A Primer on Messianic Prophecy: A Bible Journey through the First and Second Comings of Christ

By Cynthia C. Polsley

An introduction and survey that digs into the Bible's picture of the Messiah's entire career from Genesis to Revelation, A Primer on Messianic Prophecy is for anyone interested in learning more about Messianic prophecy, its support for Jesus' identity as the Christ, and its meaning for our present and future. Exploring the Messiah's First and Second Comings as they are described throughout the Bible and with attention to archaeology, biblical feasts and the Jewish wedding system, history, and current events, this Scriptural synopsis examines Messianic prophecies that span all of time. Some are fulfilled, yet many are to come. Covering topics from the beginning of creation to the last days and beyond, A Primer on Messianic Prophecy is a foundational and inspirational text for readers wanting a better understanding of the Bible's intricate inerrancy and picture of the key figure throughout Scripture--Jesus Christ, Lamb of God and Lion of Judah.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Release date: Oct 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666778830

Cynthia C. Polsley

Dr. Cynthia "Cara" Polsley is a classical philologist, researcher, and speaker. Teaching on Biblical exegesis, languages and civilization, and narratology, she is an alumna of the University of Kansas and received her Ph.D. in Classics from Yale University, where she specialized in contrafactuals and alternative realities in ancient Greek narrative. She is a spinal cord injury survivor and author of numerous books, including The Bible and the Holographic Universe and the Ifscapes series.

Book preview

A Primer on Messianic Prophecy

a bible journey through the first and second comings of christ

Cynthia C. Polsley

A Primer on Messianic Prophecy

A Bible Journey through the First and Second Comings of Christ

Copyright ©

2023

Cynthia C. Polsley. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers,

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8

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Wipf & Stock

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

199

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8

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97401

www.wipfandstock.com

paperback isbn: 978-1-6667-7881-6

hardcover isbn: 978-1-6667-7882-3

ebook isbn: 978-1-6667-7883-0

All direct quotations of Scripture are taken from the King James Version (KJV) and are in the public domain in the United States of America. Translations of ancient Greek and Latin secular texts are the author’s unless otherwise noted.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Acknowledgments

Scripture Abbreviations

Prologue

Part One: Messiah’s First Coming

A. Messiah’s Public Coming (Pre-Resurrection)

Chapter 1: His Lineage

Chapter 2: His Birth

Chapter 3: His Timing

Chapter 4: His Life

Chapter 5: His Death

B. Messiah’s Private Coming (Post-Resurrection)

Chapter 6: His Resurrection

Part Two: Messiah’s Second Coming

A. Messiah’s Private Coming (The Rapture)

Chapter 7: His Coming as a Thief

Chapter 8: His Taking of His Bride

B. Messiah’s Public Coming (The Revelation)

Chapter 9: His Approach

Chapter 10: His Arrival

Part Three: Messiah’s Millennial Kingdom

Chapter 11: His Earthly Reign

Chapter 12: His Patience

Chapter 13: His Righteous Judgment

Part Four: Messiah’s Eternal Kingdom

Chapter 14: His New Creation

Epilogue

Appendix A: What Must I Do to Be Saved?

Appendix B: The Seven Feasts and Messiah’s Career

Appendix C: The Tabernacle and Messiah’s Career

Appendix D: Overview of Messiah’s Comings

Bibliography

"Cynthia Polsley’s A Primer on Messianic Prophecy richly nuances and amplifies the life and teachings of Yeshua HaMashiach by contextualizing them in the Jewish understanding of the seven feasts of Israel, the wedding ceremony, and the tabernacle. Happily, it also clarifies the usually overlooked distinction between the private and public dimensions of the Messiah’s first and second comings."

—

Kenneth Boa

, president, Reflections Ministries

"In A Primer on Messianic Prophecy, Cynthia Polsley masterfully navigates the intricate historical tapestry of the Messiah’s lineage. This book elegantly underscores Jesus Christ as the heart and center of biblical prophecy. Highly recommended."

