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In the Hebrew Scripture these tragedies begin with the story of Lamech, who tells his wives of a tragic happening,
saying: Hear my voice; ye wives of Lamech, harken unto my speech:
According to traditional interpretations, Lamech
went hunting and instead of killing the animal he unintentionally killed his
own son. What a tragedy of mistaken identity. Then we have the
story of Joseph who, instead of Potiphar's wife the
true culprit, suffered incarceration for many years.
A Jewish tradition, recorded in the Aramaic Targum on the Book of Esther, has
it that for many years Solomon was dethroned as King in Jerusalem and a demon
named Ashmadai was ruling in Solomon's disguise,
while the true king went from city to city claiming in the words of Ecclesiastes
1: 1 2, I, the Preacher, was king
over Israel in Jerusalem, in similar vein came about the popularized
story of the prince and the beggar in which the beggar, temporarily in the
clothes of the prince, is made prince while the true prince becomes a beggar.
A more recent story has it that Fritz Kreisler, the violinist, was in Hamburg
one evening with an hour to spare before taking his boat to London where he was to play the following evening.
So he wandered into a music shop. The proprietor asked to see his violin
which he carried under his arm. In a moment he disappeared to reappear
with two policemen. One laid his hand on Kreisler's shoulder and said,
"You are under arrest." "For what?" asked Mr. Kreisler. "You have Fritz Chrysler's violin."
"Well, I am Fritz Kreisler." "Come, come," said the
policeman, "you cannot pull that on us. Come to the station.
Mr. Kreisler avoided arrest by finding a record of his music in the shop and
he begged to be given his violin and then he replayed the music.
There were many serious incidents of such mistaken identity in the history of
our people. This was especially the case when Israel asked Aaron to
make a golden calf and identified it with the God of Israel, saying, These are thy gods, (or literally
'This is thy God') 0 Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt
(Exodus 32:4). Five hundred years passed and another great tragedy happened
to our people when the physically and mentally attractive Absalom persuaded
the people of Israel to follow him and reject his father King David.
Again thousands of our people perished because of this mistake. The
full story is recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures in 2 Samuel chapters 17, 18. MESSIAH'S MISTAKEN
IDENTITY
Could a majority of our people also make a mistake in identifying the
Messiah? Surely we did make mistakes in this regard.
The story of Simon Bar Kosiba's messianic claims in
135 A.D. is well known. For a long time we had only fragmentary
knowledge of him based on a few coins and some references to him in the
Talmud. Since he was known also as Bar Kochba, some students of history
thought this might have been his true surname which had been later changed to
Bar Kosiba when the Jewish leaders convinced themselves that he was not the
Messiah (for the word Kosiba can be related to the Hebrew root of koseb or kozev which has the
meaning of lie, lying or liar). However, with
the new archaeological finding in Israel including a number of letters that
Simon Bar Kosiba wrote to various commanders, we know for certain that his
true name was Simon Bar Kosiba, that is Simon of the
city or town of Kosiba. The leaders of Israel, however, were so
impressed with his temporary victories over the Romans and with his
persecuting of those Jews who believed in Jesus of Nazareth, that even the
greatest Jewish rabbinical authority of his day, Rabbi Akiba, applied the
Scripture in Numbers 24:17 to him, where Balaam prophesies that There 'Shall come a Star out of Jacob,
and a Scepter shall arise out of Israel and shall smite the corners of Moab
and destroy all the children of Seth.
The Hebrew word for star is Kochab hence the Jewish
leaders began to refer to this man as Simon the Star, in Hebrew Aramaic, Shimeon Bar-Kochba. How bitter was their disappointment
in him whom they admired even when he boasted that he did not need God's help
and that all he wanted from God was that God not help his enemies! Only
after his complete defeat did our Jewish leaders realize that his true
surname Bar Kosiba should have been a warning to them and their eyes should
have been opened to the falseness of his claims. Perhaps the Lord Jesus
had him in mind when He warned His followers, saying, I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not; if another
shall come in his name, him ye will receive (John 5:43 Brit Hadasha). COULD WE BE MISTAKEN AGAIN?
