Did you know the worlds top 3 major religions all are expecting the soon arrival of a Messiah? Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. Not only expecting, but all three believe it could be imminent.
Abdu Murray was raised a Lebanese Muslim turned Christian apologist. He is also the founder and president of Embrace the truth. Abdu shares insights on the anticipated 3 messiahs as well as his personal journey of faith. embracethetruth.org
becomingoutlaws.com
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Counted among the outlaws, he said.
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Come follow me. People from all walks of life
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since have been becoming outlaws.
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Did you know the world's top three major religions all are
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expecting the soon arrival of a Messiah?
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That's right, all three Islam, Judaism and Christianity.
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Not only expecting, but all three believe it could be
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imminent anytime. Let's not forget about the
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Christians also have the expectation of the rise of a
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false Messiah, the Antichrist. The arrival of these religions.
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Messiahs will be nothing like the world has ever seen
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according to all three religions.
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Is that coincidence? What's going on here?
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Are they the same figure? Are they different?
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What are the similarities? To help us figure this out, we
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have back again. Acclaimed apologist Abdul
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Murray. Abdul was raised a Lebanese
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Muslim until he took a nine year historical, philosophical,
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theological and scientific investigation.
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That's the way to do it, by the way.
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That led him, of course, straight to the Christian faith.
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He's authored several books, including Apocalypse Later, Why
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the Gospel of Peace Must Trump, The Politics of Prophecy in the
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Middle East, Saving Truth and Grand Central Station, and more
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recently, More Than a White Man's Religion, which he's been
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on recently. And we talked about a couple
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topics from that book, What the Bible Has to Say about Slavery
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as well as Women in the Church, and that's a good one.
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If you haven't heard that episode, he is also the founder
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and president of the Embrace the Truth organization.
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Welcome back, Abdul. Ken, it's great to be with you,
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man. Thanks again for having me.
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Abdul Declare. That's right, you've probably
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heard that before, right? It just popped in my head.
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I have never heard that. You know, you're actually the
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first person. That's actually the first time
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someone's done that. No, I'm I'm in all seriousness,
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I get a lot of jokes about my name, but you're the first one.
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You know, I shouldn't bring a guest on and immediately joke
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about their name, but I feel like I came.
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From I've been here before, so that's right.
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Now we're still familiar that you can go ahead and make fun of
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me all you want. Yeah, I'm obviously feeling too
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comfortable. I don't know, maybe I'll edit
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that out. But it strikes me as funny.
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Being raised Muslim was typical. That was part of your culture,
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your surrounding, your family. What even LED you to begin to
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think about considering something other than what your
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comfort zone was? Yeah, So I I started off
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actually trying to knock the faith out of anybody who wasn't
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a Muslim. And then into the put Islam into
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the into the void that I had created, of course.
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So I was raised in a suburb of Detroit where there was done a
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lot of Muslims. There was just not a lot.
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Now there's a ton. It's actually a very diverse
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area ethnically and religiously. But back in the 80s and in the
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90s, it was still fashionable to say you were a Christian, even
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if you didn't mean it. And so people would say, oh, I'm
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a Christian. And I'd say, well, what does
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that mean? Actually, what I would ask them
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is the question, why are you a Christian?
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And they would say something along the lines of, I don't
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know, we go to the Presbyterian Church on Christmas and Easter.
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So I'm a Presbyterian. I'm like, what?
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I don't know. Is that a question or was that
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an answer? I'm not even sure you know why
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you're that thing. So I started to say to them, are
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you telling me that you trust your eternal soul to a world
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view that someone else has thought through but you haven't
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thought through it? And like, no, you didn't think
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through matters of faith in religion.
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I'm like, well, yeah, of course you can.
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And by the way, I've thought through your religion for you.
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Here's 15 reasons why you're wrong.
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And I would start to launch into issues about the the Bible and
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it's been changed and corrupted. But that's important because
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Muslims actually believe that God has revealed parts of the
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Bible by name. Certain parts of the Bible, but
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then it became corrupted over time such that the Quran, the
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holy book of the Muslims, needed to be revealed.
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I would start to launch into my attacks on the Bible, but also
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the incarnation of Christ that you know, Jesus can't be God.
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That's horribly blasphemous and that denigrates God's greatness,
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the Trinity. I would say the Trinity makes no
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sense. How can you possibly believe
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this thing? And the cross I thought was the
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biggest insult because you know that the central framework I
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operated from is a very Islamic framework, which is you hear the
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phrase all the time. You hear it now in the in the
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news, especially with all that's been going on, we hear a Muslim
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say Allahu Akbar. And whenever you hear someone
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say that, you know something terrible happens.
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But the reality is most Muslims say that phrase.
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Peaceful Muslims who are not interested in blowing up the
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place. They're just peaceful Muslims
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who are looking to live the American dream and move on with
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their lives. They say this phrase too, all
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the time. In fact, the phrase is so
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important that it's got a name. In Arabic, the name for the
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phrase Allahu Akbar is takbir. It literally means God is
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greater. So for the Muslim and for me,
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God's greatness was the most important part of what it meant
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to follow Islam. Because I thought Islam extolled
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and explained God's greatness, whereas other religious faiths
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tried to. But Christianity in particular
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failed because the Trinity, the incarnation, and the cross all
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insulted God's greatness. So I made it my my goal, not in
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an angry way, more in a conversational way to get people
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who weren't Muslims to see that if they wanted to worship a God
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who is truly great, they should turn to Islam to do so.
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Well, as I said before, I tell tell Christians you know,
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tradition is shouldn't be a reason you believe something.
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It should be believed because it's true.
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And that was right. I was right to say that.
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But two guys come to the apartment complex I was living
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at, at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and they
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were preaching the gospel to me. And I was talking to them and
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and frankly, we were engaging in hours, long conversations, weeks
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on end. And they challenged me.
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I challenged them back. But I really wanted these guys
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to become Muslims. So I begin to look at the Bible
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to find a contradiction in that Bible.
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And here's where the story, here's what got me going on this
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I wanted to find a contradiction in the Bible again.
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So I'm reading this Bible not wanting to believe a thing it
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says, but I come across Luke chapter 3, verse seven and the
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following verses as well. And John the Baptist is
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baptizing people. And they, he says to them, who
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told you to flee from the wrath to come, meaning, of course,
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God's judgement. And then he says something
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remarkable. He says, do not even begin to
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think to yourself you have Abraham as your father, as if
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that would save them, you know, their lineage would save them.
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For I tell you, God can raise up children of Abraham from the
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stones that struck me because what John the Baptist is saying
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is that your tradition does not save you.
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Truth is what saves you. Why that irritated me was
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because I was saying the same thing to Christians.
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No Christian ever bothered or having.
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Yet we had a chance to ask me, why are you a Muslim?
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And had they done that, I would have given them some, you know,
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lines about why I thought the Quran was God's word and all
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that stuff. But the real fundamental reason
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was because I was raised that way and I had to be, because
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that's MyHeritage, That's my lineage.
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And so I was getting mad at Christians.
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Not getting mad but criticizing Christians for believing
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something because of tradition. But that was my real reason.
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I want you to note something is that the Bible is the book that
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got me thinking about the real motivations for my own belief.
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So the very book I was criticizing as being corrupted
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over time was used by God to get into the hands of a skeptic like
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me to actually speak to me and challenge me on my motivations.
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So that started the journey. I thought to myself, I'm going
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to believe something not because it's tradition, but because it's
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true. I was fully confident Islam
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would win, but I wanted to be as objective as I possibly could,
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and that's what really began the journey.
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Had it started a little bit before that, but more on a
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curiosity level. But the real, honest, earnest
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journey of trying to find out what is true and what faith
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really talks about who God is and if does God even exist,
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started then. I wanted to know if it was true,
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not just tradition. And you can come to a place
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where apologetically you're like, you know this faith is
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true. This lines up.
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Do you get a place to where you felt it was true?
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I mean that you had an encounter with God that you hadn't had as
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a Muslim. Yeah, there did.
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There did come a place. Remember what I said?
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Right. So I said that Allahu Akbar, God
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is greater. That is the single most
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important goal or the belief that's in Islam.
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All other beliefs are subservient to that fundamental
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belief. There came a time.
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It took nine years. There came a time when I
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realized that the things I was hoping were true in Islam I
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found to be really true in the Gospel.
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So remember when I said about God being the greatest possible
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being? Well, whether it's the Trinity
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or the incarnation, these things actually demonstrate God's
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greatness, and there's a number of reasons why that is.
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The thing that really got me was the cross itself.
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I thought the cross insulted God's greatness.
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But then I realized something. If God is the greatest possible
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being, then he would express the greatest possible ethic and if
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he didn't he wouldn't be the greatest possible being.
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What makes a being great is is is his ethics amongst other
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things. So he would have to express the
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greatest possible ethic. Well what is the greatest
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possible ethic? It's obviously love and so if he
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expresses the greatest possible ethic, he would have to do it in
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the greatest possible way. Otherwise he would be 1/2 baked
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God like like Hercules or Achilles or some version of
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these kind of things or Osiris or one of these God demigods
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kind of a thing. Know if he's the greatest
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possible being then he would express the greatest possible
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ethic in the greatest possible way.
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Well what is the greatest possible way to express love
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when you when you just look at it And the Cliff snow's version
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is it's obviously self sacrifice.
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You can do a lot of things that are loving but until you
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sacrifice for someone, until you do something that hurts you.
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But for their sake, you haven't really expressed love in a true,
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true fashion. In Islam, there is no such thing
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as a God who sacrifices, but in the gospel, it's the central
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thing. And So what I was hoping to be
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true about God in one worldview ended up being actually true
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about God in the Christian worldview, in the very worldview
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I was hoping wasn't true but ended up being actually true.
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And when I realized that, and you see it, by the way, I
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remember where I was when I read it.
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Romans chapter 5 verse verse 8. For God demonstrates his love,
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his greatest possible love, and that while we were sinners,
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those who hate God, Christ died for us.
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Greatest possible being, greatest possible ethic,
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greatest possible expression of it.
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He didn't just die for those who love him, he died for those who
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hate him to transform them into those who love him.
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And it seems to me that the kind of God who would not only
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sacrifice, but take on the very enemy of humanity, death itself
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and our sin, is the kind of God who's worth believing.
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Turning the conversation a bit to these three messiahs, we can
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start with the Islam version. And from my layman's view, I'm
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aware that there's different whether you're Shiite or Sunni.
