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SEVEN SECRETS OF THE REAL MESSIAH Seven Secrets of the Real Messiah 2014 Excerpted and adapted from The Real Kosher Jesus 2012 Get The REAL Kosher Jesus e book All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means electronic mechanical photo copying scanning or otherwise without permission in writ ing from the publisher except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review ISBN 978 0 692208 49 6 Printed in the United States of America

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Contents Word to the Reader v The Secret of the Invisible God Who Can Be Seen 1 The Secret of the Suffering Messiah 17 The Secret of the Atoning Power of the Death of the Righteous 27 The Secret of the Priestly Messiah 39 The Secret of the Prophet Greater Than Moses 47 The Secret of the 6 000 Years 53 The Secret of the Hidden Wisdom 59 References 63

WORD TO THE READER The little book you are reading could change your perspective about God change your understanding about the Messiah and change the course of the rest of your life In the chapters that follow you will discover secrets about the identity of the Messiah secrets that are found in the pages of the Tanakh our Jewish Scriptures and secrets that are also illuminated in the rabbinic writings You will learn How the Messiah reveals the image of the invisible God v

How the sufferings of the Messiah relate to the pains and sufferings of Israel How the traditional Jewish teaching of the atoning power of the death of the righteous explains the Messiah s death but the story doesn t end there How the Messiah is not only a royal figure but a priestly one as well a priestly King How the Messiah is a prophet like Moses and yet even greater How an important Talmudic teaching about 6 000 years of chaos then Torah then Mesvi

siah relate to the timing of the Messiah s coming How God has hidden His wisdom about the Messiah in plain sight but in the most unlikely place Are you ready to uncover these secrets Why not pray a short prayer asking God to open your eyes so that you will discover wonders in His teaching also asking Him to help you to follow Him and His words wherever they will lead And please let us know if we can help you in your journey by contacting us at 704 782 3760 vii

All the secrets here are taken from a longer book that we ll tell you about as you read the pages that follow but for now it s time to get started So turn the page and let the journey begin

THE SECRET OF THE INVISIBLE GOD WHO CAN BE SEEN Is it possible for Jews to believe that Jesus is God It depends on what is meant by this question It is not possible for Jews to believe that God could cease to be God by taking a human form and for them to believe that in seeing Jesus people literally saw God in His very essence It is possible however for Jews to believe that God is capable of remaining in heaven while revealing Himself in the tent of a human body If God has actually done this it would explain some of the mysterious passages 1

in the Tanakh and it could even relate closely to some rabbinic ideas In a midrash to Psalm 91 when Moses realized that the tabernacle could not contain the fullness of God the Lord proclaims The entire world cannot contain My glory yet when I wish I can concentrate My entire essence into one small spot Indeed I am Most High yet I sit in a limited refuge ArtScroll Siddur 380 381 Before explaining how God can make Himself visible let us look at what the Hebrew Scriptures have to say about the possibility of seeing God In Exodus God tells Moses that no one can see Me and live Exod 33 20 but it is written in Exodus 24 2

Then Moses went up with Aaron Nadab and Abihu and 70 of Israel s elders and they saw the God of Israel God did not harm the Israelite nobles they saw Him and they ate and drank Exod 24 9 11 CSB How is this possible Abraham Ibn Ezra thought that the elders saw God in a prophetic vision This interpretation is problematic however since the text would not have mentioned that God did not harm literally raise His hand against them If it was just a vision why explain that God did not strike them for seeing a vision It appears that they really saw the God of Israel but how There are numerous appearances of 3

the angel of the LORD in the Hebrew Scriptures in which the people who see Him fear for their lives because they have seen God see Exod 3 1 6 Judg 13 15 23 Does this imply a real divine appearance Even more telling is Genesis 18 which explains that the Lord Hebrew YHWH appeared to Abraham and conversed with him and Sarah Gen 18 1 2a There were three men according to the Talmud angels who appeared to Abraham But the Talmud also says that Abraham saw the Holy One blessed be He standing at the door of his tent b Baba Mesia 86b Abraham and Sarah dined with the LORD who stayed with them while the two angels went to Sodom cf 4

