Spirit of the Lord

Here is a passage that both Christians and Jews can agree upon that speaks of the Messiah. Interestingly enough there are a number of those that both groups agree upon that are Messianic, however once you actually slow down, and look carefully, you can see it isn't about Jesus at all or any other type of man/god. It's about a real live person.

Isaiah 11:1-5

A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord—and he will delight in the fear of the Lord. He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears; but with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth; with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.
Righteousness will be his belt and faithfulness the sash around his waist.

Just a few observations: First is the word “Branch.” Most English translations capitalize this word to suggest that the individual being spoken of was or is of divine origin. The first problem with this is that Hebrew doesn't have capital letters. If you ever find an “interlinear” translation you will notice that all the Hebrew words translated into English are small and of course they are read right to left. The second thing is that the word isn't actually “branch” it's “twig”. So someone who translated this word into English for the Christian bible, not only capitalized it, but actually changed the word giving it a different meaning, perhaps a more powerful meaning to support their belief.

That's not the only difficulty of suggesting that this refers to Jesus. Jesus, according to the story, never had children and yet here it is saying that the “Messiah” will have children. The Hebrew translation says “he shall be fruitful” which would indicate children.( See Genesis 1:28, 9:1,7, 17:20) Jesus never had children or a wife to anyone's knowledge so this part couldn't have been about him either.

Next we have the “Spirit of the Lord resting upon him.” Now I don't take issue with the spirit resting on anyone. The spirit rested on most of the prophets and it is even told that it rested on Saul just before he became king. That's not my issue. What is my issue with this is that if Jesus was the messiah, G-d made flesh, according to Christian theology, why would the “Spirit of the Lord” rest upon him? Wouldn't G-d already have wisdom? Wouldn't he already understand counsel? Why would he need to have fear of himself and delight in it? This doesn't make any sense. This just shows that this is a human of whom G-d will place His Spirit upon.

And because he does,placing His Spirit upon him, justice will prevail in the world. “He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears; but with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth.”

Imagine a system that is fair to all. I know our system is supposed to be fair, but I have seen way too many times where judges have looked the other way when it involved people of power and wealth, while the poor tend to be punished severely or ignored when their case is against the rich and powerful. But this will come to an end with the coming of the messiah and all will be treated fairly. This clearly has not happened as of yet.

So there you have it for today. There is no logical way that this passage could refer to Jesus, but it also promises us that a just system will be put in place when the messiah appears and the “Spirit of the Lord” rests upon him.

Shalom.

Mountain of G-D

Today I am going to switch gears a bit. In my previous posts I have pointed out that there is no need for blood or a mediator in order to seek G-d's forgiveness. Now I would like to point out to you some of the many verses that show what things will be like in the time of the Messiah. Some of this is going to surprise those of you who have followed Christianity all of your lives. I am going to take all of this slow, a few verses at a time, unless for clarity I need to make it longer, and let you decide what you want to do with it. I am not here to bash Christians, but I am going to point out where Christianity and Judaism differ. In all fairness, I tend to go with the Jewish view on the Messiah, and the world to come.

One thing I will ask of any of you reading this, first don't take my word for any of it. Read it for yourselves. Second when you read, go slow, take your time, and see what the context is, compare it to what you believe and pray for insight and guidance.

I will be starting in Isaiah, but first a small bit of background. 1^st and 2^nd Kings gives us the story of what happened after the life of King David, and all the evil,against G-d, that those kings committed. Idolatry, human sacrifice,temple prostitution became the norm, with a couple of notable exceptions most of the kings seemed to try and out do each other in the evil that they committed. It is into this kind of madness that Isaiah comes in to warn Israel and Judah of what was to come. In among the warnings though was hope. Predictions of the future and the messiah, where G-d is going to restore Israel and the whole world is going to be blessed because of it. These are the verses I am going to share with you.

Isaiah 2:2-4 “Now it shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the Lord’s house Shall be established on the top of the mountains, And shall be exalted above the hills; And all nations shall flow to it. Many people shall come and say, “Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, To the house of the God of Jacob; He will teach us His ways, And we shall walk in His paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth the law, And the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations,
And rebuke many people; They shall beat their swords into plowshares, And their spears into pruning hooks; Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, Neither shall they learn war anymore.”

A few things for you to think about. This passage is referring to what many folks might suggest is the end of days. It is, in a manner of speaking, but only in the sense that the world is going to change. In the Christian view of the end, the world is destroyed, (though there are some evangelicals who believe in Jesus but see Israel and Jerusalem as the place for his kingdom ) and only those who are saved will go to “heaven.” Here it says quite clearly that “Lords house shall be established on the top of the mountains” there is no mention of destruction, in fact it goes on to say that the world is going to see this and the many nations are going to go there, the mountain of G-d in Jerusalem, to seek G-d and to learn of His ways, and they will learn war no more!

It isn't that there wont be a major world crisis of some sort, the book of Ezekiel makes that fairly clear, but in the end, during the time of the messiah, people will learn of G-ds ways through the Jewish people, they will follow His ways and all war will cease.

If this is true, which I believe it to be so, there is no mention of a “second coming” or people going to heaven or hell. Instead it is saying that the world will come to know G-d and His ways and everything we know of the world right now will come to a happy end.

Shalom

Whats In A Name

Before I go on you need to know a couple of things. First and foremost, just in case there is someone reading this who doesn't know, I am not a Christian. I was, and I was even a pastor, but I left it over 10 years ago because of the very things that I am sharing with you.

