First published in 2016 by Tony Pearce – more relevant still today!
Has the Messiah already come?
The Yalkut Shimoni is a piece of rabbinic literature, the oldest copy of which dates back to around 1310, but quotes many rabbis who lived far earlier in the first three centuries of this age. It touches on many future scenarios for both the nation of Israel and the world in the days of the coming of the Messiah. It states:
‘In the year the Messiah-King appears, all the nations of the world are provoking each other. The King of Persia provokes an Arab king and the Arab king turns to Aram (Syria?) for advice. The King of Persia goes back and destroys the entire world. And all the nations of the world are in panic and distress and they fall upon their faces and are seized with pains like those of a woman giving birth. And Israel are in panic and distress and asking, ‘Where shall we go?’ and He says to them, ‘Why are you afraid? Do not fear, your time of redemption has come.’
The Yalkut Shimoni warns of a conflict in the Middle East involving the Arab nations and Persia / Iran which cause Israel to be in fear. In the prophecy this leads to the final redemption through the coming Messiah King.
According to other Jewish writings, the coming of the Messiah will be preceded by days of spiritual decline and trouble. Rabbi Sokolovsky in his book ‘Prophecy and Providence’ quotes a number of passages from the Talmud speaking of times of distress during the lkveta d’Meshicha (the heels of Messiah, the days before the coming of the Messiah).
‘Tragedy will come upon you at the end of all the days.’ Targum Yonathan.
‘During the lkveta d’Meshicha insolence will abound. The young will make the faces of the elderly grow ashen with shame; the elderly will have to rise before the young; sons will disgrace fathers; daughters will rise up against their mothers; the members of ones family will become his enemies.’ Sotah 49b
‘During the lkveta d’Meshicha government will turn atheist and there will be no protest. Truth will vanish.’ Sanhedrin 97a, Sotah 49b.
The Talmud describes a time which will be scientifically and technologically advanced to the extent that it will have the power to destroy the world (Midrash Rabbah on Song of Songs 2:29). The times will be one of spiritual decay that will bring people so low that just as the wicked ways of the people living at the time of Noah brought upon them the flood, so also the generation that will see the Messiah should rightly be destroyed (Mishnah Sota 0:15).
So will there be a time of trouble in the days before the Messiah comes? The words we have quoted from the Talmud say that ‘tragedy will come upon you at the end of days.’ They also speak of a time of wickedness like in the time of Noah.
Prophecies about the Messiah
All of this does find a correspondence in the words of the Hebrew prophets. These words concern הימים אחארית, ‘acharit ha yamim’ the last days, the days before the coming of the Messiah. The prophets speak of a time of unique trouble:
‘For thus says the Lord. ‘We have heard a voice of trembling, of fear and not of peace. Ask now and see whether a man is ever in labour with child? So why do I see every man with his hands on his loins like a woman in labour, and all faces turned pale? Alas! For that day is great, so that none is like it; and it is the time of Jacob’s trouble, but he shall be saved out of it. … In the latter days you will consider it.’ Jeremiah 30:5-7, 31.
‘At that time Michael shall stand up, the great prince who stands watch over the sons of your people; and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation, even to that time. And at that time your people shall be delivered, every one who is found written in the book.’ Daniel 12:1
Similar words are also to be found in the חדשה ברית B’rith Hadasha (New Covenant / Testament) concerning the coming back of Yeshua (Jesus) the Messiah. He also said that these days would be preceded by a time of unique trouble:
‘For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be.’ Matthew 24:21-22.
In fact many of the signs mentioned by Jewish writings above correspond to things which the New Covenant (Testament) says will happen in the days before Yeshua comes again. There will be a time of moral decline, ‘as in the days of Noah’ and the ‘days of Lot’ (i.e. as in the time of the Flood and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah). Luke 17.26-30. Wickedness will increase and most men’s love will grow cold. Matthew 24.12.
Character and behaviour will be in decline: ‘But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power.’ 2 Timothy 3.1-5.
There will be wars and conflicts increasing, along with natural disasters and famines (Matthew 24.7). Following worldwide dispersion, the Jewish people will return to the land of Israel. The rebirth of Israel is prophesied in the Hebrew prophets (Ezekiel 36-39, Jeremiah 31.10 and many other places). Jesus spoke of the ‘fig tree budding’ as a sign of His soon return (Luke 21.29-31). The fig tree budding is widely interpreted as the restoration of the Jewish people as a nation in the land of Israel. At the time of the end there will be a great conflict centring on Jerusalem (Zechariah 12, Luke 19.41-44, 21.20-24). In the New Testament it is seen as a sign of the second coming of the Messiah Yeshua who will return as the all powerful king to bring an end to war and bring peace to the world, starting from Jerusalem (Isaiah 2.1-4, Zechariah 14, Acts 1.11, Revelation 20).
