The Old Testament lists many evidence of what the Messiah will do. For example, it says that the Messiah will become the King of Israel and will establish peace and justice forever.
Jeremiah 23:5
"The days are coming," declares the LORD, "when I will raise up to David a righteous Branch, a King who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land.
Followers of Jesus believe these prophecies will be fulfilled when Jesus comes back to establish peace and justice and rule the earth from Jerusalem.
However, there were many other prophecies in the Old Testament as to what the Messiah will do. One of those things was raising the dead. For example, when John sends a message from prison through his disciples to ask Jesus if he is the Messiah, Jesus basically tells him that it should be obvious he is the Messiah from all the miracles that he is performing.
Matthew 11:4-5
Jesus replied, "Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy[a]are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor."
Performing miracles was proof that Jesus is the Messiah, which is why whenever Jesus performed miracles, such as the raising of Lazarus, more and more people in Israel believed in him as the Messiah of Israel.
Most of these Messianic prophecies are given in Isaiah:
Isaiah 29:18
In that day the deaf will hear the words of the scroll, and out of gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind will see.
Isaiah 35:5
Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped.
Isaiah 35:6
Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy.
Isaiah 61:1
The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners
Basically the Messiah's job is to fix everything that's wrong with the world. That's his mission from God. A part of that mission of Jesus was fulfilled during 3 years of his ministry on earth, a part of it is being fulfilled right now, and the rest of it will be fulfilled in the End of Days, the ultimate End of History.
PS: By the way, I was recently reading these prophecies and was surprised by something. I thought it was interesting that the Bible says that in God's Kingdom we will not remember the past. I have always wondered about this, and it looks like the answer is that we will not remember our past lives. Check this out:
Isaiah 65:17
"Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind."
Another interesting thing is that we will learn directly from God, but we will not teach each other:
Isaiah 2:3
Many peoples will come and say, "Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths." The law will go out from Zion, the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
Jeremiah 31:34
No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,' because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest," declares the LORD. "For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more."
In fact, everyone will be filled with knowledge of God:
Isaiah 11:9
They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.
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Showing posts with label Jesus the Messiah. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jesus the Messiah. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Saturday, August 2, 2008
The Destiny of Church and Israel is the Same
In John 10:16, Jesus talks about Gentiles:
"16And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd."
The important thing to highlight here is this. There is no separate destiny for the Jewish people and a separate destiny for the Church. As Apostle Paul says, we have been grafted into the the tree of the Jewish faith through Abraham and we are "one flock with one shepherd." God doesn't have two wives. His only wife is Israel and we have become a part of it. There will be no separate 1,000 Year Reign for the Jews. It will be both for the faithful Jews and for the faithful Christians. All those who follow the Jewish Messiah Jesus will reign with him on earth when he comes into his Kingdom. Indeed, we are his Kingdom.
Revelation 5:9,10
"You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. 10You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth."
But, I don't think that "those who came before" were the Pharisees.
8All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them.
Because many Pharisees followed Jesus, invited him into their homes and synagogues, otherwise helped him in his ministry, and then became the first members of Messiah's Church. So, he couldn't have been talking about all Pharisees.
I am pretty sure that Jesus was talking here about the false Messiahs, because he said that while those who came before were false, he is the only true door of salvation.
There have been a number of false "Messiahs" before Jesus and many after Jesus. I don't know the exact number of "Messiahs" before Jesus, but there were at least 50 Jewish leaders after Jesus who have claimed to be the Messiah! There's even a book I saw about all of them:
50 Jewish Messiahs: The Untold Life Stories of 50 Jewish Messiahs Since Jesus and How They Changed the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Worlds
http://www.amazon.com/50-Jewish-Messiahs-Stories-Christian/dp/9652292885/
These may have been good people, but they were all obviously false messiahs, because whether they came before Jesus or after him, none of them fulfill the Messianic prophecies. So, in God's book, they are all liars, in spite of the many good deeds they may have done.
I think Jesus talks about these future self-annointed "Messiahs" when he says in another place that "I have come in the name of the Father and yet you do not accept me, but many will come in their own name and you will accept them".
