The Messiah King has Come

One of the errors that has arisen from John Darby’s dispensationalism is the two fold coming of Messiah. As I have heard it many times, Jesus came the first time as the suffering servant and will come the second time as triumphant king. They also teach that the Jews of Jesus day were all confused to this as they were expecting the Messiah to come, reestablish the throne of David and drive out the presence of the Roman Empire occupiers, returning the glory of the kingdom of Israel.

This is not what scripture teaches. Jesus was born the Messiah King. His kingdom started with his birth, when he came into his majority, he was revealed as Messiah by his herald, his cousin John and started to gather citizens into his kingdom. He taught the immediate coming kingdom to his disciples, and proclaimed it to Israel. He warned of the soon coming judgment of God upon Israel for their rebellion to God and his commands.

Daniel recorded that the Messiah would come within a certain time period. seventy sevens from the decree to rebuild Jerusalem after the Babylonian captivity.

Daniel 9:24-26
24  "Seventy 'sevens' are decreed for your people and your holy city to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy.

25  "Know and understand this: From the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven 'sevens,' and sixty-two 'sevens.' It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble.

26  After the sixty-two 'sevens,' the Anointed One will be cut off and will have nothing. The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood: War will continue until the end, and desolations have been decreed.

The Jews knew that they were living in the time period that the Messiah would come, based on when the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem was issued. They knew it was time and they were looking for the promised Messiah.

Note that this time period would bring an end to sin, an atonement for wickedness, and bring everlasting righteousness, as well as fulfillment of vision and prophecy.  This is the salvation and redemption work of Messiah Jesus. Who fulfilled all things spoken of him in the law and prophets.  This redemptive work established the new covenant in his blood, which is the foundation of the Messianic kingdom just as the old Mosaic covenant was ratified with the blood sacrifices of bulls and rams and was the foundation of the kingdom of God in Israel.

Daniel calls the Anointed One, the Messiah, the ruler, giving when he would come, within sixty two sevens. He was born Messiah King as Isaiah states.

Isaiah 9:6,7

6  For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. 7  Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this.

We also read that in this same time period that, “ The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood: War will continue until the end, and desolations have been decreed. “

This is the final part of the establishment of the Messianic kingdom, the end of the old kingdom rule. Both the city of Jerusalem, where the old throne of David stood, and the temple where the mercy seat of God stood were to be destroyed during a war. We see the fulfillment of this in what Josephus calls the Wars of the Jews happening in the time of 63-70AD.

Some in their dispensational zeal have suggested a indeterminate time gap between when the Messiah is cut off and the final last week of Daniel’s prophecy. But in reading this passage there is no time gap suggested.  Instead it reads as one time period, starting at a set time after the decree to rebuild Jerusalem, the coming and work of the Messiah, King, ending with the destruction of the city and temple.

Let me end here with an excellent quote from Matthew Henry’s Commentary on Daniel 9: 20-27 (eSword ed.). (I present Matthew Henry’s (1622-1740) comments here as an example of what was understood and taught in the church before the teaching of John Darby’s dispensationalism was accepted by American and other Evangelicals, which is the foundation of  modern futurist eschatological teaching. )

(2.) Concerning the Messiah and his undertaking. The carnal Jews looked for a Messiah that could deliver them from the Roman yoke and give them temporal power and wealth, whereas they were here told that the Messiah should come upon another errand, purely spiritual, and upon the account of which he should be the more welcome.
 
     [1.] Christ came to take away sin, and to abolish that. Sin had made a quarrel between God and man, had alienated men from God and provoked God against man; it was this that put dishonour upon God and brought misery upon mankind; this was the great mischief-maker. He that would do God a real service, and man a real kindness, must be the destruction of this. Christ undertakes to be so, and for this purpose he is manifested, to destroy the works of the devil.

He does not say to finish your transgressions and your sins, but transgression and sin in general, for he is the propitiation not only for our sins, that are Jews, but for the sins of the whole world. He came, First, To finish transgression, to restrain it (so some), to break the power of it, to bruise the head of that serpent that had done so much mischief, to take away the usurped dominion of that tyrant, and to set up a kingdom of holiness and love in the hearts of men, upon the ruins of Satan's kingdom there, that, where sin and death had reigned, righteousness and life through grace might reign. When he died he said, It is finished; sin has now had its death-wound given it, like Samson's, Let me die with the Philistines. Animamque in vulnere ponit - He inflicts the wound and dies.

