A few weeks back I was reading a book in the category of Christian Eschatological realistic fiction, I know right on brand for me lol. One of the characters in the book had done a 3-year study on every messianic verse in the Old Testament showing how only Jesus fulfills all of them. Being the chipper young man that I am (look I know 29 isn’t that young anymore but just let me have this) I thought to myself “I can do that” so I set out to find the verses that pertain to Messiah. Long story short I am not nearly enough of a scholar to be able to do this on my own. Therefore, I returned to the book from wince I was reading to see if I could find the list this Character had used. All I could find was a reference to 456 verses that and guy named Edersheim. Turns put this was enough to get me going in the right direction.
There was a book written in the 1883 Entitled The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah by Alfred Edersheim. In this book the author claims that he used a list of 456 messianic verses to write his 1200-page book. But in the copy that I was able to digitally acquire there was no version of this list. This proved extremely aggravating and resulted in me spending the last 4 weeks trying to find a list of every messianic verse in the Old Testament. I was not successful. Then a few days ago I gave up and decided I would read Mr. Edersheim’s book and see if I could extrapolate a list from it, but unfortunately I could not find the digital copy I had originally used.
This is where I caught a break, I found a new copy and on the page that it talked about this list of 456 verses it now had a foot note that said “See Appendix IX for a complete list” I was over Joyed! Then I found that the copy of the book I now had did not have any of the Appendices… but the google did. Having found Appendix 9 I hit the books. I’ve been working on this list for 7 days now and at the time of writing this I am 2 verses in and have 3 pages of notes about those 2 verses. This may take me three years haha.
This finally brings me to the point of this post. I want to share some cool insights on the second of the 456.
The second verse in reference to Messiah is a bit confusing at first look. It is Genesis 2:4, specifically the word generations. I know right, how could this be a messianic verse? Well as my pilot friend often says “Buckle up the fasten seat belt sign is now on”
The word generations in Hebrew looks like this תוֹלְד֧וֹת and if we were to render it with English lettering it looks like this TWDLWT but this only shows up in the scriptures twice. The other 30 times the word shows up it is missing a letter. This is called defective Lexeme. All of the defective spellings are missing one of the W’s, rendering the same word but imperfect and incomplete. Notably in Hebrew numerology which plays major roll in scripture the letter W is the numeric 6.
The full perfect spelling od generations only appears twice. Once in Genesis 2:4 and once in Ruth 4:18, now any biblical scholars reading this will see where this is going but I ask you to stay with me.
Genesis 2:4 is before the Fall of Man. When God created thing in their perfect state (I know that this perfection is not perfection unto exaltation as our theology teaches but don’t let that distract you) the fully spelled perfected version of the word is used TWDLWT. And then the fall happens and in the process man kind loses 6 thing according to rabbinical thought (as detailed in Genesis Rabbah or the Midrash Rabbah chapter 12 section 6 page 91) We will come back to these 6 in a minute. But what of the second time it is used?
Ruth 4:18 is significant, anyone know why? Here read it and see if you can see it: Now these are the generations of Pharez: Pharez begat Hezron, And Hezron begat Ram, and Ram begat Amminadab, and Amminadab begat Nashon, and Nashon begat Salmon, and Salmon begat Boaz, and Boaz begat Obed, and Obed begat Jesse, and Jesse begat David
Why is this important? 2 Samuel 7, Psalm 132, Isaiah 11 and a number of other scriptures hold the answer. What is held in the last few verses of Ruth is not the Davidic lineage but the Messianic lineage.
The first use is before the fall when in whole creation the generation of man was made and the next time that we see this totality of generation is in the first reference to the direct line of Messiah.
Perfection -> Lack Thereof -> Perfection Restored
Creation -> Fall -> Messianic Restoration
Lets circle back to the Hebrew numerology, W = 6 and subsequently as taught in the aforementioned book it is taught 6 things were lost from Adam when he fell. These same 6 remain lost in man, but as prophesied by scripture Messiah will restore them both in Himself and in man.
The charater in the book I was reading at the beginning that started this whole adventure makes a comment about these prophecies and how they can only point to one man. He compares it to what it takes to single a person out of the near 8 billion people on earth. I will show the same thought experiment here:
If you need a letter to get to me you can start by putting the USA on the Envelope – Right off the top all but 300 million are eliminated. Put Utah on there and that 300 million drops to 3.338 million. Put my zip code and it drops to 49,978 people. Put the Street I live on and it cuts that to a bit less than 300 people. Put the first number of my apartment, which denotes the floor and we are down to less than 70. Put the other 2 digits of my apartment number and it is down to just 2 people. At this point you can put any number of things that separate my roommate and I, but to finish it, let’s say the first letter of my name: J, with that you have found me. 8 billion to 1 in 6 steps.
