Just when North and South Korea pick up the blower and have the most awkward phone call since you got a call from the clinic, news like ‘the Bible predicts World War III is going to be triggered’ comes along and your head drops into your hands again, like the last time you got a call from the clinic.
And you kinda think, ‘FFS just get on with it already.’
If it’s not enough that the President of the United States is showing off how big the button on his desk is (we’re not sure who to, exactly) or the Chairman of the Workers’ Party of Korea is accidentally hitting his own country with missiles, a mystic rabbi amps things up with the prediction the rogue Communist state will become the nuclear key to the final war.
Ok, so gotta be a little honest here, it’s not like this prediction has just been pulled out of thin air, following all the madness going on in the current ‘who’s got the biggest rocket’ contest.
Rabbi Levi Sa’adia Nachamanii gave a speech in 1994, predicting the dangers Israel faced, a month before he died. So it’s not like we can give him grief if he’s got his prediction wrong – because it’s not really possible to call people out for incorrect apocalyptic premonitions – they get it right, we’re all dead / they get it wrong, we’re not dead yet. Pretty cushy business tbh.
Anyhoo, he said:
Not Syria, not Persia (Iran), and not Babylon (Iraq), and not Gaddafi (Libya).
Korea will arrive here.
Levi’s prediction is based on the Hebrew word for hell, which is spelt the same way as Seoul is in Hebrew and appears in a chapter of Deuteronomy on the final war, according to the Daily Star.
Deuteronomy 32:21 reads:
They have roused me to jealousy with a no-God, they have provoked me with their vanities and I will rouse them to jealousy with a-no people.
I will provoke them with a vile nation. For a fire is kindled in my nostril and burnt unto the depths of the nether world (She’ol) and devoureth the Earth with her produce and setteth ablaze the foundations of the mountains.
The totally mad thing about Rabbi Nachamanii’s 22-year-old prediction is, at the time it was made, North Korea wasn’t seen as a threat to any other country in the world other than South Korea.
Breaking Israel News notes the Nachamanii had accurately predicted the Six Day War of 1967 and the Yom Kipper War in 1973, ‘giving credence to his prediction’.
So I’m going to go and hide under a radiation-proof rock and wait for all this nuclear wind to blow over.
Tim Horner is a sub-editor at UNILAD. He graduated with a BA Journalism from University College Falmouth before most his colleagues were born. A previous editor of adult mags, he now enjoys bringing the tone down in the viral news sector.