The Messianic King pt.2: Jesus is the promised Messiah

Christians for 2000 years have been proclaiming that a Jewish man by the name Jesus of Nazareth is the promised Messiah, well let's see if he fulfills the prophesies in the Jewish scriptures.

According to the Gospels. Jesus was born in Bethlehem Matthew 2:1 , he claimed to be the son of man Matthew 26:64, he was born of a virgin Luke 1:34, he claimed to be God John 10:33, John 8:58, he was pierced and died for the sins of others Matthew 27:32-56, he rose from the dead Matthew 28:6, his kingdom and reign will never end Luke 1:33 and lastly he arrived and died before 70 AD. Now that sounds very compelling and given that there is no other human in recorded history who claimed to be Messiah before 70 AD, Jesus is the only option

The connection

We have already gone through the Prophetic expectations for the Messiah but lets completely seal the deal on Jesus not without a reasonable doubt but without a shadow of a reasonable doubt. Isaiah 40: 3  A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Isaiah predicts that there shall be one who makes straight the path for our God we know this is John the Baptist making a way for Christ because the very earliest Gospel (40-50 AD) the Gospel according to Mark opens with these very lines Mark 1:1-4 1 The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. 2 As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, 3  the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,’ ” 4 John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. So in the first Gospel (Mark) the very opening line affirms the deity of Christ. 

Next Zechariah (written 600 B.C) 11:12-13 12 Then I said to them, “If it seems good to you, give me my wages; but if not, keep them.” And they weighed out as my wages thirty pieces of silver. 13 Then the Lord said to me, “Throw it to the potter”—the lordly price at which I was priced by them. So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of the Lord, to the potter. This part in Zechariah is about a Shepard who sells his lambs for 30 pieces of silver and gives it to the house of the Lord and the Potter. do you recall how much money Judas betrayed Jesus with? and what was done with the money and where it was thrown? Matthew 27:3-7 3 Then when Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he changed his mind and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, 4 saying, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.” They said, “What is that to us? See to it yourself.” 5 And throwing down the pieces of silver into the temple, he departed, and he went and hanged himself. 6 But the chief priests, taking the pieces of silver, said, “It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, since it is blood money.” 7 So they took counsel and bought with them the potter’s field as a burial place for strangers. 30 pieces of silver? thrown in the house of God? and given to the Potter? predicted 600 years before Christ? 

Next, Zechariah 9:9  Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. Does this scene sound familiar? It is the Triumphal entry into Jerusalem where Jesus rides in on a donkey and the Daughters of Jerusalem sing Hosana to the son of David Matthew 21. 

Next Isaiah 53:9  And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth. 10  Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. Jesus was crucified next to criminals hence his grave was with the wicked and do you remember who buried Jesus? Matthew 27:57 When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who also was a disciple of Jesus. 58 He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then Pilate ordered it to be given to him. To fulfill the prophecy that says he was with the rich man in his death as well as the fact that after Jesus made an offering for sins through his death he prolonged his days by coming back to life. 

Lastly ever wondered why Jesus said what he said on the cross, Matthew 27:46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”. Jesus was quoting Psalm 22 which begins with Psalm 22:1My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? and if you read the rest of Psalm(written 1000 B.C) 22 its a vivid description of the crucifixion of Jesus i will for the sake of brevity just give 2 examples here Psalm 22:16  For dogs encompass me; a company of evildoers encircles me; they have pierced my hands and feet— 17  I can count all my bones— they stare and gloat over me; 18  they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots. Look at the amazing parallels with Matthew 27:35 And when they had crucified him, they divided his garments among them by casting lots. Another quotation is Psalm 22:8  “He trusts in the Lord; let him deliver him; let him rescue him, for he delights in him!” Its parallel is in Matthew 27:43 He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him. For he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’ ”  Needless to say this is all absolutely overwhelming evidence with dated and sealed words written several hundred years before Messiah. Jesus quotes the opening verse of Psalm 22 so that the Jews would finish the rest of the Psalm and realize what they were doing (The Psalms were the Jewish worship hymns). So they would know that they were in the midst of crucifying their Messiah.