The last days and the coming of Messiah
These prophecies tie in with current world conditions and are a sign that we are living in the last days of this age / הימים אחארית.
If there are signs of the second coming of Messiah in today’s events, does that mean he has come before?
Judaism today rejects any idea that the Messiah has come once before in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. According to the Jewish statement of faith: ‘I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah, and though he may tarry, still I await him every day.’ If we are still waiting for a coming Messiah then by definition he has not already come.
However, there are Jewish writings that say that the Messiah should have come by now:
‘The world will exist 6000 years. 2000 years of desolation (meaning from Adam to Abraham), 2000 years of the Torah (meaning from Abraham to somewhere around the beginning of the common era), and 2000 years of the Messianic era (roughly the last 2000 years); but because our iniquities were many all this has been lost (i.e. the Messiah did not come at the expected time).’ b Sanhedrin 97a-b.
This is a passage from the Talmud, which says that we should now be in the ‘2000 years of the Messianic era.’ The 2000 years of Torah are held to date from Abraham, not Moses, so according to this Midrash, the Messianic era was supposed to begin around 2000 years ago. So the Messiah should have come.
Rashi gives an explanation for the non appearance of Messiah by saying: ’After 2000 years of Torah it was God’s decree that the Messiah would come and the wicked generation would come to an end and the subjugation of Israel would be destroyed. But because our iniquities were many, all this has been lost.’ So, according to Rashi, Messiah should have come but did not because of Israel’s sins.
Michael Brown comments on this in his book ‘Answering Jewish objections to Jesus’ (Vol 1. p 1): ‘Most traditional Jews follow Rashi’s dating, putting the expected date of Messiah’s arrival at roughly 240CE. However, Rashi based his figure on a significant chronological error in the Talmudic tradition, probably the most famous error of its kind in rabbinic literature. It is a miscalculation of almost two hundred years!’ This brings us back to the time when Yeshua appeared.
The prophecy of Daniel 9.25-26 also says that the Messiah should have come at around the time when Jesus appeared: ‘Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the command to restore and build Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince, there shall be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublesome times. And after 62 weeks Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself; and the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary.’
The ‘week’ here is the Hebrew word ‘shavua’ which can mean a period of 7 days or 7 years. In this case it is 7 years. So we are talking about a period of 7 + 62 sevens which equals 483 years. At the end of this period of time לו ואין משיח יכרת ‘Messiah shall be cut off but not for Himself’. The Hebrew uses the word for Messiah and says that He will be cut off (die a violent death) but not for Himself (not for His own sins, but for the sins of others).
Therefore according to the prophecy of Daniel, Messiah should have come ‘seven weeks and sixty two weeks’ after the command to restore and build Jerusalem and before the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 CE. Clearly this creates a problem for rabbinic Judaism. Rashi claimed that the prophecy was referring to King Agrippa, the last Jewish king at the end of the Second Temple period. The reasoning for this is that Jewish kings were anointed and the Hebrew term ‘mashiach’ means anointed. However, the ‘anointing’ implied in the word ‘mashiach’ was for legitimate kings in the line of David, and could not be applied to Agrippa who was a carnal, wicked king, and a descendant of Herod, the Edomite, not of the line of David.
Moreover, the subject of the prophecy given to Daniel by Gabriel was the redemption of the Jewish people, the status of Jerusalem and the Temple. Agrippa had nothing to do with this redemption and his life or death would have been completely irrelevant to this prophecy. Even more significantly the historians Josephus and Photius put the death of King Agrippa II many years after the destruction of the Second Temple, somewhere between 93 and 100 CE, so Daniel 9.26 has to be about someone else.
The event of Daniel 9.26 was to happen between the command to rebuild Jerusalem and the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. The end point of this part of Daniel’s prophecy has to be the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple to the Romans in 70CE. Therefore, this prophecy in Daniel indicates that Messiah should have come before the destruction of the Second Temple.
There is a passage in the Talmud that agrees with this conclusion (Midrash Bereshith p. 243 Warsaw edition): ‘Messiah was to exit in 33 C.E.’ (See also – YALKUT, Vol. II (p. 79 dahlet) & NAZIR (32 beht).
