My task today
is to present you with some evidence and arguments to prove that the hope of Israel
centered in the coming of a personal Messiah, as it does among the Orthodox Jews of today.
There was a time, not very many centuries ago, when such a task was
unnecessary. Everybody believed that the line of demarkation between rabbis and priests
was that rabbis prayed for the promised personal Messiah to come, whereas priests prayed
to Him as having come in the person of Jesus twenty centuries ago, believing Him to be at
the right hand of His Father, whose mission He carried out among the cbildren of Israel in
Palestine. But that clearcut dividing line is no more, having been obscured by America's
most popular rabbis, who declare that "by the Messiah Jews do not mean a
person." Therefore no petitions for the Messiah to come are printed in the
prayerbooks of "Liberal," Reform synagogues.
Belief in a personal Messiah is so plainly set forth in the biblical and
traditional writings of Jewry, that Rabbi Solomon Schecter, formerly president of the
Jewish Theological Seminary (whom I referred to in one of my letters), dismissed such
"moderns" with the remark, that "it is unscientific and needs no refutation
of those who are acquainted with the literature of Judaism." Those Reform rabbis do
not lack acquaintance with Jewish literature on the question of a Messiah. They are
intellectually afflicted with a debunking spirit, which causes them to read out of Jewish
literature the age-old Hebraic belief in a personal Messiah, revelation, miracles,
resurrection of the body, yes, even the divine character of Holy Writ. The trouble with
these "Reform Jews" is, as Louis Minsky, editor of the Jewish Religious News
Service, said they had been told, that they "were more concerned with being liberal
than with being religious" ("Commonweal," Dec. 31, 1930).
The question of a personal Messiah is of religious import, as in it centers
all that is basically both Jewish and Christian in principle, worship and hope. It is
second only in import to their belief in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, in fact it
is part of that belief. If the Messiah be not a person, then have the truly great, both in
Jewry and Christianity, been grossly deluded.
An amazing reason for the rejection of belief in a personal Messiah is given
in "The Jew and His Religion: A Guide for Confirmation and High School Classes,"
written by Rabbi Leon Fener of Cleveland, and Rabbi B. Benedict Glaser of Pittsburgh. It
is that the task of ushering in the Messianic Age is too big for one man. Let the Rabbis
tell it -
"Our people used to believe that the Messianic Age would be
ushered in suddenly, with the coming of a Messiah in the person of a descendant of the
ancient house of David. We have been forced to revise the idea. The world is too vast,
humanity so large and the problems of modern life so many and so complicated that it is
impossible for one man to accomplish so tremendous a task during the course of a single
lifetime" (N.Y., 1931, p. 128).
This modern rabbinical assumption, that has long been
instilled into the minds of those Jewish youths who go to modern American Rabbis for
instruction, makes one wonder, to paraphrase the words of Cassius, upon what meat these
rabbis feed, that they think themselves clothed with authority to revise the promise of
God expressed through Moses and the prophets? Why, they do certainly bestride the part of
the religious world in which they function like a Colossus.
If such rabbinical views be your view, my dear Mr. Isaacs, and they must be
if your Judaism is of the Reform variety, then would you have to reject them, by becoming
Orthodox in your Messianic concept, before any priest would hold you intellectually
competent to be regenerated through the holy waters of baptism. For keep this fact in
mind, which I am continually calling to your attention, that no Jew who denies the basic
teachings of his fathers of old in Israel can become a Catholic. And one of those
teachings is that the Messiah is a person. Is God's world too big and complicated for God
to deal with its many problems of life through the leadership of His Messianic Agent? Not
if He is what David and Isaiah said He would be, and what the Catholic Church believes Him
to be' the Only Begotten Son of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Jesus, the Messiah, did not think it too big a job to undertake, for He is
the "Emmanuel, the God with us," "God the mighty," whom Isaiah
foretold to come (7: 14; 9:6).