This works the exact same way with Messiah, but instead of 8 billion it is an estimated 100 billion and instead of 6 steps it is 456.
Coincidentally 6 is the number of factors we are going to look at now.
In the fall Adam lost
1 His Splendor
2 His Immortality
3 His Stature
4 His Access to the Fruit of the earth
5 His access to the Fruit of the tree
6 The primordial Lights.
His Splendor. 1
Well that is a bit of a weird one. What does that even mean? Well as we learn in Genesis 3:23 He is removed from God presence. There are a couple other places in scripture we see people directly in the presence of God and they are Changed to withstand it, transfigured to use the theological word for it. When Adam fell, he fell from the presence of the Lord and was no longer transfigured, though there is an argument for him having to be transfigured to a lesser state from his paradisical glory that he was made with but I digress. Job 14:20 implies this as well. And a number of New Testament verses but I won’t be using any of those yet.
The question is if scripture prophecies that Messiah will fix this? The easiest way to this this is in the Typification of Messiah in Moses as taught by Deuteronomy 18:15 and supported by Moses 1: 6, 3rd Nephi 20:23. So if we can see that Moses’ splendor was ever returned then we can know that it is a prophecy of Messiah as well. Turn to Exodus 24: 29, 33-35. Moses is brought back into the presence of the Lord and his splendor is restored, but this is not all. As we learn in Exodus 19 it was God’s desire to bring His people into His presence but as show in Deuteronomy 5: 22-32 the people were afraid and would not enter into His presence but would that Moses would and relay all that he learned to them. As a type of Messiah this shows that it is God’s desire not only to have Messiah in His presence but man as well and that He will accomplish this through Messiah. This is also supported by Judges 5:34 and Nahum 2:2 in a few messianic references implying that those who follow Messiah will one day shine with the Light of the Sun or have their splendor restored.
The Last question for this first one is if Jesus met this messianic requirement? Well, there is literally the mount of transfiguration where in Jesus was brought into the presence of the Lord and was transfigured. That fulfils half of it, did Jesus make it to where man could be brought back into the presence of the lord and receive this Paradisiacal Glory and thus our Original Splendor? As every angle in scripture show the answer is a resounding Yes!
“All things are of God, who hath reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation” 2nd Corinthians 5:18
“Truly I [Jesus,] tell you, today you will be with me paradise” Luke 23:43
“Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name [than Christ’s] under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” Acts 4:12
“For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worth to be compared to the Glory which shall be revealed in us” Romans 8:18
Through Christ man is reconciled with God, brought back into His presence, and returned to splendor.
His Immortality. 2
“But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” Genesis 2: 17
“And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died” Genesis 5:5
These verse well and clearly establish that Adam lost immortality when he fell, but will Messiah restore it? Isaiah 26:19 and Ezekiel 37 are pretty clear that Messiah will in fact restore life in place of death and Moses 1:39 makes it clear that having Messiah restore immortality is of chief importance to the Lord’s plan.
Editorial sub-thought here: how cool is it that when Messiah restores that what is lost it is not only what is lost but added much more to it. When Man splendor is restored, it is not just the paradisiacal glory of the garden but the eternal glory of exaltation, not only is immortality restored but eternal live given as well. Messiah does not just fix what was broken but makes it better than the original! Sorry back to the point of the post.
We see that Adam lost immortality and that Messiah will restore it, now the third question: Did Jesus do it? Once again it is a resounding yes!
“For God so love the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not parish but have ever lasting life” John 3:16
“Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here fore he is risen” Matthew 28:5-6
“Jesus said unto her [Mary], I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live” John 11:25
His stature. 3
This one is a bit odd as there are some, in my opinion, whack ideas here. The idea of Adam losing stature come from Genesis 3: 8 and 10 “And they herd the voice of the Lord God walking in the Garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presences of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden” and “I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself” These two verses have been interpreted to mean that Adam was originally as tall as the trees and therefore hid himself among them. The has been interpreted to mean he was anywhere from 15 to 600 feet talk. This idea seems a bit ridiculous to me but I think these verses contain an idea of something that Adam lost in the fall.
