God’s Truth
Biblical Prophecies 3—Prophecies of the messiah 1
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Sunday, July 25, 1999
Prophecies of the Messiah
Ernest Phibber now takes us to Daniel 9:24-26 which he considers to be a prophecy of the death of Jesus Christ. The verses are doing the prophetic trick we have noted several times above of writing history as if it were prophecy. The Book of Daniel was written in the second century BC, only about two hundred years before the crucifixion but Daniel, the prophet, its supposed author, lived at about the time that Cyrus the Persian released Israel from captivity in Babylon. Hence a whole era of four hundred years could be predicted with absolute correctness. That is just what the author of Daniel did—the book is a valuable historic source.
The climax of the verses quoted is the beginning of verse 26 where it says the “anointed one shall be cut off”. Our tutor says the Jews do not like this passage because they do not believe in a messiah—the anointed one—who is cut off—killed. The truth is that the Jews see no prophecy of a messiah in this passage because it “prophesies” nothing other than history already past at the time it was written. Nor was “the anointed one” necessarily the supernatural messiah. High Priests of the Temple of Jerusalem were “anointed ones” because they were anointed to admit them to office.
Weeks are weeks of years, a common usage of the time, so the passage simply relates the history of Israel from the restoration of the Temple to the time of the author, Daniel, or rather pseudo-Daniel. It says that in 170 BC, sixty two weeks of years after the restoration, the High Priest would be “cut off”. Daniel could prophesy this exactly because pseudo-Daniel was writing a few years after 170 BC in about 165 BC.
What had happened was that the High Priest, Onias III, having been deposed by his brother, Jesus, was murdered. Pseudo-Daniel highlighted this because it marked the end of the Zadokite line of Priests that had, according to tradition, existed since the time of Solomon.
Now Phibber, our scholarly, highly qualified student of the bible, should have known this but he tells us God’s Truth—it is a prophecy of the death of the man who gave his name to Christianity. The more you read this man’s scholarship the more you think God’s Truth means Christian lies.
Pseudo-Daniel actually got his sums wrong probably because he did not know the exact dates of the restoration, but also because it suited his prophetic style to use the magic sounding seventy weeks of years. We are certain when the Pseudo-Daniel was writing because his prophesies go wrong when he actually tries to prophesy. Working back from about 165 BC we find his seventy weeks goes back before the supposed release from captivity.
Of course, Phibber believes the 490 years and tries to work out the mathematics of it all—but it doesn’t actually work! 490 years from the assumed date of the release from captivity in 538 BC is 48 BC, a year of no particular interest in Christian terms. If the “cutting off” is that of Jesus in around 30 AD, as our tutor supposes, then the commandment to rebuild the Temple must have gone out as late as 460 BC.
Obviously, the commandment must have preceded the Jewish princes Sheshbazzar and Zerubabbel laying the foundations which biblicists like Phibber put before 500 BC. Furthermore, Cyrus promised to pay for the restoration of the Jewish temple himself, and, if this is to be believed, the commandment went out before his death in 529 BC. All of this points to Jesus not being the one who was cut off, in the very terms believers view it.
More Messianic Prophecies
Phibber continues with another five prophecies about the messiah. From Micah, he gives us a prophecy:
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.Micah 5:2
So, the ruler of Israel shall come forth out of Bethlehem Ephratah. Phibber assures us that we all know that Jesus was born in Bethlehem and not even his enemies denied it, and isn’t it amazing that the prophecy came true even though Bethlehem is such a tiny place. Phibber tells us it is like someone saying the next President of the United States will be born in Piketon, Ohio.
Well, no! It isn’t like that really. It’s more like prophesying that the next madman to claim to be George Washington will be born in Bridges Creek, Virginia. Really it would not matter whether he was or he was not but, if the prophecy was important to my desire to promote worship of the madman, I could always write that he was born in Bridges Creek, Virginia, or in Piketon, Ohio, for that matter.
The point is that nobody would know any better. I could not do this for a President of the United States. In like wise, nobody knows where Jesus was born but, because there had been a prophecy that he would be born in Bethlehem, like the man he had to emulate, king David, his chroniclers wrote that he was born in Bethlehem.
Curiously enough, if Christians are to be believed, the prophecy did not come true anyway.
Christians deny that Jesus was, in fact, a king as Pilate wrote on the cross. They deny strongly that Jesus was ever a ruler in Israel. They deny that he wanted to be an earthly king. The innocence of Jesus depends on him not being a ruler in Israel nor even claiming to have been a ruler. If either could have been true, then Pilate had an unequivocal reason to hang him as a traitor to the emperor.
Strange then that Christians should take as prophetic of Jesus a passage that distinctly says it is the man “that is to be ruler in Israel” who shall come forth from Bethlehem. Our Christian instructors in truth are doing their usual thing—picking what suits them, and no one seems to bother challenging them.
