{"id":3035,"date":"2021-05-31T18:10:23","date_gmt":"2021-05-31T18:10:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sfdumitru.org\/?p=3035"},"modified":"2024-03-11T17:55:47","modified_gmt":"2024-03-11T17:55:47","slug":"exploring-your-faith-vi-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfdumitru.org\/en\/2021\/05\/exploring-your-faith-vi-2021\/","title":{"rendered":"The Messiah is Come!"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t

The last spiritual evening in the series The Fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets: About Christ, From the Prophets<\/em> took place on Thursday, June 9, as usual, on the YouTube channel of the monastery. The title of the evening was \u201cThe Messiah Was to Come before the Fall of the Second Temple in 70 AD (Daniel 9.24\u201327)\u201d and centered on prophecies about the date before which the Messiah was supposed to come. We underscored various Jewish or Old Testament writings that emphasized this temporal factor in connection with the Savior\u2019s coming.<\/p>

One of the writings that highlights a clear date by which the Messiah was to come is \u201cJacob\u2019s Prophecy\u201d: \u201cThe scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor lawgiver from his loins, until Shiloh comes; and to Him shall be the expectation of the nations\u201d (Genesis 49.10). So the Messiah had to come before the end of the Jewish royalty line. And we know that ended because the Jews were dispersed all over the world.<\/p>

Other prophecies state that the Messiah was to come during the Second Temple because the First Temple, the one built by Solomon, was destroyed by the Babylonians in the fifteenth century BC. Note that the Second Temple was destroyed in 70 AD by the armies of the Roman emperor Vespasian.<\/p>

Regarding the text from Malachi: \u201c\u2018Behold, I send My messenger, and he will prepare the way before Me. And the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come into His temple even the Messenger of the covenant, whom you desire. Behold, He is coming,\u2019 says the Lord Almighty\u201d (3.1), Rabbi David Qimhi (1160\u20131235 AD) says that \u201cthe Messenger of the covenant is the Messiah.\u201d Therefore, the \u201cMessenger of the covenant\u201d who will come into His temple\u2014the second temple\u2014was to come by 70 AD.<\/p>

\"\"But the central text comes from the Prophet Daniel: \u201cSeventy weeks are determined for your people and for your holy city to finish sin, to set an end to sin, to wipe out lawlessness, to atone for wrongdoings, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Holy of Holies. You shall know therefore and understand that from the going forth of the word to be answered and to build Jerusalem, until Christ the Prince, there shall be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks. Then the time shall return, and the streets and the wall shall be built; the times shall be left desolate. After the sixty-two weeks, the Anointed One shall be put to death, yet there shall be no upright judgment for Him; and he shall destroy the city and the sanctuary with the prince who is coming, and they shall be cut off with a flood, and to the end of the war, which will be cut short, he shall appoint the city to desolations\u201d (9.24\u201326).<\/p>

This text is extraordinary because it speaks of the Anointed One\u2019s coming\u2014 the Messiah\u2014and His ensuing blameless death. And an even more concrete fact is the mentioning of the coming of a foreign ruler\u2019s people who will tear down the city of Jerusalem and the Sanctuary. The Prophet Daniel makes a direct connection between the death of the Messiah and the demolition of the Temple.<\/p>

There are many arguments in support of this interpretation. First, the Jews have always referred to this prophecy as suggesting the Messiah. Maimonides (c. 1135\u20131204 AD) says this in his letter to the Jews of Yemen: \u201cBut Daniel clarified for us the depths of the knowledge of the end times. However, because they are secret, the sages, may their memory be a blessing, forbade the calculation of the days of the Messiah\u2019s coming, so that the uneducated people would not be lost when they saw that the end had come and there was no sign of the Messiah. For this reason, the sages, may their memory be a blessing, decreed: Cursed be he who calculates the end of times! But we cannot say that Daniel was wrong in his calculation.\u201d<\/p>

Also, the historian Josephus, who was contemporary with these events, wrote in his book, The Antiquities of the Jews<\/em>: \u201cIn the same way, Daniel wrote about the Roman rule and that the land would be destroyed by them\u201d (X, 11, 7). He explains the reference to the Romans in the prophecy of Daniel.<\/p>

Another argument is found in the Talmud, Yoma 39b: \u201cThe Sages taught: During the tenure of Shimon the Righteous (hierarch in the third century BC), the lot for God always arose in the high priest\u2019s right hand; after his death, it occurred only occasionally; but during the forty years prior to the destruction of the Second Temple, the lot for God did not arise in the high priest\u2019s right hand at all. So too, the strip of crimson wool that was tied to the head of the goat that was sent to Azazel did not turn white, and the westernmost lamp of the candelabrum did not burn continually.<\/strong> And the doors of the Sanctuary opened by themselves as a sign that they would soon be opened by enemies, until Rabbi Jo\u1e25anan ben Zakkai scolded them. He said to the Sanctuary: Sanctuary, Sanctuary, why do you frighten yourself with these signs? I know about you that you will ultimately be destroyed, and Zechariah, son of Ido, has already prophesied concerning you: \u2018Open your doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may devour your cedars\u2019\u201d (Zechariah 11.1).<\/p>

The Finnish professor Risto Santala draws the conclusion from all these references, saying: \u201cSince we know that Titus took Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple in 70 AD, we can understand that when the Talmud speaks of the events of 40 years before this it is referring to the year 30, which is most commonly recognized as being the year of Jesus\u2019 death. […] By the time the city of Jerusalem and the second Temple have been destroyed, the Messiah ought to have already come.\u201d<\/p>

This conclusion regarding prophecy also applies to all our spiritual evenings so far. The concordance between the Christian and Jewish traditions on prophecy is noteworthy and surprising as well.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The last spiritual evening in the series The Fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets: About Christ, From the Prophets took place on Thursday, June 9, as usual, on the YouTube channel of the monastery. The title of the evening was \u201cThe Messiah Was to Come before the Fall of the Second Temple in 70 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[28],"class_list":["post-3035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-icon-from-within-may-jun-21","tag-exploring-your-faith","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfdumitru.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfdumitru.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfdumitru.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfdumitru.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfdumitru.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3035"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sfdumitru.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3035\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3103,"href":"https:\/\/sfdumitru.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3035\/revisions\/3103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfdumitru.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfdumitru.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfdumitru.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}