Adam, now fallen, could no longer stand upright before the Lord. When someone hides, they seek to not be seen and to shrink away. This is shown a number of times in scripture: Isaiah 50: 5 “My lor God has opened my ears, and I did not rebel, I did not shrink.” (this is in opposition to what a normal person would have done which the implication is rebel and shrink) In Mosiah 2:38 we see the same concept again “Therefore if a man repenteth not, and remaineth and dieth an enemy to God, the demands of justice do awaken his immortal soul to a lively sense of his own guilt, which does cause him t shrink from the presence of God” and again in Mosiah 27:31 “… Then shall they confess, who live without God in the world, that the judgements of an everlasting punishment is just upon them; and they shall quake, and tremble, and shrink beneath the glance of His all-searching eye” and the same idea is shown in 2nd Nephi 9:46 “Prepare your souls for that glorious day when justice shall be administered unto the righteous, even the day of judgement, that ye may not shrink with awful fear;”
This fear in the presence of the Lord of the unrighteous that make them to shrink is a cause of the fall. Adam lost is stature before the Lord but is it prophesied that Messiah will restore this?
Once again, we have the Typification of Messiah in Moses that shows that Messiah will undo this loss of stature. “I am the Lord your God, which brought you out of Egypt, that ye should not be their bondsmen; and I have broken the bands of your Yoke, and made you go upright” Lev 26:13 As with pretty much all things Moses did on the request of the Lord, this functions as a prophecy of Messiah coming to break the Bands of Man’s Yoke, and make us go Upright in a similar way that Moses under the direction of the Lord did for the Hebrews . This is also supported by a few additional scriptures stating that God has made man to be upright such as Ecclesiastes 7, also backup by Gabriel (An angle of the Lord standing in messianic position) and his interactions with Daniel in Chapter 8 when he reaches into Daniel’s life and literally sets him upright before the Lord.
Adam lost is stature before the Lord, Messiah will restore it, but, did Jesus do it? 2 Corinthians 5:21 “God made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we would become the righteousness of God” 1 Peter 2:24 “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, that we may cease from sinning and live for righteousness. By His wounds you were healed.” Through Christ our advocate (1 john 2:1) we can be forgive and once again stand before God and not shrink. Because Jesus did not shrink (D&C 19:18) We can have our stature restored before the Lord, and as always not just restored but though Christ made righteous before the Lord.
Fruit of the earth and trees. (4 and 5 combined)
I’m combining these two together because they are so similar. We see in Genesis chapter 3 that the ready availability of fruits of the earth and trees ended at the fall and man must toil all of his days and eat by the sweat of his brow. But before we dive too far into this I want to talk about what the fruits are, as I believe they are not limited to Botanical and culinary verity. Fruit has many meaning in scripture and I think with few exceptions Adam lost easy access to all of them in the fall. (the major exception to this is the fruit of the womb, or children which the fall actually cause to be possible see 2 Nephi 2:25) But we shall, for this section, take a look at 2 types of fruit in scripture. The edible fruit, spiritual fruit. How each is lost in the fall, prophesied to be restored by Messiah and show restored and perfected in Christ.
Fruit of the field (the edible kind), this is the most literal meaning of the verse in Genesis 3. For the most part fruit being all the edible produce of plant and animal is cured for Adam’s sake as stated in verse 17. We can see this persistence in the world today in that unless in particularly good soil plants need to be pruned and nurtured to bring for fruit. But lest see if Messiah is prophesied to fix this. When prophesying about Messiah and His reign Zechariah chapter 8 records “For the seed shall be prospered, the vine shall give her fruit, the ground shall give her increase, and heaven shall give her dew; and I [the Lord] will cause the remnant of this people to posses all these things” Ezekiel 36:30 “I will multiply the fruit of the tree, and the increase of the field” Isaiah 65: 21-22 “No Longer will they build a house only to have another live in it, or plant a vineyard only to have another eat its fruits… My chosen ones will enjoy to the fullest what they have produced” Messiah will make us able to enjoy the fullness of the fruits of the field. Does Jesus do this? We see multiple time that Jesus can make Fish, bread, and wine available upon command: Luke 5:6, John 21:11, Matt 17: 27, john 2:7-9, Matt 14:13-21, Mark 6:30-44, Luke 9:10-17, Matt 15:32-39, and Mark 8:1-9 and we know that during the Millennium when Christ reigns in power that the earth will become celestialized and one can assume in the process that the fruits will be as well.