—

Ron Rhodes

, author of The End Times in Chronological Order

This essay is an excellent overview of some of the future biblical events of our Lord and Savior in a rich and fascinating way. The study offers a refreshing and clear distinction between the future returns of our Lord as laid out in the Scripture. It resists the temptation to spiritualize what Scripture has made plain. This work is enthusiastically recommended to those wishing to sort out these issues and build on them.

—

James F. Stitzinger

, president, Books for Libraries

In this well-written primer on messianic prophecy, Cynthia Polsley leads the reader through some of the key biblical passages concerning Jesus’ first and second coming, as well as his millennial reign and eternal kingdom. Although one may not agree with all her conclusions, this book will help to broaden your vision and increase your understanding of all those plans and promises of God that find their ultimate fulfillment in Messiah Jesus.

—

Michael Gleghorn

, research associate, Probe Ministries

"Cynthia Polsley has written masterfully in her new book, A Primer on Messianic Prophecy. Detailing the first and second comings of the Messiah, Polsley walks the reader through the importance of the background and details of the advents. She then unfolds the Messiah’s millennial kingdom and the eternality of the same. As both a pastor of a local church and adjunct university professor, I highly recommend A Primer on Messianic Prophecy for both the pew and classroom."

—

Greg Ammons

, senior pastor, First Baptist Church of Garland, TX

In love, laughter, and gratitude for treasured role models

and godly mentors over the years:

to Tom and Nancy, for keeping all of us;

and to Faith and Dillan, for never forgetting the syrup.

As always, for my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ:

"To the only wise God our Saviour,

be glory and majesty, dominion and power,

both now and ever. Amen" (Jude 25).

In all the books of the Old Testament, from the prophecy in the Garden of Eden right away down to Malachi, the last of the Prophets, there were certain marks and tokens of the Christ. All these were so very singular that it did not appear as if they could all meet in one person; but they did all meet in One, every one of them.

—C. H. Spurgeon

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1.

Spurgeon, Christ’s Dying Word,

361

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Acknowledgments

A Primer on Messianic Prophecy would not have been possible without wonderful family members, friends, and teachers. Special thanks goes to my parents (Ps 16:6), siblings (Ps 133:1), and nieces and nephews (still the best, and a main inspiration for this book; 2 Pet 3:18). I am grateful to the behind-the-scenes beta readers who have lent their eyes and time to this project, as well as to the members of OCC Revelation and both Wednesday fellowship groups for lending their ears, support, and comments along the way (Num 6:24–26).

Scripture Abbreviations

Old Testament

Gen Genesis

Exod Exodus

Lev Leviticus

Num Numbers

Deut Deuteronomy

Josh Joshua

Judg Judges

Ruth

1 Sam 1 Samuel

2 Sam 2 Samuel

1 Kgs 1 Kings

2 Kgs 2 Kings

1 Chr 1 Chronicles

2 Chr 2 Chronicles

Ezra

Neh Nehemiah

Esth Esther

Job

Ps Psalms

Prov Proverbs

Eccl Ecclesiastes

Song Song of Solomon

Isa Isaiah

Jer Jeremiah

Lam Lamentations

Ezek Ezekiel

Dan Daniel

Hos Hosea

Joel

Amos

Obad Obadiah

Jonah

Mic Micah

Nah Nahum

Hab Habakkuk

Zeph Zephaniah

Hag Haggai

Zech Zechariah

Mal Malachi

New Testament

Matt Matthew

Mark

Luke

John

Acts

Rom Romans

1 Cor 1 Corinthians

2 Cor 2 Corinthians

Gal Galatians

Eph Ephesians

Phil Philippians

Col Colossians

1 Thess 1 Thessalonians

2 Thess 2 Thessalonians

1 Tim 1 Timothy

2 Tim 2 Timothy

Titus

Phlm Philemon

Heb Hebrews

Jas James

1 Pet 1 Peter

2 Pet 2 Peter

1 John

2 John

3 John

Jude

Rev Revelation

Prologue

The English word messiah comes from the biblical Hebrew word mashiach (מָשִׁיחַ; or moshiach), which means anointed one, or chosen one.

