What is messianism?

39 A multitude of testimonies had announced that the Son of David should sit, on the part of God, upon His Father's throne; and the fulfilment of God's counsels as to Israel is connected, in the Old Testament, with Him who should thus come, and who on earth should stand in the relation of Son of God with Jehovah God. The Christ, the Messiah, or, as is but the translation of this name, the Anointed, was to come and present Himself to Israel, according to the revelation and the counsels of God. And this promised seed was to be Immanuel, God with the people. The expectation of the Jews scarcely went beyond this character of Christ, Messiah, and Son of David; and they looked even at that in their own way, merely as the exaltation of their own nation, having no sense of their sins, nor of the consequences of their sins.

The Christ, the Messiah, or, which is but the same word translated, the Anointed, was to come and present Himself to Israel, according to the revelation and the counsels of God. And this promised seed was to be Emmanuel, God with the people.

But this character of Messiah, although the expectation of the Jews scarcely went beyond it and they looked even at that in their own way, merely as the exaltation of their own nation, having no sense of their sins or of the consequences of their sins—this character of Messiah was not all that the prophetic word, which declared the counsels of God, had announced with respect to the One whom even the world was expecting.

"The Messias." Now look at John 1:41, "One of the two that heard John speak, and followed Him, was Andrew. He first findeth his own brother Simon, and saith unto him, we have found the Messias, which is, being interpreted, the Christ." Messias, as called by a Jew, was the Christ. He was called in Isaiah 61, and in Psalm 2, the anointed One. It brings before us the Lord Jesus Christ as the Man who God intended should be the Centre of the Old Testament, because you will see, all the way through the O.T., there was the promise of the Messias: He was intended to heal Israel, and the nations of the earth for God. The promise centred round the coming of the Messias, the seed of the woman, the seed of Abraham and David; He was to come to answer to God's will in all those Scriptures and hold every thing for God. So that when they said, "We have found the Christ," it meant that they had come to the Person who was competent to hold everything for God. But then that was only as far as they had learned it in connection with His place on earth. But, since He has died, risen and gone above, and God has made Him in resurrection both Lord and Christ, He is seated at the very centre of everything, in the midst of the throne of God; God has made known to us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself that He would gather and head up everything in the hands of the worthy One, in whom we have obtained an inheritance. God in that way introduces us to Him not merely as the One who is supreme in God's eyes and the centre of His purposes, but as the Christ, who will hold everything for God. There is an illustration of it in natural creation. In the solar system the sun acts throughout the whole. Our planet, with all the other planets, are held in their position by the mighty attraction of the sun.

The advent of a glorious Messiah to the earth was characteristically a Jewish hope. I speak not of traditional fables, but of the truths which the Jews saw and held fast in their scriptures. To such believing Jews Messiah was the centre and security of the promises made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; He was the accomplisher of all righteousness, blessing, and peace in their land — Immanuel's land. By Him they expected to be saved from their enemies and from the hand of all that hated them; that so they might serve Jehovah without fear all the days of their life {Luke 1:68-79}. He was to cut off all the horns of the wicked, and to exalt the righteous; to save Zion, and build the cities of Judah, that they might dwell there, and have it in possession, and thus the seed of His servants should inherit it, and they that love His name dwell therein.

This, as is plain in the Psalms, is the character of the deliverance pleaded by the Jewish remnant — not a rapture out of the earth, but a destruction of their enemies in it; a divine vengeance upon their enemies here below, not a gathering to the Lord in heaven. They looked, and will look, for Jehovah to go forth and fight against the nations He will gather at the latter end against Jerusalem; they will look for His feet to stand upon tho Mount of Olives, and Jehovah shall be King over all the earth. There, with David their king over Israel, restored, as it were, from the grave, and Ephraim and Judah united perfectly and for ever under the rule of the true Beloved, they expect to dwell in their land, and the heathen shall know that God Jehovah sanctifies Israel when His sanctuary shall be in their midst for evermore. They might read of a Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven, but their hope was the presence and reign of the Messiah here below, in special connection with the Jewish nation and land. The following texts will still more plainly show the truth we have been stating:

The advent of a glorious Messiah to the earth was characteristically a Jewish hope. I speak not of traditional fables, but of the truths which the Jews saw and held fast in their scriptures. To such believing Jews, Messiah was the center and security of the promises made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; He was the accomplisher of all righteousness, blessing and peace in their land, Immanuel's land. By Him they expected to be saved from their enemies and from the hand of all those that hated them, that so they might serve the Lord without fear all the days of their life. He was to cut off all the horns of the wicked, and to exalt the righteous; to save Zion and build the cities of Judah, that they might dwell there and have it in possession, and thus the seed of His servants should inherit it, and they that love His name dwell therein.