Even today there is an Orthodox Jewish movement which centers in Brooklyn, New York, that believes that Rabbi Mendel Schneerson (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/schneerson.html) was the Jewish Messiah. He was born in 1902 in Nikolayev, Ukraine and died in 1994 in Brooklyn, NY. He was a very smart and wise man. But he is obviously not the true messiah. The amazing thing for me was that his followers actually believe that he arose from the dead and that his spirit is with them today. And they believe this even though no one has seen him walking the earth after his death. How much more reason we have to believe in Jesus' resurrection, when he was seen by over 500 people walking the earth after his death!
"16And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd."
The important thing to highlight here is this. There is no separate destiny for the Jewish people and a separate destiny for the Church. As Apostle Paul says, we have been grafted into the the tree of the Jewish faith through Abraham and we are "one flock with one shepherd." God doesn't have two wives. His only wife is Israel and we have become a part of it. There will be no separate 1,000 Year Reign for the Jews. It will be both for the faithful Jews and for the faithful Christians. All those who follow the Jewish Messiah Jesus will reign with him on earth when he comes into his Kingdom. Indeed, we are his Kingdom.
Revelation 5:9,10
"You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. 10You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth."
But, I don't think that "those who came before" were the Pharisees.
8All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them.
Because many Pharisees followed Jesus, invited him into their homes and synagogues, otherwise helped him in his ministry, and then became the first members of Messiah's Church. So, he couldn't have been talking about all Pharisees.
I am pretty sure that Jesus was talking here about the false Messiahs, because he said that while those who came before were false, he is the only true door of salvation.
There have been a number of false "Messiahs" before Jesus and many after Jesus. I don't know the exact number of "Messiahs" before Jesus, but there were at least 50 Jewish leaders after Jesus who have claimed to be the Messiah! There's even a book I saw about all of them:
50 Jewish Messiahs: The Untold Life Stories of 50 Jewish Messiahs Since Jesus and How They Changed the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Worlds
http://www.amazon.com/50-Jewish-Messiahs-Stories-Christian/dp/9652292885/
These may have been good people, but they were all obviously false messiahs, because whether they came before Jesus or after him, none of them fulfill the Messianic prophecies. So, in God's book, they are all liars, in spite of the many good deeds they may have done.
I think Jesus talks about these future self-annointed "Messiahs" when he says in another place that "I have come in the name of the Father and yet you do not accept me, but many will come in their own name and you will accept them".
Even today there is an Orthodox Jewish movement which centers in Brooklyn, New York, that believes that Rabbi Mendel Schneerson (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/schneerson.html) was the Jewish Messiah. He was born in 1902 in Nikolayev, Ukraine and died in 1994 in Brooklyn, NY. He was a very smart and wise man. But he is obviously not the true messiah. The amazing thing for me was that his followers actually believe that he arose from the dead and that his spirit is with them today. And they believe this even though no one has seen him walking the earth after his death. How much more reason we have to believe in Jesus' resurrection, when he was seen by over 500 people walking the earth after his death!
Friday, August 1, 2008
Christian Unity and Denominations
Does Jesus approve of the fact that there are so many Christian denominations, full of his followers who claim theirs is the correct way of following Him? One thing is for sure, Jesus did not create denominations. In fact, he probably really wanted to avoid the splintering of his future disciples into so many different groups. There are over 40,000 Christian denominations today! That could not have been the way Jesus wanted his bride to be split up. If you read his amazing prayer to the Holy Father in John 17, you will notice that Jesus thought that our "complete unity" as followers of Jesus will be an important witness to the world that Jesus was really sent by God. In fact, if you read the passage closely, Jesus seems to already know that there will be many different denominations of his followers in the future. That's why he says, "may they (those believe in the future) be brought to complete unity."
