2025-07-23 – Jesus Christ is the Promised Messiah Part I: What is Prophecy?

The “promises” made by man are different from a promise made by God.  God’s promises are Covenantal in nature, because God alone possesses omnipotent agency and omniscient knowledge to fulfill His promise.  Human agency is fallible, conditional and finite and can therefore not be more than aspirational at best. 

God’s Messiah takes human form to fulfill all of God’s promise to mankind (delivering his people from bondage and restoring the Line of King David).  He is “anointed” or set aside for this purpose.  Other “messianic” figures appearing in human history prior to the arrival of The Messiah were also set aside through either consecration as High Priests, coronation as Kings, or through direct descent of the Holy Spirit as Prophets.  In these roles, they each pre-figured only partially God’s true and complete Messiah. 

Christ’s role as High Priest is a unique fusion of the agent and the blameless victim.  Presenting his earthly form to God as atonement for the sins of all men, signifies that this self-sacrificing High Priest is God Himself.  His role as King of Kings maintains God’s covenant with Israel by restoring the line of David in Jerusalem, but extends it now to the Gentiles and all the rest of the world.  Here again this King is none other than God Himself.  Christ’s role as Prophet is a bipartite fusion of God’s Divine Word and Jesus’ human Flesh, as we are reminded each week in the Last Gospel (the Word became Flesh and dwelt among us).  The deliberate revelation that the promised Messiah is God Himself communicates to us that only this Messiah is capable of filling God’s promise to humanity. 

Genuine prophecy is rooted in God’s imparting Divine Order to a disordered cosmos, and can be recognized by its multi-dimensional character: 1) it begins with and leads back to God; 2) it is miraculous; 3) it refers to our real, perceptible world; 4) and its endpoint is theosis, the fusion of God’s divine presence with ourselves.  Isaiah’s foundational prophecy of Immanuel in 7:14 contains these dimensions.  Creation, salvation and revelation are equally potent expressions of God’s recognition that His Creation (i.e. ourselves) is good, because it embodies His goodness.  These expressions are God’s gifts to transform our earthly selves into creatures able to live in and for God.  To receive these gifts, we must allow our faith to perceive God’s Word when it appears in miraculous context (i.e. a virgin birth).  Miracles can and do happen, but they are done to further God’s purpose for our salvation and return to His kingdom.