But there’s another question I’d like to ask you. That question is, “If Jesus was the Messiah, why didn’t He bring in worldwide peace?” Why was there a Holocaust? Why were there Inquisitions and pogroms? Why is there starvation in Africa? Why is the environment being destroyed?
Why has the world become systematically worse with everybody in it and so commonly the Jews getting the worst of the worst? How could He be the Messiah? Why didn’t He bring in worldwide peace? Where is the Messianic redemption? It’s ridiculous to believe He’s the Messiah, the world wouldn’t be the way it is. Things have only gotten worse for us. How can you believe in Him? That’s the question.
Let’s turn – not to any Christian source, not to any Gentile source, not to any human source – let’s turn to the word of God, the Hebrew prophet Daniel 9, “Daniye’l Hanawbe”. In Daniel 9 we read verses 26 and 27…
Hamashiach hitzarek lavo v’l’moot lifneh hahorban shel ha beit ha migdash ha shenit.
The Messiah would have to come and be cut off – be killed, before the destruction of the Second Temple. "But that’s your Christian interpretation”. No, I’m not looking at Christian interpretations; that’s what the text says, and try reading Sanhedrin 96 to 98b. Why do the rabbis say there’s a curse on reading Daniel 9? For the time of the Messiah’s coming is foretold in it. And as we read, the Sanhedrin wept, “Oy! Oy! The Messiah has come? No, the temple is destroyed and He’s not come! Woe unto us!” God cannot break His word. The ancient sages understood this was about the Messiah. He had to come and die. “Wars and desolations are determined to the end”. (Dan. 9:26)
In Judaism the rabbis go to the greatest lengths to try to reconcile two irreconcilable pictures of the Messiah, “HaMashiach ben Yosef” and “HaMashiach ben David”, “the Messiah the Son of Joseph” and “the Messiah the Son of David”. The “Conquering King” and the “Suffering Servant” we call “ben Ephraim”. Some rabbis said one will resurrect the other. It’s two Messiahs. Is it two Messiah’s or one Messiah with two comings? Daniel was right; it was one Messiah with two comings. He was shown the future. This is what Moses spoke of, this is how it will happen: He will come, He will be cut off, He will be killed. “Wars and desolations are determined until the end”, then He will come again.
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In His first coming He comes as the Suffering Servant in the character of Jozef from the B’reshit, the book of Genesis, as you think of Joseph in the book of Genesis.
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His own Jewish brothers rejected him, but the goys accepted him.
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He went from a place of condemnation to a place of exaltation in a single day as did Rabbi Yeshua.
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Yosef was betrayed by his brother Yehuda for 20 pieces of silver as Jesus was betrayed by Yehuda – Judas for 30 pieces of silver.
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Joseph’s brothers did not recognize him at the first coming, they thought he was a goy, an Egyptian. And so Jesus’ brothers recognize Him at the second coming. They think He’s a goy, He’s for the Christians. Hollywood gave Him blond hair and blue eyes, but He did not have blond hair and blue eyes.
My question is this: If the Hebrew prophet who was given the clearest picture of what the future would be like, if he was given the most accurate detail of how the Messianic redemption would come to Israel and enter the world, if he said the Messiah would come and be cut off and wars and desolations would be determined to the end, how can you say Jesus was not the Messiah because there’s wars and desolations? It’s supposed to have happened.
Think of Moses the first time he tried to save his people – they rejected him; it was the second time they accepted him as with Joseph. The first time they rejected him, the second time they accepted him. Why should the Messiah be any different? The Hebrew scriptures do not say He will bring in worldwide peace, it says He will come and bring an opponent; it says He will come and be cut off; it says wars and desolations will be determined until the end – then He will come and bring in worldwide peace. In His first coming He came to pay the price for the sin that prevents the peace from coming. In His return he will bring the peace. Shalom alkot Yisra’el.
I don't understand the argument. How can you say He's not the Messiah because He didn't bring in worldwide peace but was killed when that's exactly what Daniel said the Messiah was supposed to do? Why don’t the rabbis tell you this? I'm afraid you’ll have to ask them, I’m not a rabbi, but I know what their ancient rabbis said, “Don't read Daniel 9, there’s a curse if you do”. What are they afraid of? Can you really believe that God would have put something in His Word that He didn’t want you to understand? Why would He put it there?
There was a rabbi who hated Christians because he had known nothing but persecution in Eastern Europe. His family had been terribly persecuted. His name was Rabbi Leopold Cohen. Only once in his life did he ever see a New Testament and he picked it up and threw it against the wall in violent anger because of the pogroms his people had experienced in the shtetls of Eastern Europe. In desperation to flee the anti-Semitism he arrived in New York City and there he began to study and study and study. He always studied Torah and he always studied Talmud. He studied Mishnah, he read the Midrashim. Be he decided instead of studying rabbinic commentary on the Prophets he would study the Prophets. And when he came to Daniel 9 he had questions he could not answer. So he went to the Talmudic literature, he went to the tractates like Sanhedrin, and he discovered what I discovered: The Messiah had to come and die before the Second Temple would be destroyed before 70 A.D.
That's my question. If Rabbi Yeshua – Jesus only did what the Messiah was prophesied as going to have to do, how can you reject on the basis of having fulfilled the prophecy? You can reject somebody on the basis of having not fulfilled the prophecy, but how can you logically, rationally as a Jew before God reject Him on the basis of fulfilling what He was supposed to?
