LEAUKI POSTS:

And here, Leauki, you are mouthing Maimonides who wrote: "If there arises a king from the House of David, versed in the Torah who performs the commandments like David his ancestor....and wages a war of God, it is assumed that he is the Messiah. If he successfully does this and builds the Temple in its proper place and gathers the dispersed of Isreal, behold, he is certainly the Messiah." 

I honestly don't understand why Jewish people refuse to accept Christ as Messias. Christ is the only One Who fulfilled the OT prophecies being born in the time, place, family and manner foretold in Jewish Scripture. It took place over 20 centuries ago during the closing days of the Mosaic era when the Jews ceased to have an Aaronic priesthood. The ardent prayers of Orthodox Jews for the coming of the predicted Messias is, imo, hoping for the impossible.....becasue when one examines it, there is no longer a House of David or a House of Aaron from which the Messias of the OT priesthood could come. Those houses fulfilled their mission during the first century of the Christian era.

It seems there are 2 groups of Jews ...those who accepted Christ and those who didn't.  We know that there were multitudes of Jews who didn't want Christ killed..but what must be studied both from Scripture and history itself is that group of Jews and those who followed their lead who shouted "Crucify Him"...."We (the Jewish people) have no king, but Caesar and "His blood be upon us, and upon our children!" .   

St.John 8 identifies them as "the chief priests and the guards". Christ Himself identifies the group planning to kill Him in v. 39. The Jews repeated, "Our father is Abraham" and Jesus answered, "If you were Abraham's children, you would do as Abraham did. As it is you want to kill me when I tell you the truth." So, from that, we know that Christ wasn't killed by all Jews indiscriminately, but by the group of people St. John later identified as  "the Jews". 

"The Jews" at this moment of revolutionary spirit are the ones known from their rejection of Christ, the Suffering Messias...but they had rejected Him as the Messias even before this...Why? becasue Christ didn't fit their want of a mighty military leader and warrior king who would defeat the Romans and bring Heaven on earth to Isreal. From this point, on "the Jews" defined themselves by their rejection of Christ and embarked upon a path of revolutionary activity ever looking for their warrior king. 

By the time of Maimonides, 1000 years after Christ's death, the definition had become axiomatic.  It was Maimonides who established the criteria by which the Jews could identify the Messias.

 MM POSTS:

You should catch up on your knowledge of Jewish history by reading Flavius Josephus, the Jew who wrote "The Jewish Wars" starting with the insurrection of 66AD that began when the Roman ruler Florus used a small scale riot in Jerusalem as a pretext for looting the Temple....followed by the abomination of desolation by Ttitus in 70AD.  The Jewish historian Graetz wrote, "According to Josephus, it was chiefly the belief in th eimminent advent of a messianic king that launched the Jews upon the suicidal war which ended with the capture of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple in 70AD. Even Simon bar-Kokhba, who led the last strubggle for national independence in 131 AD was still greeted as Messiah."

It is for you to follow what happened in Jewish history after that to understand what would define the options for subsequent generations of Jews. Do it and you'll find the political factions among the Jews became critical schools in the years following the destruction of the Temple.

Really?  I blame some Jews, like Wilhelm Reich, Sigmund Freud, Helen Gurley Brown and Peter Singer, etc.  for being advocates and architects of what what Pope John Paul II, of happy memory, coined the "Culture of Death".

I wonder if any of the Catholics you live among invested with Bernard Madoff's $50 billion ponzi scheme?

Tim Kaine, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden.

I dont think the "culture of death" knows any religion.

Yes, Doc, of course, you are exactly right...and sadly, the list goes on and on and on! The culture of death exists becasue people fail to practice the principles of God's holy religion and from people who fail to hold them accountable.

My point was just a direct response to Leauki's statement:

He didn't rebuild the Temple, didn't bring peace to the world, and he didn't unite all the Israelites in the land of Israel.

Cyrus came closer.

Exactly right, the Messiah must meet all the qualification set out in the old testament.

Leauki posts:

mm posts:

Knock, knock guys.....these are Maimonide's claims....and he doesn't come anywhere close to God's chosen OLd Testament prophets who did in fact prophecy the Messias, the Anointed One.

Forget Maimonides, read the Old Testament prophets who prophecied the Messias.....you'll see that Christ fulfilled everyone of them to the letter. The prophets predicted the Messias would be born in the House of David from the tribe of Judah....Isaias 7:14 said He would be miraculously born....Nearly 5 centuries before, Daniel 9:6 foretold the Messias was born of the lily of Isreal who brought him forth in the city of David.