Gen 18 22 18 33 19 1 According to this account one of the three men was YHWH This text refers to Him having dusty feet Gen 18 4 sitting down eating and talking yet all the while He remained the Lord of heaven and earth which means that God has the ability to appear on earth in human form while remaining enthroned above The doctrine of the Incarnation which speaks of God visiting us and living among us in the person of Yeshua the Messiah is nothing other than the most thorough explanation of the many theophanies meaning divine appearances of YHWH in the Hebrew Scriptures While Maimonides stated that God has no form see Deut 4 12 28 there are passages in the Tanakh which state that 5

God does have a form see Num 12 8 and Ps 17 15 The fact is that the ancient rabbis also dealt with the question of how the invisible God could interact with human beings using the Aramaic term Memra which means the word to personify God In other words God s word is depicted as an extension of Himself performing His divine will see Ps 107 20 and Isa 55 1012 with the most dramatic example found in the creation account in which God created all things by speaking The Aramaic Targums further developed this concept of the divine Memra often speaking of the word of the Lord rather than the Lord Himself Compare the following examples in which the scrip6

tural passage comes first and the Targum the Aramaic translation of the ancient rabbis follows Gen 1 27 God created man The Word of the LORD created man Targum Pseudo Jonathan Num 10 35 Rise up O LORD Rise up O Word of the LORD Isa 45 17 Israel will be saved by the LORD Israel will be saved by the Word of the LORD 7

Perhaps most interesting is the Targum s rendition of Genesis 28 20 21 Whereas the Hebrew reads If God will be with me then the Lord will be my God the Targum reads If the Word of the Lord will be with me then the Word of the Lord will be my God We have to keep in mind that these words echoed in the ears of those who attended the synagogues over the centuries they heard over and over again that Jacob s God was the Word of the Lord If we were to go to the beginning of the Gospel of John and substitute Memra for word we would get the following text In the beginning was the Memra and the Memra was with God and the Memra was God He was with God in the beginning Through him all things 8

were made John 1 1 3 This is sounding quite Jewish The main difference is that while the manifestations of God in the Hebrew Scriptures occurred episodically being few and far between and only lasting briefly the miracle of God s self disclosure in Yeshua is that this manifestation lasted for thirty three years The Gospel of John goes further saying The Memra became flesh and took up residence among us We observed His glory the glory of the One and Only Son from the Father full of grace and truth John 1 14 adapted from the CSB The Greek phrase for made His dwelling among us literally means to pitch a tent or to tabernacle Just as YHWH pitched his tent in Israel i e the tent of meeting so too has His tent been 9

pitched among us in the person of Yeshua What an incredible act of divine condescension and yet at the same time He filled the universe with His presence The word John uses in his Gospel for Memra is logos a Jewish Greek concept that was described in detail by Philo According to The Oxford Dictionary of Jewish Religion p 423 Philo used the idea of the logos to bridge the gap between the transcendent God of Judaism and the divine principle experienced by human beings This view of the Logos as a mediating principle between God and creation could link up with the concept of meimra Aram word in Targum literature especially as it appears in Targum Onkelos 10

One might ask Doesn t this violate the Shema which declares God s unity That is a terrific question since this is a fundamental concept of Judaism But there is absolutely no violation of our profession of faith in the Shema since the word echad denotes oneness not absolute unity Interestingly the Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson 1902 1994 perhaps the most influential rabbi of the modern era makes this striking point Echad means one But is echad the ideal word to express the divine unity Like its English equivalent the word does not preclude the existence of other objects nor does it preclude its object being composed of parts 11

Cited from The Numerology of Redemption The oneness the Shema speaks of is like the oneness of night and day Gen 1 5 the oneness of man and woman who have become one flesh Gen 2 24 or the unity of the assortment of various pieces coming together to form the Tabernacle Exod 36 13 God s oneness is similar to these types of unity In the centuries after Yeshua manifested Himself to Israel Christian theologians recognized this complex unity in God calling Him a trinity i e Father Son and Holy Spirit but this concept does not speak of three gods Rather it speaks of God in His complex unity 12

