Torah and New Testament Foundations-The False Messiah-Part 1

The study of the Messiah has been called the “Greatest Story Ever Told” and there is movie by that name that is still being shown on TV at certain times of the year. We are going to begin a teaching on an eschatological character called the False Messiah. This will be just the beginning of a massive teaching on the False Messiah and this deception.

We are going to go into the many Jewish texts, which of course includes the Gospels and Epistles. We will also quote from the Mishnah, Talmud and the Midrashim. There are several sources you can go to for a study on Jewish eschatology. For instance, “Everyman’s Talmud” by Abraham Cohen and “The Messiah Texts” by Raphael Patai come to mind. The purpose of this study is to look at the Christian and the Jewish sources about the False Messiah. We will look at the nature of the False Messiah and put his coming in chronological order, or in other words, “where he fits in.” We will look at what the requirements are and how would you know who he is. There is a certain criteria. Is it possible to know who he is before the Birth-pains (Tribulation) begins? We believe you can, if you know what you are looking for.

The Christian concept of the “Antichrist” is loosely based on Jewish eschatology, but they do not explore the Jewish sources very deeply. We will look at the many “pictures” of the False Messiah in Scripture. There are also people in history who will give us a profile of the False Messiah. There are also characters that will be associated with him, like the False Prophet and the Ten Kings, etc. Then there will be the relationship between the False Messiah and the Abomination of Desolation. Once we know the criteria for the False Messiah, we will be able to see individuals in the Tanak who fit that picture. Then, even more additional information will come forth and gathered. We will even get a profile of what the False Messiah will even look like when we look at the relationship between the false Messiah and the Abomination of Desolation. Speaking of the Abomination of Desolation, many people do not realize that it is in the world right now and it has been for centuries. Most people on earth have seen it, but we will have more information on this later in the teaching.

We want to go over all this information and arrive at a proper profile of the False Messiah. There is a lot of false information on him out there in prophecy books. There is a lot of false information about the Abomination of Desolation out there also, so we want to see what the Scriptures say about this relationship. The doctrine of the false Messiah is an ancient teaching, not something that came along recently. So, we will find out when this message came along in Scripture.

We are going to look at the strategy of the enemy to create “the greatest delusion ever told” and reveal it. Strategy is how to win a war. Tactics is how you win a battle, so there is a difference and it is part of spiritual warfare. Our enemy had a strategy to create a delusion and deception, and this strategy goes back thousands of years. It has been built on, added to, refined, reaffirmed and solidified over and over again. People have been deceived so long they believe this delusion is true and the way it is. We are going to examine this delusion and expose it.

There are many terms and names for the false Messiah in Scripture. He is called the “man of lawlessness” in 2 Thes 2; the “man of sin” in 2 Thes 2; The “son of perdition” in 2 Thes 2; the “prince who is to come” in Dan 9; the “evil profane prince” in Ezekiel and a “seven headed beast” in Rev 13.1, just to name a few. There are a number of personalities in the Tanak that portray the False Messiah like Pharaoh, Amalek, Absalom, Sisera, Haman, Jehoahaz, Jehoichim, Jehoichin, Zedekiah, Antiochus Epiphanes IV, Manasseh, Amon and Tirhaka. Personalities from history include Constantine, Charlemagne, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin and the Caesars (from Julius to Nero). There are a number of personalities and creatures from the Jewish texts that tell us about the False Messiah like Armilus, Tannin, Beliel, Rahab, Samael, Azazel, Ahriman (Persian god of evil) and Leviathan.

We will have terms we will want to look at like the “Antichrist” (we don’t like this term- “anti’ means “against the Messiah and it does not meet the biblical criteria), “Pseudo-Messiah” (a counterfeit with recognizable terms) and the “False Messiah” (we like this one). We will look at the Kingdom of the False Messiah and how it relates to the Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Medo-Persian, Greek and Roman empires and how they relate to the prophecies. We will look at the contradictions between Jewish and Christian sources, too.

In an article on “Antichrist” in Wikipedia it says, “The Antichrist is a Christian concept based on interpretation of passages in the New Testament. The term ‘Antichrist’ occurs five times in 1 John and 2 John, once in plural form and four times singular.” These references are 1 John 2.18, 2.22, 4.3; 2 John 1.7. The article continues, “In traditional Christian belief, Jesus the Messiah appears in his second coming to earth to face the emergence of the Antichrist figure. Just as Christ is the Saviour and the ideal model for humanity, his opponent in the end of days will be a single figure of concentrated evil.” It continues, “The word Antichrist is made up of two roots: anti and christos. Anti can mean not only against and opposite of, but also in place of. Christos, translated Christ, is Greek for the Hebrew Messiah, meaning anointed, and refers to Jesus of Nazareth within Christian, Islamic and Messianic Jewish theology.”

In the Article “Judaism” in Wikipedia it says, “There are warnings against false prophets in the Hebrew Bible but no personal anti-Messiah figure.” This we would disagree with. The Tanak alone is full of anti-Messiah figures. We just gave a short list of some of them, and we will eventually take a closer look at them. The Jewish writings are full of references to the False Messiah and some are very specific. So, we have a problem. We know that there were “Judaisms” in the First Century, not one “Judaism.” As a result, there is no “Jewish eschatological view” but “many different views.” It is the same thing with Christianity. There is no such thing as one “Christianity” but many “Christianities.” As a result, there will be different views on eschatology and the False Messiah coming from Catholicism, Baptists, Pentecostals, Lutherans, Methodists, Episcopalians, Inter-denominational and so on. These groups have many different views on eschatology, but there will be several things in common also. So, we need to understand what these are. These groups moved away from the Jewish texts and sources long ago. They were the “new Israel” and the new “people of God” after all. The Jews rejected “Jesus”, so why should they look at the Jewish sources and what they have to say about anything.

The article in Wikipedia goes on to say, “However, Bernard McGinn conjectures that the concept may have been generated by the frustration of Jews subject to the often capricious Seleucid or Roman rule, who found the nebulous Jewish idea of a Satan who is more of an opposing Angel of God in the heavenly court insufficiently humanized and personalized to be a satisfactory incarnation of evil and threat.” Now, what this is saying is later on, after the First Century, Jewish frustration with the governments that controlled them caused them to conjure up these figures about a False Messiah. This is totally untrue. This article goes on to say that “In the Seventh Century A.D. Sefer Zerubbabel and the Eleventh Century A.D. Midrash Vayosha, an anti-Messiah type figure, influenced by Christian and Muslim interpretation, Armilus appears in some schools of Jewish eschatology. He is described as bald, partially maimed and partially deaf.” This again is not true and the idea of a False Messiah did not come from Christian or Muslim sources.

In Part 2, we will pick up here and discuss the article “Antichrist” from the Jewish Encyclopedia and the Encyclopedia Judaica. We will compare what is being said and see that there is some disagreement. We are going to find out that the Jewish writings had a lot to say about the False Messiah and this is a factor as to why Christianity knows so little about this figure. Because of this, many Christian teachers, and those who have listened from them, have gone into error. One of the purposes of this teaching is to point these things out, get on the right track, and learn what the Lord has given to us about this eschatological figure. We will get into where he comes from and what he will do, then get into the Abomination of Desolation, which is a whole category by itself.

Posted in All Teachings, Articles, Idioms, Phrases and Concepts, Prophecy/Eschatology, The Festivals of the Lord, The Tanak, Tying into the New Testament

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