 |
Web Hosting by Netfirms | Free Domain Names by Netfirms |
|
|
|
"Moshiach signifies the separation of the good from the evil. This is why he will come only in a generation which is altogether meritorious or altogether sinful," i.e., at a time in which there will be no mixture of good and evil. So as long as Moshiach has not come, there is a mixture of good and evil in all the worlds: there is no good without evil and no evil without good." -Rabbi Shneur Zalman
The idea of Messiah is not foreign to B'nei Noach and those who observe the Covenant and Laws of Noah! Considering that a majority of B'nei Noach have emerged from Christianity, it is quite certain that the idea of a messiah was central in our belief system.
Answer for yourself: Is it possible for those of us who have emerged from Christianity to reconcile our formerly-believed Christian concept of messiah with the Jewish concept, which predated Christianity by several centuries?
Even within ka'al B'nei Noach we find individuals who still struggle to keep their belief in Jesus intact. Instead of believing in the Gentiles' Jesus, they now believe in a Jewish Jesus - and they now call him Yeshua HaMoshiach (Yeshua the Messiah). They strip away the Christian's anglo-saxon garments of Jesus and redress him in a more ethnic Jewish costume. Now Yeshua is introduced as an Orthodox rabbi, complete with tzitzits, tallit, and tefillin. And by doing this to Jesus, they believe they have rectified the Church's whitewashing of a Jewish Yeshua into a figure called Jesus, and that they have restored the truth to the world. Beyond this their studies lead to see the corruption of their own Gentile religious texts where they come to see and understand the corruptions of hundreds of Messianic texts in the Christian Bible which go a long way in explaining why the Jewish people who have a different reading of these texts in their Jewish texts cannot accept the Jesus as depicted in the New Testament as their Messiah. Thus the need for study for both the Christian and the Jew in order to come to the knowledge of the truth about Yeshua.
Where most Christians fail to understand is that the “real” Jesus is the “Jesus of History” and not the “Christ of Christian Faith.” Most Christians have not bothered to ask, "Who is the messiah that the Jews have been looking for?" In their efforts to be “Christ-like”, they have neglected to study Moshiach from the purely Jewish viewpoint. They, in fact, have long forgotten that the idea of Moshiach is an original Jewish concept. They have failed to understand that only the remnant of Torah-observant Jews can make clear to us who Moshiach is, what his responsibilities are, where he will ascend the throne of kingship, why he will be crowned King Moshiach, and how all of this will come to pass.
Although the concept of Messiah has always been a part of Judaism, we find greater definition of who the Messiah is, and what the Messianic era is, from the hasidim who are part of the Chabad Lubavitch than those ideas proposed from an Anti-Semitic Gentile establishment called the “church” today. Rebbe Menachem Schneerson stressed to the hasidim that we are the generation who will witness the Ultimate Redemption. Examining the Messiah according to Hasidic (Chassidic) thought is a robust challenge, and a storehouse of information is available on our very website above let alone the Internet and the World Wide Web. Much, much more can be said regarding Moshiach than what we at Bet Emet could ever hope to accomplish through numerous newsletters. Therefore, I recommend that you select certain books to study in order to examine the concept of Messiah from a Jewish perspective and gain a greater understanding of the Hasidic concept of Moshiach. Let us also recommend our website dealing strictly with Messianic issues: http://www.geocities.com/bennoah1messiah.
One of the books we are recommending is an outstanding book by Rabbi Shmuel Boteach, entitled The Wolf Shall Lie With the Lamb: The Messiah in Hasidic Thought.