i am firmly anti-christian... 'christ' means 'king' and i have no want for a king...
you say you are "anti-christian"..do you hate all Christians?? I bet not, I bet you deal with Christians every day of your life, and get along just fine with them. You afraid to say you are antiChrist? That is what you meant, right? While it is your God given right to reject the Messiah, I am here to tell you that The Savior is still on the throne at the right hand of God and He knows His own.
little excerpt for your reading pleasure..
CHRIST, is the English rendering of the Greek Christos, meaning "anointed." See Messiah which translates the corresponding Hebrew term mashiach, the anointed one.
Old Testament and Jewish Background See Messiah.
Various groups of individuals in the Old Testament were recipients of a ceremony involving anointing with oil. Notable examples were priests (Ex. 29:7) and kings in Israel from the time of Saul onward (1 Sam. 10-16). The appellation, "the Lord's anointed" came to be used to mean the king of Israel, (1 Sam. 24:6, 10). The psalmist looked forward to an ideal annointed king who may or may not have been already seen dimly portrayed in the contemporary Israelite kings (Pss. 2:2; 18:50; 20:6; 132:10, 17). A good illustration of what anointing implied is seen in Psalm 105:15 (1 Chron. 16:22) where the term "anointed" (here used in the plural) refers to the Hebrew patriarchs as those set apart for God's service and called to be His representatives. An unusual occurrence of this idea is in Isaiah 45:1 where "his anointed" refers to Cyrus the Persian ruler whom God appointed to serve Him.
The failure of the Hebrew monarchy, certified by the Babylonian Exile (587-538 B.C.), paved the way for the emergence of a messianic hope. The prospect entailed a coming deliverer, usually of the Davidic family but also with priestly connections, who would restore the kingdom to Israel and be a kingly figure. Such a prophetic figure is not actually called the Messiah in the Old Testament. The Song of Solomon, written in the period 70-40 B.C. by a Pharisee, gives the first positive identification of the coming redeemer of Israel with one whom the Lord anoints as His Messiah. The prayer runs: "See, O Lord, and raise up for them their king, the Son of David ... [and] their king is the Lord's anointed" (Song of Sol. 17:21,32; compare 18:7). This usage, however, is exceptional. The scarcity of allusions to the Messiah before the New Testament period is probably to be explained by the fact that Israel's hope took on various shapes. Often it was God Himself who was expected to visit the nation in deliverance; sometimes it was His angel or messenger who would herald the onset of the new age (Mal. 3:1,2; 4:5,6). The term "Messiah," where it is found, relates to a human figure who, as a member of David's family, would usher in the restored kingdom and promote Israel's interests in the world, usually implying a triumph over Israel's enemies in a war of liberation (Song of Solomon), or in the creation of a purified people (as in the hope entertained by the sect of the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran).
Jesus as the Christ in the Gospels The first three Gospels give less prominence to the title "Christ" (the Messiah) than we might have expected. Jesus never openly paraded His Messiahship, nor did He overtly claim to be the Messiah in the sense of announcing an aspiration to be Israel's warrior king. Yet He did claim to be the One in whom the kingdom of God was present (Mark 1:14,15; Luke 11:20). His parables enunciated both the arrival of the kingdom and its character, setting a pattern for living for those who would enter God's realm as His children (Matt. 13; Mark 4). His mighty acts in healing the sick and casting out demons were demonstrations of the power and presence of God at work in His ministry (Luke 5:17). His teaching on prayer was based on the awareness He had of God as His Father in an intimate sense, calling him "Abba," my dear Father, which is a nursery word used of an earthly parent by Jewish children (Mark 14:36; Luke 10:21-22; 11:2). See Abba. His entire mission was seen as heralding the coming of the divine kingdom which, He believed, was closely tied in with His final journey to Jerusalem (Luke 9:51; 13:32-35) and His sacrifice there on the cross (Mark 8:31-32; 9:31; 10:32-34). Only in this way, Jesus knew, could God's kingdom come and God's will be done by His anointed Servant and Son (Luke 4:16-19).
For this reason--that God's redemption of Israel would take place only by the suffering of the Messiah--Jesus took a reserved and critical attitude to the title "Christ." When Peter confessed "Thou art the Christ" (Mark 8:29), Jesus' response was guarded: not denying it, but distancing Himself from the political and social connotations which a nationalist Judaism had accepted as commonplace in the expected Deliverer. (See Mark 10:35-45; Luke 24:19-21; Acts 1:6 for the evidence that even the disciples entertained such a hope.) At the trial Jesus was interrogated on this point. The balance of the evidence points in the direction that He still maintained a reserve (Matt. 26:63,64; Luke 22:67,68), with the same reluctance to be identified with a worldly messiah-king evident, too, in the interview with Pilate (Mark 15:2: "Art thou the King of the Jews?" asked Pilate. "Thou sayest it," Jesus replied; but the answer is probably noncommittal meaning, "It is your word, not mine"). At all events, Jesus was sentenced to death on the trumped-up charge of being a messianic claimant and a rival to the emperor in Rome (Mark 15:26,32). The Gospels make it clear that there was no direct and supportable evidence that Jesus so claimed to be such a figure. Instead, He consistently viewed His life and mission as fulfilling the role of the "Son of man" (a title drawn from Dan. 7:13,14 where it stands for God's Representative on earth who suffers out of loyalty to the truth and is at length rewarded by being promoted to share the throne of God) and God's chosen Servant, a pattern for ministry which Jesus evidently found in Isaiah's servant songs (Isa. 42:1-4; 49:5-7; 52:13-53:12). If this is the correct background to Jesus' self-awareness, both of His relationship to God and to His mission, it helps to explain how He looked confidently beyond defeat and death to His vindication by God in the resurrection. Whatever destiny of suffering and rejection by His people awaited Him, He saw, like Isaiah's servant, that God would bring Him out of death to newness of life. Also, the significance Jesus attached to His death as an atoning sacrifice in such sayings as Mark 10:45; 14:24 requires some such background as the vicarious sacrifice of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 53:5,10 to give it coherent meaning.
In the apostolic church this understanding of Jesus' life and ministry was given clearer definition (Acts 2:22-36; 8:26-40), and in the hands of the New Testament theologians such as Paul (Rom. 3:24-26) and the author of Hebrews (ch. 8-10) the conviction regarding the person, work, and glory of Jesus Christ is clearly articulated.
Ralph P. Martin |