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There may be a different understanding of what that
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means, but I think you were starting to allude to that they
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believe this has become corrupt. Our scriptures and how does that
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play into a coming Islamic Messiah?
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Yeah, So the great question and yeah, I do appreciate your,
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your, your understanding of the subtlety between the different
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sects within Islam, whether it's Shia, Sunni.
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There's also sects within Sunnism or Shiism where they
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have some different understandings as well, whether
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it's Seveners or Twelveers or Ismailis or whatever it is on
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the Shia side and other things on the Sunni side.
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Essentially let me just boil it down to the sort of the
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essentials is that the Muslim, the Muslim faith, the Islamic
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faith would teach that God is that that Jesus is a will
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return. He actually does return, but he
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returns as the essentially the general or the leaders, the
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commander of the armies of believers against the armies of
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the unbelievers. That Jesus will die in a battle
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with those unbelievers, but then he will rise up again, be raised
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to life like all of us eventually will cause.
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Muslims do believe in a bodily resurrection of the of
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generally, not the not of not of Jesus, but of people generally.
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And then Jesus in terms of having died in that war.
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But the one who is actually the Messiah in in the sense of the
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one who will establish the Islamic rule on earth forever,
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is not the not a Messiah in a strict sense.
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So the word Messiah of course comes from the Hebrew Mashiach
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anointed 1 and while Jesus is called in the in the Quran,
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Jesus is called Isa. Isa is not really the Arabic way
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to say his name, it's really Yasua.
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But the the Quranic way to say Jesus name is Isa, but he's
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called isa al Messiah. You can see the word Messiah
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right in there, right? So it's Al Messiah.
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The thing is though is that the Quran never actually in Islamic
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sources never actually define what it means for Jesus to be
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the Messiah. Al Messiah means the Messiah.
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There's no real definition of this word or understanding of
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what it means to be the Messiah in terms of Jesus.
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However, Islam does have an have a figure called the Mehdi.
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Mehdi typically spelled the Mahdi is depending on which
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Muslim you ask has a figure is a figure who either returns after
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a a a period of long occultation where he's been hidden for
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centuries he's alive but he's been hidden for centuries or
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he's a different figure altogether and he comes and he
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again leads the armies of the the the believers in in Islam
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against the armies of the unto Vanquish them forever and
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establish an Islamic rule on earth forever such that God's
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paradise essentially becomes to all fruition on the earth.
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Now what's interesting is Jesus in the, in that instance
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actually does have roles. When Jesus comes back, he not
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only leads the armies of believers in in the battle, but
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he also in that battle, again depending on the Muslim you ask,
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destroys all crosses and symbols of the crucifixion, kills all
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the pigs, which is just really sort of a interesting detail and
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establishes prayer, you know, among the Muslim nation called
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the Ummah. But then he dies and then he
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raises up again and the Mahdi is the one who actually is the, the
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ultimate leader, human, a human leader, not divine, but a human
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leader of the Muslims. So that's the Islamic version.
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It's got, it's got a lot, there's a lot of wars obviously,
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and depending on which Christian you ask, there's a lot of wars
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in Christian eschatology as well.
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But you have Jesus not coming to end all wars, but to use a war
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to end all wars. And is it corrected that pretty
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much the Jesus comes back and says that scripture had been
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corrupted, how it came about, how we read it now isn't true
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and that Islam is true. Yeah, you're right.
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In fact, the Quran actually says that Jesus has already said that
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back when he was here 2000 years ago and he's just going to
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repeat it but with force. Because it seems like in
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general, at least if not specifically the the Mahdi and
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then the return of Jesus in the Christian realm seems very
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similar. Like they have their hero is our
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villain, that the Mahdi almost seems to be what we would see as
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an Antichrist figure. And then there's like a false
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prophet, a religious figure that helps give him and sustain his
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power and helps the world accept him.
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I don't know if it's that simple, but it just seems to be
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kind of. Parallel.
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Well, I could definitely see that from depending on which
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perspective from a Christian perspective you're talking
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about. Now without getting hyper
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technical, you know Christians often think that the the real
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debate within Christian eschatology is when the rapture
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happens, you know is it pre MIT or post Trib or tribulation.
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For the uninitiated that there'll be this period of
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tribulation, A7 year period of tribulation.
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And the debate amongst Christians is whether or not the
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church gets raptured or taken out of the earth before the
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tribulation happens in the middle of the tribulation or
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after that seven-year period of tribulation.
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And then Jesus comes back and establishes a Millennium and all
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this. Now the reason I bring all this
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up is because your question is a good one, but it also
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presupposes one particular version of eschatology.
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That debate pre, mid and post Trib is 1 debate within one
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strand of Christian eschatology called premillennial
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dispensationalism. But then there's dispensation.
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There's actually premillennialism, which is not
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dispensational, and then there's amillennialism and post
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millennialism. And then there's a thing called
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preterism. Those are actually older in
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Christian theology than dispensational premillennialism.
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The reason I say that not because I'm not saying any one
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of them is right or wrong. The point is, is that there's
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actually A and those other ones. By the way, those other views,
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Amillennialism, post millennialism, preterism, they
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don't even have a rapture and they don't have any sense of an
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Antichrist so much as they interpret Sean's words in for in
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his first, his first letter as not being about an Antichrist,
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but someone who is Antichrist. Like it's a position, not a not
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a person. Yeah.
