Messianic age

“ The resurrection and final judgment which in the preceding form of belief were the prelude to the everlasting Messianic kingdom on earth, are now transposed to the end of the transitory, early kingdom of the Messiah. This temporary earthly kingdom is no longer the final abode of the risen righteous. They are to enjoy a blessed immortality in the eternal heaven. ”

“ Hence the world will last for six thousand years of toil and labour; then will come one thousand years of Sabbath rest for the people of God in the kingdom of the Messiah.” This idea must have already been very common in the first century before Christ. The combination of Gen. i., Dan. ix. and Ps. xc. 4 was peculiarly fascinating.
Nowhere in the discourses of Jesus is there a hint of a limited duration of the Messianic kingdom. The apostolic epistles are equally free from any trace of chiliasm (neither 1 Cor. xv. 23 seq. nor 1 Thess. iv. 16 seq. points in this direction) . ”

“ In civilization the two parties stood equal, and remained so through the one hundred and seventy troubled years which followed. For more than two centuries following the appearance of the Messiah in the western world, there had been but one people on the land, and these followers of the Messiah—Christians. This was the American golden age—the age of peace, of prosperity, of expansion, until the lands, both in the north and in the south were inhabited by a numerous and happy people. ”

“ He is yet a Jew, and the teaching of the rabbis and of the Old Scriptures has been the coming of some kind of a king—a great Messiah, who, from out little Palestine, shall rule the world in an age of gold. The age, perhaps, is taking something out of the Bible that is not in it. Our own age has done that many times. Is it doing it to-day? Never in this world did imagination reach so high a pitch as it did among the Jews in that wonderful time. Nothing was talked of or thought of, but the coming golden age and the new king, riding in a chariot of the clouds. ”

“ Under all this was a central spiritual germ of a Divine promise and plan. A Messiah was really to come. It was in answering the questions, what kind of a king he was to be, and over what sort of a kingdom he was to reign, that the errors crept in. The Messianic conceptions which have come down to us through the Prophets, the Targums, incidental allusions in the New Testament, the Talmud, and the few other traditions and records yet in existence, are very diverse and sometimes contradictory. ”

“ Not only did the ancients look forward to the time of the coming of the Messiah in the flesh, with delight, but there was another day for which they sought and for which they prayed. Knowing, as they did, that the fall had brought upon them death, and that man was sensual and evil, they longed for a day when the earth might again rest and appear as in the beginning—when evil might be unknown upon its face, and all creation enjoy one undisturbed peace for a thousand years. ”

“ When then rationalism degraded Jesus to a teacher of religion and morals, the Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament became almost entirely without an object, until the gradual unfolding of the idea of the Messiah was recognized in them, and, as there was a return from a merely nominal Christianity to that of the apostles, the gradual subjective preparation of the essential salvation was perceived. ”

“ But the mystic speculations on the origin, activity, and sojourn of the Messiah, which were a favorite theme of the apocalyptic writers and the Haggadists during the pre-Christian and the first Christian centuries, gave way to a more sober mode of thought, in the disappointment that followed the collapse of the great Messianic movements. On the one hand, the Church deified its Messiah and thus relapsed into paganism ”

“ From this fact the whole ancient Christian eschatology was known in later times as “chiliasm”—a name which is not strictly accurate, since the doctrine of the millennium was only one feature in its scheme of the future.
1. This idea that the Messianic kingdom of the future on earth should have a definite duration has—like the whole eschatology of the primitive Church—its roots in the Jewish apocalyptic literature, where it appears at a comparatively late period. ”

“ The Messianic expectation, being directed to supernatural events, had no political character, and one who knew Himself to be the Messiah could never dream of using earthly means for the attainment of His ends ”

“ In fact, we may claim the chronicler's own implied authority for including in the picture of the coming King the characteristics he ascribes to the priest and the prophet. Thus the Messiah of Chronicles is [pg 302] distinctly more spiritual and less secular than the Messiah of popular Jewish enthusiasm in our Lord's own time. Whereas in the chronicler's time the tendency was to spiritualise the idea of the king, the tenure of the office of high-priest by the Maccabæan princes tended rather to secularise the priesthood and to restore older and cruder conceptions of the Messianic King. ”

“ Only a very brief summary of the conceptions current in these writings can be given. The coming of the Messiah will be preceded by the Last Woes. The Messiah is very variously conceived: (1) “a passive, though supreme member of the Messianic Kingdom”; (2) “an active warrior who slays his enemies with his own hand”; (3) “one who slays his enemies by the word of his mouth, and rules by virtue of his justice, faith and holiness” ”

“ Even when the thought of the future age is most prominent, that age does not by any means appear in inevitable connection with a personal Messiah. On the contrary, God Himself, not His instrument the Messiah, is often represented as ushering in the new era when Israel should be blessed. ”

“ It was only in this future form, not as actual, that Jesus spoke of His Messiahship. Modern theology keeps on endeavouring to discover in the title of Son of Man, which is bound up with the future, a humanised present Messiahship. It does so in the conviction that the recognition of a purely future reference in the Messianic consciousness of Jesus would lead in the last result to a modification of the historic basis of our faith, which has itself become [pg 285] historical, and therefore true and self-justifying. ”

“ Any one who holds “historical” miracles to be just as impossible as any other kind, even when they occur in a critical and sceptical work, will be forced to the conclusion that the Messianic eschatological significance attached to the “resurrection experience” by the disciples implies some kind of Messianic eschatological references on the part of the historical Jesus which gave to the [pg 344] “resurrection” its Messianic eschatological significance. ”

