The bombing that killed Ayatollah Khamenei last month was, according to Rabbi Mendel Kessin, a divinely orchestrated event, prophesied thousands of years ago, executed on the exact day the Torah commands the obliteration of Amalek, and marking nothing less than the opening of the messianic era.

In a lecture posted to YouTube two weeks ago, Rabbi Kessin, a prominent Torah scholar and lecturer, whose classes on Jewish thought and the divine plan of history draw tens of thousands of listeners, laid out a sweeping framework rooted in Talmudic and Kabbalistic sources. “We are living in really an incredible time,” he told his audience. “How incredible. Most of us have no idea.”

Trump, Iran, and the Ancient Blueprint

Rabbi Kessin pointed to a midrash (rabbinic teaching) in the Yalkut Shimoni, a medieval anthology of classical Torah commentary, in the section on the prophet Isaiah. “It says that in the year the Mashiach (Messiah) will come, Paras (Persia), which we know was Iran, will come and declare war against the whole world,” he said. “Edom, which represents America, will come and fight with them and defeat them.”

The midrash then records a divine voice proclaiming: “Do not worry. The time of your redemption has arrived.”

“What that means very simply,” Rabbi Kessin explained, “is that this is the last war. This is the war that ushers in the geula, the beginning of redemption.”

He connected this directly to gematria (the numerical value of Hebrew letters), noting that the Hebrew year 5786 carries the numerical value of the word Mashiach, the Messiah. “The gematria of 786 is that in this year the Messiah will come. I don’t think it could be said more directly.”

Khamenei as Haman Reincarnate

Rabbi Kessin made a striking identification, stating that Khamenei was a gilgul (reincarnation) of Haman, the villain of the Purim story who descended from Amalek, the archetypal force of evil in Jewish theology. “The gematria of Khamenei, as his name is spelled in Hebrew in the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv, is zeh hu Haman, ‘this is Haman,'” Kessin said.

What he found most astonishing was the timing of Khamenei’s death. Israel bombed and killed Khamenei on Parshat Zachor, the Shabbat when Jews worldwide are commanded to read the Torah portion commanding the erasure of Amalek’s memory. “While the Jews in Israel are reading the parasha that commands the Jews to take out Haman, he is being obliterated,” Kessin said. “That’s a message. God is saying: I want to show you what I’m doing.”

The verse in question reads: “Timcheh et zecher Amalek”, “You shall surely obliterate the memory of Amalek” (Devarim 25:19).

Four Shells of Evil — and Their Destruction

Rabbi Kessin grounded his analysis in a Kabbalistic doctrine of four kipot (shells or husks) — four levels of evil described in the opening verses of Bereishit (Genesis). The Torah describes the primordial earth as tohu vavohu, “unformed and void,” followed by darkness and the deep. The Sages identify these four terms as four environments of evil through which the Jewish people must pass, subduing and ultimately destroying each.

The four great civilizations that historically embodied these forces — Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome — have each in turn collapsed after the Jewish people lived through their exiles. “When you see evil over and over, and especially the chiefs of evil fall,” Kessin said, “it means the Satan has no power in the court of heaven. He is failing. He is dying.”

Iran, he argued, represents the final remnant of the Persian kipah — and with it, the last of the four shells. “The Satan is dying, or else this could never happen.”

Trump as the Reincarnation of Esau

The theological engine behind Trump’s role, Rabbi Kessin argued, is the figure of Esav (Esau), Jacob’s twin brother, a patriarch who failed his divine mission but whose neshamah (soul) is destined to return at the end of days and fight alongside Israel. 

“Trump is a gilgul of Esau,” Rabbi Kessin stated plainly. “That is his job, to go after countries, wherever you find good and evil, and try to get the evil eliminated.” He cited the Torah’s prophecy: “VeRav ya’avod tza’ir”, “The older shall serve the younger” (Bereishit 25:23), as an allusion to the restoration of brotherhood between America and Israel. “What you really have when you have America and Israel fighting Iran is the restoration of two brothers.”

He added, “God saved him from a bullet by a quarter of an inch. Why? Now we see why; to take out Iran.”

The Third Temple — This Year?

Kessin did not stop at Iran’s defeat. He pointed to a striking Kabbalistic reading of the word v’shakhanti, “and I will dwell,” from Shemot (Exodus) 25:8, the verse in which God commands the building of the Mishkan (Tabernacle). A commentary known as the Ba’al HaTurim notes that the word v’shakhanti contains within it the word v’sheni, “and the second,” alluding to the Second Temple. Its numerical value, Rabbi Kessin argued, points to something further.

“The gematria of v’shakhanti, the entire word, is 786,” he said. “Which is this year, 5786. That is actually when the Third Temple will be built.”

He described what such an event would look like to the world: “Don’t be surprised if you wake up one day and all of a sudden the newspapers are reporting, if they want to tell the truth, which they don’t, that there is actually a temple sitting on top of the Har HaBayit, the Temple Mount. How in the world could you have a temple and no mosque sitting on top of the Temple Mount?”

The descent of the Shekhinah, the divine presence, into the Third Temple, he said, would be the global event that shifts human consciousness from materialism to recognition of the Messiah. “A political event is not enough to convince people of its messianic implications. What it has to be is an event that is not political, that is spiritual and miraculous, where there is a revelation.”

A New Book on the Power of Speech

Before delivering the lecture, Rabbi Kessin announced the publication of a new book based on a 1988 lecture he gave on lashon hara, harmful speech. Published by Feldheim, the book is titled The True Power of Speech: The Key to Both Worlds. “What the book is really all about,” he said, “is when you speak lashon hara, what happens to your mazal, your good fortune, and the good fortune of your family.” He called it a guide to understanding “what caused the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash, the Holy Temple, what prevents it from being rebuilt, and why the redemption has not come. I guarantee you,” he said, “that if you do that, it will affect your life and the life of your family.”

The book is available in Judaica stores before Shavuot, or through Feldheim Publishers and Amazon.;