Fruits of the Spirit, this is a less straight forward interpretation of Genesis 3 but no stretch of the imagination either. After the fall man was no longer in the presence of God and was spiritually cut off. Often scripture talks of a relationship with God as fruit. In Lehi’s dream it is “fruit [that] was desirable to make one happy” “Desirable above all other fruit” in John Chapter 4 it is the meat that Jesus has to eat that the disciples know not of. In Isaiah 37 it is the fruit that Judah will bear upward. It is the whiteness in the field that is ready to harvest. It is what is represented in the fruits of the sacrifices in the law of Moses. It is the fruit of the vineyard in Jacob 5. Anyone who strives for a closer relationship with God knows that it is only by the proverbial sweat of their brow that they can overcome the natural man and find that fruit. It does not spring forth from the proverbial ground anymore.
Will Messiah fix this? “And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your old men shall dream dreams, your yon gen shall see visions. And also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out my spirit.” Joel 2 :28-29 “And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and supplication” Zechariah 12:10 “I will pour my spirit on your offspring and my blessings on your children” Isaiah 44:3. “Behold, for this last time have we nourished my vineyard; and thou beholdest that I have done according to my will; and I have preserved the natural fruit, that it is good, even as it was in the beginning.” Jacob 5:75
These verses in my opinion make it clear that Messiah will bring this fruit back in abundance. And Jesus fulfills this prophecy. He performed 37 miracles as recorded in scripture but according to the end of the people of John this is not all that he did, if all of it were written not even the world could ahold all of the books which should be written. Jesus clearly shows that he has unrestricted access to this type of fruit but He also give access to man. “Jesus called the twelve together, he gave them power and authority” Luke 9:1 “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit” Acts 2:4 Lastly is Revelation 22:2 Which talks of a spiritual tree with fruit for the world and leaves that heal. This tree of life is Jesus who in the millennium will spread the spirit an healing to all nations. Once again, we Jesus fulfils this prophecy of Messiah.
Lastly is the premortal lights. 6
It is believed that the world had more light in it before the fall. We see this reflected in a number of ways in scripture. One of them is the comment on the Light of God’s presence when ever he is there, burning bush, pillar of fire, His word is light, His first act in scripture was to speak light into the world. And then with the fall we go with man into the dark and dreary world. Countenances are darkened, eyes are dimmed and night becomes the purview of the adversary. But does the promise of Messiah over come this?
Isaiah 30:26 “Moreover the light of the moon shall be as the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day that the lord bindeth up the breach of his people, and health the stroke of their wound” Helaman 14: 3 “And behold. This will I give unto you for a sign at the time of his coming; for behold, there shall be great lights in heaven, insomuch that in the night before he cometh there shall be no darkness, insomuch that it shall appear unto man as if it was day” When Messiah comes he will bring light and when Messiah reigns The light of the universe will glow brighter in acknowledgement.
Does Jesus fulfill this? “Where is he that is born King of the Jews? For we have seen His star in the east and are coming to worship him” Matt 2:2 “I am the true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world” D&C 93:2 “A light to lighten the gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel” Luke 2:32 “In him was the life; and the life was the Light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” John 1: 4-5 “Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life” John 8:12 “Behold the time is at hand, and this night shall the sign be given. And it came to pass that the words which came unto Nephi were fulfilled, according as they had been spoken; for behold, at the going down of the sun there was no darkness; and the people began to be astonished because there was no darkness when the night came… And it came to pass also that a new star did appear, according to the word.” 3rd Nephi 1:14-15, 21 but this is not all, when Jesus comes in His power and Glory He will fulfill thew latter half of this prophecy “And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever” Rev 22:5
Man, I did not expect this to turn into 4000 plus words, sorry but also not sorry. If you have gotten this far congratulations you are a trooper. But in conclusion on this topic, I have just a bit more to say.
A few thousand words ago we talked of how you can single out 1 person from 8 billion with 6 factors and I believe these 6 factors that I have given here show that Jesus is Messiah. But you may be able to find another who meets the criteria of these 6 but surely that individual will not meet the other 455 (as this only counted as one of the verses about Messiah)
“As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive… But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore my beloved brethren [and sisteren] be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in -vain in the Lord.” 1 Corinthians 15: 22, 57-58
We live in a fallen and dreary world but the promise of Messiah gives us Hope and the reality of Jesus gives us strength.
“Wherefore, whoso believeth in God might with surety hope for a better world, yea, even a place at the right hand of God, which hope cometh of faith, maketh and anchor to the souls of men, which would make them sure and steadfast, always abounding in good works, being led to glorify God” Ether 12:4
Be still and know Jesus is Messiah.
In His magnificent and hope-filled name amen.
As always I’m praying for you; please pray for me.