He came out of one of the most obscure cities in the world; carried on
a public mission within territorial limits that did not exceed the size of the State of
Delaware, for a period of only thirty-six months, during which time He revolutionized the
whole wide world of His day, our day, and all the days to come. During these three dozen
months, He, the Messiah, outlined principles, set the example, and instituted the means,
that alone can solve the grave individual, domestic, economic, social, and international
problems of humanity in our extensive, complicated, wicked world. The non-existence of
peace, righteousness and plenty in the Messianic Age, Jesus, the Prince of Peace,
inaugurated, is no more the fault of this One Man than is God to blame for the wars going
on in the hearts, homes, industrial, commercial and financial relations of man, and
between nations.
The Messiah came. He is the "Prophet" Moses said God would
"raise up" whom "you" shall hear (Deut. 18:.15). He said that
"without Me you can do nothing," that is nothing of permanent value to solve the
problems of life; nothing to gain salvation. God made man; God gave man dominion over the
whole of creation, and endowed man with the power to properly use, or to abuse the use of
the forces and substances of nature. God gave man the standards to follow in his
relationship with Him and his fellowman, through Moses, and then more perfectly through
the Messiah, the Mighty Man of men. Hence, if the peace of the Messiah does not obtain in
the hearts of men, it is not due to the task being too great for a personal Messiah to
accomplish. Rather is it due to wilful disregard of the will of that One Man, the Son of
God.
The proof that the Messiah promised to Israel was to be a person is so
numerous in Holy Writ that only some of the main texts can be presented in this letter.
Immediately after the fall of man, due to the sin of our first parents, God promised, as
Moses tells us, that the "seed" of a woman, not a man, would crush the head of
the serpent. That woman was the Second Eve, the Lily of Israel, who brought forth the
Second Aclam, the Messiah, a person (Gen. 3:15). Then came the promise to Abraham (Gen.
22:18), that through his descendants all nations would be blessed. He was called
"The desired of all nations" by Aggeus (2:8). Isaiah referred to Him
when he said, "There shall come forth a rod (a particular line of family descent) out
of the root of Jesse (father of David, II:I)." Zacharius (9:9) cried
out to Israel - "O daughter of Jerusalem. Behold thy king will come to thee, the just
and saviour; he is poor and riding on an ass." Surely it must have been a person and
not an era that was to ride upon an animal. It was Jesus, riding into Jerusalem on an ass:
"Hosanna to the Son of David. Blessed is He who cometh in the name of the Lord" (St.
Matt. 21:9).
The description of this personal Messiah in the Old Testament fits
Jesus so truly, that only pride, ignorance or wilful blindness can account for not
accepting Him as the High Priest (Ps. 109) of the Jews; their Prophet (Deut.
2:15); and the Prince of Peace (Is. 9).
Jesus was born in the house of David, of the tribe of Judah, as
foretold in Genesis 49.
Jesus was born in Bethlehem, under the star of Jacob, after the sceptre, the
political independence of Judah, was taken away, as foretold in Michaes 5:2; Numbers
24.17; Genesis 49: 10.
Jesus was born of a virgin mother, as foretold by Isaiah 7: I4.
Jesus was born in the time foretold by Daniel, nearly five centuries before
His mother brought Him forth in the City of David (Dan. 9: 24-26).
Jesus was called "God the Mighty," the "Prince of
Peace,", was adored by kings, as foretold in Isaiah (9:6).
Jesus was conspired against; betrayed, sold for thirty pieces of silver; led
like a sheep to slaughter; suffered His hands and feet to be pierced; and withal arose
from the dead, as foretold in Psalm 40:10; Zacharias 2; 12-13; Isaiah 53:7;
Psalm 21; and Isaiah 11:10. All of these Messianic prophesies refer to
a person and not an era.
While nearly all of the Jews rejected Jesus as the Messiah, they never lost
sight of the fact that He was to be a person, until the Made-in-Germany brand of Judaism
entered the Judaic world. The expectation of a personal Messiah was more prominently in
the minds and hearts of Jews during times of affliction than during days of peace.
The length of this letter compels me to wait until next week before taking up
the subject from the standpoint of Jesus designating Himself as the Messiah. |