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Or if there was, one of them would be that it was an early
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Roman Emperor. Yeah, and it's this is already
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all pretty much happened already.
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Right. And that's the preterist view,
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for example, amongst others. So I I, I say that not again to
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to say one's right or one's wrong.
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I'm just saying that we have to appreciate the differences
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within Christian eschatology and not assume that probably the
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most popular version which sells, you know, books and ends
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up being in movies, that's usually premillennial
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dispensationalism. So now let's assume that that's
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true, that it is that way. One could argue that that's what
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you have happening here, is that it looks like there's a figure
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going to arise, and one religion has predisposed people to
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accepting him as a deliverer, which is how they get deceived.
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So that's interesting. What also would be interesting
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is if that more popular version is not true and that it's more
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symbolic or it's already happened in the past or
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whatever. Then you have two other
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religions that their eschatology seems very similar, but
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Christianity already happened. Yeah, it just seems more
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interesting that all three stories kind of line up with the
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same characters but with different roles depending on the
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perspective. Well, yeah, And.
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And the interesting part of it is that they all share a root in
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one sense. Now, I'm not saying they're all
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the same 'cause they're not. But they share a root.
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When you look at the development of Islam, for example, you see
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Jesus appears as a prophetic figure.
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He's a prophet. Nothing more than that.
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He's a prophet. He's a prophetic figure and he
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will return. That sounds similar to
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Christianity, except that they divest them of a divinity.
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There's no sense in which Jesus is actually a savior.
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He's just a figure who tells us to go back to true Islam and
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obey God's commands. But Islam is very law based.
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A lot of the dietary restrictions, a lot of the
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prayer restrictions, a lot of the stuff actually looks very
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much like the Mosaic law. So they would they they instead
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of having a new covenant under the the blood of the Lamb.
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Because the blood, the lamb's blood, meaning Jesus, has never
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been shed. You wouldn't have to go back.
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You, you can't go back. You're sorry.
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You can't have a new covenant. You have to revert back to the
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old covenant of law. So in in one sense, which is
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terribly ironic, and, you know, you know, when you look at the
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way Jews and Arabs have been at war for so long, they're so
00:20:35
similar. If you look at their actual
00:20:36
religious practices, it's really quite interesting.
00:20:40
So you get a messianic sense of certain things in Islamic
00:20:46
theology, both from a Christian perspective and a Jewish
00:20:49
perspective. So you wouldn't be surprised to
00:20:52
see similarities even with the Mahdi and the role of Jesus.
00:20:57
The Jews, of course, don't really see the Messiah in the
00:21:02
same way necessarily under this new covenant of dying for the
00:21:05
sins of the world as Christians might.
00:21:09
But they do see it similar in one sense, that there is a
00:21:11
Messiah. That role is quite defined.
00:21:13
You look at, you know, Psalm 22, Isaiah 53, Psalm 1-10, you see a
00:21:18
bunch of different places where Ezekiel's got plenty of things.
00:21:22
Daniel, of course, has references to a Messiah, one
00:21:25
like a son of man who sits at the right hand, who's who's
00:21:28
coming us from all that everlasting, whose Kingdom will
00:21:30
have no end. You see a lot of this stuff.
00:21:32
Daniel chapter. Daniel Chapter 7, for example,
00:21:34
is a messianic passage. So you see a lot of this stuff,
00:21:38
but what Jews actually believe the Messiah to be is a coming
00:21:42
Davidic king. Someone in the line of David,
00:21:45
who is, who shares literally David's lineage, genetically
00:21:50
actually comes from his line, not symbolically, but
00:21:52
genetically, and that he sets the world to right.
00:21:56
He delivers Israel from all of her enemies.
00:21:58
He establishes a nation of Israel through whom all the
00:22:01
people of the world will be blessed.
00:22:03
There'll be an established Kingdom.
00:22:05
It'll be forever and ever, and there'll be peace when the
00:22:07
Messiah comes. Once the enemies of Israel are
00:22:10
vanquished, peace will reign forever.
00:22:12
And you know, there'll be all kinds of harmony and justice and
00:22:16
and love will be the rain and all this stuff.
00:22:19
That'll be the the the paradigm of future existence.
00:22:23
So it's it's great, right? I mean, it's fantastic.
00:22:27
So that's essentially, I'm boiling down a lot of Jewish
00:22:30
thought because you can look at the Talmud and the Midrash and
00:22:32
the Mishnah and find a lot written about the Messiah.
00:22:38
Those are, of course, books that are outside the Bible.
00:22:41
Well, let let me ask you about that the books outside the Bible
00:22:45
doesn't that kind of confuse the issue and that their
00:22:48
interpretations and thoughts of different rabbis through the
00:22:52
years this and that that kind of becomes extra biblical sources
00:22:57
and maybe muddles what the expectation of the Messiah is as
00:23:00
opposed to pure scriptural prophetical word.
00:23:05
Yeah. Well, it's interesting you say
00:23:07
that because a lot of Jewish thinking when it comes to actual
00:23:10
interpretation of the the Tanakh, the five books of Moses,
00:23:13
the Ketubim, the the writings and you know, in terms of like
00:23:17
the the prose and Psalms and these kind of things.
