th of the way there.