Daniel's 70 weeks 

 This one is a Juggernaut so lets get some of our facts straight, The date of crucifixion is dated by scholars to be between 30-33AD We know this because Jesus' was crucified under Tiberius Caesar who reigned from (AD 14-37) referencing this time period with the Passovers in the Gospels we get our dates. This is also how we know the length of Jesus' ministry was 3 and a half years because there are 3 passovers (an annual celebration Exodus 12:3) that pass after his baptism to the day of his crucifixion John 6:4, John 11:55, John 13:1. Lets get into the Prophecy of Daniel 9:24-27 Daniel 9: 24 “Seventy weeks have been decreed for your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to make an end of sin, to make atonement for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy place. Keep in mind the term "to anoint the most holy"  Okay lets decode the weeks the scholarly consensus is that the 70 weeks (490 days) are 490 years, so a day for a year this is because the entire city of Jerusalem could not be rebuilt in 490 days (a year and a half) as well as often times when speaking prophetically the Jewish scriptures take a day for a year. The 2 passages that show this is Numbers 14:34 34 According to the number of the days in which you spied out the land, forty days, a year for each day, you shall bear your iniquity forty years, and you shall know my displeasure.’ and Ezekiel 4:6 6 And when you have completed these, you shall lie down a second time, but on your right side, and bear the punishment of the house of Judah Forty days I assign you, a day for each year. Now when do we start counting the the 490 years? 

Lets look at verse 25 Daniel 9:25 “So you are to know and discern that from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; it will be built again, with plaza and moat, even in times of distress. We are told that from the issuing of a decree to restore Jerusalem is when we start counting. So when was this decree given it was given in the year 457 B.C by king Artexerxes the decree is too long to add here, so here is the citation (Ezra 7:12-26). We are told that 7 weeks shall pass which is 49 years (7x7=49) which lands us in 408 B.C and by this time the temple was rebuilt along with the entire city.

Lets move on  Daniel 9:26 “Then after the sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing, and the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. And its end will come with a flood; even to the end there will be war; desolations are determined. Remember the term "to anoint the most holy"? Lets count what year it is, from the decree   457 B.C and we add the 7 weeks and the 62 weeks giving us 69 of the 70 weeks which would be 483 years from 457 AD we land on the year 27 AD (we never count the year 0 AD the year after 1 B.C is always 1 AD) and what happened on 27 AD ? well, Jesus was baptized (anointing the most holy) and begun his pubic ministry. 

 Finally Daniel 9:27 27 “And he will make a firm covenant with the many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will put a stop to sacrifice and grain offering; and on the wing of abominations will come one who makes desolate, even until a complete destruction, one that is decreed, is poured out on the one who makes desolate.”  We see that this 1 week is the final week of the 70 and it says in the middle of that week the Messiah will make an end to sacrifices. what's the middle of 7 years (1 prophetic week) well 7/2 is 3 and a half exactly the length of Jesus' public ministry which lands us pinpoint on the day of Jesus' crucifixion (30 AD) where he made an end of sacrifices as he was the final sacrifice for mankind that atoned for all sins. The remaining 3 and half years lands us on 34 AD which is the time when the Gospel was being preached to Gentiles in the book of acts by the conversion of Paul. The desolations referred to are a reference to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD which is not part of the 70 weeks but as mentioned in part 1. That temple signifies the end of any possibility of another Messiah lest we say God made a false prophesy by saying Messiah would come before the destruction of the 2nd temple. It is for this reason that the Jewish Talmud has put a curse on anyone who attempts to calculate the years of Daniel's prophecy. Refer to the picture for a summary of the 70 weeks 

Conclusion

Where he was born, how he was born, what he would do, how he would do it, how he was betrayed, how he would die and when he would die . So that we may know that he truly was the Son of God not without a reasonable doubt but without a shadow of a reasonable doubt. Many Atheists scholars propose that the disciples wrote all this in and it didn't really happen because they can't attack the prophesies because those are established 500 years before Jesus so they attack the Gospels. Then why did the disciples go to their deaths for what they knew to be a lie? Their executions where documented by Romans, not only Christians. Then they say that Jesus probably tried to fulfill the prophesies on purpose. Okay and how did he (on purpose) control his mother's sexual activity before his birth or where his mother birthed him or when he was crucified or how he would be killed or that he wanted to be crucified and how do you plan a resurrection? You see there is no way out. How Great is our God who leaves unbelievers without excuse and gives believes assurance in his only begotten son Jesus Christ our savior, our Messiah.