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As a title, messiah refers to someone who is anointed, selected, holy, or set apart. Although many people are anointed for specific purposes in the Bible, Scripture especially tells us of one true, divine Messiah who is anointed by the Lord for a unique set of tasks. This Messiah—The Messiah, whom we will most often call Messiah with a capital M—fulfills a critical office when he performs the duties he is given by God. Actually, his offices and duties are the most important in all of history and in the entire world, which is precisely why the Bible also tells us so much about his credentials.

The Messiah has multiple mandates and traits. He provides an atonement for sin by voluntarily suffering and dying on others’ behalf. He intercedes for believers and is their high priest and only mediator before God. He inherits the legal kingship of Israel’s king David, rightfully claiming the throne of a worldwide earthly kingdom headquartered in Jerusalem. Having proven his purity and legitimacy, Messiah is then forever honored as the eternal king of a new creation. He is holy, unchanging, righteous, and worthy; he is tried and true.

There have been and will continue to be people who falsely claim to be Messiah. None of them meet or can meet the biblical requirements for Messiah. As we’ll see, many of the prerequisites for the long-awaited Messiah are already too past due to be fulfilled by anyone today. It’s unwise and even dangerous to be easily persuaded about the identity of Messiah at any time or to blindly follow just anyone who claims to be a messiah. This book exists to help show the distinction between the real Messiah and false messiahs.

Why does the human race need a Messiah? The requirement for a perfect Anointed One comes from the very beginning of human history. History on its present course—history as we know it, with human beings who live and die, with civilizations that come and go, with generations that rise and then pass away—began with the first sin.

The first sin, which resulted in the Fall (i.e., the fall from righteousness) is described in Gen 3. The first two chapters of Genesis record the creation of the first man, Adam, and his wife, Eve. By the time of Gen 3, Adam and Eve have been given dominion over all other creatures and are instructed to care for the Garden of Eden (Gen 1:28, 2:15). However, Adam and his wife transgress against God. They break the one law that exists in Eden: not to eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen 2:17). Their transgression is an act of sin. It is a violation of the Lord’s holiness (1 John 3:4, 5:17; Rom 4:15; Matt 5:48; Deut 18:13). By nature, sin demands a punishment and justification (Ezek 18:20, 30–32; Rom 2:6, 6:23; Isa 3:11; Hab 1:13; 1 Pet 1:15–16).

Because of their sin, Adam and Eve have become imperfect and cannot complete a holy justification for themselves. They now need an intercessor who can achieve holiness for them (Ps 14:2–3; Isa 64:6; Rom 3:10, 20, 8:3–8; 2 Cor 5:21; Phil 3:9; 1 Tim 2:5). Having become unholy and corrupt with sin, they cannot raise themselves back to a state of holiness and perfection. They need a perfect atonement: someone able to make proper amends for the sin that was committed. In short, because of what happened in Eden, Adam and Eve and their sin-infected descendants need a messiah.

Yet not just any messiah will do when it comes to fulfilling humanity’s need for a perfect savior. We need one certain Messiah. This Messiah must be able to meet biblical criteria and to do everything that is necessary to provide the required divine atonement. Purchasing redemption is not an easy process. It involves, among other things, living a perfect life and, paradoxically, dying a painful death. The perfect life must display God’s holiness. The painful death must display the weight of holy judgment upon the corruption of sin. Messianic prophecy, first openly given in Gen 3, is delivered throughout history. It explains Messianic criteria, responsibilities, and privileges. The prophecies about Messiah exist to (a) verify Messiah’s origins, (b) testify to Messiah’s purpose, and (c) glorify Messiah’s divinity.

