Daniel 9:26 And after the sixty-two weeks Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself; And the people of the prince who is to come Shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end of it shall be with a flood, And till the end of the war desolations are determined.
The Book of Daniel prophesied in this passage, that the Messiah will come and be cut off, and then the city of Jerusalem and the sanctuary (the temple) will be destroyed. The city of Jerusalem was destroyed by the Roman army led by Titus in 70 AD. Consequently the Messiah of Israel, whoever he is, had to have come before the year 70 AD. There is only one person whose identity and life perfectly fits the description and timing contained in this prophecy; no one else even comes close. This same Messiah was to be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2), ride a donkey into Jerusalem (Zechariah 9:9) and die for the sins of the world (Isaiah 53). He fulfilled at least 100 other prophecies at His first coming. He is Yeshua (Jesus) of Nazareth.
But for nearly 2,000 years most of Yeshua's own Jewish people have been searching and waiting in vain for their Messiah, blind to His true identity and first appearing.
Now we who do know Him might look with condescension on our Jewish neighbors, but we ought to be careful that we're not making the same mistake in a way; waiting for a fulfillment or a promise that has already come, and missing it because of blindness, jealousy, worldliness or pride. Yeshua is our fulfillment in life; having received Him and known Him, have we still missed that reality?
Don't forget to center your life and your hope on Him. He is the Way, the Truth, and the LIFE! With so much work to be done, let's make sure our lives are centered!
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[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]Recently, I’ve been impressed by the Lord to address the anxieties many are feeling about the future– how to be strong in the face of the intense opposition we’ll be facing as believers. One of the founders of the modern state of Israel, David Ben-Gurion once said, “Courage is a special kind of knowledge, the knowledge of how to fear what ought to be feared and how not to fear what ought not to be feared. From this knowledge comes an inner strength that inspires us to push on in the face of great difficulty. What can seem impossible is often possible with courage.”
For a season, I worked in Washington, D.C., for one of America’s largest Christian political organizations. Sometimes I saw how politics could get ugly and, more often than not, how it changed people — not for the better…but usually for the worse!
Have you ever felt uneasy, unsettled or unstable? Or maybe a better question is — who hasn’t? How do we overcome these feelings?
Is that a trend or something? I don’t know what it is but I’ve heard that phrase said quite a bit. We were even walking down the Wal-Mart isle to pick up a few things and my wife showed me a T-shirt with “I have issues” written across the front! I guess the world is coming to the sad reality that we really do have some issues.
It never ceases to amaze me, the way the devil uses our offenses and our “offendedness” to divide and conquer marriages, relationships, churches — even entire nations!
There’s an old adage, “Have the heart of a lion!” Hearing it, we think, “courage”. This recalls a quote I once heard; “Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened”. I doubt there’s a single hero story in which the fearless leader fails to inspire the righteous determination of his army or people. The voice of the captain resounds through the ranks evoking the fierce cry of every warrior ready to face death or worse, for the cause. Courage truly is contagious.
The Hebrew word for “face” is “panim”, (the Hebrew letters, peh-nun-yud-mem), literally “faces”, a plural word. Normally, when we think about God, we focus only upon one of His “faces” at a time. God is “love” – or He is “holy”– or He is “just”— or He’s a God of “wrath”. Yet, of course, ALL these “faces” are His at once; and so the word “panim” accurately reflects the truth of God’s multifaceted being. As we get to know Him better we begin to appreciate the complexity of His nature and the fact that our focus on one “face” is a very limited view, since there’s so much more going on in His amazing “Personality”.