I want to tell you about the one and only time that my father prophesied. First of all, do understand that prophesying is not “fortune telling” or being a “psychic,” and it is not the use of human extra-sensory perception (ESP). To prophesy means that one is uttering a truth that is provided to you directly by God. Thus the prophets were speaking something on behalf of God, not on behalf of their own wisdom or from supposed arcane sources.
To prophesy only once is not unusual. Most of the Biblical prophets lived years of average pious lives and then receive their calling from God, and sometimes it is only once that they are called upon to prophesy. Prophets do not, in other words, establish themselves in the “prophecy” business. People who needed consistent guidance did not go to prophets, who only spoke on God’s behest, but they went to what the Bible calls “wise” men or women. Among the Israelites wise men or women were pious and steeped in the faith; they were not “smart” due to arcane or secular studies.
Anyway, my dad was a totally average guy of his times, though he was what some might call “deep.” My cousin said that my dad had a genius IQ, but in keeping with his times he dropped out of school in the eighth grade in order to work and help support the family (this would be when he was thirteen years old and would have been in the early part of the 1900’s). So even though he had a smart mind and a keen interest in the world, and fought in the American army in World War II (where he met the woman who would become my mother) the one time he prophesied really stands out. My mother and I were reminiscing about this a few years ago while we watched the news one evening.
Around sixty years ago when the UN made their determination to partition Palestine and establish the state of Israel, my father turned to my mother (who as a war refugee was still learning English and was not much on politics). He pointed out to her what was going on and said to her, “Do you see what is happening? Remember this day. What is happening is going to be a great sorrow and how they are doing this is a great mistake. In the future remember what I said.”
My mother says how after my dad died in the 1960’s, she has watched what has happened and marveled how he prophesied this, telling her to think on that day, just as he said. And so a few years ago we watched the news and she recalled once again what he had said.
My father who has enormous street credibility as he put his life on the line-and was wounded-fighting the Nazis he was certainly not being anti-Jewish. He prophesied the disaster that would come from the approach that was taken sixty years ago and how it would only create woe and destroy the peace. This is one reason I am so angry and irate about what is going on in Gaza. My family, through my dad’s prophesy, has seen this coming for sixty years and I cannot believe that rather than thoughtful re-examining of what has worked well with Israel and Palestine and what obviously has not worked, there is only greater hardening of hearts and narrow mindedness. There are people who have been refugees now for as long as it has been since my father prophesied. It’s like there has been a competition about who can care less about the millions, both Jewish and Palestinian, who have suffered. Yet there has been a mind blowing resistance toward contemplating even the most minor of errors that have been made, particularly by Israel. I have never seen a group of people who deny ever making any sort of error as the Israeli institutions. This has now translated into a petty tyrant cruelty that is truly shameful.
Anyway, I thought that I’d share this perspective that has been understood in my family for sixty years now, as we’ve just watched the continual dismal countdown to fulfillment of my father’s prophecy. Cultists have been so nosy and weird about my father that I figured I might as well blog, since it’s certainly not a secret, what is true about my father and what is not. He was just an interesting and average guy with intriguing hidden depths, but the only “supernatural” claim that anyone can make about him is that he uttered that one prophecy regarding the continual sorrow of Palestine and Israel due to errors made in its creation sixty years ago. Ah well.