00:23:19
And of course that the prophets, the minor prophets that follow,
00:23:23
a lot of times it's the the understanding is transmitted
00:23:26
through authority, which is a very Middle Eastern way to do
00:23:28
things. Yes.
00:23:29
You transmit it not through direct interpretation, but
00:23:32
through the authority of that interpretation and who's
00:23:36
qualified to interpret it. That's what you get a lot of.
00:23:38
Now the reason why I say that is because that's where you get the
00:23:41
Talmud. The Talmud is a book.
00:23:44
It's not one book. It's a series of writings that
00:23:47
is far in excess in terms of its sheer volume of the, of the
00:23:52
Bible, of the, of the Old Testament.
00:23:53
It's far in excess of. And what you have is you have
00:23:57
various scholars of different schools of thought interpreting
00:24:01
almost every word of the Bible from a from a certain kind of
00:24:04
lens. And what does this word mean
00:24:06
exactly and why is this where if there's a vagary in the in the
00:24:10
Bible where things seem to change or there is a sense in
00:24:12
which something is ambiguous, there's all kind of
00:24:15
interpretations, you know. And around the messianic
00:24:18
scriptures there's plenty of room for interpretation.
00:24:22
So for example, Isaiah chapter 53 where it says in verse 4,
00:24:26
surely he is born our Greece and carried our sorrows smitten by
00:24:30
God now, yet we've seen him stricken, spitten by God and
00:24:33
afflicted. But he was pierced for our
00:24:34
transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities.
00:24:38
A lot of the rabbis would say originally did say that's
00:24:41
actually the Messiah. Now what ends up happening in
00:24:44
the Talmud, in the Midrash and in the Mishnah and different
00:24:46
different other biblical texts, they started to interpret it
00:24:50
after the Christian movement. They interpreted as no, that
00:24:53
that's not really the Messiah, that's Israel.
00:24:54
That's a reference to Israel herself, the actual nation of
00:24:57
Israel, which of course is not true.
00:25:00
And even the earliest rabbis didn't think so.
00:25:02
But my point in sharing this with you is to affirm your
00:25:04
question is that all those extra biblical things are an attempt
00:25:07
to clarify what the Bible says. But because so many, you know,
00:25:11
you know, the how the phrase goes, too many, too many chefs
00:25:14
spoil the soup, is that there's so much going on here that the
00:25:18
sheer level of interpretation leads to so many different
00:25:22
possibilities of what it could mean.
00:25:24
So yeah, there's a lot of different interpretations of
00:25:27
that. Having said that, what's really
00:25:29
interesting is, and I did this in my in my in my first book I I
00:25:32
talked about this about what did the Jews expect the Messiah to
00:25:37
be around Jesus's time. Since then, they've had
00:25:41
different ideas now because, you know of the sort of schism
00:25:45
relationally between Christians and Jews, especially when the
00:25:48
earliest Christians were in fact Jews and there wasn't a whole
00:25:51
lot of schism to begin with. But because of and after the Bar
00:25:55
Cochbar rebellion, there was a lot.
00:25:59
But before that there were two expectations of who the Messiah
00:26:02
might be. There was Messiah Ben David, in
00:26:06
other words, Messiah son of David, which was a Davidic king
00:26:09
who was going to come and Vanquish all the enemies of
00:26:12
Israel. And of course the Jesus time.
00:26:14
The expectation was that the Messiah would Vanquish the
00:26:16
Romans and the Roman occupation. But then there was also an
00:26:19
understanding of it was a minority opinion at the time,
00:26:22
but there was an authority, an understanding of a different
00:26:25
Messiah called Messiah Ben Joseph.
00:26:28
And of course the story of Joseph is one of tremendous
00:26:30
suffering, but deliverance through that suffering assaulted
00:26:33
to slavery, all these things and thrown into prison, etcetera.
00:26:36
So there was Messiah Ben David, the coming king who with
00:26:39
authority, the military king. Then there was Messiah Ben
00:26:43
Joseph who was the suffering servant.
00:26:46
And so in Jesus time the question became who is the
00:26:50
Messiah going to be like? Is he going to be Messiah Ben
00:26:52
David or Messiah Ben Joseph? And what Jesus does as his first
00:26:56
coming, as the Messiah is say yes, it's both he is going to
00:27:02
be. He is the king who defeats
00:27:03
death, but he does it through suffering.
00:27:06
But ultimately he will be the Davidic King, that which will
00:27:09
which will establish God's peace and justice and rule for all
00:27:12
time upon His Second Coming when the Messiah comes again.
00:27:17
For those listening that haven't dug into this or don't kind of
00:27:22
know the difference between Judaism and Christianity, this
00:27:26
is my quick summary is that I still consider myself a believer
00:27:31
in the Jewish religion. As was mentioned by the early
00:27:37
the early believers, people just thought it was a different
00:27:39
Christianity was a new sect of Judaism.
00:27:42
They called it the way because everything Christians believe is
00:27:46
the Old Testament. It's just that we believe this
00:27:49
person was the coming Messiah that the Jews produced.
00:27:53
It's not a different religion in our view.
00:27:55
It's the fulfillment of Judaism and that everything in the Old
00:27:59
Testament primarily, well, according to Jesus own words,
00:28:02
was written for him by him about him.
