HEBREW WORD STUDY – MESSIAH – MESHACH – משׁח  

Amos 9:11:  “In that day will I raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen, and close up the breaches thereof; and I will raise up his ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old:”

I took the day off work to do my taxes and ended up spending the day reading the Talmud.  So you can bet I found something really interesting.  I found it in Sanhedrin 96b.  Rabbi Yochanan centuries before the Holocaust of World War II made this prophecy of the coming of the Messiah: “The disciples truly wise in learning will dwindle away.  The few of them that remain will waste away in grieving and sighing. Also, in the external circumstances of that time, diverse troubles and heavy calamities will strike in rapid succession is such a manner that while one is taking place, another will already be impending.”   

This sounds an awful lot like the Holocaust and the rise of Israel as a nation today.  It is in the midst of these events that the Messiah will return. But this is what I really liked.  Just a few texts later in the Talmud in Sanhedrin 98a we find this prediction of the return of the Messiah: “Hayom im baqolu tashama’u”  the Messiah will come “Today if you harken unto His voice.” 

In the Talmud, in Chaggai 1b we find that there is no era in which the House of the Lord can’t be built. 

Ok, the Jews believe the Messiah has yet to come and we believe He has already come and will return.  But one thing we evangelical Christians have in common is that we are anticipating the coming of the Messiah, albeit for us it is the return.  Still, we are anticipating the Messiah but we can experience all the benefits of the return of the Messiah if we will harken unto the voice of God and follow His leading. 

What is the lesson here?  It is the same for both Jew and Gentile Christians as stated by Rabbi Hirsch: “If only those who wait for Him and long for Him do their part by not yielding to despondency

and apathy, inactivity and by the unfavorableness of the times.  Rather they must know and act according to their knowledge that every day and every hour is the right time for salvation.  Today, if we only harken unto Him.”