“ The Messianic consciousness is rooted far too deep in the sources ever to be removed by a critical process. That Jesus thought He was the Messiah is nearly as certain as that He lived at all. There is a tremendous problem there. It would be no problem if Jesus were an ordinary fanatic or unbalanced visionary ”

“ When they have to do with pusillanimity, desponding at the sight of the heathen world as it seems to be all-powerful,—they then represent the Messiah as the invincible conqueror of the heathen world, who shall subject the whole earth to the kingdom of God. ”

“ The Messiah, as all Jews conceived of Him, was a superhuman being; and His First Coming as a man among men did not count as really Messianic. The whole first generation of Christians looked intently for His Coming in power and great glory, which they believed to be near at hand. ”

“ IN an age when Gods and men were on the most familiar terms, and when the character of one furnished a transcript for the other, and when each consented to act a reciprocal part towards elevating, honoring and glorifying the other, the birth of a God or Messiah was, as a matter of course, regarded as an event of sufficient importance to attract the attention of the great ones of the earth, and even the denizens of heaven also. ”

“ You think of the Messias as a mighty king, who will make Israel great in the eyes of the world, and free it from the power of Rome: but I say to you that even as Moses lifted up the brazen serpent on the tree, so shall I, the Messias, be lifted up on the Cross and die. ”

“ The Messiah will rejoice the living for four hundred years; then, together with all human beings, he will die; then after the world has returned to primeval silence for seven days, the new age, with the final resurrection, will be ushered in. It may be doubted whether this representation harmonizes with what is said elsewhere in 4 Ezra about the Messiah, indeed whether even in this passage the representation is thoroughly consistent. ”

“ These are Messiah’s titles, which evince his equality to the work which he has undertaken—the salvation of the world, and the subjugation of all things unto himself. He is able, not only to set up his kingdom, but also to establish it for ever. It shall never be destroyed, nor left to other people; but shall break in pieces and destroy all other kingdoms, and the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdom of our God and of his Christ. ”

“ The contrast between the obscure beginning and the conspicuous destiny of Messiah is the point of the prophecy. 'I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me.' Strange elevation for a king is a cross! But it is because He has died for men that He has the right to reign over them, and that they 'shall seek' to Him. ”

“ The reference to the human race is also indicated by the connection between "her seed" in this verse, and the words, "Thou shalt bring forth sons," in ver. 16. Finally,—As the person of the Messiah does not yet distinctly appear even in the promises to the Patriarchs, this passage cannot well be explained of a personal Messiah; inasmuch as, by such an explanation, the progressive expansion of the Messianic prophecy in Genesis would be destroyed. ”

“ If the latter, as months and years passed away, the Church must have simply died of inanition, and we should have heard no more of Christianity. If the former hypothesis be preferred, then it is plain that His followers must have determined to start His Messiahship on a new basis. But what was this? How was it to be propounded to the world? How were His other disciples to be persuaded to accept it? Instead of an earthly, the Church for the future must be headed by a heavenly Messiah, who was coming at some future day to take vengeance on His foes. ”

“ In dealing with this greater salvation the relation of time is not observed. " Now, the prophet beholds the author of it in His humiliation and suffering, then the most distant future of Messiah's kingdom presents itself to his enraptured eye the time when Israel shall walk in the light of Jehovah and all the Gentile world shall be converted to Him ; when all that is opposed to God shall be destroyed ; when inward and outward peace shall prevail and all evil caused by sin shall be removed." ”

“ Then the Messiah shall not appear “as a root out of dry ground;” but shall stand forth before heaven and earth “in the glory of the Father, and of his holy angels;” in addition to the glory of his own person as God-man, and the glory of his work as Mediator. Before him, “the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat; the earth also, and the works that are therein, shall be burned up;” and death and hell shall deliver up their dead ”

“ None knows how the rumor started, but during the next few months, ‘soon after the Cold Solstice,’ the prophecy runs, a Messiah is to come to earth, ignorant of his destiny. When he learns it he will offer mankind its ancient liberty. ”

“ The last of days will evanescent die Before the throne, lost in eternity. And Thou wilt gather all the righteous souls Around Thee, that they, face to face, may see Thy glory and behold Thee as Thou art."
Now the Messiah from the crimsoned dust Rose victor, and the heavens sang aloud— The third heaven, of the great Messiah's most Transcendent sufferings which brought endless life To precious souls, as now gone over Him. So sang the heavens.
IV.—Pilate's Wife Bewails the Saviour's Sufferings
The Messiah is seized and bound. ”

“ As the rosy clouds, flushed with his upward beams, seem to cradle the rising sun, so we find, at the first advent of the Sun of Righteousness, a holy radiance brightening the latter days of four aged saints, who were chosen, as it were, to reflect the first rays of coming glory, and bear witness to the Messiah. ”

“ State of the Religious World at Messiah's Birth.—At the time of the birth of the Son of God, the enfeebled world was tottering on its foundations. The national religions which had satisfied the parents, no longer proved sufficient for the children. The new generations could not repose contented within the ancient forms. The gods of every nation, when transported to Rome—then the dominant political power in the world—there lost their oracles, as the nations themselves had there lost their liberty. ”

“ The prophecies regarding the Messiah are so numerous, pointed, various, and improbable, as to set human sagacity utterly at defiance; while they are also connected so as to form a scheme of prophecy, which gradually unrolls before us the advent, the ministry, the death, resurrection, and ascension of the Lord, the progress of his gospel over all the world, and the blessed effects it should produce on individuals, families, and nations. It closes with a view of the second coming of Jesus to conquer the last of his enemies, and take possession of the earth as his inheritance. ”