Messiah

“ If it were for the Gentiles that the Messiah should come, he is no longer the Messiah promised to the Jews and announced by their prophets. If Jesus be the Messiah of the Jews, he could not be the destroyer of their nation. ”

“ And that was the only possible meaning the term Messiah could have had in the minds of the Jews of the generation of John and Jesus. Messiah could not possibly refer to one who merely taught God's will or proclaimed the necessity for righteous living. To all such holy persons the Jews gave the title of prophet. The Messiah was to be more than a prophet; the Messiah was to bring in the establishment of the new kingdom, the kingdom of God. No one who failed to do this could be the Messiah in the traditional Jewish sense. ”

“ Such men were looking for a leader, but no leader had yet been found. So all the people, with their various ways of thinking, were looking and longing and waiting for the Messiah. Is it any wonder that, when Jesus began to teach and do cures, the people asked one another if this might not be the Messiah, and that they sometimes tried to make him a leader to free them from the Romans? To understand what the people thought of Jesus and how Jesus talked to the people, one must know how this hope of the Messiah was all the time in the people's minds. ”

“ For the people of the Lord are they who wait for him; for they still wait for the coming of the Messiah.
6:14 And behold, according to the words of the prophet, the Messiah will set himself again the second time to recover them; wherefore, he will manifest himself unto them in power and great glory, unto the destruction of their enemies, when that day cometh when they shall believe in him; and none will he destroy that believe in him. ”

“ All those questionings and misgivings as to his origin and mission which we have pictured to ourselves as haunting him ever since his first visit to Jerusalem, are now, as it were, focussed. There are mocking voices whispering again as of old, but more scornfully and keenly in his ear, “Are you really the Messiah, the Son of God, so long looked for? What more proof have you to go upon than you have had for these many years, during which you have been living as a poor peasant in a Galilean village? The word of this wild man of the wilderness? ”

“ The Messiah comes, convulses the earth, overthrows the army of the Gentiles, delivers the Jews, cleanses Jerusalem, cuts off all wickedness from the earth, raises the saints from the dead, brings them with Him, and commences His reign for a thousand years; during which time His Spirit will be poured out upon all flesh; men and beasts, birds and serpents, will be perfectly harmless, and peace and the knowledge and glory of God shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea ”

“ The Messiah must be conscious of ability perfectly to accomplish the will of God with man, and to bring men into absolute harmony with God. This is claimed by Jesus. He stands in His sober senses and claims to be that universal Sovereign, that true King of men, whom the Jews had been encouraged to expect, and who when He came would reign over Gentiles as well as Jews. ”

“ I shall bring in my Messiah; but he shall be a widely different person from him whom the Jews expect; for, whereas they expect the Messiah to be a mighty secular prince, and to set up a secular kingdom, he shall appear a man of sorrows and acquainted with griefs; and redeem mankind, not by his sword or secular power, but by his humiliation, passion, and death. Therefore they will be offended at him and reject him, and think it would be reproachful to trust in such a person for salvation. ”

“ If the Old Testament Scriptures represent the Messiah as a divine Person; the proofs which demonstrate Jesus to be the Messiah, demonstrate him also by farther and necessary consequence to be divine. Yet, though there is a union of natures in Christ, there is no mixture or confusion of their properties: his humanity is not changed into his Deity, nor his Deity absorbed by his humanity; but the two natures are distinct in one Person. ”

“ A warrior Messiah, or a prophet seeking to convince the world, would have displayed signs suited to attract the blind devotion of the multitude: he would have wanted to prove his pretensions by the striking character of his signs and wonders. Such was the Messiah whom the Jews were led to expect; in general they imagined no other, and for no other did they care: so we find that it surprised the disciples and the brethren of Jesus, that He should content himself with healing poor sick people in hamlets of Galilee, instead of confounding Herod in Tiberias, or the scribes in Jerusalem. ”

“ The greater part of the Jews at this time had forsaken their God, and had become careless about pleasing Him. They expected a Messiah, but regardless of the prophets who had spoken such different things, they had formed their own notions on the subject, and looked for the Messiah to come as a king or conqueror, surrounded with pomp and splendour. These men would not believe that a helpless infant, born in a stable at Bethlehem, could be the Son of God, the promised Messiah, Who was to be the Saviour of the world: pride and unbelief led them to reject the Lord, even from His birth. ”

“ And when at last, in the hour of their deepest need, their long-rejected, crucified Messiah appears for their deliverance when His blessed feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives they will almost simultaneously be made aware of it ; for, though they may not all at once behold Him with their eyes, the whole world, and nature generally, will be conscious of, and respond to, the visible appearing and presence of the Son of God. ”

“ And yet from the saying of the Samaritan woman, “I know that Messiah cometh; (that is, the Christ, the Anointed;) when he is come, he will teach us all things,” it would seem that, down to our Saviour’s time, they understood the true doctrine concerning his person, his incarnation, and the titles by which he would be distinguished. When told that he who was then present in the form of man, and who spoke to her, was the Messiah, she manifested no surprise or doubt. ”

“ Many Jews of our Lord’s day in Palestine believed that the Son of Man, the Messiah, would act as the vicegerent of God in “the day of judgement,” at “the end of the world.” In implying that He would so act our Lord is, in other words, professing that He is the Messiah: but, more than this, He gives to the Messianic claim a depth and fullness of meaning which makes it identical with a properly divine claim. ”

