Messianic prophecy

“ 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. ”

“ Messianic prophecies, in the most common acceptation of the term, are such as connect the hope of salvation and the glory of God's people with an ideal king, who, originating in Israel is to rule the world. This king is as such divinely anointed, but this attribute does not become a distinctive designation in the Old Testament. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There are passages enough, clearly predictive of the Messiah, and clearly accomplished in him, to afford a solid foundation for the argument from prophecy, as here instituted, without looking out for any other of more nice and ambiguous interpretation.
Hence we see the dangerous mistake of those, who contend that the argument from prophecy hath not, of itself, the nature of a direct positive proof of our religion. Prophecies fulfilled, I mean such prophecies as those in question, prove invincibly the divine inspiration of the prophets. ”

“ When once consigned to that abode of wo, there is a great gulf fixed, even the unchangeable decree of Omnipotence; a barrier stronger than walls of brass, and cannot be surmounted, or destroyed. [106] The word here rendered hell, (in the Greek, hades,) is the same as the Jews, before the Babylonish captivity, used for the grave, and is the sense in which it must be here understood. This verse is prophetic of the resurrection of the Messiah; which doctrine is taught in many parts of the Old Testament, by type, figure, and prophecy ”

“ 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. ”

“ If Jesus be the Messiah prophesied of in the old Jewish books, then he is not God: if he be not the Messiah, Jewish prophecy is silent as regards him altogether, and an appeal to prophecy is absolutely useless. ”

“ Many who object to the spiritual view, misconceive what is meant by the spiritual exposition; and consider it as setting aside altogether the historical fulfilment of prophecy; whereas the question is simply between religion and politics, between church and state; in short, whether the spiritual or temporal history of the world should be looked to, for the fulfilment of those prophecies which foretel the progress of Christianity, or the Messiah's kingdom. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We cannot conceive that heathen women, and those actuated by dæmons, should speak more clearly and fully of the Messiah than those holy men did who, we are sure, were moved by the Holy Ghost, nor that the Gentiles should be entrusted with larger and earlier discoveries of the great salvation than that people of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ was to come. But enough, if not more than enough, of the pretenders to prophecy. ”

“ But in the early times of Apollos, and during the next twenty or thirty years, before the Gospels had been committed to writing, there must have been a far stronger gravitation towards the Old Testament and a far more powerful tendency to find something in the life of Christ to fulfil every prediction about the Messiah and to correspond to every miracle wrought by Moses and the prophets. Judged in the light of these considerations, our present record of Christ's life ought to surprise us not by the number, but by the paucity, of the fulfilments of prophecy and the miracles contained in them. ”

“ In the beginning of the age of prophesy in the Old Testament, there were schools of the prophets, and, before that, the Spirit of prophecy came upon the elders of Israel that were appointed to the government; but now the Spirit shall be poured out upon persons of inferior rank, and such as were not brought up in the schools of the prophets, for the kingdom of the Messiah is to be purely spiritual. ”

“ The far distant islands are in expectation, and ships are waiting to carry them. I shall choose from among my people men whom I shall send to the Gentiles that are beyond the seas, in Africa, in Lydia, in Italy, in Greece, to the islands afar off, to them that have not heard of me and have not seen my glory.” Again, the reign of the Messias is everywhere represented as having no end; it is to endure for ever. We shall only mention the prediction of the Messianic kingdom contained in the book of Daniel, which was familiar to the Jews, and one in which they trusted. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We have no words to denote greater ideas, than these: the mind of man cannot elevate itself to nobler conceptions. Of such transcendent worth and excellence is that Jesus said to be, to whom all the prophets bear witness!
3. Lastly, the declared purpose, for which the Messiah, prefigured by so long a train of prophecy, came into the world, corresponds to all the rest of the representation. It was not to deliver an oppressed nation from civil tyranny, or to erect a great civil empire, that is, to atchieve one of those acts, which history accounts most heroic. ”

“ 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. ”

“ NEARLY all religious history is prophetic of the coming of Saviors, Messiahs, Redeemers, and virgin-born Gods. Most religious countries, and more than a score of religious systems, had a standing prophecy that a divine deliverer would descend from heaven and relieve them from their depressed state, and ameliorate their condition. And in most cases that prophecy was believed to have been fulfilled by the birth of a being, who, as he approached the goal of moral and intellectual manhood exhibited such remarkable proof of superiority of mind as to be readily accepted as the promised Messiah. ”

“ 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” ”

“ Now, if we can show as we think we can, and as we shall try to do in a later part of this article that the later Jews expected the Messianic resurrection to be the prelude to an ascent into heaven, and not the beginning of a gross earthly immortality, it will powerfully confirm the theory which we have just indicated. ”

“ It is equally necessary that the small, as well as the great and conspicuous parts of prophecy should be fulfilled; and it is highly satisfactory to trace, amid the more minute events connected with the life and death of Jesus, so striking a correspondence with the Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah. ”

“ But, though the prophecies of Christ’s first coming (so largely and accurately considered by many great writers) be not the immediate subject of our inquiry, yet they must not be wholly overlooked by us. It will contribute very much to rectify and enlarge our ideas of the divine conduct, in this whole dispensation of prophecy, and to make way for that conviction, which the prophecies of Christ’s second coming were intended to give, if we stop a while to contemplate the method and œconomy of that prophetic system, by 105 which the first advent of the Messiah was announced and prepared. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ As a matter of fact there is nothing in the life or teachings of Jesus, as recorded in the New Testament, that at all corresponds to the personality or character of the Messiah of Hebrew prophecy. And may I add here, that the Messiah of Hebrew prophecy, for whose coming the Jews were looking at that time, and for which most of the Jews have been looking ever since, is but a fiction and a myth, born entirely out of the patriotic devotion and fervid poetic fancy of the Old Hebrew prophets? ”

“ Several of Christs miracles seem to have grown out of the Messianic prophecies; that is, were manufactured in order to fulfill the prophecies. There was, as we learn by the Gospels, an impression deep and wide-spread among the disciples of Christ, that the Old Testament was full of texts foretelling the advent of their Messiah, and foreshadowing his practical life. Under this conviction, a number of passages are quoted in the Gospels from the prophets as referring to Christ, but which, however, the context shows could not possibly have been written with any such thought or intention. ”

“ We have in this author a practically complete statement of later Christian Chiliasm. There is indeed one important feature missing. The specific duration of the Messianic kingdom is not given. The advent of the kingdom also is not pressingly imminent.
In the Parables 94-64 B.C. we find certain other elements. This writer holds to the eternal Messianic kingdom but the scene of this kingdom is not the earth as at present existing but a new heaven and a new earth. The Messiah is no longer a mere man but a supernatural being. ”

“ 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. ”