Messianism

“ When the same prophet (Ch. lx.) foretelling the glory of the Messiah's reign, by the conversion of the Gentiles, says The abundance [pg 008] of the sea shall be converted unto thee; the forces of the Gentiles shall come unto thee, it is evident that the sea does not mean the literal sea, but figuratively the Gentile nations, as afterwards expressed.
When he styles the Messiah's kingdom, Zion, the city of the Lord, whose walls shall be called salvation, and whose gates praise; a spiritual and not a literal city must be intended. ”

“ There seems to have been an almost boundless competition amongst the disciples of the various religious orders, including Jews, Pagans, and Christians, as to who could, or whose God could outstrip all competitors in achieving astonishing prodigies that should set the laws of nature at defiance. And no devout disciple, who had good inventive powers, would allow any rival to outdo him. Nothing could authenticate the claim of the adopted Messiah to the throne or heaven, or a participation in the Divine Essence, like a miraculous display of divine power. ”

“ The Messiah's kingdom is allowed to be the chief subject of these prophecies; but if Christ be the Messiah, his kingdom is a spiritual one, and what relates to it must be spiritually understood. We marvel at the blindness which prevents the Jews from perceiving in prophecy the numerous intimations of a spiritual Messiah, all of which appear to us [pg vi] to have been distinctly fulfilled in the person of Christ; and yet that very blindness to their spirituality is what prevents ourselves from understanding other prophecies relating to the same subject. ”

“ It is far from clear, then, that thou art the Messiah promised to our fathers; perhaps it is an evil spirit which, through thee, operates these wonders before our eyes, and imposes upon the credulity of the vulgar; so many deceivers have already appeared in Judea, who, giving themselves out for the great Prophet who is to come, have seduced the people, and at last drawn down upon themselves the punishment due to their imposture. Keep us no longer in doubt: if thou be the Christ, tell us plainly, and in such a way as that room shall no longer be left either for doubt or for mistake. ”

“ The resulting character of the Messiah is a fair picture of one who realises the very ideal of a strong and righteous ruler of men. 'Wisdom and understanding' refer mainly to the clearness of intellectual and moral insight; 'counsel and might,' to the qualities which give sound practical direction and vigour to follow, and carry through, the decisions of practical wisdom; while 'the knowledge and fear of the Lord' define religion by its two parts of acquaintance with God founded on love, and reverential awe which prompts to obedience. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If there had been no Mosaism, so to say, there could have been no Messiah. So far from being opposed either to the form or spirit of the religion of Israel, the proclamation of the Messiah was its necessary complement, and could only be intelligible by confirmation of its truth and maintenance of its validity. Christianity—belief in the Messiah—in its earlier phases, drew its whole nourishment from roots that sank deeply into Mosaism. ”

“ You have been brought up, my daughter, to look upon us as a deluded and despicable sect, who have justly incurred the scorn and punishment that have so heavily been laid upon us, because we have forsaken the religion of our forefathers, and declared our belief that He, whom our chief priests and elders considered worthy of a cruel death, was indeed the Lord Christ, the long-promised Messiah. ”

“ As many as are justified in Messiah's righteousness are also being regenerated and sanctified by His blessed Spirit, and there is not one arrayed in the beautiful robe of His perfection who does not also make it the aim of his life to perfect holiness in the fear of God now, and who shall not in the end be conformed to His image, and be actually and fully like Him in character. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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) . ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In a word, the Jewish doctrine of the Messiah marks the fusion of Pharisaism with the national religious feeling of the Maccabean revival. This national feeling, claiming a leader against the Romans as well as deliverance from the Sadducee aristocracy, again sets the idea of the kingship rather than that of resurrection and individual retribution in the central place. Henceforward the doctrine of the Messiah is the centre of popular hope and the object of theological culture. The New Testament is the best evidence of its influence on the masses (see especially Matt. xxi. 9) ”

“ Now, had such a Messiah appeared in Judæa, it is perfectly certain, from the character of human nature, that his earthly circumstances would have a tendency to cherish in the people, as a nation, and as individuals, the bad principles of pride and ambition. Worldly pomp and circumstances would have had the sanction of the highest authority in the person of their Messiah; and it would have induced the desire in all hearts to elevate themselves as nearly as possible to his temporal condition. The pride of the human heart would have been fostered and not humbled. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Messiah's Kingdom cannot mean the rule of any one Incarnation, past, present, or to come; the possibility of any such autocracy being a source of permanent health or prosperity is precluded by the very form of those equations according to which (whether we are aware of it or not) we must think whenever we think sanely. An embodied perfection, who shall spare other people the trouble of thinking for themselves, by telling them what they are to do and to believe, may be a suitable ideal for cowards; but no such anomaly can be the Messiah, or will be tolerated by the leaders of living Science. ”

“ Again, in the days of Messiah, all men, as Scripture saith, ‘are to serve God with one accord’; and yet it is very certain that since the appearance of him whom Christians believe to be Messiah, mankind has been split into more hostile divisions on the ground of religious belief, and more antagonistic sects have sprung up, [492] than in any historic age before Christianity was preached. ”

“ It opens with a denunciation against worldly-mindedness, and a declaration of God's purpose to frustrate the schemes, and cut off the hopes of ambition, pride, and avarice, in the judgments pronounced against those cities, which were then the most conspicuous for their riches and power. This is immediately [pg 030] followed, as if by way of contrast, by a view of the spiritual nature of the Messiah's kingdom, founded in meekness and humility, and affording benefits of a very different kind, namely, the taking away of sin, and the redemption of mankind from a state of sin and perdition ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There can be no doubt of the reality and
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universality of the belief, in the Apostolic Church, in the immediate return of the glorified Messiah and speedy "end of all things." (1)
The substance of the preaching of the Apostles in Acts, simply is that Jesus is the Christ, (2) the expected Messiah. (3) Their chief aim is to prove that his sufferings and death had been foretold by the prophets, (4) and that his resurrection establishes his claim to the title. (5) The simplicity of the creed is illustrated by the rapidity with which converts are made. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The certainty of Messiah’s universal dominion is founded, secondly, on his perfect qualification to accomplish the work which the Father hath given him to do. “No one knoweth the Father,” in all the perfection of his nature, all the wisdom of his counsels, and all the immutability of his purposes, “but the Son; and no one knoweth the Son, but the Father,” as he alone is of the same essence, and exhibits the same attributes. Christ is “God manifest in the flesh;” “the brightness of the Father’s glory, and the express image of his person.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the prophetic Scriptures, a divine as well as human nature is attributed to the Messiah; and yet every polytheistic idea is excluded by the assumption of his essential unity with the Most High God. It was expected that the Angel or Revealer of Jehovah, who had often before made himself occasionally visible, and acted as the Mediator between God and the people, in all their transactions, would assume human nature in the person of the Messiah, and redeem and bless both Jews and Gentiles. ”

“ A biographical theory, having posited a Messiah whose Messianic claim is a mystery, a Teacher whose alleged teachings are a mass of conflicting tendencies, and whose disciples admittedly have no Messianic gospel till after his inexplicable execution, following on an impossible trial, may make the assumption that by way of popular myth he was then fortuitously deified by Messianist Jews, and later transformed by other Jews into a Saviour for Gentiles ”