00:28:05
And it was all a foreshadowing, a physical foreshadowing of a
00:28:09
spiritual reality in a Kingdom to come that, you know, Moses
00:28:14
would lead people out of physical slavery, and there
00:28:16
would be a Messiah who would lead people out of spiritual
00:28:18
slavery or sin. So, and having said that, would
00:28:23
it be true then that the Jews who are waiting for their
00:28:26
Messiah today are expecting this Messiah you mentioned like more
00:28:32
of a military David figure, which, by the way, Christians
00:28:34
also believed it was a physical bloodline to David in that that
00:28:40
we're not moving forward to a spiritual dimension and we're
00:28:42
just waiting. Jesus was the wrong one.
00:28:44
There's another one. But they're thinking this one
00:28:47
will bring them back to Levitical law and sacrificial
00:28:51
sacrifices by a third temple. Is that a main belief of Judaism
00:28:56
or is that like a sect of orthodox Jews that think a
00:28:59
Messiah, Will we need a third temple so that we can
00:29:02
reinstitute the law, the sacrifices and that they see
00:29:06
that old covenant as the as the end all be all that this is God
00:29:14
on earth. I mean, this is the Kingdom.
00:29:17
Yeah. So I think that there are that
00:29:19
is a sect of Orthodox Judaism or maybe even Conservative Judaism
00:29:23
that would say something along those lines.
00:29:25
And I think that there would be some subtlety and differences
00:29:27
between those different viewpoints.
00:29:30
Among what and exactly what are the nuances of how such a
00:29:33
Messiah would actually come and do what he is going to do
00:29:37
militarily and Vanquish the enemies of Israel as well.
00:29:40
Whether it results in a new third temple or it results in no
00:29:44
more need for sacrifice because people have been cleansed,
00:29:48
etcetera. There's different views on that.
00:29:51
But essentially what you have is a Messiah who will usher in, who
00:29:54
will, like I said, destroy the all oppression and enemies, and
00:29:59
who will establish Israel as a both literal and figurative or
00:30:05
or spiritual Kingdom on earth where there'll be peace and
00:30:10
justice and all these kind of things.
00:30:11
That's one of the reasons why people have actually let many
00:30:15
Jews have rejected Jesus as Messiah, because they said that
00:30:19
when the Messiah comes, this is all going to happen.
00:30:21
And that clearly didn't happen with Jesus because the Romans
00:30:24
weren't vanquished. But the Romans destroyed the
00:30:26
Temple in 1870 AD and there's no peace on earth and no lasting
00:30:32
peace and all these kind of things.
00:30:33
So what did Jesus really do? Of course Jesus is answering
00:30:37
them when he says remember what I said?
00:30:40
I'm both the suffering servant Messiah Ben Joseph and Messiah
00:30:44
Ben David. The one you guys have been
00:30:46
waiting for is both of these people.
00:30:48
Actually, you're just waiting. You you just think it's one
00:30:50
swoop where the Messiah does it once, but maybe the Messiah does
00:30:54
it in stages or in various facets that are a little more
00:30:59
subtle than you might actually realize.
00:31:01
So they do expect that, like you said.
00:31:03
But I would say that that's more Orthodox or Conservative Jews.
00:31:07
Now this is, this bears. This bears mentioning when you
00:31:11
went, when you went into a Jewish person.
00:31:14
Just because they're Jewish doesn't mean they're religious.
00:31:16
Jewishness is an identity, and they may even read the Tanakh
00:31:20
and go to synagogue and all these things.
00:31:23
But the idea that God is a part of their lives is far from them
00:31:27
because it isn't the religion and the creed that's important.
00:31:33
It's the deed that's important. In other words, Judaism creates
00:31:38
a sense of cultural wholeness or unity.
00:31:42
It's a sense of morality and these kind of things.
00:31:45
So don't assume that every Jew you run into, even if they're
00:31:48
very proud of being Jewish, is actually religious in any sense
00:31:50
of the word that we would come to think.
00:31:52
They might not even believe in God at all.
00:31:54
I know plenty of agnostic or atheist Jews who are pretty
00:31:57
serious about being Jews, but they don't believe that God
00:32:00
exists or they're doubtful about it.
00:32:01
But that comes as a shock to many years.
00:32:03
But that's actually a very common experience.
00:32:06
Yeah, it's it's confusing to people I talk to because, I
00:32:09
mean, what other race is defined?
00:32:12
They have the same name for their racial identity as they do
00:32:15
for their religion, right. So if you bail out of your
00:32:17
religion, you're still Jewish, and that's very confusing to
00:32:20
people. If you're Irish, that doesn't
00:32:22
mean you're Catholic. They could, but it doesn't mean
00:32:26
it. But when you're Jewish, it's
00:32:27
very confusing to say I'm Jewish but I don't follow Judaism, you
00:32:31
know? Right.
00:32:33
Or or or they they they they have what's called the Reform
00:32:35
Judaism or more of a liberal Judaism where it's more the
00:32:38
morality and the tradition that that is that is held.
00:32:43
In other words, God was the glue as a figurative idea, was the
00:32:47
glue that held this morality and this culture together.
