Messiah Or Charlatan?
John 4:26
Jesus
of Nazareth is the Christ, the incarnate God; or he was the slickest, most
devious charlatan who ever lived. Which was he? There is no question that he
claimed to be the Messiah, the Christ, God in human flesh, the Son of God,
eternally one with the Father and the Spirit. He made no bones about his
claims. But there have been many over the centuries who have made such claims.
Most were obvious candidates for the funny
farm. Still, they made their claims; and some people believed them. Could
Jesus of Nazareth have been such a fraud?
Two
thousand years before Jesus was born at Bethlehem,
God told Abraham that in his Seed all the nations of the earth would be
blessed. The blessing was not to be found in Abraham’s seeds (the Jewish
people), but in his Seed (one promised man). God made it clear that the
promised blessing was to be found in only one man of supernatural descent, by
passing by Ishmael (the child of the flesh) and choosing Isaac (the child of
promise), passing by Esau (the eldest) and choosing Jacob, and passing by
Jacob’s eleven other sons and choosing Judah. Many, many years later, an
insignificant descendent of Abraham named Jesse was identified as one in the
messianic family. Jesse had eight sons. But God passed by all of them, except
David. David was the one chosen through whom God would raise up the Messiah,
the Prince, the Redeemer-King of Israel.
Strict
as the genealogical requirements were which must be met by one claiming to be
the Christ, the Old Testament prophecies were even more precise and demanding.
In Genesis 49:10, Jacob promised that civil government would not depart from Judah,
until the Christ had arrived. So it came to pass. Just after the exaltation of
Christ to the throne of David, the throne of God,
Judah’s government
collapsed. The nation of Israel
was smashed to smithereens in 70 A. D.
There
is more. God’s prophet, Micah (Mic. 5:2), declared the precise place where
Messiah would be born – Bethlehem.
But there were two Bethlehems. One was in Ephrathah. The other was in Zebulon,
seventy miles to the north. Jesus was born in Bethlehem,
Ephrathah, the Bethlehem specified
by Micah.
The
prophecies of the Old Testament were even more detailed. The prophets spoke
plainly and in minute detail about the Messiah being of poor social status, his
miraculous powers, and his death at Jerusalem.
They predicted that Messiah would be betrayed by a friend for thirty pieces of
silver, forsaken by his followers, falsely accused, that he would refuse to
defend himself, that he would be executed by crucifixion, that he would be
numbered among transgressors in his death, that he would pray for his
tormenters at the time of his crucifixion, that his body would be pierced, and
yet not a bone of it broken, and that men would cast lots for his garment.
Anyone
who pretends to imagine that all the prophecies of the Old Testament, just
accidentally coincided with the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth, and deny
that he is indeed the Christ, God incarnate, “the Savior of the world,” is a wilfully ignorant fool.
Don Fortner