Commenting on this Maimonides said: ‘Daniel has made known to us the knowledge of the end times. However, since they are secret, the wise rabbis have barred the calculation of the days of Messiah’s coming so that the untutored populace will not be led astray when they see that the End Times have already come but there is no sign of the Messiah’ (Igeret Teiman, Chapter 3 p.24.).
From this statement it appears that Maimonides believed that Daniel had knowledge of the time of the coming of the Messiah and that that time has now passed. Because of this, rabbis should not teach about this subject in case their congregations are troubled by the fact that these events have happened and the Messiah did not appear.
Do Hebrew prophets and New Covenant texts contradict each other?
This is what Rachmiel Frydland discovered as a young Jewish man studying at a yeshiva in pre-war Poland: ‘I knew that the secrets of Israel’s redemption and the Messianic Days lay hidden in the book of Daniel. I also knew that some of the great Talmudic and post-Talmudic Rabbis had plunged into the study of this book and even plummeted the hidden secrets of its symbolic signs and ciphers. The Talmud and Midrash, discussing Israel’s redemption, often refer to the book of Daniel as the revealer of the secret time of Messiah’s coming. However at the yeshiva I was ominously reminded of a warning and a curse pronounced against those who try to figure out the end. The Talmud says: ‘May they drop who try to figure out the end; for they say, ‘Since the time of his (Messiah’s) coming has already arrived, yet he did not come. Therefore he will not come at all’. (Sanhedrin 97b). The study of our greatest sages brought them to the conclusion that if the dates in the Scriptures are correct, the Messiah should have come in the first century of our era, or thereabouts. In a Talmudic portion it is written concerning the timing of the Messianic Age: ‘The school of Elijah taught: The world is to be for six thousand years; two thousand years without Torah; two thousand years with Torah and two thousand years Messianic times (Midrash Rabba Gen.98.3).’ (What the Rabbis know about the Messiah by Rachmiel Frydland).
While all other attempts to make sense of the prophecy of Daniel 9.26 fail to identify who ‘Mashiach’ is, it makes perfect sense when applied to Yeshua. He came, at the right time, around 2000 years ago. He came before the destruction of the Second Temple, to be cut off (die a violent death), not for Himself (not for his own sins), but for the sins of others. In doing this, He fulfilled the prophecy of Daniel 9.26 as well as other prophecies of Messiah suffering as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. He was buried and rose again on the third day, appearing to His disciples for 40 days before ascending into heaven. At His ascension from the Mount of Olives on the east side of Jerusalem the angel told the watching disciples that He would come again: ‘This same Jesus who was taken from you into heaven will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven.’ Acts 1.11.
The place where this happened, the Mount of Olives, is prophesied in the book of Zechariah as the place to which the Messiah will come at the end of this age. In Zechariah 12.2-3, we read of Jerusalem being a ‘burdensome stone’ to all nations. This means there will be some crisis involving all nations concerning Jerusalem, exactly what we now have in the Middle East as the UN and the great powers discuss the status of Jerusalem. This will lead to a global conflict in which Israel will look to ‘one who has been pierced’ to save them from those seeking their destruction (Zechariah 12.9-10). As they look to Him ‘a fountain will be opened for sin and uncleanness’ (Zechariah 13.1). After this time of great trouble in which two thirds of the people will be cut off (Zechariah 13.8), the Lord will return and stand on the Mount of Olives (Zechariah 14.2-5), bringing an end to the war and beginning His reign of righteousness on earth (Zechariah 14.9).
The one who has been pierced has already come – about 2000 years ago. He came at the right time. Earlier, we quoted Rashi who said the Messianic Age had not come ‘because our iniquities were many’. In the New Testament, we read that was precisely why Messiah did come! To save us from our sins and make the way for God to forgive us and give us eternal life: ‘You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Messiah died for the ungodly. …. God demonstrates His own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Messiah died for us. Since we have now been justified by His blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through Him! For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to Him through the death of His Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through His life! Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Yeshua (Jesus) the Messiah, through whom we have now received reconciliation.’ Romans 5.6-11.
He will come again at the right time. As we see, the signs of His return getting nearer, He is looking for Israel to welcome Him with the Messianic greeting ‘Baruch ha ba be shem Adonai’, Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. ‘For I say to you (Jerusalem), you shall see Me no more until you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.’ Matthew 23.39.
This article is part of a booklet ‘Messiah, Israel and the end of days’ available on request for £2.