The Shekhinah Another rabbinic concept that helps make sense of the interval between God as He is in Himself and God as He appears to human beings is the shekhinah God s earthly presence Professor Benjamin Sommer of Jewish Theological Seminary notes that God is the same as the shekhinah but the shekhinah does not exhaust God so one can refer easily to God and subsequently to God and the shehkinah The Bodies of God 254 n 21 This reminds me of a conversation I once had with a conservative rabbi who noted that based on my explanation of the New Testament texts Yeshua was like a walking shekhinah Exactly Professor Sommer who is not a believer in Jesus as Messiah in any way also had 13

this to say T he theological model Christianity employs when it avows belief in a God who has an earthly body as well as a Holy Spirit and a heavenly manifestation is a perfectly Jewish one The Bodies of God 135 In other words the Christian view of God as triune is in harmony with Jewish thought And I remind you that Dr Sommer is not a Christian This helps us to understand texts like Isaiah 9 6 which is found in the middle of a Messianic prophecy where the promised child is called el gibbor Mighty God The best explanation for this verse is that it refers to Yeshua who is God incarnate the Divine Son pitching His tent among us while His heavenly Father remained enthroned in heaven This is the teaching of our own Hebrew Scriptures 14

An Extraordinary Divine Mystery It is important to note that the New Testament never says that God became a human being According to John No one has ever seen God But the one and only Son is himself God and is near to the Father s heart He has revealed God to us John 1 18 NLT That s why Jesus could say to His Jewish listeners Very truly I tell you before Abraham was born I am John 8 58 NIV thereby associating Himself with YHWH This is why Thomas one of Yeshua s disciples could say to Him My Lord and my God John 20 28 Jesus Himself is the shekhinah of the invisible God and whoever sees Him sees the Father And so this doctrine is essentially Jewish and contains no trace of idolatry 15

What a profound mystery For the full secret see The Real Kosher Jesus pp 125 138 16

THE SECRET OF THE SUFFERING MESSIAH There is a teaching in the Talmud that there will be two Messiahs the Messiah son of Joseph or son of Ephraim and the Messiah son of David While rabbinic texts speak of the suffering of both it is the Messiah son of Joseph who is most often seen as the suffering Messiah being destined to die in battle before he is raised from the dead by the Messiah son of David see b Sukkah 52a Raphael Patai an eminent Jewish anthropologist wrote a chapter on the Suffering Messiah in The Messiah Texts This work includes texts that can be found in 17

the most important genres of rabbinic literature including the Talmud midrash and medieval and modern biblical commentaries In the following passage Patai summarizes some of the most significant rabbinic doctrines concerning the sufferings of the Messiah According to one of the Messiah legends God gave the Messiah the choice of whether or not to accept the sufferings for the sins of Israel And the Messiah answered I accept it with joy so that not a single soul of Israel should perish In the later Zoharic i e mystical formulation of this legend the Messiah himself summons all the diseases pains and sufferings of Israel to come upon him in 18

order thus to ease the anguish of Israel which otherwise would be unbearable Messiah Texts 104 Patai also cites a passage from the Zohar the foundation of Jewish mysticism that describes the Messiah s sufferings and references Isaiah 53 5 In the hour in which they i e the souls of the righteous sufferers tell the Messiah about the sufferings of Israel in exile and about the sinful among them who seek not the knowledge of their Master the Messiah lifts up his voice and weeps over those sinful among them This is what is written He was wounded because of our transgressions he was 19

crushed because of our iniquities Isa 53 5 Zohar 2 212a in Messiah Texts 116 How interesting The text that the missionaries use so often is actually attributed to the Messiah by the Zohar a work of Jewish mysticism In a passage from the Talmud Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi finds the Messiah sitting outside the gate of the city unwinding and rewinding the bandages of his wounds He asks the Messiah when he will come and he replies that he will come that day Later it is explained to Rabbi Yehoshua by another rabbi that this is what Elijah meant Today if you but hearken to his voice Ps 95 7 b Sanhedrin 98a 20

