Declining

The

Where do we stand before Moshiach comes?

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Generation

Personal Ability

Human ability has been generally shrinking with time.
So at the end of days, we’re rock bottom.

Make sense of it:

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Reduction in Personal Ability

	Earlier Generations	Later Generations
Intellectual Ability	The “Oral Torah” wasn’t (even allowed to be) written as people knew it all by heart (hence its name).	- No deep minds. - Can’t even remember what I had for breakfast.
Emotional Ability (expressed through prayer)	Prayers were a few pages long (easy & quick to arouse those big hearts of theirs).	- No deep hearts. - We say “OMG!” 100 times a day. - We have thick prayer BOOKS! (takes longer to cultivate our emotions towards G-d).
Physical Ability	- Must stand up when learning Torah (the whole day). - Fasting one or two days = no problem.	- Allowed to sit while learning Torah because we just can’t stand up so long. - We can’t function if we miss a meal.

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Shift in Focus Over Time

Reduction in Ability is not only in each of the human faculties (Intellect, Emotion, Action) –
It slides down across them –
“The Falling Suka of David”:
Earlier generations had large intellectual capacity – their main occupation was Torah Learning.
Later generations are bigger in the realm of Action.
Not because we’re physically stronger.
Rather because we have more means at our disposal:
Funds and technology.
Doing Charity and Good Deeds like no earlier generation has ever known.

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"Heels of Moshiach"

Before Moshiach comes, you can hear his heels (footsteps).
That’s when the generation is also like a heel in comparison with earlier generations:
Fraught with insensitivity.
Look – The footsteps of Moshiach and the associated climax are in full swing, but alas, they go straight over our heads!
However there’s also a plus to being spiritually insensitive:
Can handle the roughness of Deep Evil.
Just doing the right thing with earnestness.
Any other generation would appreciate how ugly and dangerous Deep Evil is, and would go crazy.

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	Head	Heels
Within a Generation	Leaders	Simple Folk
Across History	Forefathers	Pre-Moshiach
Sensitivity	Very	Hardly

Today's Brains - in Application

Philosophy can make important new grounds –
In the beginning of the journey.
But when you’re hired to execute, you don’t take out the drawing board.
Depth of mind was reserved to the philosophers of old.
The ingenuity we have today is in how to apply past achievements, not dreaming new ideas from scratch.
Action, not theory. Application, not reinvention.

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G-dly Capacaity

Earlier generations had it all in their heads
We have it all (and much more) on the computer
It works the same way spiritually:
We can reach far higher levels with the deeper dimensions of Torah than with our own IQ.

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Summary

In Pre-Moshiach Times, personal ability is at record low because:

Otherwise we’d go crazy (from the Pre-Moshiach Climax).
That’s how we can handle the Deep Evils that surface then.
It’s really not about our own capacity, but about the Torah we acquire. The deeper the Torah – the larger our ability to reach the greatest heights – those destined for the Messianic Era.

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Two Appendices:

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Visual Representation

of the change in the landscape of Evil over time

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Daniel 12:10

They will be clarified and whitened, and many will be purified, and the wicked will pervert [them], and all the wicked will not understand, but the wise will understand.

The verse is dealing with (“they”) Deep Evils...
“Many” – world scale, not just local instances.
Everyone can see – “clarified”, or even more so – “whitened”
But to “understand”, got to be “wise”.
Why is it happening? The deep evils that have been hidden thus far are rising to the surface – to get cleaned up (“purify”).
Personal and global.
How? Via the Deep Good (Torah).
So be wise.

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