Translated from Spanish the Facebook article by Ronie Paternina.
For Catholics, Christians, and Messianics who are searching for truth and wanting to get out of idolatry.
Did Jesus bring peace to the world? No! There is still war Matthew 10:34 Nullified death? No! Lots of people dying everywhere. Luke 19:27
Eradicated The diseases? No! (Many in hospitals and clinics)
Has evil been annulled? No! (Not at all…it is on the increase.)
Nullified sin? No!
Nullified misery and pain? No! (Many people suffering and even more from poverty)
Did he bring paradise? No!
second coming since he does not exist)
Provided us with salvation? No!
Did he bring freedom to the world? No!
Has our economic condition changed? No!
Did he achieve unity and brotherhood among the nations? No!
Did he really make God known to the world? No!
Where then is the kindness and virtue of his sacrifice?
Where is the great power of his blood, and his death?
Deuteronomy 24:16 (NO ONE CAN DIE FOR THE SINS OF OTHERS).
Note: It should be noted that it is written in the Torah that YHVH does NOT accept human sacrifices. It says so in Deuteronomy 18:10 – Jeremiah 7:31 – Leviticus 18:21 – Leviticus 20:2. Jesus, Yeshu, Yashuah or whatever you want to call him, he died in vain for humanity. WHAT DID JESUS CHRIST ACHIEVE WITH HIS SUPPOSED SACRIFICE of himself? Nothing!
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Well, just so you know, the prophecies about the Messiah that you listed and that are recognized in Judaism cannot be fulfilled until the Messianic Kingdom has been established. They come from the Rambam’s Book of Kings. So then using these prophecies as criteria for recognizing the Messiah will disqualify any messianic candidate from being recognized as the Messiah until the candidate has accomplished the work of the Messiah. So, nobody can claim anyone at all is the Messiah. However, the Rambam was aware of this predicament and stated that since this is the case, anyone whose teachings are not contradictory to Torah can be presumptively held to be a Messiah candidate. These presumptive Messiah candidates are then only disqualified if they are revealed to teach contrary to Torah or fail at the mission of establishing the Messianic kingdom, with “death while trying to complete the Messianic mission” being another disqualifier.
Now I know you are Karaite and don’t care about the Rambam, but apply the logic. Anyone who says, “Bob can’t be the Messiah because Bob did not establish the Messianic Kingdom” is basically saying that nobody can have any opinion about who the Messiah might be until the Messianic Kingdom has been established. This would then require the Messiah to establish the Messianic Kingdom without anyone knowing that he is the Messiah, or, he will establish the Messianic Kingdom with the support of those who have presumed him as a Messianic candidate while acknowledging that he has not yet fulfilled the prophecy about establishing the Messianic Kingdom.
So that’s what you are saying. “X cannot be the Messiah because X has not established the Messianic Kingdom.” This logic demands that there simply not be a Messiah. It says that nobody can be the Messiah until they have established the Messianic Kingdom, but the Messiah must be the Messiah before establishing the Messianic Kingdom.
The conclusion, then, whether or not Rambam is important to you, is that the fulfillment of Messianic prophecy cannot be a criterion for accepting a Messianic candidate. So, Christians should shut up about “Jesus fulfilled all these prophecies!” But also Jews kinda need to be quiet about the whole “That messianic candidate can’t be the Messiah because he did not fulfill the prophecies.” Fulfillment of prophecy, other than checking to see if a candidate is from Bethlehem and descended from David through Solomon, is not how one determines if someone is the Messiah. Again, this seems to just be a logical necessity regardless of one’s opinion of Rambam.
Also, other than forced or coerced conversions to Christianity, no Jew has ever suffered because of their belief in who the Messiah is. I want to caveat that a bit. Yes, a given Jew may have been convinced that Bar Kochba was the Messiah, enlisted in his army to fight for the Messianic kingdom, and been killed in battle only to find out he did all that for nothing. So yes, in its most direct sense, Jews have suffered for their views on the Messiah. But what I am trying to get at with my statements “Jews haven’t suffered for their Messianic beliefs” is on the personal, spiritual level. Like, no Jew ever lost touch with Hashem because of a Messianic belief. No Jew became more cruel, or more ignorant, or in some way more godless because they have some belief about the Messiah. This holds true for those who believe Bar Kochba is the Messiah, who believe the Lubavitcher Rebbe is the Messiah, who believe Jesus (his Jewish devotees tend to call him Yeshua) is the Messiah.
So, as a Karaite, you can kinda be “unmessianic”, as the Messiah in the Tanakh is a reference to the High Priest, to David, to Cyrus, and other shadowy figures (yes, plural – the Tanakh says not to bother the “Messiahs”). The true messianic hope of an ultimate redemptive Messiah comes from interpreting prophecies about the deliverance of Israel in terms of a Messianic national salvation. So, I suppose, you could say that all those prophecies about Israel ruling the world have nothing to do with the Messiah. I’ve seen it done. However, saying that these prophecies have to be fulfilled before someone can be accepted as Messiah is basically saying there can be no messianic hope as far as you’re concerned.
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A couple of things:
Belief in a/the messiah as being crucial to their faith has roots in Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism (13 principals of faith – #12 – although the talmudic Rabbi Hillel disagreed), there is no command in the Torah to believe in a/the messiah. I think by giving it so much credence, it only justifies the Christian “crusade” to prove Jesus was the messiah. He clearly was not as you very clearly pointed out in this post and done so with great scriptural and logical backing. I think that it needs to be pointed out to Christians, and even Rabbinic Jews, that one has no obligation from the Torah to believe in a/the messiah at all (which kills the entire Christian faith). Just my two cents 🙂
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