00:32:51
So whether it's true or not isn't relevant but in terms of
00:32:55
God's existence, but that God's existence, belief in God's
00:32:59
existence is what they needed back then to hold the glue
00:33:02
together. But now we use the the Bible as
00:33:04
a guide on how to hold our community together, culturally
00:33:09
speaking. So that's the experience.
00:33:11
The reason why it's just so foreign to Christians is because
00:33:13
creed and deed are inseparable. So we've specifically talked
00:33:18
about Jewish Messiah, Islamic Messiah, and then we hinted
00:33:23
around a Christian Messiah coming but didn't really hit it.
00:33:27
So what we're talking about there is a return of the
00:33:33
Christian Messiah. Now of course it depends on what
00:33:36
you mean by the word Christian. I know what I mean when I say
00:33:39
it, but other folks might mean something different.
00:33:42
Doesn't mean that there's the Christianity is a relativistic
00:33:45
faith. It's not.
00:33:46
I think that there are those who would say they hold to a
00:33:48
Christian ethic or a Christian understanding, but largely
00:33:52
symbolic, much like Jews might say I'm a Jew but I don't really
00:33:56
believe in God. There are people who say, well,
00:33:58
God is a good idea, or maybe God exists.
00:34:01
But whether Jesus really walked on water, whether Jesus really
00:34:04
rose from the dead, that isn't a relevant that's not relevant.
00:34:07
It's the message of love and joy and and love your enemies and
00:34:10
pray for those who persecute you.
00:34:11
That's the important. So there are those and they
00:34:15
really have an eschatology in that sense or a coming idea what
00:34:19
a Messiah really is. Jesus delivers us from sin by
00:34:21
being a good example. In other words, the Good news is
00:34:25
that's a minority position and I think a mere orthodoxy.
00:34:30
And I don't mean like Eastern Orthodoxy or Greek Orthodoxy.
00:34:33
I mean a mere orthodoxy, an orthodoxy in the sense of
00:34:37
believing what it is that Jesus actually taught and taking it
00:34:41
literal where intended and figurative where intended.
00:34:44
You have what's called what CS Lewis would call the Mere
00:34:47
Christianity, which is that part of which is that Jesus dies on a
00:34:51
cross to save us from our sins, rises from the dead three days
00:34:56
later to prove that He has power over death and that our physical
00:35:01
resurrection will follow. Just like His physical
00:35:03
resurrection, and that He will return and establish an
00:35:07
everlasting Kingdom, a physical resurrection with a physical
00:35:10
heaven where we'll have physical bodies, but they will not be
00:35:14
merely physical. There'll be spirit dominated and
00:35:17
there'll be a new heavens and a new earth, and it'll be like
00:35:19
that forever and ever, and we'll have intimacy with God.
00:35:23
So in the in the in Christian faith, in that mere Christianity
00:35:28
kind of way, whether you're Catholic or Protestant, Orthodox
00:35:32
or otherwise, and whatever other denomination, within those 3
00:35:36
strands you might find yourself, there is a sense in which Jesus
00:35:43
not a sense in which there's a belief, a fund foundationally,
00:35:46
that the Messiah actually came 2000 years ago in the person of
00:35:51
Jesus of Nazareth. And what that means is that God
00:35:54
himself incarnates in, you know, in in human flesh.
00:35:59
He He takes on human skin as it were.
00:36:00
He takes on human flesh. And so Jesus is one person with
00:36:03
two natures, a divine nature and a human nature.
00:36:06
And that's how the Messiah comes.
00:36:09
And that's based on interpretations from Isaiah 53
00:36:12
and Psalms and the understanding of what the Messiah would be
00:36:17
like. Daniel Chapter 7 is another good
00:36:19
example where the Son of Man, he is the Messianic figure and he
00:36:24
is 1 from old and everlasting whose Kingdom has no end and so
00:36:28
he has no beginning which and only one one being has no
00:36:32
beginning and that's God. And so the Messiah looks divine
00:36:36
when you read the Old Testament. And then Jesus is the fulfilment
00:36:39
of those prophecies about the Messiah, and that he is the
00:36:44
Incarnate God the Son, but with human nature He's the Son of
00:36:48
God, and he fulfils all the sacrificial laws that were in
00:36:54
the Old Testament. So in other words, we were under
00:36:57
the yoke of the law because of our sinfulness, and so we had to
00:37:03
shed the blood of animals in order to have that sin
00:37:07
propitiated temporarily, because we're higher creatures than
00:37:10
animals, and so our sin is far graver.
00:37:13
But no animal can stand in my place because no animal is as
00:37:15
good or as as elevated of a nature as me.
00:37:20
So it can't sit in my place permanently.
00:37:22
It can only be a type and shadow of the the kind of redemption
00:37:26
that is to come. That's why we need to have
00:37:28
sacrifices over and over again. But the Bible in the Old
00:37:32
Testament looks forward to a day when there will be no no need
00:37:35
for sacrifice because an ultimate sacrifice has been
00:37:37
made. Isaiah 53 is is the culmination
00:37:42
of that where he is pierced for our transgressions.
00:37:44
He's trust. He's crushed for our iniquities
00:37:47
and the his chastisement is what brought us peace and by his
00:37:52
wounds we are healed. That's a prophecy of what the
00:37:56
Messiah is to go through Psalm 22 as well.
00:37:58
You see that Messiah is is pierced his in his hands and his
00:38:02
feet and they cast lots for his clothing and all these things.
00:38:06
These are, these are prophecies about the coming Messiah.
00:38:09
And so Jesus as a man, the Incarnate, can stand in our
00:38:15
place and and be therefore be judged in our place.
00:38:19
But because he's fully righteous and only God could be fully
00:38:22
righteous, he also has no sin of his own to bear.
00:38:27
And so the Messiah is the one who delivers us not by
00:38:30
vanquishing our enemies, because we are in fact of the enemies of
00:38:33
God, but by paying for our sins transforms us into looking like
00:38:38
his Son. In other words, God sees His
00:38:41
righteousness is imputed to us and therefore we look like Jesus
00:38:45
to God. That's how that is.
00:38:47
That's our deliverance and we know how long we have any
00:38:49
penalty for death. And so there's two comings of
00:38:52
the Messiah. The first one is to establish
00:38:54
the new covenant is to deal with sin once and for all by paying
00:38:59
on the cross what we all deserve to pay and arising from the dead
00:39:04
to prove that he could do it and giving that resurrection life
00:39:07
and power to us. So that Paul says who is a Jew
00:39:11
of Jews and a Pharisee of Pharisees says essentially that
00:39:15
that resurrection power that brought Jesus to life is the
00:39:18
power of power that lives in US. And just as his physical body
00:39:21
was sown in corruption in the ground after being brutalized,
00:39:25
it is raised incorruptible and that's how our bodies will be.
00:39:29
So that's the first coming. The second coming of the Messiah
00:39:32
is when all of this culminates and it's all whatever timing God
00:39:35
has, fullness of time has come and all things will be set right
00:39:40
because Jesus will return, And Jesus, when he does that, will
00:39:44
establish a Kingdom, however complicated that is.
00:39:47
Depending on your strand of belief within Christianity, he
00:39:50
will, He will establish a Kingdom that will reign forever
00:39:53
and ever, and we will explore God and understand Him of
00:39:57
intimacy with him forever. So we'll have an infinite amount
00:40:00
of time to explore the infinite God, which will be will be in a
00:40:04
perpetual novelty will it will never get old.
00:40:06
It'll always be novel and always new.
00:40:09
And we'll be experiencing this world with uncorrupt bodies,
00:40:12
which means that we'll be able to do things we were intended to
00:40:16
do, but never able to do because of the sin that corrupts us.
00:40:19
So the Messiah has a delivery from sin and then a then the
00:40:22
establishment of a Kingdom. He does both of those things.
00:40:26
So I was just talking recently with someone doesn't have a lot
00:40:30
of Bible knowledge but a a believer and about the three
00:40:34
messiahs and not familiar with any of them and I and the
00:40:41
response was pretty typical as I find this terrifying because
00:40:48
you're talking about some an end to something or the beginning of
00:40:51
something to the unknown or this is too much information it's
00:40:55
scary. In the New Testament it said to
00:40:59
incur when talking about the coming of Christ to encourage
00:41:02
each other with these words. So in in A to wrap this up,
00:41:08
somebody at that kind of level of understanding what what's
00:41:12
like a 3060 second response of where is the hope as a believer
00:41:21
to soon anticipate a return of Christ which the church has been
00:41:25
called the dew. Yeah, yeah.
00:41:27
So here, here, here, it comes down to really this There's a
00:41:30
new heavens and the new earth which is established, and there
00:41:34
will be no more death. The Bible says specific.
00:41:36
There will be no more death. And he will wipe away every tear
00:41:39
from their eyes. So everything in this life that
00:41:42
besets us, that causes us pain, that sets us back, that that
00:41:47
constantly plagues us and haunts us, whether it's pain we've
00:41:50
caused or pain that we've caused others, all of that will be set
00:41:53
right and they will not exist anymore.
00:41:56
It will not be something that sets us back.
00:41:59
So this newness that comes from the old passing away, what
00:42:03
passes away in the old is that which we hate anyway, that which
00:42:07
is decay and and things that fall apart.
00:42:10
So all of your passions, all the things you love, all the people
00:42:13
you love, you will love them and know them better than you've
00:42:16
ever known them before, and completely and unselfishly.
00:42:20
All the things that you hope for and care about will all be so
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new and fresh and perpetually new and fresh.
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That's why the Bible says not to fear this, but to welcome it and
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to pray for it. For eye has not seen, nor ear
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has heard, nor has entered into the heart of man, that which God
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has prepared for those who love him.
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Which means that whatever you're worried about, it won't be bad.
00:42:41
Whatever you're hoping for, it'll be so much better than
00:42:43
that. So whatever is entering into
00:42:45
your ear or entering into your heart or trying to be something
00:42:48
you see, heaven and the new earth and the new and the new
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new creation will be so much better than that.
00:42:55
All the things you wish were true will be infinitely better
00:42:58
than even the things you wish we wish for.
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It's a hope, it really is a hope to have all the things that
00:43:04
plague us and hold us back. The rains are off and we're
00:43:08
living in freedom, incorruptible, without
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corruption whatsoever. And God himself will be our
00:43:13
light counted among the outlaws, he said.
00:43:16
Come, follow me. People from all walks of life
00:43:20
sense have been becoming outlaws.