John 17:11,20-23
"Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name—the name you gave me—so that they may be one as we are one. ... "My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
You should really read the whole chapter 17 in John. It is very deep and powerful:
English - http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john%2017&version=31
Russian - http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john%2017;&version=13;
New Russian - http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john%2017;&version=39;
Apostle Paul also very much wanted to avoid the natural human splitting inside of churches because church members prefer the teaching of one Christian teacher or another. Apostle Paul specifically said, "Do not say I am Paul's or I am
While I think that the rise of many denominations was often a healthy development in history, it is not the ideal that Jesus is looking for. The trouble with us humans is that once we form a particular church or a denomination, over the period of decades and centuries we also form lots and lots of human traditions that have very little or nothing to do with the Bible or Jesus. And if this process is not kept in check by constant reformation and return back to the Bible, these traditions will keep growing and growing until they become more important than the Bible itself. (You can even see this in Baptist churches.) For example, in the doctrine of the Catholic Church, the Tradition of the Church is considered just as important as the Bible. They say you cannot consider the Bible without the huge tradition they have built up over many centuries, in fact making human tradition more important than the Word of God. (Which is exactly what Jesus warned against many times!) So, what Martin Luther, Jan Hus, John Calvin, and many others did in the Reformation, was a very healthy development. They tried to bring the Church back to the Bible as a true source of our faith and Jesus as the true Head of the Church, not the Pope.
So, the Reformation was a very positive development. But the trouble with the Reformation is that the people who followed these leaders decided to form their own denominations and these denominations were even called by the names of these leaders. So, you have the Lutheran denominations that started from followers of Luther. (Even though Luther explicitly asked them to reform the existing church instead of starting their own denomination.) You have the Jan Hus denomination that was started by his followers in Bohemia (Czech Republic today). You have an entire Calvinist movement consisting of many denominations (Reformed, Presbyterian, etc.) that was started by John Calvin. So, the reality is that many denominations were started by one single man and are sustained by his name and his teaching. And while the teaching of these leaders may have been much better than the heresies that the Catholic Church offered, it is still not the real thing, which we should seek only in the Bible. The same thing goes for many contemporary charismatic churches that were founded by one man and are sometimes even called by his name. Our Church can only be called the Church of Jesus, not the Church of Luther, the Church of Calvin, or the Church of any other human leader, because the church cannot be anybody's property. It belongs only to Jesus the Messiah.
John 17:11,20-23
"Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name—the name you gave me—so that they may be one as we are one. ... "My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
You should really read the whole chapter 17 in John. It is very deep and powerful:
English - http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john%2017&version=31
Russian - http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john%2017;&version=13;
New Russian - http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john%2017;&version=39;
Apostle Paul also very much wanted to avoid the natural human splitting inside of churches because church members prefer the teaching of one Christian teacher or another. Apostle Paul specifically said, "Do not say I am Paul's or I am
While I think that the rise of many denominations was often a healthy development in history, it is not the ideal that Jesus is looking for. The trouble with us humans is that once we form a particular church or a denomination, over the period of decades and centuries we also form lots and lots of human traditions that have very little or nothing to do with the Bible or Jesus. And if this process is not kept in check by constant reformation and return back to the Bible, these traditions will keep growing and growing until they become more important than the Bible itself. (You can even see this in Baptist churches.) For example, in the doctrine of the Catholic Church, the Tradition of the Church is considered just as important as the Bible. They say you cannot consider the Bible without the huge tradition they have built up over many centuries, in fact making human tradition more important than the Word of God. (Which is exactly what Jesus warned against many times!) So, what Martin Luther, Jan Hus, John Calvin, and many others did in the Reformation, was a very healthy development. They tried to bring the Church back to the Bible as a true source of our faith and Jesus as the true Head of the Church, not the Pope.
So, the Reformation was a very positive development. But the trouble with the Reformation is that the people who followed these leaders decided to form their own denominations and these denominations were even called by the names of these leaders. So, you have the Lutheran denominations that started from followers of Luther. (Even though Luther explicitly asked them to reform the existing church instead of starting their own denomination.) You have the Jan Hus denomination that was started by his followers in Bohemia (Czech Republic today). You have an entire Calvinist movement consisting of many denominations (Reformed, Presbyterian, etc.) that was started by John Calvin. So, the reality is that many denominations were started by one single man and are sustained by his name and his teaching. And while the teaching of these leaders may have been much better than the heresies that the Catholic Church offered, it is still not the real thing, which we should seek only in the Bible. The same thing goes for many contemporary charismatic churches that were founded by one man and are sometimes even called by his name. Our Church can only be called the Church of Jesus, not the Church of Luther, the Church of Calvin, or the Church of any other human leader, because the church cannot be anybody's property. It belongs only to Jesus the Messiah.
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