Bible Study Library

Dear Disciples:

The following study is not directly in the book of Revelation, but it is designed to helped turn our minds toward the study of biblical prophecy. We’ll be looking into a topic that is important to understand as we learn more about the Christ-Messiah establishing His kingdom and judging the world.

The short message of this lesson is that God intentionally hid the fact that the Messiah would come twice: First as a humble servant who would be killed by His own people to save them and then resurrected; Secondly as a powerful ruler over all of the nations who would live forever. God obscured these facts so that Satan would unknowingly help Him complete His plan by crucifying the Messiah.

Here’s a summary of how we got there. Admittedly, this is a sketchy treatment of this idea and it needs further study.

Follow the progression of thought here:

• In Old Testament prophecy, God clearly revealed that there would come a king and ruler over all nations, and that he would live forever. These prophecies all clearly call this king the Messiah.
• The OT also talks about a humble, suffering servant who would be murdered by his own people for their sins. But every one of these prophecies is obscure in its original context. It is not clear that they are about the Messiah.
• It seems like a contradiction for the same man to be a powerful king over all nations who lives forever and also a suffering servant who is killed.
• How could this be? Without everything God taught us in the NT, we wouldn’t be able to make sense of the contradiction. This is the difficulty Jews have with believing Jesus is the Messiah, since he was killed and never became a ruler over the nations.
• Christians realize that the prophecies of the suffering servant are about Jesus’ first coming and the prophecies about Him as an everlasting ruler refer to His second coming. But the Old Testament didn’t mention two comings. Without faith in Christ, the Jews have a reasonable objection.
• Why didn’t God explain all of this in the Old Testament? The Bible seems to indicate that God intentionally kept some secrets about Jesus all the way up to the time of his death and resurrection. It seems to indicate that these things were intentionally made obscure so that they could only be understood after-the-fact. This was in order to confuse Satan, so that Satan would be sure to have Jesus killed. If Satan knew God wanted Jesus to die, he would not have killed Him and salvation wouldn’t have come.
• Here is some evidence of all of this:
  • Many times in the New Testament we are told about the mystery hidden for long ages past but that is now revealed and made known and similar wordings (Romans 16:25-26; Ephesians 3:2-11; Colossians 1:25-27; 1 Peter 1:10-12 are examples).
  • The 12 Disciples, primarily Jews and who knew the Old Testament as their scripture, often didn’t understand things Jesus was saying to them, even though those things seem pretty clear. For instance, in Luke 18:31-33, Jesus clearly told them they were going to Jerusalem to see the Son of Man handed over to the Gentiles, mocked, insulted, spit on, flogged, and killed, and that on the third day he would rise again. How much clearer could that be? Yet in verse 34, it says the disciples did not understand any of this. Its meaning was hidden from them, and they did not know what he was talking about. Other examples of them not understanding things He clearly said are in Mark 8:31; Mark 10:45; Mark 9:9-12; Matthew 20:17-19; Luke 9:22; and John 3:14.
  • Jesus once told the disciples that the reason He spoke in parables was that The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them (Matthew 13:10-13).
  • After His resurrection, Jesus opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. He told them, “This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem” (Luke 24:45-47)
  • As I said before, if Satan knew killing Jesus would fulfill God’s plan he wouldn’t have done it! He evidently thought he was killing the Messiah who would some day become the king of all nations and live forever. He no doubt thought that to kill the Messiah would be to defeat God!
  • Certainly if the Jews understood that the Messiah would be crucified this way, they wouldn’t have done what they did. That is why the chief priests and teachers of the law mocked Jesus on the cross, saying Let this Christ, this King of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe (Mark 15:31-32). That makes perfect sense, since they expected the Christ (Messiah) to live forever. They basically said If he really is the Messiah, let him prove it by living forever!
  • Paul referred to this lack of understanding by Satan and the world when he wrote: We speak of God’s secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden… None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had they would not have crucified the Lord of glory (1 Corinthians 2:7-8)
• All of the above leads us to the idea that God intentionally hid the fact that the Messiah would come twice: First as a humble servant who would be killed by His own people to save them and then resurrected; Secondly as a powerful ruler over all of the nations who would live forever. This was the mystery, and God obscured it so that Satan would unknowingly help Him complete His plan by crucifying the Messiah.

Worth thinking about!

Finally, I provided a resource which you can see here that provides a representative example of how orthodox Jews view the Messiah and what they think of Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah.