Chapter Nineteen: A Messiah By Any Other Name Is Just As Sweet

On top of the Mount of Olives, our tour guide mentioned something I had heard before, that a great fault line runs from the Mount of Olives into the city of Jerusalem. I doubt that they knew much about fault lines when the Bible was written. This makes the prediction of Zechariah the prophet all the more marvelous:

Zech 14:3-5, 9

“Then the LORD will go out and fight against those nations, as he fights in the day of battle. ⁴ On that day his feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, east of Jerusalem, and the Mount of Olives will be split in two from east to west, forming a great valley, with half of the mountain moving north and half moving south. ⁵ You will flee by my mountain valley, for it will extend to Azel. You will flee as you fled from the earthquake ^F26 in the days of Uzziah king of Judah. Then the LORD my God will come, and all the holy ones with him….9 “The LORD will be king over the whole earth. On that day there will be one LORD , and his name the only name.”

Jews have traditionally sited this as one of the chief texts predicting the coming of the Messiah,(or Anointed One) to deliver Israel from her enemies and rule the entire world with Israel as a headquarters.

Now, here’s an interesting tidbit: What Orthodox Jews expect from the initial appearance of the Messiah, many Evangelical Christians expect in the Second Coming.

The New Testament teaches that Jesus will return from heaven and set His feet upon the Mt. of Olives. (Acts 1).This is how we will know that the Messiah has returned. In fact, Jesus left an important warning: If His coming was reported in any other way, we were not to believe it:

Matt 24:23-27

. ²³At that time if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or, ‘There he is!’ do not believe it. ²⁴For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect–if that were possible. ²⁵See, I have told you ahead of time.
²⁶“So if anyone tells you, ‘There he is, out in the desert,’ do not go out; or, ‘Here he is, in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it. ²⁷For as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. ²

The controversies between Jews and Christians about whether or not Jesus claimed to be God, or was, in fact, God, are dealt with by this author in other articles. For now, suffices to say, that Christians take the passage above literally, God incarnate, returning as Jesus. Jews would take it figuratively to some degree. This is understandable, as Hebrew Prophecy was written in the style of Hebrew Poetry and it is not always easy to know when a passage has a literal or poetic fulfillment.

Jews would say that the real God does not have feet and that the Messiah (not God) touches down on the Mount of Olives. God is represented by empowering the Messiah. Christians would agree that these are the feet of the Messiah and they would also agree that God does not have feet. They would explain by saying that Jesus is not God in His true original form, but rather a form He chose to take, an epiphany similar to His appearance when he spoke with Abraham about Sodom (Gen 18).

In summary: Both Christians and Orthodox Jews (or at least a good number of Orthodox Jews) agree that this passage is referring to the Messiah. Jews claim it is the coming of the Messiah with the power of God, thus the Messiah’s feet literally, God’s feet figuratively. Christians would say that God and the Messiah are one and the same.

As you can see, if Jews were expecting the Messiah to have a dramatic appearance in which he splits the Mount of Olives, defeats the enemies of Israel, and rules over the whole world, Jesus, (in their eyes) did not fill the bill.

Christians respond by saying that before the Messiah could deliver Israel as a warrior and rule as king, he first had to die for the sins of Israel and rise from the dead.

“Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” (Isa 53:4-6)

“For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was stricken. He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.”

“Yet it was the LORD’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the LORD makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand. After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light [of life] and be satisfied, by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities. Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” (Isa 53:8-12)

Because of the prophecy’s obvious association with Jesus, some (but not all) rabbis have tried to re-interpret this prophecy as a kind of allegory about Israel suffering at the hands of the Gentiles. Israel certainly has suffered at the hands of the Gentiles and this has been a horrible, unjustified event of human history, but this is not what Isaiah is talking about in Chapter 53 and ancient rabbinical literature (the Midrash and Zhor) interpreted this prophecy to be about the Messiah! (See link below for references.)

QUESTION: Even if the Messiah was meant to first die and rise from the dead, where does the Bible predict two comings? It seems that there was only supposed to be ONE coming of the Messiah.

You are correct. Of course the Messiah was only meant to come once! But prophecy is sometimes conditional upon the response of the people. Jonah, for example, predicted that the people of Nineveh would die in 40 days. The population, all on their own, repented and God called off His judgment. Interestingly enough, Jonah never used the conditional word “if”. He did not say, “You will die if you do not repent.” He merely told them they would die. The condition was implied nevertheless.

When Jesus came to Jerusalem, there was a big split between the people of Israel. It is a myth that all the Jews rejected Jesus. Many of them accepted Him and the original church was made up of so many Jews that before a Gentile could become a Christian, the church argued about whether or not the convert had to be circumcised first. But the leadership of Israel certainly rejected him and God will often deal with a nation based upon the actions of their leaders, just as He once chastised all of Israel for David’s prideful census.

If Israel, as a nation, had accepted Jesus, the Romans would have been very concerned. Pilate, all on his own, without the encouragement of the Sanhedrin, would have executed Jesus and the Messiah still would have risen from the dead three days later. However, at that time, Jesus would have raised His army, taken up the sword, beat the snot out of the Romans and delivered Israel once and for all. Jerusalem’s second temple would never have been destroyed.

Yes, it was meant to be one coming, but knowing that the people would reject him, Jesus predicted the following:

Matt 23: 37-38

³⁷“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. ³⁸Look, your house is left to you desolate. ³⁹For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’^F103 ”

NOTE; this prediction is not an excuse for anti-Semitism! Paul the Apostle gave a grave warning against Anti-Semitism in Romans 11.

But this verse above is an explanation of why Jesus needed to appear twice. His complete mission was conditional upon the acceptance of the people. Orthodox Jews, who do not see Jesus as the Messiah, still must account for the destruction of the second temple from a spiritual point of view. It is understood that the first temple fell to the Babylonians because God had removed His protective hand from Israel. The sin at that time was idol worship.

What was the sin leading to the destruction of the second temple? Not Idol worship, but other problems, such as a corrupt priesthood, people put in place as puppets under the Romans, sometimes by bribing the Romans. Many Orthodox Jews will accept this explanation: God was judging corruption. That accounts for a good deal of what Jesus preached against anyway, so despite the differences, there is still considerable agreement to be found here between Jew and Christian.

Perhaps the best verse to conclude this article would be another prediction from Zechariah about the response of the Jewish people to the coming of the Messiah, this Messiah whom they are assuming is making his first appearance:

Zech 12:10-14

¹⁰ “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit ^F22 of grace and supplication. They will look on ^F23 me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son. ¹¹ On that day the weeping in Jerusalem will be great, like the weeping of Hadad Rimmon in the plain of Megiddo. ¹² The land will mourn, each clan by itself, with their wives by themselves: the clan of the house of David and their wives, the clan of the house of Nathan and their wives, ¹³ the clan of the house of Levi and their wives, the clan of Shimei and their wives, ¹⁴ and all the rest of the clans and their wives.

Another area where Jews and Christians agree: There will be no coming of the Messiah, first or second, until the temple is rebuilt. You would be surprised how quickly that might just happen. This leads me to another very unusual tour and that will be the subject of my next diary entry.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE

New International Version NIV

Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House.