This idea of the suffering Messiah comes from the Hebrew Bible especially from Isaiah 52 13 53 12 Might Yeshua be the one this prophecy describes Consider Psalm 22 which seems to describe in remarkable detail the crucifixion and resurrection of the rabbi from Nazareth This psalm Ps 22 7 13 18 NIV contains the following verses All who see me mock me they hurl insults shaking their heads My strength is dried up like a potsherd and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth you lay me in the dust of death Dogs have surrounded me a band of evil men has encircled 21

me they have pierced my hands and my feet I can count all my bones people stare and gloat over me They divide my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing At the end of the psalm the psalmist sings a song of praise to God for deliverance All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the LORD All the families of the nations will bow down before You for kingship belongs to the LORD He rules over the nations All who 22

prosper on earth will eat and bow down all those who go down to the dust will kneel before Him even the one who cannot preserve his life Their descendants will serve Him the next generation will be told about the Lord They will come and tell a people yet to be born about His righteousness what He has done Ps 22 27 31 CSB What a magnificent conclusion to such terrible suffering Not surprisingly the writers of the New Testament saw in this psalm an extremely accurate depiction of the sufferings and triumph of Yeshua But it is not only the New Testament authors who 23

attributed Psalm 22 to the Messiah The Pesikta Rabbati an 8th 9th century midrash also references this psalm when speaking of the Messiah stating in chapter 36 that when Abraham Isaac and Jacob spoke to Ephraim the Messiah they said that because he had suffered on behalf of their children he was greater than they were It is no secret therefore that the Messiah is destined to suffer for the sins of His people and this concept was not invented by Christians Instead its origins can be traced to the Hebrew Scriptures with some parallels in the rabbinic writings But only Yeshua fulfills these prophecies suffering willingly for the nation of 24

Israel and bearing our guilt on His own shoulders He is the only one who experienced such horrors so as to atone for our sins and He is the only one who was subsequently glorified by being raised from the dead and being seated at the right hand of God the Father which is referred to in our Tanakh as well as in Psalm 110 For the full secret see The Real Kosher Jesus pp 139 148 25

THE SECRET OF THE ATONING POWER OF THE DEATH OF THE RIGHTEOUS Traditional Judaism believes in the atoning power of the death of the righteous The Orthodox Jewish historian Rabbi Berel Wein describes the attitude of the Jewish people who suffered atrocities in the seventeenth century as follows Jews nurtured this classic idea of death as an atonement the betterment of Israel and humankind somehow was advanced by their stretching their neck to be slaughtered This spirit of the 27

Jews is truly reflected in the historical chronicle of the time he whom God loves will be chastised For since the day the Holy Temple was destroyed the righteous are seized by death for the iniquities of the generation Yeven Metzulah end of Chapter 15 quoted in Wein The Triumph of Survival 14 Notice how Yeven Metzulah connects the atoning powers of the death of the righteous to the destruction of the Temple Now that there are no longer Temple sacrifices the righteous die on behalf of the people According to the Talmud the death of the righteous atones mitatan shel tsad28

diqim mekapperet Most notably the rabbis interpret the deaths of Miriam and Aaron in this light explaining that the death of the righteous atones see b Mo ed Qatan 28a The Zohar also supports this idea of the atoning power of the righteous with reference to Isaiah 53 The children of the world are members of one another and when the Holy One desires to give healing to the world He smites one just man amongst them Whence do we learn this From the saying He was wounded for our transgressions bruised for our iniquities Isa 53 5 In general a just person is only smitten in order to 29

procure healing and atonement for a whole generation Cited in Driver Neubauer 2 15 This message i e that a godly person can suffer so as to atone for the sins of others is central to the gospel message Who could be holier and more righteous than the Messiah His sacrifice has brought about freedom from transgressions Although we deserved death He became a source of life for all who believe This Christian message is thoroughly biblical and thoroughly Jewish Consider Solomon Schechter s assessment of the Talmud s teaching on the suffering of the righteous and atonement The atonement of suffering and 30

death is not limited to the suffering person The atoning effect extends to all the generation This is especially the case with such sufferers as cannot either by reason of their righteous life or by their youth possibly have merited the afflictions which have come upon them Aspects of Rabbinic Theology 310 311 This teaching of the Talmud is supplemented by the following prayer in Fourth Maccabees written somewhere between 100 BCE 100 CE Cause our chastisement to be an expiation for them Make my blood their purification and take my soul as a ransom for their souls 4 Maccabees 6 28 29 And there are top scholars who argue that this idea 31

