God’s Truth
Biblical Prophecies 4—Prophecies of the messiah 2
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Sunday, July 25, 1999
Rise From The Dead
Now Phibber gives us another quotation from Psalms to prove that the Old Testament foretold that Jesus would rise from the dead. The cited verses include:
My flesh shall dwell in safety. For thou wilt not leave my soul to Sheol, neither wilt thou suffer thine holy one to see corruption. Thou wilt show me the path of life. In thy presence is fulness of joy, in thy right hand are pleasures for evermore.Psalms 16:9-11
These lines were themselves quoted in the Acts of the Apostles 2:24, by Peter, so our skeptical physicist will be certain that they are true. They sound quite convincing as they stand but let us take a look at them in context.
When the whole prayer is read the first thing that strikes you is that there is not the slightest indication in any way that it is the messiah who is speaking to God. The Christian argument therefore adopts a circular shape. It does not indicate that this is the messiah but it speaks about incorruptibility so it must be the messiah speaking. Yet whoever is praying feels it necessary to tell God that he has never put his trust in any other gods. It seems amazing that the messiah should feel he has to tell God this. Whatever minor infringements the messiah committed requiring confession before God, one would not have thought sacrificing at a pagan alter could have been one.
The general sense is not of the Son of God asking his father in heaven to confirm that he would be resurrected but that of a good but sick man praying that he should not yet be taken by death. I accept that these observations will not impress any Christian if only because what is good for St Peter is good enough for them, but those who are less fixed in their ideas could only conclude that the use of these verses by St Peter shows God’s Truth has a long history.
Finally, we get quotations from another psalm (Psalms 110:1,4) which apparently prophesies that Jesus was to ascend to heaven because God tells someone, interpreted to be the messiah, to sit “at My right hand” thereby showing that the messiah was in heaven. Incidentally Doctor Phibber believes that these psalms were really written by king David in about 1000 BC. Our tutor betrays himself not as the analytical and inquiring scientist that he makes out but a barmy Christian fundamentalist who evidently believes the bible is literally true in every particular! No doubt you will believe who you will, but it is certain that the psalms of David were not in general written by David. It is more than likely that none of them were. They were hymns, some doubtless part of the liturgy of the Temple, but many might have been added later.
Our mentor tells us immediately that this psalm should not be in the Hebrew bible at all because it is heretical for Jews because the psalmist (king David) addresses his descendant, the messiah, as “my lord” when respect of son for father requires David to be lord over his descendant. Phibber tells us this because it was the argument used by Jesus to confound his inquisitors in Matthew 22:41-46. It does not seem to me nor, I imagine, to you a problem that a mere spirit—that of David—should address a supernatural being sitting as a favourite of God in heaven, as “lord”. The New Testament says it was a problem for the Jews. Jesus does not reveal the answer to the conundrum, but it has the required effect upon his opponents—they scarper.
Heresy or no heresy, there it is, number 110 of the Book of Psalms. Verse 1 of it is:
The Lord said unto my lord, sit thou at My right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.
Phibber informs us that these lines baffle the Jews because the messiah, having ascended to heaven, is evidently hanging about waiting to return to power on earth. Why is it necessary? Why indeed? The answer is that the right hand of God is a metaphor for power. Only a fundamentalist Christian could interpret these lines as literally meaning that “my lord” had been raised to heaven while mayhem reigned below. The chant is of God telling His messiah that he would give him power and authority. There is nothing baffling about it especially for a Jew who expected a supernatural messiah with God-given powers.
Melchizedek
The other verses Phibber quotes are:
The Lord hath sworn and will not repent, thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.
The thoughtful Dr Ernest Phibber tells us that the messiah had to be of the tribe of Judah as all Jewish kings were, and the messiah was a king. Priests however were Levites (of the tribe of Levi). You could not be both because only the male line counted so there could be no such thing as a Mechizedek, a king who is a priest. Proof was that king Uzziah who tried to usurp the role of the High Priest was struck down by God with leprosy.
Well, maybe so, but we are getting a touch of God’s Truth here because Jewish kings besides Uzziah broke the rules. The whole of the dynasty of the Macabbees were kings and priests and the dynasty continued for over a hundred years. Why then didn’t God strike them down with leprosy, and why does not Doctor Phibber point out this contradiction to us? Because it is more fun doing to the Jews what the gospels tell us Jesus did to the Jews—expose them as bigots. The Jews did not like the idea of Melchizedek, he tells us, because in Genesis Melchizedek was the priest-king of Jerusalem to whom Abraham had to pay tithes of a tenth. He was therefore superior to Abraham and to the priests descended from him. After this he is not mentioned again in the Old Testament except in Psalms 110.