“ He will send the Messiah to open men's eyes, that so he may turn them from the service of dumb idols to serve the living God, because, though he has long winked at the times of ignorance, he will now maintain his prerogative, and will not give his glory to graven images. He will perform his word because he will not lose the honour of being true to it, nor be ever charged with falsehood by the worshippers of false gods. ”

“ The idea of the Messiah shall notwithstanding be realized, in accordance with the promise, within his own house. The vision of the future which passes before his soul is none other than the picture of the Messiah detached from its subjectivity. ”

“ The great objection which the Jews made against Jesus being the Messiah was his ignominious death and sufferings. The cross of Christ was to the Jews a stumbling-block, because it did by no means agree with the idea they had framed of the Messiah; but Paul here alleges and makes it out undeniably, not only that it was possible he might be the Messiah, though he suffered, but that, being the Messiah, it was necessary he should suffer. He could not be made perfect but by sufferings; for, if he had not died, he could not have risen again from the dead. ”

“ It is difficult to get any words that actually came from Jesus in which he claimed to be the Jewish Messiah (rendered in Greek by “the Christ”) or to be a part of the godhead, or in which he explained the doctrine of the Atonement or urged any sacrifices or sacraments (that is to say, priestly offices) upon his followers. ”

“ Jesus declares himself to be the long promised Messiah—his claim rests on no slight or doubtful evidence—he came at the very precise time it was foretold the Messiah should appear to the people and the holy city. Christ's ministry was among the people of the Jews—Judea was the land of his nativity—the scene of his labours—the witness of his miracles—he was born at Bethlehem, near Jerusalem, and crucified just "without the gate" of the holy city. ”

“ Second, we dissent from the proposition that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah announced by the prophets, because the church which he founded, and which his successors developed, has offered, during a succession of centuries, most singular contrast to what is described by the Hebrew Scriptures as the immediate consequence of Messiah’s advent, and of his glorious kingdom. The prophet Isaiah declares that when the Messiah appears, peace, love, and union will be permanently established; and every candid man must admit that the world has not realized the accomplishment of this prophecy. ”

“ Now because it is a great stumbling-block to the older Jews to suppose that their conquering Messiah was not only himself conquered but also slain with insults and with the death of a slave, for this cause the Christians spare no pains to shew that the oracles of the older Jews themselves predicted that he should be so slain; and they also labor to shew that the same books of prophecy foretold how the Messiah should be born, and the manner of his life; and that all these predictions are fulfilled in the birth and life of their Christus. ”

“ Not the Messiah but a branch which was to be broken off, nevertheless to be remembered in the covenants of the Lord, that the Messiah should be made manifest unto them in the latter days, in the Spirit of power, unto the bringing of them out of darkness unto light; yea, out of hidden darkness and out of captivity unto freedom. * * * * * For Joseph truly testified, saying: A seer shall the Lord my God raise up, who shall be a choice seer unto the fruit of my loins. * * * * * Thus saith the Lord unto me: A choice seer will I raise up out of the fruit of thy loins ”

“ No other king ever entered Jerusalem in this manner, which had been foretold by the prophets; and therefore what had now happened, ought to have convinced all the Jews that Jesus Christ was indeed the Messiah: but nothing will convince those who are obstinately determined not to believe, and even now, "some of the Pharisees from among the multitude," who chose to think it was blasphemy to give Jesus, a man, the honour due to the Messiah, "said unto him, Master, rebuke thy disciples." ”

“ And so rooted were the Jews in the notion of the Messiah's being a temporal Prince, a conquering Pacificator, and Deliverer, even after the death of Jesus, and the progress of Christianity grounded on the belief of his being the Messiah, that they have in all times of distress, particularly in the apostolic sera, in great numbers followed impostors giving themselves out as the Messiah, with force, and arms, as the way to restore the kingdom of Israel. ”

“ But if Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah, in that character his Deity also is necessarily involved, because the Messiah is surrounded with attributes of divinity in the Old Testament; and our Lord himself as certainly lays claim to those attributes as to the office of “the Christ.” Without referring here to the Scriptural doctrine of a Trinity of divine Persons in the unity of the Godhead, (see Trinity,) it is sufficient now to show that both in the Old and New Testament Scriptures, the Messiah is contemplated as a divine Person. ”

“ It is said that there is in these days a growing feeling amongst the Jews, that the Messiah must have come unobserved by them. Let us pray, that through this feeling, they may be led to see and acknowledge, that Jesus of Nazareth is indeed that Messiah. Great efforts have been made, and are still being made, for the conversion of the Jews, but with little success at present. The time is not yet come for them to be brought into the fold, and made one flock with the Christians, under one Shepherd, Jesus Christ our Lord. ”

“ It having pleased God that, between the time of a Messiah being promised and the time of his coming, there should be delivered by the prophets a variety of marks by which the Messiah was to be known, and distinguished from every other man ”

“ And as we dwell in him, so, too, dwells he in us; and, as man more expands towards divinity, more and more of the divine enters into his being, until he attains unto a fullness of light and truth; of power and glory; until he becomes perfectly one in God, and God in him. This the meaning of the Messiah's prayer, made for all those who become his disciples—"That they all may be one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee: that they also may be one in us" (John 17: 21) . ”

“ Not the Messiah alone reveals God; but, in his degree, every ruler, prophet, priest, every man who stands for wisdom, justice, purity, and devotion, represents him. It is not doctrinal belief in the Messiah, but vital adoption of his spirit and character, of the principles of real goodness, that constitutes the salvation of the disciple. We are to look not for the resurrection of the flesh from the grave, but for the resurrection of the soul from all forms of sin, ignorance, and misery. ”