Exploring Prophecy

Prophecy, a compound word formed from the Greek words πρό (pro) + φημί (phēmi), means to tell before(hand) or to say before(hand). Prophecy entails stating something that is not yet obvious, known, or seen. Messianic prophecy is a very specific type of prophecy. It occurs in patterns, pictures, and proclamations (Hos 12:10; Isa 41:21–23; Amos 3:7). Many verses are explicitly prophetic. Arguably, though, every detail in the Bible points to Messiah’s truth in one way or another. In fact, we could say that the entire Bible is Messianic prophecy in some sense. The Old Testament foreshadows and prophesies both the Messiah’s First Coming and his Second Coming, whereas the New Testament records and celebrates his First Coming. Throughout, the New Testament further teaches and anticipates his Second Coming.

Messianic prophecies throughout the Old and New Testaments take different forms. Sometimes a prophecy is made by contrast. A non-Messianic figure may blatantly lack some good and necessary characteristic that Messiah will have, highlighting Messiah’s holy nature. Other times, a prophecy is implied by a symbol or simile. Something unusual stands out or is said and later falls into perspective in the light of prophecy fulfilled. Prophecy is woven throughout the whole Bible.

What other types of prophecy do we see in the Old and New Testaments? Often prophecy tells historical events far in advance, proving that the Lord is God and has complete awareness of what is to come. For example, almost two hundred years before the Persian king Cyrus comes to power in the sixth century BC, the Lord directs the prophet Isaiah to write down Cyrus’s name. He describes precisely how Cyrus will subdue other nations (Isa 44:28, 45:1). Elsewhere, the prophet Daniel receives detailed information about Alexander the Great’s future empire, its division into four kingdoms under Alexander’s successors (the diadochoi), and a final empire that will emerge in the end times (Dan 7). Daniel’s prophecies have been so historically accurate that many modern-day scholars labor to rewrite Daniel’s timeline. They argue that at least parts of the book of Daniel must have been written much later than the sixth century BC.

Despite such allegations against the prophecies it contains, a sixth-century date for the book of Daniel is well supported. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran dealt a devastating blow to the claim that Daniel was written no earlier than the second century BC. Taken together, the separate Dead Sea Scrolls contain pieces of almost the entire book of Daniel. For these writings to be present in such quantity in second-century BC Qumran, the book of Daniel must have been revered and known from earlier times, as attested by the author, the book’s linguistic forms and historical details, the historian Josephus, the prophet Ezekiel (Ezek 14:14, 20), and others.

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A most logical conclusion is that the prophet Daniel received exact information about historical events, far in advance. The meticulousness of the prophecies is stunning. For anyone trying to deny the book’s authenticity, these amazing prophecies are a serious problem to solve. They are a testimony to the divine inspiration of Scripture.

The Bible contains examples of smaller-scale, more immediate prophecies, as well, such as those used to verify a prophet as prophet in the first place. To name one example, when Samuel the prophet privately anoints Saul as Israel’s first king, Samuel predicts signs that Saul will immediately encounter (1 Sam 9–10). That same day, Samuel says, Saul will meet two men by Rachel’s tomb. They will tell him that his father’s lost donkeys have been found and that Saul’s father Kish is now concerned about Saul, who had been sent to find the donkeys. Next, Saul will meet three men on their way to Bethel. One will be carrying three young goats; another, three loaves of bread; and the third, a bottle of wine. They will greet Saul and give him two of the three loaves of bread. As Saul journeys on from there and approaches the city of Gibeah, he’ll meet prophets descending from the high place. They will be in a procession with musicians playing upon a harp, tambourine, flute, and lyre. As these other men are prophesying, the Spirit of the Lord will transform Saul into a prophet with them.

