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One of the primary ways that we know that Jesus was not the Messiah
was simply because he did not fulfill any of the Messianic prophecies.
Many people have written on this subject, both in books and
online. This article will not add anything new to what they have
written, but since so many people write me about this subject,
evidently this article needs to be here at this site as well.
The Prophets have written a great deal about what the Messiah
will do when he comes. Likewise, the Oral Torah has much to say
about this as well, of course. Numerous Rabbis or the post-Talmudic
era have collected these teachings and written about them. I
shall write some of what has been written by the Rabbis. I hope
and plan to quote many of the verses from Tanach (Jewish Bible)
in a separate article one of these days. (To write in detail
all the Talmudic and Midrashic passages would be too much for
me to do.)
The Messiah will be a human being, the child of two human
parents. He will be by unbroken patrilineal descent the undisputed
heir of King David.
The Messiah will be the unchallenged king of all Jews everywhere
in the world. (When I say unchallenged, I mean that none of the
Jews will challenge him, once it is understood who he is. There
is little doubt in my mind that the Catholic Church -- and perhaps
many Protestant Churches as well -- will challenge him, and call
him the "antichrist." But they will soon realize their
error, because they will have no power against the true and only
Messiah.) He will be anointed with the special anointing oil
that the Prophets used when appointing kings. The word "messiah"
is Hebrew for "annointed."
The King Messiah will reinstate the royal dynasty of David
to its ancestral regal status. He will be king, and his son will
be king after him. The King Messiah will live a very long life.
When he dies, his son will become king. When his son dies, also
after a long life, the grandson will be king after him. After
the grandson's reign, this world will come to an end. The world
will be dormant for one thousand years, and then the World to
Come will begin and last for all eternity. We will be resurrected,
which means that our souls will return to our bodies, and we
will live forever on this, earth, which will also be renewed.
The King Messiah will be very active in the Holy Temple. He
will reinstate the Sanhedrin, our highest court, and they will
reinstate the High Priest. Together, they will rebuild the Holy
Temple. It is possible that the Messiah will not be anointed
king until after the Holy Temple has been rebuilt, but in any
case from the beginning he will lead all the Jews.
Sacrifices will once again be brought at the Holy Temple.
The Messiah will lead us in war to defend us when enemies
of the Jews begin the War of Gog and Magog. The enemies of the
Jews will attempt to destroy us, as they have been attempting
to do for millennia, but they will not succeed. Nevertheless,
great destruction will take place, unless everyone repents first.
If everyone repents, the War of Gog and Magog will not take place.
The King Messiah will gather the scattered Jews from all over
the world. The lost Ten Tribes of Israel will be restored to
the Kingdom of Israel, and the King Messiah will rule all twelve
Tribes. He will also restore the family systems within each Tribe
as they had originally functioned.
The King Messiah and the Sanhedrin will restore the Sabbatical
system and the Jubilee (which involve seven-year counts and a
fifty-year count), as well as all other Commandments that we
are unable to fulfill today. He will uphold and restore complete
performance of the commandments and complete obedience to Hashem
and His Torah. He will cause all Jews in the entire world to
fulfill the Commandments of the Torah, and to uphold and strengthen
the one and only true Judaism. Likewise, he will succeed in getting
all the nations of the world, everyone alive, to acknowledge
and serve the One True G-d, Hashem. This does not mean that they
will convert and become Jews. It means that they will keep the
Seven Laws that Hashem commanded the children of Noah.
The Messiah will not cause any changes in the Commandments,
nor will he add to them or subtract from them. He will certainly
not start a new religion, nor will his followers start a new
religion.
The Messiah will regain the entire Land of Israel for the
Jews, and the boundaries of the land will be as great as those
promised to Abraham.
The King Messiah will be extremely learned in Torah and absolutely
observant of all the Commandments as taught and explained in
the Oral and Written Torah.
There will be utter peace in the world. After the King Messiah
has been victorious, not a single nation will dare consider waging
war, and no nation will rule over any other. People won't even
study warfare or battle tactics anymore. And no one will have
any reason to fear anyone else, ever again. There will be no
racism or other forms of oppression, ever again.
The nations will send their emissaries to the King Messiah,
and the King Messiah will teach the world how to live in peace,
and how to want to live in peace. Then, everyone in the world
will enjoy eternal peace, for as long as this world will last.
The great Rabbi, Rav Shlomoh Freifeld, of blessed memory, said
in a talk he once gave that I attended that the Messiah will
be a great teacher.
Good things will be easily available to everyone. When the
Messianic Era comes, there will be no poverty, no war, no hardships,
no reason for jealousy or competition, and no boredom. Everything
anyone needs will be easily and quickly available, so that good
things will seem to grow on trees.
Our primary concern will be in growing more and more spiritual,
and we will all enjoy doing this.
The Messiah will not need to perform any miracles to prove
who he is. Nor would the miracles be very significant. The Messiah's
purpose is to bring about the return of the Jews from exile,
to restore our united practice of the Commandments of the Torah,
to raise our conciousness to a high level of fear and love of
Hashem, and to reinstate the Jewish kingdom in the Holy Land
of Israel as Hashem originally established it under King David.
