An Address to the Jews by Harold Mayer

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jun 30, 1914

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 41, No. 25.

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An Address to the Jews

By Harold Mayer

Scriptural Evidence that Jesus Is the Messiah — Jesus Fulfilled Every Specification of Prophecy

Stronger Evidence of His Divinity than Even His Teachings and Miracles

By HAROLD MAYER

A Convert from Judaism

IN the Old Testament Scriptures, it is clearly set forth that the cause of the separation between man and his Creator is sin. Isa. 59: 2. From the first disobedient act of Adam and Eve until the present generation, with its accumulated sins, the human race has lived in exile from God and His undefiled beings. But God, in His mercy and great love for mankind, devised a plan to save His banished ones. 2 Sam. 14: 14. And the knowledge of this plan of salvation was to be communicated to the world through the Hebrew race, whom God favored by making them the depositaries of His law, and of the records of the prophets. Rom. 3: 2.

HAD BEEN ACCURATELY DESCRIBED

Therefore the Jews, from their study of the Scriptures in their possession, would be led to expect the coming of One who would deliver them from the curse of sin. They had received an accurate description of the Anointed One of God who was to remove the curse from mankind; and further, the time of deliverance had been revealed to them.

The prophecy in the ninth chapter of Daniel had declared that after threescore and nine weeks, Messiah should be cut off for the sins of the people. And so the Jews were expecting their Deliverer sixty-nine weeks of prophetic time, or four hundred eighty-three years, after the going forth of the decree of the Persian monarchs to rebuild Jerusalem, 457 B. C. Ezra 7: 7-9. Four hundred and eighty-three years from this date would bring the expected time of the Messiah's appearing to about 26 or 27 A. D. The correctness of this date has never been disputed by the Jewish people.

ANSWERING THE PREDICTION HE STOOD BEFORE THEM

In the year A. D. 27, Jesus of Nazareth stood up in the synagogue and announced His mission as the Anointed of God to deliver the people from sin, quoting as His authority Isa. 61: 1, 2. The supernatural works of healing that afterward accompanied His teaching, testified that He was no ordinary man. Nevertheless the Jewish people did not recognize in Him any of the characteristics of the Deliverer whom their whole economy had taught them to look for.

Now either this man Jesus was a deceiver, or else the Jewish people had misunderstood the prophecies pointing to the Messiah. But a deceiver would hardly have persistently exclaimed: 'Search the Scriptures; for . . . they are they which testify of Me.' 'Moses wrote of Me.' 'It is written.' 'How readest thou?'

NO OTHER ANSWERS THE SPECIFICATIONS

It was evident that Jesus believed He was divinely commissioned to save the people from their sins; and from the failure of the Jewish rabbis of His time to convict Him of sin, He must have been the Messiah, for no other man since His time has so exactly fulfilled the specifications of the prophecies. If Jesus is not the Christ, mankind has no hope in any one; because the 'time' is long past, the scepter has departed from Israel, and the land has been 'forsaken of both her kings.' Gen. 49: 10; Isa. 7: 16.

In Gen. 3: 17-19 we learn that after Adam had sinned, he was sentenced to eternal death. God, however, did not carry this judgment into immediate execution, but revealed a plan of escape from the penalty. Gen. 3: 15.

PROMISES OF THE MESSIAH

The 'Seed of the woman' was to become the Saviour of all mankind. This is the first Messianic promise recorded in Scripture. This promise is made more definite in the eighty-ninth psalm, the third and fourth verses, and in other prophetic scriptures, pointing out a descendant of David as the Anointed of God to fulfil His purpose of salvation.

In Isa. 7: 14 the record is that the Saviour is to be born of a virgin, and His mission was to bring down God to mankind. The Jews are at a loss to explain this prophecy, although they are strong in branding Jesus as an illegitimate child. The great Jewish commentators are nonplused at this verse of Scripture.

Further on, in the ninth chapter of Isaiah, the sixth verse, it is made plain that God Himself is to be man's Saviour. Indeed, the whole Scripture is plain on this point of a divine Redeemer, for man can not 'by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him: (for the redemption of their soul is precious, and it ceaseth forever).' Ps. 49: 7, 8. And again, 'I have laid help upon One that is mighty.' Ps. 89: 19. 'The mighty God, the everlasting Father' alone was able to redeem man from sin.