All of these small signs given to Saul have a distinct purpose. They are not in themselves significant enough to become part of the extra-biblical historical record because they are minute details of a comparatively everyday situation. No one would necessarily write them in a separate journal that survived for us to find today. After all, wouldn’t it have been commonplace for Saul to have seen men carrying loaves of bread or bottles of wine? Even today, we don’t consider it odd to see someone traveling with some kind of food or provisions. As small as the signs are in terms of the bigger historical record of millions of people going about their daily lives over the millennia, these little predictions are primarily for Saul’s benefit. The signs demonstrate to him that Samuel has been sent by God and that God is with Saul (1 Sam 10:7). The signs occur in the exact order prescribed by Samuel. They involve the exact quantities of the exact people and items, and they happen in the exact places and manners named by Samuel.

Other prophecies refer to what are called end-time events. Some of these prophecies are just as exact as those given to Saul by Samuel. Such prophecies include references to the man of sin known as the Antichrist (2 Thess 2:3), the existence of the Third Temple in Jerusalem (Rev 11:2), placement of an Abomination of Desolation in the temple (Dan 9:27; Matt 24:15), and the completion of Messiah’s Second Coming (Zech 14). Still other prophecies are more general prophecies. These relate to trends and cultural shifts that will become more and more noticeable as we approach the end times: for instance, increasing global apostasy inside and outside of the church institution, culminating in Satan’s ultimate last-days deception (2 Thess 2:9).

Prophecy Vs. Prediction

Prophecy should not be confused with speculation or prediction based on human knowledge, data, or familiarity, no matter how accurate. The scientific method is useful for testing predictions about natural occurrences, but the scientific method is not a prophetic method. Neither is understanding a friend’s preferences well enough to predict the friend’s choice in a situation or estimating an amount of rainfall based on cloud cover. These types of situations are in themselves not indicative of prophetic abilities. A prophet is not someone who gives close enough guesses based on reasonable knowledge or assumptions. Prophecy involves situations where the prophet does not have the logical information necessary to make an accurate forecast or educated guess, does not make a broad generalization that can easily be interpreted in multiple directions, and does not simply enjoy odds in his favor.

Prophecy that meets the biblical definition is accurate to the last detail and exhibits repeated accuracy in every ensuing prophecy, whether near and small or far and large. God tells what is going to occur, and he does it over and over with the same precision and accuracy. As does everything else, biblical prophecy comes with a worldview. Unlike everything else, that worldview is trustworthy, consistent, unchanging, and purposeful. Coming straight from God himself, it addresses the past, present, and future exactly and does not leave interpretation to abstraction or readjustment. The bigger picture behind prophecy in the Bible fits the nonambiguous, reliable message of who Messiah is, what he does, and when he does it.

In studying prophecy, we should be aware of the following biblical admonitions:

•Do not follow a prophet’s call for idolatry even if that prophet has accurately foretold/achieved a sign or wonder (Deut 13:1–3).

•Do not fear a prophet if he prophecies in the name of the Lord but is then incorrect in what he has prophesied. If what he foretold does not happen but he prophesied using God’s name, do not fear that prophet just because he spoke God’s name when he made the incorrect prophecy (Deut 18:22; compare Jer 23:16; Ezek 13:9).

•Do not be deceived by false christs and false prophets who persuade using great signs and wonders, no matter how wondrous their works may appear (Matt 24:24).

•Do not be deceived by false prophets who come in the guise of innocent Christians (Matt 7:15).

•Do not be surprised that the world speaks approvingly of false prophets (Luke 6:26).

•Be wary of all spirits and prophets, testing them by their professions of Jesus Christ. We should always judge prophetic and supernatural claims by what a person or spirit confesses about Jesus as the Messiah come in the flesh and as declared in the inerrant, authoritative Word of God (1 John 4:1–3).

Long-term or short-term, Bible prophecy is accurate, extremely and absolutely precise, meaningful, and consistent. It never encourages idolatry and never sends mixed messages.

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Messiah in Prophecies from Genesis to Revelation

Messianic prophecy is prophecy that relates to the (a) character, (b) coming, and (c) function of a very particular