of the atoning power of righteous martyrs goes back to the Akedah the sacrifice of Isaac as it is written in Fourth Maccabees Isaac offered himself for the sake of righteousness Isaac did not shrink when he saw the knife lifted against him by his father s hand 4 Maccabees 13 12 16 20 The rabbis believed that Isaac was thirty seven years old when Abraham was called by God to offer him up on Mount Moriah Gen 22 making Isaac the greater hero in the event since he did not resist his father s actions In one midrashic account of creation God describes to the angels the significance of man in the following words You shall see a father slay his son and the son consenting to be slain to sanctify my Name 32

Tanhuma Vayyera sec 18 Another midrash even compares Isaac who carried the wood for the offering on his shoulder to one who carries his cross on his own shoulder see Genesis Rabbah 56 3 Of course Isaac was not ultimately sacrificed but despite this the rabbis teach that Scripture credits Isaac with having died and his ashes having lain upon the altar Midrash HaGadol on Gen 22 19 and God is seen as having accepted Isaac s sacrifice as though the ashes of Isaac were piled upon the altar Sifra 102c b Ta anit 16a In keeping with the doctrine that there can be no atonement without blood having been shed the rabbis maintain that Isaac in fact shed his blood see Mekhilta d Rashbi p 4 Tanh Vayerra sec 23 33

The binding of Isaac is commemorated by Jews throughout the generations to this very day The Mekhilta of Rabbi Ishmael an early midrash comments on the blood that was applied to the door frames in Exodus 12 13 blood which caused the angel of death to pass over the Hebrews and spare their firstborn sons The midrash states And when I see the blood I will pass over you I see the blood of the Binding of Isaac I 57 meaning that it was not the blood of the sacrificial lambs that God saw but rather the blood of Isaac There is even a Jewish prayer that is still recited in an additional service for Rosh Hashanah the Jewish New Year which says Remember today the Binding of Isaac with mercy to his descendants 34

How powerful this is in the memory of the Jewish people and how clearly it points to the atoning power of the death of the righteous But whereas Isaac was not perfectly righteous and didn t actually die on Mount Moriah Yeshua our Messiah was perfectly righteous and did die on our behalf There s also a fascinating insight we can glean from the book of Numbers regarding the atoning power of the death of the high priest The Torah teaches that bloodshed pollutes the land and the only acceptable payment for this bloodshed is the blood of the one who shed it But what if a man killed someone accidentally and unintentionally Then he could flee from his avengers and live in a city of refuge until his death or until the death of the high priest Num 35 28 35

What then would pay for the shedding of the blood Was it his time in exile or was it the death of the high priest The Talmud states It is not the exile that expiates but the death of the high priest m Makkot 2 6 b Makkot 11b see also Leviticus Rabbah 10 6 The death of the high priest the spiritual leader of the people of Israel atones for the accidental homicide functioning as a substitute for the death of the one who unwittingly killed another person The high priest the individual called to be closest to God in the nation of Israel intercedes on behalf of the people not only through his prayers but also through his death In a similar way some of the ancient rabbis declared Behold I am the atonement of Israel Mekhilta 2a m Negaim 2 1 in Schechter 311 36

If according to rabbinic tradition the high priests the godly rabbis the holy martyrs and the righteous of Israel are able to atone for the sin of their generation does it not make sense that the Messiah who is our greatest leader and the only perfectly holy martyr would make atonement for the nation Yeshua the Messiah is our great high priest He is our atonement This doctrine is not something invented by Christians but is an idea that has its basis in our ancient tradition and in the Hebrew Scriptures For the full secret see The Real Kosher Jesus pp 149 158 37

THE SECRET OF THE PRIESTLY MESSIAH The royal Messianic prophecies which speak of King Messiah ruling and reigning on the earth destroying the wicked and establishing God s righteous kingdom are widely accepted by Jews and Christians but what about those prophecies which speak of a righteous servant suffering and being put to death In what sense are those prophecies Messianic They are Messianic because they are priestly and the Messiah is a priestly King The authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls believed that there would be two Messianic figures one royal and one priestly 39

