|
|
|
|
If Jesus is the Jewish Messiah, then why don't most Jewish people believe in Him? |
|
 |
It seems rather strange to many Jewish people that the Messiah could
have come, and yet comparatively so few Jews believe it.
|
|
The
number of living Jewish people who believe in Yeshua
(Jesus’ Jewish name) numbers somewhere between 200,000 to over a million.
Though this number is not insignificant, it’s still not the majority of
the Jewish people. For many, there’s the idea that the truth is determined by a
majority vote. But as much as this
may play a role in the politics of men, this has little to do with the truth of
God. In
the Jewish Scriptures (Tanakh), the prophet Isaiah declares that most Jewish
people would not recognize the Messiah when He would first come:
“Who has believed our report? To
whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For He grew up before Him as a
tender shoot, as a root out of dry ground; He would have no majesty that would
attract us, nor any beauty that we would desire Him. He is despised and forsaken
of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief, and we hid as it were our
faces from Him; He was despised and we esteemed Him not” (Isaiah 53:1-3). God knew and revealed to Isaiah what may not seem all that hard to figure out: The majority of
people don’t want God’s way of salvation, not even religious people!
In fact, that’s exactly what Isaiah goes on to say:
“All we like sheep have gone astray, each one has turned his own way;
but the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6) It
was prophesied that although He would be our sin-bearer, the true Messiah would
be rejected by the majority of the Jewish people when He would first come.
Isaiah makes this matter crystal clear by further stating:
“The remnant shall return, even the remnant of Jacob to the *Mighty
God”
(Isaiah 10:21) God
recognized that only a “remnant”, a very small portion of the whole nation,
would believe and make “teshuvah” (repentance). Only this remnant
would “return to the Mighty God”. This prediction is fulfilled in the Jewish
people (like myself) who have come to believe in Yeshua. The New Covenant (see Jeremiah 31:31-34) also compares the present situation of the Jewish majority with their apostate condition in the time of Elijah the Prophet: “Even so, then, at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace” (Romans 11:5). Though
the Scriptures make clear the phenomenon of general unbelief,
there will be some who still wonder how the Rabbis could have “missed
it”. The Messiah that God promised and sent was not the 'Messiah' the world or
the rabbis were looking for. They wanted a Messiah who would immediately remove
Roman domination from Israel and return Israel to its former glory. But the purpose of Yeshua’s coming was to die for sins; and rather than vindicate the self-righteous judgements of the rabbis, He insisted that the religious leaders of Israel repent as well! That was intolerable for the rabbinical leaders. Though many did accept the Messiah, the majority of the Jewish people and Rabbis rejected Yeshua, just as the prophets predicted. But
there will come a time when our people as a nation will come to believe in Him.
The Prophets also predicted: “I will pour upon the house
of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem,
the Spirit of grace and supplications: and they shall look on Me whom
they have pierced, and mourn for Him as one mourns for an only son”
(Zechariah 12:10) “The stone which the builders
rejected shall become the chief of the corner”
(Psalms 118:22) One
day our people will trust in Yeshua, their Messiah and King. We also see it was foretold that today a “remnant of Israel” believes in the Messiah. You can be part of that “remnant”, if you will acknowledge Yeshua for what the Tanakh and New Covenant declare Him to be, the Messiah of our people. Shalom! *To learn how
“Mighty God” (Isa. 10:21, 9:5, 6) refers to the Messiah, read our brochure
“How
can a man become God?” For
more information please call or write:
|
|