Secondly, To make an end of sin, to abolish it, that it may not rise up in judgment against us, to obtain the pardon of it, that it may not be our ruin, to seal up sins (so the margin reads it), that they may not appear or break out against us, to accuse and condemn us, as, when Christ cast the devil into the bottomless pit, he set a seal upon him, Rev_20:3. When sin is pardoned it is sought for and not found, as that which is sealed up.

Thirdly, To make reconciliation for iniquity, as by a sacrifice, to satisfy the justice of God and so to make peace and bring God and man together, not only as an arbitrator, or referee, who only brings the contending parties to a good understanding one of another, but as a surety, or undertaker, for us. He is not only the peace-maker, but the peace. He is the atonement.

     [2.] He came to bring in an everlasting righteousness. God might justly have made an end of the sin by making an end of the sinner; but Christ found out another way, and so made an end of sin as to save the sinner from it, by providing a righteousness for him.

We are all guilty before God, and shall be condemned as guilty, if we have not a righteousness wherein to appear before him. Had we stood, our innocency would have been our righteousness, but, having fallen, we must have something else to plead; and Christ has provided us a plea. The merit of his sacrifice is our righteousness; with this we answer all the demands of the law; Christ has died, yea, rather, has risen again.

Thus Christ is the Lord our righteousness, for he is made of God to us righteousness, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. By faith we apply this to ourselves and plead it with God, and our faith is imputed to us for righteousness, Rom_4:3, Rom_4:5.

This is an everlasting righteousness, for Christ, who is our righteousness, and the prince of our peace, is the everlasting Father. It was from everlasting in the counsels of it and will be to everlasting in the consequences of it. The application of it was from the beginning, for Christ was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world; and it will be to the end, for he is able to save to the uttermost. It is of everlasting virtue (Heb_10:12); it is the rock that follows us to Canaan.

     [3.] He came to seal up the vision and prophecy, all the prophetical visions of the Old Testament, which had reference to the Messiah. He sealed them up, that is, he accomplished them, answered to them to a tittle; all things that were written in the law, the prophets, and the psalms, concerning the Messiah, were fulfilled in him. Thus he confirmed the truth of them as well as his own mission.

He sealed them up, that is, he put an end to that method of God's discovering his mind and will, and took another course by completing the scripture-canon in the New Testament, which is the more sure word of prophecy than that by vision, 2Pe_1:19; Heb_1:1.

     [4.] He came to anoint the most holy, that is, himself, the Holy One, who was anointed (that is, appointed to his work and qualified for it) by the Holy Ghost, that oil of gladness which he received without measure, above his fellows; or to anoint the gospel-church, his spiritual temple, or holy place, to sanctify and cleanse it, and appropriate it to himself (Eph_5:26), or to consecrate for us a new and living way into the holiest, by his own blood (Heb_10:20), as the sanctuary was anointed, Exo_30:25, etc.

He is called Messiah (Dan_9:25, Dan_9:26), which signifies Christ - Anointed (Joh_1:41), because he received the unction both for himself and for all that are his.

     [5.] In order to all this the Messiah must be cut off, must die a violent death, and so be cut off from the land of the living, as was foretold, Isa_53:8. Hence, when Paul preaches the death of Christ, he says that he preached nothing but what the prophet said should come, Act_26:22, Act_26:23. And thus it behoved Christ to suffer. He must be cut off, but not for himself - not for any sin of his own, but, as Caiaphas prophesied, he must die for the people, in our stead and for our good, - not for any advantage of his own (the glory he purchased for himself was no more than the glory he had before, Joh_17:4, Joh_17:5); no; it was to atone for our sins, and to purchase life for us, that he was cut off.

     [6.] He must confirm the covenant with many. He shall introduce a new covenant between God and man, a covenant of grace, since it had become impossible for us to be saved by a covenant of innocence. This covenant he shall confirm by his doctrine and miracles, by his death and resurrection, by the ordinances of baptism and the Lord's supper, which are the seals of the New Testament, assuring us that God is willing to accept us upon gospel-terms.