These two figures were spoken of in the Hebrew Bible but in rabbinic Judaism there is virtually no reference to a priestly Messiah Psalm 110 4 sheds light on the priestly role of the Messiah stating The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind You are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek Ps 110 4 NIV And this is addressed to the Davidic king meaning that the king is called a priest But Davidic kings came from the tribe of Judah whereas the priests descended from Aaron and the tribe of Levi How is this possible The answer is found in the life of King David since David himself performed priestly functions see for example 2 40

Sam 24 25 where he offers sacrifices or 2 Sam 6 14 where he wears the linen ephod which priests wore The Tanakh even states his sons were priests 2 Sam 8 17 the Hebrew is kohanim the standard word for priests We see then that David who was a prototype of the Messiah was also a king who performed priestly functions We gain more insight from the book of Zechariah where God addresses the high priest Joshua and says Hearken well O High Priest Joshua you and your fellow priests sitting before you For those men are a sign that I am going to bring My servant the Branch NJV It is well known that the Branch is another name for the Messiah Keep this in mind as we look at another verse from the same book 41

Zechariah 6 11 13 reads M ake a crown and set it on the head of Joshua the high priest And say to him Thus says the LORD of hosts Behold the man whose name is the Branch for he shall branch out from his place and he shall build the temple of the LORD It is he who shall build the temple of the LORD and shall bear royal honor and shall sit and rule on his throne And there shall be a priest on his throne ESV A crown is placed on the head of Joshua the high priest he is called the Branch and it is prophesied that this man will rule on his throne Joshua therefore 42

becomes a Messianic symbol Whereas David was a prototype of the priestly king Joshua was a prototype of the royal priest What is more the name of the high priest Joshua yehoshua in Hebrew is often shortened to Yeshua The Jewish rabbi from Nazareth Yeshua who was also called the son of David made atonement for our sins and interceded for sinners thereby doing the work of a priest Of course He is our royal Messiah born King of the Jews and being crucified as King of the Jews see Matt 2 2 27 37 but before establishing His kingdom He had to atone for sin This is how the letter to the Hebrews describes Yeshua s priestly ministry 43

I f sprinkling ceremonially unclean persons with the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer restores their outward purity according to Torah ritual then how much more the blood of the Messiah who through the eternal Spirit offered himself to God as a sacrifice without blemish will purify our conscience from works that lead to death so that we can serve the living God Heb 9 13 14 CJB What a remarkable high priest we have The Talmud and rabbinic writings with all their beauty and wisdom have missed this truth and the Jews who wrote the ancient Dead Sea Scrolls who were 44

waiting for two Messiahs were wrong There is only one Messiah and He is simultaneously priest and king The New Testament accurately conveys this truth which is supported by the Hebrew Bible Yeshua is our priestly King For the full secret see The Real Kosher Jesus pp 159 163 45

THE SECRET OF THE PROPHET GREATER THAN MOSES Before entering the Promised Land Israel faced a conundrum While Moses was able to see the Promised Land he could not go with Israel but had to see the land from Mt Nebo What were the Israelites to do without their beloved leader Moses promised them The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers You must listen to him Deut 18 15 cf Deut 18 18 Yet we find the following words at the end of Deuteronomy Since then no prophet has ris47

en in Israel like Moses whom the LORD knew face to face who did all those signs and wonders the LORD sent him to do in Egypt no one has ever performed the awesome deeds that Moses did in the sight of all Israel Deut 34 10 12 NIV emphasis mine The rabbis teach that there will never be another prophet on the same level as Moses instead they believe that there will be a prophet or a series of prophets who will do what Moses did i e serve as God s mouthpiece This is the teaching of Maimonides who states in the seventh of the Thirteen Principles that Moses was on a qualitatively different level than any other This assessment though 48

traditional is incorrect This becomes clear when we compare the promise that God would raise up a prophet like Moses with the statement at the end of Deuteronomy that no prophet like Moses had been seen in Israel since his passing We already pointed out that the Jewish authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls were expecting a priestly Messiah and a royal Messiah But these Jews who lived immediately before and after the time of Yeshua also expected the rise of a great prophet like Moses We find written in the Community Rule They shall depart from none of the counsels of the Law to walk in the stubbornness of their hearts but shall be ruled by the primitive precepts in which the men of the Community were first instructed until there shall 49