I started out with the intention of proving to a few Jewish folks that I knew, that they had missed Jesus as the Messiah. I believed the Christian idea that the Jews were made blind to the truth because they had “rejected” Jesus and had crucified him.

Turned out, after studying all of this, that we (Christians) were wrong, and I was wrong as well. Once I came to that conclusion, I wrestled with it for over a year, I couldn't decide if it really mattered or not but the longer I wrestled the harder it became. Finally I told my wife, it took her awhile to see it, but she did, and then I came out of the proverbial closet to another pastor that I was ministering with, thus ending my ministry, and now here we are.

So now I will start at the beginning. I actually started down this path after trying to defend something that Jesus said in one of his parables, on a Jewish radio web page. Luke 19, especially vs.27 “But those enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them—bring them here and kill them in front of me.”

The argument that was made was that this was just another piece of evidence that Jesus couldn't have been the messiah because he is advocating violence when the Jewish belief is that when the Messiah comes he will bring about an end to all war and killing and bring about a universal knowledge of G-d.

I argued against that saying that is was simply a story that he told to try and help people understand the coming kingdom, that he didn't mean that he would be the one to kill anyone. That didn't go over very well. I got blasted from many sides. Remember, I was a Christian on a Jewish web page, they didn't take too kindly to my comment.

This,however, got me to ask one simple question: Why is it that the Jews can't see that Jesus is the messiah?

Most Jewish people I had ever met seemed very intelligent and there were a few Rabbi's that I had listened to that knew the New Testament better then most Christians, so how was it possible that they couldn't see the truth right in front of them?

So I decided that I was going to prove that Jesus was the messiah and I was going to do it with nothing more than the “Old Testament” and my concordance. In the end I was using several versions and my computer as well.

Before I go any further, please understand I did not do this lightly. I was afraid, what if it turned out that they, the Jews, were right? A part of me had already started to believe it, I was after all a Messianic person at that time and I already believed that most Christians should be following the holy days and festivals of the Jews if they really believed in and followed Jesus because, he was after all a Jew. Having said that I was also fearful that I was going to condemn myself to hell for even questioning that which I had been taught and believed. This was my mind set to begin with.

So I started.

First I wanted to find every reference that I could for the word Messiah. The word for it in Hebrew is Mshich, pronounced something like Machiach, which simply means anointed or anointed one. See H4899.

I found that the word anointed or anointing was used 92 times in the OT. It was primarily used in reference to the priests, kings and prophets and the processes of anointing thereof.

What I didn't find was any reference to Jesus ( though Cyrus is named anointed of G-d) or that the “messiah” had anything to do with saving man kind from their sins by dying for them, or that he was any kind of G-d. A servant of G-d, yes, a king, yes but not G-d.

There are many passages that describe what things will be like when the Messiah reigns, I thought I'd use just one and trust that you will take the time to look at others.

Isa.11:1-4 “And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots: And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord;

And shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord: and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears: But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth: and he shall smite the earth: with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked.” KJV

No one disputes that the Messiah will come from the line of Jesse and David ,but the fact of the matter is that he is quite human. Note that it says that the “spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him” it does not say that he is the Lord (G-D) only that His spirit is upon him, much in the same way as the spirit of G-d came upon the prophets and rulers. It also states that he will have the “spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord” This tells me that he will be as wise but that he will have great respect for G-d. There is much more just in this chapter but the bible is full of similar prophecies. Read all the rest of chapter 11 for yourselves to get an idea of what the real messiah will do.

Now some will say that Jesus will full fill all these things upon his second coming. Yet in the Jewish scriptures there is no concept of a “second coming” all is to be done in the time of the Messiah.

Some of you may be saying what about chapter 9, especially verses 5-6, doesn't that call the messiah “G-d”? No. In fact it is one of many verses that most Christians know ( mostly because of Handel's Messiah) that is really taken out of context.

For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given; And the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

While I love the song that goes with this, remember a couple of things, Hebrew tends to translate a bit different in English, there is no punctuation, nor is there uppercase or lowercase letters. The way you see it, with the caps especially, is the way Christian translators, with their already pre disposed idea that this is about Jesus, has made it. Also take note of the wording. In the KJV it says “His name will be called” implying that it is after, at a later date, which reads differently in the Jewish scriptures.

The Jewish bible (JPS) Reads a bit different. “For a child has been born to us, a son has been given us, and authority has settled upon his shoulders. He has been named “The mighty God is planning grace; The eternal Father, a peaceable ruler.

In this Jewish translation it says “He has been named” meaning that these are his names given to him when he is born.

Actual translation from Hebrew

that boy he is born to us son he is given to us and she shall become chieftainship on shoulder blade of him and he shall call name of him one marvelous one counseling el masterful father of future chief of well being

Sounds a bit less romantic or G-d like when literally read.

In all three cases it should be noted that these were to be names that he would be called, it doesn't mean that he is G-d. All names have meaning, but it doesn't mean that you are what your name translates to. For example my first name means “fiery lizard”, my middle name means “strength of a bear” and my last name means “table top land”

Now I can certainly be fiery at times, yet I'm not a lizard, I have been told on occasion that I don't know my own strength, yet I am not a bear, nor am I a table top, yet this is what my names translate to.

These names were to show just how powerful that the Messiah is going to be but they do not name him G-d.

I know that this is only a small portion of verses that I have shared with you, and I also know that some are not going to believe me, so I encourage you to read the OT, slowly. Translate the Hebrew for yourself, compare the prophecies to see if they match. Then you decide.

I will share more soon.

Shalom