This is plain in the Psalms as the character of deliverance pleaded by the Jewish remnant — not a rapture out of the earth, but a destruction of their enemies in it; a divine vengeance upon their enemies on earth, not a gathering to Jehovah for heaven. They looked, and will look, for Jehovah to go forth and fight against the nations He will gather at the latter end against Jerusalem; they will look for His feet to stand upon the Mount of Olives, and Jehovah shall be King over all the earth. Then, with David their king over Israel, restored as it were, from the grave and Ephraim and Judah united perfectly and for ever under the rule of the true Beloved, they expect to dwell in their land, and the heathen shall know that God Jehovah sanctifies Israel when His sanctuary shall be in their midst for evermore. They might read of a Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven, but their hope was the presence and reign of the Messiah here below, in special connection with the Jewish nation and land. The following texts will still more plainly show the truth we have been stating.

One of these two disciples who followed Him was Andrew, and he sought out his own brother Simon, as we see in verse 41. His testimony was, "We have found the Messiah — the Christ." This means that they recognized Him as "the Anointed One," as He had been prophetically announced in Psalm 2:2, and again in Isaiah 61:1. All the way through the Old Testament there occurs this promise of the Messiah who was to come as the Centre of all God's good purpose for the earth — the One in whom Israel should be blessed and the nations of the world healed. This was as far as they knew at that moment, and although we have obtained an inheritance as connected with a heavenly Christ, we can rejoice in it too. What the sun is to this planet in a material way, the Lord Jesus will be to the whole earth in a spiritual way in the millennial age which is to come.

The prophetic Scripture has been so constructed, in the wisdom of its Author, as to contain essential truths from which the Holy Ghost has subsequently demonstrated the things which are now ministered, as her seasonable portion, to the Church (Rom. 16:26). But the glories which filled the eye of Jewish faith in connexion with its Messianic expectation, were such as pertained primarily and especially to Jesus under His distinctive titles of Seed of Abraham, and Son of David, the long-promised messenger of the covenant of faithful promise. As Israel's King, His seat of dominion should be the throne of David, and His royal diadem of beauty the long afflicted and once desolate city of Jerusalem. The long and richly-varied strain of Jewish prophecy tends always to the establishment of Immanuel's earthly kingdom as its term and ultimate accomplishment.

Messiah would therefore be from David's lineage, but also a holy Babe born of a virgin. Added to these revelations is this, that He would be none other than God Himself in Manhood's form, and a Man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, yet the Anointed of God reigning in glory. It is not difficult to apprehend that the prophets and the disciples of the Lord were perplexed with these enigmas. In the light of the New Testament, and having the Holy Spirit to teach us, the outline of the whole picture is plain: Messiah is both God and Man, and His first coming was to make God known and to accomplish redemption, and His second coming to fulfil all that remained of the prophecies of old.

God's programme, as foretold in the Old Testament, had two great events in view — the first and second comings of Christ. Until He came the first time, over nineteen centuries ago, it was not possible to distinguish clearly between the two, for many of the prophecies pass almost insensibly from things accomplished at His first advent to those which await accomplishment at His second. Some pious students of the prophecies, who lived in the centuries before Christ, noticed discrepancies, and tried to account for them by the theory that there must be two Messiahs: One who suffers, and One who reigns in glory. The true solution, as we now know, is that the one and only Messiah was to come first to suffer and afterwards come again to reign.

There were a number of predictions concerning the humiliation, the sorrows, the death of the Messiah, though outnumbered by those speaking of His glory, His power, His discriminating judgment. What was the solution? We do not know that Jews debated the possibility of there being two Advents, though we have been given to understand that some held the theory of two Messiahs — a sorrowing One, and a triumphant One. But obviously on this point the Old Testament was indeterminate. Of course God could have made the point quite clear, if it had suited His ways to do so. He could have caused Malachi to write in his last chapter about "the tender mercy of our God; whereby the Day-spring from on high" should visit them rather than about the burning up of the wicked by the rising of "the Sun of righteousness," and to speak plainly about John the Baptist instead of giving a prediction about Elijah the prophet, which as subsequent events proved had a certain reference to him. But no, Malachi's closing note was a prediction as to the far-off coming to reign and not the near-approaching coming to suffer.