THE JEWISH PEOPLE REJECT IT

In spite of the definiteness of this prophecy in the ninth chapter of Isaiah, pointing to the Son of God as the Messiah, the Jewish people will not accept such an idea. They claim it is not in harmony with the statement, 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one God.' But they fail to remember that the Scripture also says, 'I will declare the decree: the Lord hath said unto Me, Thou art My Son.' Ps. 2: 7. And again: 'Who hath established all the ends of the earth? what is His name, and what is His Son's name, if thou canst tell?' Prov. 30: 4. The latter part of the verse in the Hebrew seems to imply that the people of God would doubt the possibility of His having a Son.

But the existence of two divine Beings in the Godhead is clearly taught in the first chapter of Genesis, where the plural 'Elohim' is used for God, meaning Gods, when speaking of creation.

THE DIVINE SACRIFICE

Throughout the Jewish economy, the great truth of a divine Sacrifice was brought home to the heart of the believer. If a person committed a sin, he brought his substitute, a lamb, to the priest, confessed his sins over it, and placed them on its head. Then the animal was slain, and the sinner was pardoned because an innocent victim had taken his place and suffered death for each sin. Did the priest, as he went through this ceremony of placing his hands upon the sacrificial victim, think of the words of Scripture, 'The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all'? Isa. 53: 6.

The strongest proof that Jesus Christ is the Messiah of Israel is that He fulfilled every specification of Scripture. His miracles and teachings are secondary to this. The very fact that His own people rejected Him helps to establish the truth of His claim to being the Son of God and the Saviour of men; for do we not read in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah that He was 'despised and rejected'? And the scripture goes on to say that it was God's will that this should be done to Him, in order that He might pay the full penalty for sin, and let the guilty ones go free: 'He was oppressed, and He was afflicted, . . . He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter. . . . For the transgression of my people was He stricken.' 'He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; . . . and with His stripes we are healed.' 'We did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.'

DID NOT NEED A TEMPORAL PRINCE

Israel did not need a mighty earthly prince with power to crush their political enemies. God had permitted ancient Israel to try this experiment on several occasions, and when success came to their arms, they turned to idolatry. What they needed was a Prince to deliver them from the enemy of souls, to save them from their sins (Isa. 49: 25), and to deliver them from eternal death. This was clearly the mission of the Messiah of Israel. Hosea 13: 14.

If the Jews could look at God's purpose toward them in this light, they would understand the plan of salvation — how necessary it was for the Messiah to sacrifice His life, even by the cruelest and most shameful of deaths, that of the cross; for only by tasting the cup of God's wrath to the bitter dregs could justice be satisfied over God's broken law. This would help one to realize, too, what an awful thing sin is, since it cost so much to redeem mankind.

THE AGONIES OF HIS DEATH FORETOLD

How plainly the prophecies speak of the sufferings of the Messiah, and how clearly they describe the exact manner of His death! The student of history that knows the Roman method of torturing criminals, could not be blind to the meaning of the words in the twenty-second psalm: 'My strength is dried up: . . . my tongue cleaveth to my jaws. . . . They pierced my hands and feet. I may tell all my bones. . . . They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.' And in the sixty-ninth psalm: 'Reproach hath broken my heart. . . . They gave me also gall for my meat; and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.'

What a picture that is of a Roman crucifixion! This is part of the prophetic description of the death of the great sin-bearer who paid the penalty, in our behalf, over God's violated law — who was cursed for our sake. Deut. 21: 22, 23.

WERE THOSE FISHERMEN RIGHT?

Is not the mission of the Messiah made clear by these prophecies? And after all, may not those few fishermen who preached in Jerusalem and throughout Judea, be right in their views as opposed to the learning of the great Sanhedrin? 'The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God,' and simple faith is of more value in understanding the great purposes of God toward us than all the learning in the world. How significant are Isaiah's words, 'Who hath said Amen to our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?'