come the Prophet and the Messiahs of Aaron and Israel 1 QS 9 11 By the time Jesus came on the scene there was a great expectation among the people for the Prophet to come see John 1 21 6 14 This was not some fabricated expectation instead it was a hope firmly rooted in the Hebrew Bible In fact Scripture holds that the Messiah will have a greater stature than Moses and this is reflected in a midrash on Isaiah 52 13 which states See My servant will act wisely he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted The midrash states Who art thou O great mountain Zech iv 7 This refers to the King Messiah And why does 50

he call him the great mountain because he is greater than the patriarchs as it is said My servant shall be high and lifted up and lofty exceedingly he will be higher than Abraham lifted up above Moses loftier than the ministering angels Yalqut Shim oni 2 571 Indeed Yeshua our royal and priestly Messiah is the Prophet like Moses but even greater the one our forefathers waited for who sums up in Himself all the hopes of the nation of Israel For the full secret see The Real Kosher Jesus pp 165 170 51

THE SECRET OF THE 6 000 YEARS There is a well known passage in the Talmud which states The world will exist six thousand years Two thousand years of desolation meaning from Adam to Abraham two thousand years of Torah meaning from Abraham to somewhere around the beginning of the Common Era and two thousand years of the Messianic era roughly the last two thousand years but because our iniquities were many all this has been lost i e the Messiah 53

did not come at the expected time Sanhedrin 97a b Remarkably this tradition maintains that the Messiah s scheduled time of arrival was nearly 2 000 years ago When interpreting this text traditional Jews follow Rashi s dating which puts the Messiah s anticipated arrival time at approximately 250 CE however this dating is based on a rabbinic chronological error of more than 175 years Recalibrating Rashi s dating by nearly 180 years yields a very surprising result the Messiah was supposed to come in the same century as Yeshua came The Vilna Gaon the most eminent rabbinic scholar of the 18th century has a 54

fascinating interpretation of a story in the Talmud in which Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chananyah was tested by the elders of Athens at the beginning of the 2nd century CE The Greeks inquired Where is the midpoint of the world According to the Gaon by asking this question the elders were criticizing the Jews since their very traditions held that the Messiah would come between the eras of Torah and Mashiach but since in the Greeks eyes the Jews had not yet experienced redemption the midpoint of the world had passed the Jews by forever As rendered by Aharon Feldman The Juggler and the King 146 Unperturbed Rabbi Yehoshua lifted up 55

his finger and replied Here is the midpoint of the world According to the Gaon while the elders were aware of this Talmudic tradition they were ignorant of another tradition which maintains that the Messiah will not come until all the government has turned to heresy Sanhedrin 97a which means that before the arrival of the Messiah there would be a universal turning away from God The Gaon explains that when Rabbi Yehoshua lifted his finger and replied Here he was claiming that God had already set in motion the events that would lead to the Messiah s arrival For the Gaon the Messianic era was inaugurated roughly 1 800 years ago In the Gaon s view however it is only 56

when the human race convert s back into a true human a God like being filled with wisdom love kindness and an exalted spirit that Mashiach will finally come The Juggler and the King 149 150 But our view and the view of the Gaon differ in two key ways 1 While the Gaon interprets the present as an age of escalating apostasy we see it as an era of enlightenment and gradually increasing awareness of the true identity of the Messiah in the midst of apostasy 2 The Gaon believed that the Messianic era came but the Messiah did not whereas we believe that the Messianic era came and that the coming of the Messiah was the event that inaugurated this age cf Silver who has a similar view to the Gaon s Which of these positions do you think makes more sense 57

Because of the intense Messianic expectation in the first century CE and the disappointment brought about by the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE along with the failure of the Bar Kochba revolt in 135 CE some rabbis concluded that although the Messianic age had been inaugurated it would be several centuries before the Messiah would actually come in person to save his people Could it be that the Messiah has come and inaugurated the first stage of the Messianic era a great period of world transition but that we have failed to recognize His coming For the full secret see The Real Kosher Jesus pp 171 177 58