Next we get from Phibber a prophesy from Zechariah 9:9-10 about the king entering Jerusalem on “an ass, and upon a colt, the foal of an ass”. This is just what Jesus deliberately chose to do, according to the gospels. Our tutor, for the first time, accepts that actions in the New Testament could have been in deliberate fulfillment of Old Testament prophesy. Why then shouldn’t Jesus enter Jerusalem on an ass if he had read Zechariah? It’s hardly a prophecy if it is done deliberately in its fulfillment.
Phibber has an answer. Any king would want to enter Jerusalem on a chariot or on a warhorse not on a humble ass. So whoever wrote the prophecy must have known that Jesus was going to enter on a lowly ass. Get out of that one, Unbeliever!
All right. Our bible scholar, Phibber, cannot have failed to see that the author of Zechariah was himself using prophecy from Genesis 49:10 where Jacob is foretelling the future of his son Judah. The passage is quite mysterious but was taken by the Essenes to be a messianic prophecy. Zechariah who also was strongly apocalyptic took up the reference. Now in Genesis 49:10 the messiah seems to be called Shiloh and the reference to the foal and the colt links them to vines. The whole song is a transcription of an early work so the animal references could have been tribal symbols of some sort, perhaps associating the tribe of Judah with the culture of grapes. In pagan religions, the ass and the vine are often connected. Later Zechariah saw the chance to use them as symbols of the coming Deliverer and so depicted his messianic king entering Jerusalem on a colt, the foal of an ass.
Humble Man
“Pshaw!” I can hear Dr Ernest Phibber raging:
What people would “rejoice greatly” and “shout” their approval of a king entering on an ass? How absurd it must have all sounded.
I know he would say this because it is what he writes. And yet, he continues, it did not seem absurd because Jesus was such a humble man though one with the personality of a mighty king.
Sounds great to a Christian but the reality was that the Jews were expecting a king who would conquer the world. He did not need to have chariots or mighty armies because God would be on his side and success would be through a miracle. The Jews knew no one could gather a mighty army without the Romans finding out. They did not expect it. Furthermore Zechariah seems closely linked with Essenism. The Essenes valued the poor and the humble, believing that righteousness came from poorness and meekness. Contrary to the assertions of our tutor therefore it is fully understandable how Zechariah could predict a humble entry into the Holy City.
Perhaps our scientific bible reader, Dr Ernest Phibber, had not had the chance to read about the Essenes so could not fully appreciate the influence of one of the most important strands of Judaism at the time of Jesus. What he did know about however was the effect that the humble entry would have upon the world because Zechariah prophesied that in considerable detail. The tribes would gather together with Judah and Ephraim and conquer the world aided by a few lightning bolts. These bits didn’t come true, but no matter, the bits that suit the Christians did come true because Jesus made them.
Now we come to Psalms 45:2,7. Dr Ernest Phibber, our mentor, believes it tells us why God blessed the messiah more than anyone else. Only a perfect man with perfect speech and perfect behaviour could be a messiah.
Thou art fairer than the children of men, grace is poured into thy lips. Therefore God hath blessed thee forever.Psalms 45:2
Thou hast loved righteousness and hated wickedness. Therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.Psalms 45:7
This prophecy must be about Jesus, he’s so good. What else, then, does it says about him? Surely it must predict more about the humble, poor and meek man at the centre of Christianity. Here is a selection of verses:
Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O mighty one, thy glory and thy majesty. Thine arrows are sharp, the peoples fall under thee, out of ivory palaces stringed instruments have made thee glad. At thy right hand doth stand the queen in gold of Ophir. Instead of thy fathers shall be thy children, whom thou shall make princes in all the earth.
Dr Ernest Phibber has again forgotten about most of the prophecy—indeed all of it that does not fit the outcome. The perfect man of this psalm is a mighty, and mighty wealthy, king who will put his children as princes to rule the world. He is a combination of David and Solomon, he is the idealised king that the Jews, in times of tribulation, yearned for to lead them out of oppression, he is their messiah, a God given king who would inaugurate the kingdom of God on earth. I expect the doctor would tell us the rest of it is metaphorical—what suits suits, what does not suit is metaphorical. God’s Truth.
Anyway the doctor goes on to say that Jesus had to be sinless because the Christian gospel of salvation is based on a sinless sacrifice. Even non-Christians will agree that the Jesus of the gospels seemed a remarkably good man but was he sinless? I always understood that there were seven capital sins one of which was wrath. The gospels tell us that Jesus was liable to fits of anger, for example, when, at the age of twelve, he is rude to his mother, when at an older age he is rude to his family, when he is rude to Peter, calling him Satan, and other instances. But most of all he is furious in the Temple and rages about, throwing tables over. That sounds angry enough. Isn’t that a sin? I don’t know why I ask, of course, it isn’t. It is all part of God’s plan so cannot be a sin, don’t you see?