We know Cyrus isn't the Messias becasue he didn't fulfill these Old Testament prophecies. And besides, Christ Himself told the Samaritan woman at the well, who said, "I know the Messias is coming, and when He comes, He will tell all things." To which Christ replied, "I who speak to thee am He." Here Jesus claimed to be the Messianic Son of God of which there can only be one! The Messianic nature of Jesus manifested in the manner, time and place of his birth, His teachings, and the part He played in the fulfillment of the Law and prophecies.

Lula,

Maimonides referred to "Old Testament" prophecies when he made his list of requirements/expectations. The fact that a scholar of a thousand years ago reads the Bible doesn't mean that what he reads is not to be considered Biblical. I don't even know how you could possibly have arrived at that conclusion.

Cyrus came closest.

"Closest" only counts in playing horseshoes.

You see, and that is where you don't understand Judaism and the Messiah concept.

What Cyrus did was ACTUALLY USEFUL.

"Closest" COUNTS.

But a theoretical Messiah who doesn't do anything useful doesn't count.

Cyrus was not THE Messiah, but he came much much closer than Jesus to doing good for Israel and the world.

You seem to up on many things, Leauki, but not on Old Testament evidence that Our Lord Jesus Christ was the one foretold to come in the ages before His birth.  

You have said you like to learn from going to the direct source...in this case, it's the Old Testament books of prophecy which record overwhelming evidence of Christ's coming as well as His life and Death. They announced the Messiah would be racially of Adam, religiously of Moses, nationally of Jacob, tribally of Judah and ancestrally of David.

I'll make it easy for you and provide 25 which are sufficient evidence to prove Christ to be what He is: "Emmanuel: God with us.;" "God the Mighty"; "the Prince of Peace"; our Messianic Lord.

They are found in Deuteronomy 3: 15; 15:18; 18:15; Genesis 49:10, 24; 3:15; Psalms 131:11; 71:10; 40; 21:17, Jeremias 23:5; Michaes 5:2, Numbers 24:17; Osee 11:1; Zacharias 9:9; 11:13; Malachais 3:1; Dan 9:25-26; Aggeus 2:10; Judges 13:7; and Isaias 11:1; 14:7; 7:14; 9:6; 40:10-11; 53:7; 50:6; and in 11:10, Isaias wrote "He would be resurrected from the dead."

If after studying these propecies above you fail to reallize that Jesus is the Christ and their fulfillment, then all I can say is the cause of not understanding is squarely on your end.  

arguing about if Jesus is the Messiah or not is futile as those that believe he is the M<essiah are not going to change their position and those that are still waiting for the Messiah to come will not change theirs. NO matter how much biblical proof one side or the other throws there will remain a stalemate. Jews that are waiting for the Messiah will continue to wait, Christians and Jews that believe he has come, believe in him NOW! There is proof on both sides of the arguement if Jesus was or was not the Messiah, I guess it comes down to faith about what anyone believes.

and hand gernades.

MM,

Good one....I'll remember that...

I don't care if somebody else's (Christians') Messiah has come or not. It is that weird idea that people insist that he must be mine as well that I object too.

We have been through this. In the examples you gave I found several translation errors and lots of very inprecise prophecies that could (and did) fit hundreds of people.

Words were changed (like from "cut" to "pierce") to accomodate the crucifixion. Aramaic sentences containing "elohin" ("gods", "powerful ones") are read as Hebrew "Elohim" ("G-d") to create the statement "son of G-d" (instead of "son of powerful ones"). Yuds become Vavs to make a "lion" into "cut" (despite the fact that "cut" is then spelt with an extra consonant, similar to "crut" instead of "cut").

Racially of Adam? Good one.

Religiously of Moses? If Jesus believed that he was the son of G-d, he certainly didn't share Moses' religion.

Nationally of Jacob? Very good.

Tribally of Judah? Sounds fantastic, except at the time of Jesus' birth the tribes were already dispersed and almost everyone was a member of the tribe of Judah (except for the few Levites and the odd Samaritan). Until the discovery of the tribe of Dan ("Ethiopian Jews") few Jewish children had the opportunity to be born into any tribe but the one that still existed (after the assimilation of Simeon and others).

Ancestrally of David? We have no proof that Jesus descended from David.

Except for the thing about Moses' religion, the above matches every single Jew born almost ever. It matches better for most, as they would share Moses' religion as opposed to making up a new one. Heck, Larry David, the creator of Seinfeld, is a descendant of King David.