Yes, we could be mistaken again, especially if we prefer to follow man's view
of Messiah instead of God's view as revealed in His Word. The majority
of Jewish Orthodox exegetes follows the views of the
great thirteenth-century philosopher Maimonides. His view is that the
hallmarks of Messiah are that He is to fight Israel's battles and be
victorious, and He is to force the Jews to keep Torah, the Mosaic Law interpreted
by the rabbis, the so-called Halacha. In such
a case any of the Israeli successful military leaders could claim to be
Messiah if only they were more religious.
But, we will not be mistaken if we accept the plain teachings
of God's Word and seek there the hallmarks for Messiah. If so, we will
find them very clear. Let us just list a few of them:
1. Messiah must fulfill the picture which the prophets drew of
Him, This includes: His
supernatural birth as predicted in Isaiah 7:14,
therefore the Lord himself shall
give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall
call his name ImmanueL His birth
in Bethlehem as predicted by Micah in 5:2: But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah,
though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he
come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth have
been from of old, from everlasting. His
performing of supernatural deeds as foretold in Isaiah 35:5 -6, then the eyes
of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be
unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as an
hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters
breakout, and streams in the desert. His death
as atonement for sin as described in Isaiah 53:5-8, But he was wounded for our
transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our
peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like
sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to
his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. He
was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is
brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is
dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. He was
taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation?
For he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my
people he was stricken. His death to be by piercing His hands and feet, Psalm 22:16,
For dogs have compassed me, the assemblies of the
wicked have enclosed me: they, pierced my hands and
my feet. And I will pour upon the house of
David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, (Zechariah
12: 10). 2. Messiah must also be resurrected from the dead as predicted by King David, saying, For
thou wilt not leaves my soul in Sheol, neither wilt
thou permit thine Holy One to see corruption.
Thou wilt show me the path of life. In thy presence is fullness of joy; at
thy right hand are pleasures forevermore (Psalm 16: 10-11). 3. As to the time of His coming, Messiah had to come before the
Second Temple was destroyed
by Titus. The archangel Gabriel made this clear to Daniel when he came
to him and gave a revelation as to what would happen and when Messiah would
come. Thus Daniel is told, after threescore and two weeks 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 (9:26). Those
commentators who follow Rashi's exegesis that the
Hebrew word Moshiach (Messiah) refers to King
Agrippa, who died before Titus conquered Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple,
confirm that this prophecy had to be fulfilled before 70 A.D. But it
could not be King Agrippa! Surely Gabriel, the archangel, would not
refer to him the title Messiah. He was not even of David's seed, but a
descendant of the hated Antipater and Herod, a profligate king doing all he
could to please the Romans. Only the Lord Jesus is the fulfillment of
this prophecy, and He came in the right time and so He will also come again
to fulfill the rest of this prophecy.
4. Among Messiah's accomplishments is the winning of the
obedience of a large proportion of non-Jews. Thus, the patriarch Jacob
predicted that "The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a
lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come,
and unto him shall the gathering of the people be" (Hebrew Amim means nations or Gentiles). He is to be a
Light to the Gentiles according to Isaiah 49:6, And
now, saith the LORD who formed me from the womb to
be his servant, SOLUTION OF HIS IDENTITY
These are only a few of the identifying marks of Messiah as described by the
prophets and by the patriarchs. There should be no doubt left now in
your mind that these were all fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth. In the
course of the last nineteen centuries, hundreds of thousands of our people
have come to believe in His Messiahship because of these and other proofs.
Millions of Gentiles turned away from their idols of wood and stone, and from
their man-made philosophies and came to trust the God of Israel, our own
Jewish Messiah and to believe in our Jewish Scriptures, both Old and New
Testament. Surely
this is the time for us to cry out together with His first Jewish followers,
saying, WE HAVE FOUND HIM (THE MESSIAH) OF
WHOM MOSES IN THE LAW, (John
1:45). by Rachmiel Frydland Reprinted
with permission of The Messianic Literature Outreach For
further information contact
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