THE SECRET OF THE HIDDEN WISDOM Kabbalah or Jewish mysticism is receiving a lot of attention today since so many people are searching for spiritual enlightenment Many of these people believe that Christianity is an antiquated and spiritually impotent religion and that on the whole Christians and Messianic Jews are rather shallow people Could this be a great misconception Could it be that the good news about the Messiah called the gospel is far deeper than we might recognize at first glance We know that Jesus often spoke in parables When asked why he explained to 59

His disciples The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you But to those on the outside everything is said in parables so that they may be ever seeing but never perceiving and ever hearing but never understanding otherwise they might turn and be forgiven Mark 4 11 12 NIV quoting from Isa 6 10 What does Yeshua mean by the secret of the kingdom of God In another passage He thanks the Father with the words I praise you Father because You have hidden these things from the wise and learned and revealed them to little children Yes Father for this was your good pleasure Matt 11 25 True wisdom is revealed to the humble and the lowly who look to God rather than to their own wisdom 60

Paul also speaks about this secret wisdom describing it as God s secret wisdom a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began 1 Cor 2 7 NIV What is this secret wisdom God had a wise plan from the beginning of time to gather the Jews and Gentiles together into one community through the death of the Messiah cf Eph 3 8 10 But God s wisdom is hidden in plain sight and it is up to us to be able to discover it as Solomon urges us in Proverbs if you seek it like silver and search for it like hidden treasure then you will understand the fear of the LORD and discover the knowledge of God Prov 2 4 5 61

And here is the great discovery the deep secret that has been hidden from many Jewish eyes for centuries God s ultimate wisdom is not found in Kabbalah or in some dense philosophical texts or in some other religion like Hinduism and Buddhism which attract so many secular Jews No God has hidden His wisdom in plain sight in the lowly carpenter from Nazareth the crucified Jew rejected by our people He is Yeshua our Messiah in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge Col 2 3 NIV Take another look at Yeshua and read about what He said and did in the New Covenant Writings What you discover there will change your life For the full secret see The Real Kosher Jesus pp 179 182 62

References Baron David The Visions and Prophecies of Zechariah Grand Rapids Kregel 1972 Chabad org The Numerology of Redemption http www chabad org parshah ar ticle_cdo aid 2741 jewish The Numerology of Redemption htm accessed January 21 2014 Dalman G H Der leidende und der sterbende Messias der Synagoge im ersten nachchristlichen Jarhtausend Berlin Reuther 1888 Driver S R and Adolph Neubauer eds and trans The Fifty Third 63

Chapter of Isaiah According to the Jewish Interpreters 2 Vols New York Ktav 1969 Feldman Aharon The Juggler and the King The Jew and the Conquest of Evil An Elaboration of the Vilna Gaon s Insights Into the Hidden Wisdom of the Sages Jerusalem New York Feldheim 1991 First Mitchell Jewish History in Conflict A Study of the Major Discrepancy Between Rabbinic and Conventional Chronology Northvale NJ Aronson 1997 Guggenheimer Heinrich W Seder Olam The Rabbinic View of Biblical Chronology Northvale NJ Aronson 1998 64

Levenson Jon D The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity New Haven Yale 1993 Patai Raphael The Messiah Texts Detroit Wayne State University Press 1979 Rosenthal Judah M Seder Olam Encyclopedia Judaica 14 1091 1093 New York Macmillan 1972 Schechter Solomon Aspects of Rabbinic Theology New York MacMillan 1909 Scherman Nosson trans The Complete ArtScroll Siddur Brooklyn Mesorah Publications 1984 65

Silver Abba Hillel A History of Messianic Speculation in Israel New York MacMillan 1927 Sommer Benjamin The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2009 Wein Berel The Triumph of Survival The Story of the Jews in the Modern Era 1650 1990 Brooklyn Shaar 1990 Werblowsky R J and G Wigoder eds The Oxford Dictionary of Jewish Religion s v logos New York Oxford University Press 1997 Get The REAL Kosher Jesus e book 66

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