Differences and Similarities Between the First and Second Coming of Jesus Christ

The Jewish people were expecting a Messiah in the form of a military leader that would overthrow the Roman empire and restore the house of David. The Jewish people would not have envisioned Christ the servant of all (Mk 35:9 RSV). A leader who in humanity was humility to all He severed. The political aspiration of the Jewish people is given spiritual fulfillment when Christ ascensions into His heavenly kingdom.

Jewish tradition passed down the oral and written story of Messianic prophecies for generations. To provide the correlation between the anticipated Messiah and the fulfillment through Jesus, Matthew affirmed prophecies throughout the birth story with two significant fulfillments—Abraham’s promised seed [offspring] and the virgin birth.

Messiah/Christ: In the Christian religion, the Messiah was a savoir who would bring the “Last Judgment.” They believed that Jesus, or Christ meaning “God’s anointed” in Greek, was this savior.

The first misunderstanding between Jews and Christians is that Jews are still searching for a Messiah, Jeremiah 23:5 (“the days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, a King who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land). While Christians believe that the Messiah has arrived. The challenge here is that this formulation attributes to the expectation of a Messiah, a prominence and a centrality it has not usually had in Judaism. Christianity is a Messiah associated religion to an extent that Judaism is not. Although in Judaism the rate has varied from a different century to the other and from one branch to the other, the messianic age expectation, of a period of justice and peace, has always been more important (Fisher, 2010). In any case, the coming of messianic age and the Messiah appearance are connected together. When justice and peace arrive, then, will be the period to identify that the Messiah is. Until then everybody has the task

Per Genesis God created humans on the 6th day out of his own image. Some people believe this refers to characteristics, while others believe this refers to physical likeness. The fall of humanity started with Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit. They were banished from the garden, and humans were cursed by God from that day forward. He made work hard, allowed us to feel suffering and die, made childbirth painful and more. Many people question why God gave us the ability to sin if he is so good and gracious. The answer is God gave us free will to make our own decisions. Adam and Eve had free will but were not sinful by nature. After the fall, God

Humankind was created in the image of God; He gave them like characteristics such as compassion, love, and faithfulness. In Genesis 3 we learn of the Fall of Humanity, which introduces not only sin into the world but also pain. (“Lecture 3”, 2015) After the Fall human nature is then scarred by sin, humans are born sinful by nature. In Genesis 4 Cain brings murder into the world; from here we see humanity relentlessly depart from the wisdom of God. (“Lecture 3”, 2015) Only by accepting Jesus Christ into their hearts, can they atone for their sins and get right with the Lord.

• Sin as connected with the limitations of man’s being: is necessary cause that stems from our finite being

At the beginning of time, God created mankind, creatures made in his own image, with whom He could have relationship with. Unfortunately, the original humans, Adam and Eve, shattered this relationship by turning away from God and sinning, putting themselves before Him. All of the descendants of Adam and Eve, mankind itself, have and continue to suffer from the repercussions of this Original Sin. Ever since that time, thousands of years ago, God has been working through human history in order to repair His relationship with Humanity, redeeming them from the effects of sin. His plan of salvation began with a covenant He made with a nomad named Abraham, whose descendants became the nation of Israel. This covenant established the Lord's intentions to bring about redemption for humanity through the nation of Israel. Sadly though, the ancient Israelites time and again were unfaithful to their covenant with God, and would worship the false idols of the nations around them. Because of their sin of apostasy, the nation of Israel eventually split in two, and was then wiped out by foreign invaders, sending in the Hebrew people into exile. It was during this exile that the Prophets, men who would speak on behalf of God, began to predict the coming of the Messiah, an 'anointed one' of

Despite the fall of humanity, man’s purpose is to find its way back to the original creation. God made a way for Human’s to restore that connection by sending his son, Jesus Christ for the atonement of humanity. When God poured himself into a man, he was the perfect lamb sacrifice. The path Jesus Christ provided was for man to confess their sins, repent, redemption, and renewal of their soul (Chapter 6, In the Beginning of Wisdom). This allows man to worship and fellowship with God.

In addition to the writings of Jeremiah, other Old Testament works written in the centuries prior to the birth Christ pointed to the coming of a messiah to save the Jewish people from their continuing history of enslavement, persecution, and dislocation. Some Jews waited for a David-like king to rescue them. Others felt that Jesus Christ--who had suffered for the sins of his people, the one who had endured and conquered death--was the true messiah. Whether the messiah had come or the messiah was still yet to come was the key issue between the Jews who remained Jews during the first and succeeding centuries versus those who

“A human is fundamentally a dialogue between body and spirit” (Swidler, 2014:2). Our sin nature comes from the point when “The LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”(Genesis 2:9, NIV) This tree that God created will later be used as a tool to enable humanity’s initial fall. “Now the serpent was craftier than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’” “You will not

A messiah is a rather ambiguous term. It mainly means an anointed one; usually a messiah is considered to be a son of David and would reestablish Israel to what it once was. Because messiahs are anointed ones they would typically be Jewish priests, prophets and kings. However, a Messiah can also be a warrior, or a man of peace. (CITE) A messiah was to reestablish unity among the Jewish people and navigate through the hardships and oppression that they went through during early Judaism and bring a sense of freedom and relief. An array of messianic claimants came forth during the two peaks of Jewish rebellion, the death of King Herod the Great and the first Jewish war against the Romans.

The early beginnings of the Common Era displayed several Jewish expectations of the Messiah that were complex. As compiled in the Dr. Peter Flint, some was expecting the return of Elijah (Mal 4:5-6, Mark 6:15), or even Moses (Deut 18:15-19, John 1:21) and many expected the Messiah to be a descendent of King David, one that would arrive in Bethlehem . Apart from the background of messianic expectations seen in modern Bibles, several sectarian scrolls shed light on such expectations. Four select texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls in Cave 4 helps shed some light into this area of messianic expectations and will aid help answering this question on who was the Messiah.

The Question of Morality - Mankind was created good, but sin entered the world through Adam according to

An angel appeared before a woman named Mary and stated to her that she would give birth to a son. She would name her son Jesus. Mary being a virgin gave birth to a child, conceived by God through his Spirit. Jesus being conceived in a supernatural manner became man and God in one creation. God became incarnate in this child who became known by the name of Jesus (Mathew 1:18-25) . Jesus was a Palestinian Jew, born in a town south of Jerusalem, raised in Nazareth in a small village in Galilee. Jesus was not any ordinary child. Jesus was the son of the living God. Not only was He the son of Mary, He was foremost the Son of God. He was incarnated sent to us for the redemption of all mankind. So how do we handle the incarnation of God?