Christians have grasped on this apparent superiority over the orthodox Jewish tradition and great play is made in the Epistle to the Hebrews of the identity of Jesus with Melchizedek. This might prove to be a doubtful blessing for Christians who consider Jesus to be unique because it seems the figure of Melchizedek was important to the Essenes, and the evidence that the Essenes were the fount of Christianity is considerable. Comment
Phibber winds up this section by asking how a psalm that was anathema to Jews ever came to be written and preserved by the very people who hated it. No prizes for the answer—it was the work of God.
An examination of the psalm in question shows that it is an old liturgical formula for the coronation of a king. Possibly this is one of the psalms that harks back to the Maccabees and was used at their coronations as supposed heirs of David. Solomon, as the Old Testament proves, was a Melchizedek, offering sacrifices as a priest in his new temple though he was a king. Solomon appointed a priesthood based on a priest called Zadok which in the myth continued until the time that the Book of Daniel was written when the Zadokite line was broken by the Greeks who ruled Israel at the time. So by our learned mentor’s arguments the Jews must have hated the First Book of Kings and the First and Second Books of Macabbees as well as Psalms 110 because Melchizedeks known as Solomon or the Macabbees figure in one or other of them, though the word Melchizedek is not used.
Finally, let us, as usual, look at the whole psalm. After the person being addressed is made a priest forever of the order of Melchizedek, is he told to go out and heal, forgive sins and be a sacrifice as a redemption for sin? Not this person. He is to “strike through kings in the day of his wrath”, “strike through the head in many countries”, be a “judge among the nations” and “fill the places with dead bodies”. Is this really the same Jesus that our Teacher in Truth, Phibber, is referring to. If the bit in which he sits at God’s right hand refers to Jesus, why does the rest of it not apply to him? This is indeed God’s Truth.
Uncanny Accuracy
Now our tutor addresses the question of how unbelievers explain the uncanny accuracy of the Old Testament prophecies about Jesus. Three possibilities are offered:
- Jesus deliberately fulfilled the prophecies
- The early Christians reinterpreted the Old Testament
- The early Christians lied about the “facts of history”.
Quite so. We have touched upon these three at various points so far. Dr Ernest Phibber expresses the first possibility as Jesus spending years swotting up the Old Testament until he knew all the Old Testament prophecies then going around fulfilling them. Not only does it sound silly, put like this, but how could Jesus arrange to be born in Bethlehem? How did he manage to live a life without sin? Did he really arrange to be tortured to death, to get his tormentors to carry out every minute instruction, arrange to be resurrected then carried up to heaven? “Wow! You got me there”, is the response invited.
The second accusation is that Christians read prophecies in the Old Testament where none exist. Our Teacher of Truth says it won’t do. Christians see in the Old Testament the same prophecies about the messiah as the Jews. It is just that the Jews are unbelievers. “Gulp. I never thought of that”.
The third theory is that the events of the gospels never took place at all. It is a collection of stories put together based on the many prophecies in the Old Testament. The gospels are fiction. But the moral tone of the New Testament is so high that it could not possibly be fiction. “What more can you say? Game, set and match”.
I imagine that anyone with more than zero brain cells would regard Doctor Phibber’s arguments as fatuous, especially the last one, yet he seems to think, with all his letters and years of bible study, that there is little more to be said. God’s Truth requires that there can be no combinations of the three possibilities offered because as soon as you allow all three deceits to apply then the feeble arguments offered against any one simply do not stand up. Thus Jesus knew what he was doing deliberately in fulfilment of prophecy when he chose an ass and a colt, the foal of an ass, to enter Jerusalem. He was saying: “I am the Son of David, the king you have been expecting”. It was an example of Case 1.
Jesus did not need to arrange to be born in Bethlehem because the gospel writers arranged it for him. If the main parts of the gospels are anything to go by Jesus was brought up in Nazareth and therfore was probably born there. The birth in Bethelehem is tacked on by unhistorical stories that are added later. An example of Case 3.
As to Case 2, we have already seen many examples of how prophecy, for Christians is selective. They take the bits that suit and reject all the rest because they do not suit. Jews have no need to do this because mostly they do not believe that the messiah has yet visited and so there is nothing that the prophecies have to measure up to. If Phibber, our instructor, is to be credited then any prophecy judged to be so by the Jews—and all of it not just the suitable bits—should be checked against the reality in Jesus. Automatically all of those prophecies in which a mighty king is foretold would have to be disregarded, even if some of the bits seem to fit very well. But that would not suit God’s Truth.