His death made his testament of force, and enabled us to claim what is bequeathed by it. He confirmed it to the many, to the common people; the poor were evangelized, when the rulers and Pharisees believed not on him. Or, he confirmed it with many, with the Gentile world. The New Testament was not (like the Old) confined to the Jewish church, but was committed to all nations. Christ gave his life a ransom for many. ‘

     [7.] He must cause the sacrifice and oblation to cease. By offering himself a sacrifice once for all he shall put an end to all the Levitical sacrifices, shall supercede them and set them aside; when the substance comes the shadows shall be done away. He causes all the peace-offerings to cease when he has made peace by the blood of his cross, and by it confirmed the covenant of peace and reconciliation.

By the preaching of his gospel to the world, with which the apostles were entrusted, he took men off from expecting remission by the blood of bulls and goats, and so caused the sacrifice and oblation to cease. The apostle in his epistle to the Hebrews shows what a better priesthood, altar, and sacrifice, we have now than they had under the law, as a reason why we should hold fast our profession.

(3.) Concerning the final destruction of Jerusalem, and of the Jewish church and nation; and this follows immediately upon the cutting off of the Messiah, not only because it was the just punishment of those that put him to death, which was the sin that filled up the measure of their iniquity and brought ruin upon them, but because, as things were, it was necessary to the perfecting of one of the great intentions of his death.

He died to take away the ceremonial law, quite to abolish that law of commandments, and to vacate the obligation of it. But the Jews would not be persuaded to quit it; still they kept it up with more zeal than ever; they would hear no talk of parting with it; they stoned Stephen (the first Christian martyr) for saying that Jesus should change the customs which Moses delivered them (Act_6:14); so that there was no way to abolish the Mosaic economy but by destroying the temple, and the holy city, and the Levitical priesthood, and that whole nation which so incurably doted on them.

This was effectually done in less than forty years after the death of Christ, and it was a desolation that could never be repaired to this day. And this is it which is here largely foretold, that the Jews who returned out of captivity might not be overmuch lifted up with the rebuilding of their city and temple, because in process of time they would be finally destroyed, and not as now for seventy years only, but might rather rejoice in hope of the coming of the Messiah, and the setting up of his spiritual kingdom in the world, which should never be destroyed. Now,

     [1.] It is here foretold that the people of the prince that shall come shall be the instruments of this destruction, that is, the Roman armies, belonging to a monarchy yet to come (Christ is the prince that shall come, and they are employed by him in this service; they are his armies, Mat_22:7), or the Gentiles (who, though now strangers, shall become the people of the Messiah) shall destroy the Jews.

     [2.] That the destruction shall be by war, and the end of that war shall be this desolation determined. The wars of the Jews with the Romans were by their own obstinacy made very long and very bloody, and they issued at length in the utter extirpation of that people.


     [3.] That the city and sanctuary shall in a particular manner be destroyed and laid quite waste. Titus the Roman general would fain have saved the temple, but his soldiers were so enraged against the Jews that he could not restrain them from burning it to the ground, that this prophecy might be fulfilled.

     [4.] That all the resistance that shall be made to this destruction shall be in vain: The end of it shall be with a flood. It shall be a deluge of destruction, like that which swept away the old world, and which there will be no making head against.

     [5.] That hereby the sacrifice and oblation shall be made to cease. And it must needs cease when the family of the priests was so extirpated, and the genealogies of it were so confounded, that (they say) there is no man in the world that can prove himself of the seed of Aaron.

     [6.] that there shall be an overspreading of abominations, a general corruption of the Jewish nation and an abounding of iniquity among them, for which it shall be made desolate, 1Th_2:16. Or it is rather to be understood of the armies of the Romans, which were abominable to the Jews (they could not endure them), which overspread the nation, and by which it was made desolate; for these are the words which Christ refers to, Mat_24:15, When you shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel, stand in the holy place, then let those who shall be in Judea flee, which is explained Luk_21:20, When you shall see Jerusalem encompassed with armies then flee.

     [7.] That the desolation shall be total and final: He shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, that is, he shall make it completely desolate. It is a desolation determined, and it will be accomplished to the utmost. And when it is made desolate, it should seem, there is something more determined that is to be poured upon the desolate (Dan_9:27), and what should that be but the spirit of slumber (Rom_11:8, Rom_11:25), that blindness which has happened to Israel until the fulness of the Gentiles shall come in? And then all Israel shall be saved.