How do we know that Jesus was the Messiah?
god.allow...@gmail.com
to every creature....
The word "Messiah" means "Anointed One," the name given to the promised
Deliverer who would some day come to the people of Israel as their
great Savior and Redeemer, "anointed" as Prophet, Priest, and King by
God Himself.
Some, of course, are still looking for the fulfillment of these Old
Testament promises in the future, when the "Messiah" will come to
establish a world kingdom of peace and justice centered around the
chosen nation, Israel.
On the other hand, the group of Jewish believers who became the first
founders of Christianity were convinced that Jesus of Nazareth was
their promised Messiah. The name "Christ" is the Greek equivalent of
"Messiah," so that the name Jesus Christ really means "Jesus the
Messiah," or "Jesus the anointed." They preached this truth with such
conviction and power that not only many Jews but, later, a still
greater host of Gentiles, believed on Jesus, both as the Christ and
also as the Lord and Savior of all men.
And indeed they had good reason for such faith. The Old Testament
Messianic prophecies were found to be uniquely fulfilled in the Lord
Jesus Christ. There are hundreds of these prophecies, so that the
possibility of their accidental convergence on any ordinary man is
completely ruled out by the laws of probability.
Some of the prophecies are so framed, in fact, as to preclude their
fulfillment by anyone living after the first century A.D. For example,
the patriarch Jacob said, in Genesis 49:10, "The scepter shall not
depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh
come." The name "Shiloh" is a title of the Messiah, and the prophecy
states that Judah's tribe would remain the chief tribe in Israel, in
particular providing their kings, until Messiah would come. The
prophecy must have been fulfilled prior to the destruction of Judah and
Jerusalem in A.D. 70, by which time certainly all semblance of a
scepter had departed from Judah.
Similarly the promise was given to King David that the Messiah should
be one of his descendants, as the King eternal, the one of whom God
said, "I will establish the throne of his kingdom for ever" (II Samuel
7:13). Isaiah said, "There shall come forth a rod out of the stem
(literally 'stump') of Jesse (that is David's father), and a Branch
shall grow out of his roots" (Isaiah 11:1). This is another name of the
Messiah, and indicates that, even after it would appear that the family
tree of Jesse has been cut down, yet one Branch will grow out of the
stump. Evidently the very last one who could be known to have come of
this lineage would finally prove to be the promised Messiah!
This was fulfilled uniquely in Jesus. His foster father, Joseph, was in
the royal line from David and thus held the legal right to the throne
(Matthew 1:1-16). His mother, Mary, was also a descendant of David, as
shown by her genealogy in Luke 3:23-31. But ever since the time of
Jesus, it would be quite impossible to establish the legal or
biological lineage of any pretender to David's throne, as all the
ancient genealogical records were destroyed soon after that.
An even more striking prophecy is given in Daniel 9:24-27. There Daniel
was told explicitly that Messiah would come 69 "sabbaths" (that is, 69
sabbatical years - a total of 483 years) after the decree was given to
rebuild Jerusalem, which at that time lay in ruins after
Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, had destroyed it.
Such a decree was given later by the Persian emperor. Although the
exact date of the decree is somewhat uncertain, the termination date of
the prophecy must have been some time in the first century A.D. In
fact, it must have been before the destruction of the city and the
temple by the Romans in A.D. 70, because the prophecy said quite
explicitly: "After (the 483 years) shall Messiah be cut off, but not
for himself; and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy
the city and the sanctuary" (Daniel 9:26). Not only must Messiah come
before this destruction, but He was also to be "cut off," rejected and
killed, before it came.
It is obvious that no one but Jesus could have fulfilled these
prophecies. The prophecies absolutely preclude any still future
Messiah, except that even that hope also will find its fulfillment in
the second coming of Christ.
And then, of course, there are still hundreds of other prophecies, all
of which were fulfilled by Jesus Christ: His virgin birth (Isaiah
7:14); His birth in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2); His sacrificial death
(Isaiah 53:5); His crucifixion (Psalm 22:14-18); His bodily
resurrection (Psalm 16:10); and many others. All of these unite in
their witness that "Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God" (John 20:31).
The probability that hundreds of such specific predictions, each quite
independent of the others, could all be fulfilled concurrently in one
individual, is unlikely in the highest degree, especially in view of
the miraculous nature of many of them (e.g., the virgin birth, the
resurrection, etc.). No rational conclusion seems possible except that
Jesus is all He claims - Messiah, Savior, Lord and God.
Jesus.Freak
love it got some work to do my self now.