PAPER 136: Section 1.
Concepts Of The Expected Messiah
P1509:3, 136:1.1 The Jews entertained many ideas about the expected deliverer, and each of these different schools of Messianic teaching was able to point to statements in the Hebrew scriptures as proof of their contentions. In a general way, the Jews regarded their national history as beginning with Abraham and culminating in the Messiah and the new age of the kingdom of God. In earlier times they had envisaged this deliverer as "the servant of the Lord," then as "the Son of Man," while latterly some even went so far as to refer to the Messiah as the "Son of God." But no matter whether he was called the "seed of Abraham" or "the son of David," all were agreed that he was to be the Messiah, the "anointed one." Thus did the concept evolve from the "servant of the Lord" to the "son of David," "Son of Man," and "Son of God."
P1509:4, 136:1.2 In the days of John and Jesus the more learned Jews had developed an idea of the coming Messiah as the perfected and representative Israelite, combining in himself as the "servant of the Lord" the threefold office of prophet, priest, and king.
P1509:5, 136:1.3 The Jews devoutly believed that, as Moses had delivered their fathers from Egyptian bondage by miraculous wonders, so would the coming Messiah deliver the Jewish people from Roman domination by even greater miracles of power and marvels of racial triumph. The rabbis had gathered together almost five hundred passages from the Scriptures which, notwithstanding their apparent contradictions, they averred were prophetic of the coming Messiah. And amidst all these details of time, technique, and function, they almost completely lost sight of the personality of the promised Messiah. They were looking for a restoration of Jewish national glory -- Israel's temporal exaltation -- rather than for the salvation of the world. It therefore becomes evident that Jesus of Nazareth could never satisfy this materialistic Messianic concept of the Jewish mind. Many of their reputed Messianic predictions, had they but viewed these prophetic utterances in a different light, would have very naturally prepared their minds for a recognition of Jesus as the terminator of one age and the inaugurator of a new and better dispensation of mercy and salvation for all nations.
P1510:1, 136:1.4
The Jews had been brought up to believe in the doctrine of the
Shekinah.
But this reputed symbol of the Divine Presence was not to be seen in the temple.
They believed that the coming of the Messiah would effect its restoration.
They held confusing ideas about racial sin and the supposed evil nature of
man. Some taught that Adam's sin had cursed the human race, and that the Messiah
would remove this curse and restore man to divine favor. Others taught that
God, in creating man, had put into his being both good and evil natures; that
when he observed the outworking of this arrangement, he was greatly disappointed,
and that "He repented that he had thus made man." And those who taught this
believed that the Messiah was to come in order to redeem man from this inherent
evil nature.
P1510:2, 136:1.5
The majority of the Jews believed that they continued to languish under Roman
rule because of their national sins and because of the
halfheartedness of
the gentile proselytes. The Jewish nation had not wholeheartedly repented;
therefore did the Messiah delay his coming. There was much talk about
repentance; wherefore the mighty and immediate appeal of John's preaching,
"Repent and be baptized, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." And the kingdom
of heaven could mean only one thing to any devout Jew: The coming of the Messiah.
P1510:3, 136:1.6
There was one feature of the bestowal of Michael which was utterly foreign
to the Jewish conception of the Messiah, and that was the union of
the two natures, the human and the divine. The Jews had variously conceived
of the Messiah as perfected human, superhuman, and even as divine, but they
never entertained the concept of the union of the human and the divine.
And this was the great stumbling block of Jesus' early disciples. They grasped
the human concept of the Messiah as the son of David, as presented by the
earlier prophets; as the Son of Man, the superhuman idea of Daniel and some
of the later prophets; and even as the Son of God, as depicted by the author
of the Book of Enoch and by certain of his contemporaries; but never had they
for a single moment entertained the true concept of the union in one earth
personality of the two natures, the human and the divine. The incarnation
of the Creator in the form of the creature had not been revealed beforehand.
It was revealed only in Jesus; the world knew nothing of such things until
the Creator Son was made flesh and dwelt among the mortals of the realm.