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What is the Messiah?
        MESSI'AH
        The first promise of the Messiah was given in Gen 3:16. The Son of God and all true believers are "the seed of the woman." Comp. Acts 13:23; Gal 4:4, and Heb 2:16 with John 17:21,Heb 12:23. The devil and all his servants represent the serpent and his seed. John 8:44; 1 John 3:8. The temptations, sufferings, and ignominious death of Christ, and the fierce opposition and persecution which his followers have endured, are significantly described by the bruising of the heel; while the complete victory which our Redeemer has himself achieved over sin and death, and which his grace enables the believer also to obtain, and the still more perfect and universal triumph which he will finally accomplish, are all strikingly illustrated by the bruising or crushing of the serpent's head. The books of heathen mythology furnish curious allusions to this passage of the Bible. In one of them Thor is represented as the eldest son of Odin, a middle divinity, a mediator between God and man, who bruised the head of the serpent and slew him. And in one of the oldest pagodas of India are found two sculptured figures, representing two incarnations of one of their supreme divinities, the first to be bitten by a serpent and the second to crush him.
        The promise thus given when man fell was supplemented by so many particulars in the course of the centuries that the coming Messiah was the great hope of Israel. In type and symbol, in poetry and prose, in prophecy and history, the Jews had set before them in increasing prominence and clearness the character and life and death of the promised Messiah, and yet, as a nation, they grossly misapprehended his character and the purpose of his mission. They were accustomed to regard his coming as the grand era in the annals of the world, for they spoke of the two great ages of history, the one as preceding and the other as following this wonderful event; but they perverted the spiritual character of the Messiah and his kingdom into that of a temporal deliverer and ruler. We find that about the time of the Messiah's appearance Simeon, Anna, and others of like faith, were eagerly expecting the promised salvation. Luke 2:25-38. At the appointed time the Redeemer of the world appeared.
        He was born in the year of the city of Rome 749 -i.e. 4 years before the beginning of our era- at Bethlehem, in Judea, of the Virgin Mary, who was espoused to Joseph; and through them he derived his descent from David, according to prophecy. Ps 89:3-4 and Ps 110:1. Comp. Acts 2:25, Eze 23:36; Isa 11:1-10; Jer 23:5-6; Eze 34:23-24; Eze 37:24-25; John 7:42. The story of Christ's life is told with so much simplicity, completeness, and sweetness in the Gospels, and is at the same time so familiar to every Bible-reader, that it is not necessary here to repeat it. In one sentence, Jesus Christ was the incarnate God, whose coming was the fulfillment of prophecy; whose life was the exemplification of absolute sinlessness; whose death was the result of man's malice, and yet the execution of God's design and the atonement for the sins of the world; whose resurrection was the crowning proof of his divinity; whose ascension was a return to his abode, where he ever liveth to make intercession for us.


Bibliography Information
Schaff, Philip, Dr. "Biblical Definition for 'messiah' in Schaffs Bible Dictionary".
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