Those are the Messiah's essential purposes. Even bringing peace
and affluence to the world will be only so that the world will
be able to peacefully pursue our purpose of serving Hashem through
Torah study and prayer -- Jews as Jews, and Gentiles as Gentiles.
Performing miracles is not particularly meaningful, since the
Messiah will be an obviously righteous man, and the Torah commands
us to obey the righteous.
What I'm driving at here is that all the miracles in the universe
do not make someone Messiah, if he is not righteous. jesus, who
contradicted the Torah, could not have been the Messiah, no matter
how many miracles they claim he performed. The real Messiah,
when he comes, may or may not perform miracles, but he will certainly
not contradict the Torah in any way, shape or form.
The King Messiah may decide not to perform overt miracles,
but he will nevertheless be immediately recognized as a man who
can judge the inner essence and spirituality of people. His wisdom
will be recognized by all, and many representatives of all the
nations will also come to learn wisdom from him and get his advice.
And no one in the universe will have any doubt that the Messiah
has come, and we won't have to argue with people about whether
or not the Messiah has come. There will no longer be any missionaries,
and no one will be teaching anyone else about any other religions,
except maybe as history.
Everyone in the world will see the prophecies fulfilled, and
there will be no doubts about any of it.
In every generation, the potential exists for the Messiah
to come. The Torah says, in speaking of the coming of the Messiah,
"In its time I will bring it quickly" (Isaiah 60:21).
The Talmud explains that there are two ways the Messiah can come.
Hashem has established a final time, a deadline. If we repent,
the Messiah will come quickly, before the deadline. If we do
not repent, the Messiah will nevertheless come at the deadline
(Sanhedrin 98a).
If we merit it, the Redemption will come quickly, and we will
see many open and overt miracles.
If we do not merit the Redemption when the deadline comes,
if we have not repented by then,it will happen in stages. It
will take longer to happen, and there will be no or few open
miracles. And there will be war first. Hashem will cause a king
as evil as Haman to pass laws against us, and he will oppress
us until we repent. And to destroy us, he will set into motion
the war of Gog and Magog, which you may have heard of under the
inexplicable name of "Armageddon."
The great Chofetz Chayim, the leading Rabbi around a century
ago, said that the war of Gog and Magog will take place in three
stages. The first stage, he said, was World War One. He predicted
that the second stage would be much worse, and he predicted the
precise year of the beginning of World War Two.
But if we repent, the Messiah can come even now, right this
very minute.
How is this possible? In each generation there is one (or
more) righteous person who is worthy of being the Messiah, if
the generation repents and the time is right for the Messiah
to come. In every generation, since we have not all fully repented,
the potential Messiah of each generation has lived his life,
and passed away, as do all people, whether righteous or not,
completely unaware that he would have been the Messiah.
Some people think that the greatest person, the most righteous
person of each generation is the potential Messiah of that generation.
Often, they base it on the person's notoriety. This is an error.
Maimonides teaches that the Messiah can even be an unknown righteous
person, a quiet, private person that not too many people know
about. We make the mistake of thinking that we always know who
the most righteous person of every generation is. But this is
an error. The most righteous person could live in secret, doing
what he must do privately and quietly. And we simple people are
in any case not capable of judging who is more righteous than
who, because we can't read minds and we don't know what's in
anyone's hearts.
If we all repent, the potential Messiah of this generation
will become the Messiah. Note that he is not yet the Messiah,
and he was not born the Messiah. He was simply a very righteous
person. He himself has no idea that he is the potential Messiah
of that generation. Certainly, the people at large have no idea
who the potential Messiah is.
If we make ourselves ready for the Messiah, Hashem will make
the potential Messiah of the generation into the actual Messiah.
Hashem will send the Spirit of Messiah that He created before
He created the universe, and the potential Messiah of the generation
will thereupon become the actual Messiah. The Messiah will then
proceed to fulfill all the Prophecies that he is destined to
fulfill.
Please understand something: Hashem loves and wants all of
His children. He wants none to be left out when the Messiah comes.
Hashem therefore wants all Jews to repent, and all of us brought
into the Messianic Era. Just a few won't do, and even one left
behind is too many. So we can't look at any particular group
and expect their righteousness to bring the Messiah. Each and
every one of us must work to improve ourselves.
Jewish Law requires us to pray that the redemption and the
Messiah come soon, and to eagerly anticipate it happening. We
must, each day, continue to pray and continue to hope that the
Messiah will come, even though he did not come yesterday, and
he did not come this morning.
For we know that the Messiah will come, because Hashem has
promised that he will come.
May it be Hashem's will that we all merit the coming of the
Messiah immediately, very soon, and may he come quickly.
To learn more about the Messianic Era, and also the World
to Come, go to the "Life, the Afterlife, and the Soul Gateway."
http://www.beingjewish.com/toshuv/real_messiah.html |