ce: Yesterday I had an Interesting discussion with a jewish friend of mine and he told me that Jesus couldn't have been The Messiah because he didnt fulfill the messianic prophecies:
jc: My take on this is that the Lord is not a messiah, which is to say someone from among the people to unite them. This has been a powerful myth in several religions, that a man will come to whom all will listen and bow, but there can’t really be such a man ever. You might say the idea of a messiah is an image of the expectation of humans that God can hear each one of them without conflict, although as they face each other there is always conflict. Each man thinks God will justify him against his neighbors, but such an entity can’t exist when the neighbors don’t agree on their own. You could say it’s a horribly twisted God facing every direction, and the myth of a messiah is that this can be unified.
ce: The Messiah is supposed to accomplish :
A. Build the Third Temple (Ezekiel 37:26-28).
jc: This seems to be seriously primitive, in an era when human machines are putting up thousands of new buildings every day. With two billion Christians, averaging 100 per congregation, that’s twenty million preachers and twenty million churches. And according to this line they’re all talking about a single temple being built somewhere! You can understand from Ezekiel’s perspective, he was only thinking about one temple in his local region. This is the weirdness when you overinterpret poetry from ancient days.
ce: B. Gather all Jews back to the Land of Israel (Isaiah 43:5-6).
jc: Again, this is seriously primitive, but it’s also a tremendous fault running throughout the Old Testament, portraying God as a racist who would honor birth instead of virtue. The Christians are comfortable with ideas their God will favor one race over another, and so they are all secretly racists, remaking God in their own faulty image. Such bad ideas should have fallen away long ago, but they’re perpetuated because men don’t seek God.
ce: C. Usher in an era of world peace, and end all hatred, oppression, suffering and disease. As it says: "Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall man learn war anymore." (Isaiah 2:4)
jc: That’s reading far too much into Isaiah’s paltry line. Considering his line first, one has to understand virtually every nation maintains an army, so that to put a stop to all this is going to require some serious firepower on God’s part, whatever will occur at Judgment. The big trouble of preparing for war is not in the war itself, but in the dreadful cost to the resources future generations might’ve used for tractors, squandered in man’s petty drama.
God cannot end hatred. As one of the few memorable lines from the Bible put it, man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward. To stop hatred would require transforming men, and while humans think this should be easy for an omnipotent God, it is not the case. Men can be raised to toleration. If the meek inherit the Earth, there will be less hatred. From my perspective I’d want to know if someone saying, “God will end hatred,” has really ended hatred in his or her mind. It isn’t enough to say, “Yes,” I’d need to see proof.
ce: D. Spread universal knowledge of the God of Israel, which will unite humanity as one.
jc: This will occur, but I think it will be very slow. The God that is real can be revealed, but I think current religions have momentum, and men will cling to a God of imagination.
ce: As it says: "God will be King over all the world—on that day, God will be One and His Name will be One" (Zechariah 14:9).
jc: What if the Lord doesn’t want to be king? The Lord is already the king, and He knows it. He also sees the fealty of the citizens isn’t worth much, as they have not arisen to virtue. Such lines appear in scripture because men want to rule, they want to be kings and see others bow. It has not been emphasized God prefers competent friends, to followers.
ce: The historical fact is that Jesus fulfilled none of these messianic prophecies, so I countered that Jesus will fulfill these in the Second Coming, but Jewish sources show that the Messiah will fulfill the prophecies outright, and no concept of a second coming exists.
jc: The Lord can laugh at prophecies, because He is real and the people should listen to Him. He knows Himself to be the Creator moving among the creatures, and if they are creatures who don’t care to know it, why would He care to be king? It isn’t even very hard for the Lord to begin explaining and demonstrating His differences from creatures, and He may bring a new message too. It’s like Jesus said, the pure in heart shall see God.