Thursday, September 18, 2008

*Now* Do I Believe? Nope!

Shirat Devorah asks an excellent question. Now we see that banks are failing. For those who doubted DreamingOfMoshiach's dreams that banks would fail, and dismissed Nava as a false prophetess, now do we believe?
Now Do You Believe?
All that is occurring now was predicted 11 months ago, here
and now you can read it in today's news at:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/26752496
To this, I would answer: Nope!

Why not?

1) First and foremost, today's situation is not what Nava predicted. She predicted the failure of commercial banks, which is where we deposit money and get a bit of interest. What is occurring now is the failure of certain investment banks. They both are called "banks," but it is a homonym. Of course, though there was initially a government division between ownership of these two types of banks, this is no longer the case, and so there are a few banks that do both. But for the most part, we are dealing with a homonym.

As this CNN article notes, while some are betting, in the stock market, that commercial banks will fail next, there is a difference between them:
But Wall Street's problems are, in some ways, just that. The vast majority of the banks that consumers rely on for simple services like checking and savings accounts didn't get caught up in complex mortgage-backed securities or gamble on the subprime segment of the housing market.

Still, commercial banks are grappling with their own issues.

Numerous community banks nationwide owned preferred shares of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that are now virtually worthless following the government's dramatic decision earlier this month to take them over.

And as the housing market continues to deteriorate and the economy remains at a standstill, banks both big and small could face higher loan delinquencies and defaults in the months ahead.
So Nava's nevuah is not what is happening right now. What Nava said, then, was:
I was shown what will happen when the banks will go bankrupt; there is going to be such a mess... No one will be able to withdraw from any bank even a nickel... All previously written checks that were not yet cashed will not be honored... People will get charged for returned checks, although it's not their fault... There will be so much havoc, confusion, and anger....

People were feeling very frustrated and confused, crying, 'I never saw it coming...". Everyone became so money-crazed.... People were banging on banks' doors to be let in... The workers in the bank were also petrified because they also lost all their money and the only reason they came to 'work' was not to work, but to try to save their money. Everything seemed so chaotic...
And she says that she was told, back then, to withdraw the kever Devorah money from the commercial bank. She is clearly talking about commercial banks here.

2) Secondly, people have dreams corresponding to what they are thinking about, even in the many instances it is not prophecy. And in that same link, she bolsters her dream with the fact that an earlier fake autistic communication said the banks would fail. This is what gave her the idea, I would think. And I believe facilitated communication is a sham, for many very grounded reasons.

3) Other predictions she made did not come to pass, so even if one thing among many does, that is just playing the odds, where eventually you will get a win, or something that is interpretable as a win.

4) Even back then, the economy was starting to sour, which was why being were making dire predictions in the first place. I do not think it is impossible that eventually, the commercial banks might also fail, in which case we would all be in a very bad place. But I would not necessarily see it as a fulfillment of Nava's prophecy.

5) Nava was giving very bad and unsound financial advice. The FDIC insures accounts up to $100,000. For all these months, anyone who listened to her and withdrew their money from the banks lost hundreds or thousands of dollars in interest. And she is responsible for this tremendous loss of money. If even she had waited until now, rather than back then, to withdraw her money, she could have had her money working for her.

Furthermore, let us say all the commercial banks will fail next. If some of them fail, the FDIC will step up and reimburse people who had money in those banks. If all of them fail, perhaps they will do the same thing. But if the FDIC does not, and so everyone across America has now lost all the money in the bank, and the government is bankrupt and cannot help out, then the government has failed. Your dollars you kept stuffed in your mattress will likely be worthless.

6) Finally, there is this possible undercurrent that belief in Nava as true prophetess is a more frum position than disbelief. But this is not so. We have a religious obligation to listen to a Navi Emes, and a religious obligation to not pay heed to a Navi Sheker. We also have an obligation to distinguish between the two. Now, we happen to disagree about the metzius -- whether Nava is for real or not. I happen to think she is not for real, but is only fooling herself, and then fooling others. And Shirat Devorah presumably agrees with me on the point of the need for discernment, as a while ago, she worked to tell people not to believe a false kabbalist by the name of Jonathan Waxman (no relation). It would not be a good thing for people to be following a false kabbalist.

Update: Also, see this link. (hat tip: Reb Akiva at Mystical Paths) And this, linked from there.

No comments:

LinkWithin

Blog Widget by LinkWithin