Jewish Messiahs

Whether the notion has been extended or corrupted is beyond my pay grade. But the above idea is exactly the Christian understanding of the Messiah, but universalized and eternalized. It's not about putting a specific country and people back together on this piece of land on earth. It's about putting all people back together with God in his realm.

But without a doubt, the Jews deserve a messiah as they define him. And definitely one who is not "mentally unstable and probably a manic-depressive."



I was recently reading a history on Magellan: Over the Edge of the World. I tried to like this book. And it started off well enough. But like a lot of histories, it stopped telling a compelling story and got lost in minutia. But those with more patience might want to read it because it does appear to be a first-rate history...other than being able to tell a more concise and interesting story. One viewer seemed to think the same and wrote:



That was my impression as well. I mention this because in this book the author mentions the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. Without a doubt, this was a vast human tragedy and certainly contributed to the dumbing-down of Spain which continues to this day.

It is awful hard to believe in any type of messiah. I can't say I understand the Jewish view because few understand what they have gone through.

But I'm reading what appears to be a good Cold War spy book called The Spy and the Traitor. It's centered around Oleg Gordievsky. I'm only about 8% into it, but so far I give the author full marks for telling an intriguing story.

And you get some real immersive background on the whole mindset and reality of Communism. There's nothing I can tell you about that.

But it reminds me that God can be approached in more than one way. There's the sort of "positive" notion of God (you can see him working in your life, etc.). He's active, does miracles, cares about his creation, is nurturing, etc. This is difficult for many people to see and believe. But I find the "negative" to be absolutely convincing. When you reduce people to materialist/atheist unthinking cogs, you see the evil that so easily and quickly flows from – I don't know what else you can call it – the lack of God in a culture. We see this in our own. It is arguably at the base of most of the ugliness and deceit.



Are you watering the crops with the blood of an enslaved and conquered people? Are your brothels more abundant than your libraries? Do your people revel in sin? Or are they more-or-less productive, honest, decent, and hard-working people?

If the latter, one could rightly say that they are building upon the template of the Almighty (assuming God isn't a lying, immoral slacker). That is an implicitly divine community in Negev.

What immediately popped into my head is this lyric from the song, "In a Big Country" by Big Country

I'm not expecting to grow flowers in a desert
But I can live and breathe and see the sun in wintertime

In a big country, dreams stay with you
Like a lover's voice fires the mountainside