2. JESUS BEFORE JESUS – THE GENESIS

Like I explained in the Intro to this series here, all our discussions will be based on scripture, which we have established as largely proven to be true through the materials provided in the Intro. Check it out if you haven’t. 😉

Once there lived a man called Isaiah. He lived some 700 years before Christ was even born. His name Isaiah was the English form of the Hebrew name ‘Yeshaeyahu’ which meant ‘The Lord saves His people’ or ‘YHWH is salvation’. Isaiah may have been called long before when his first entrance in scripture, but the turning point in his life was in the year that King Uzziah died [Chapter 6:1]. Isaiah heard the Lord ask, ‘Who shall I send? Who will go for us’, and volunteered himself. So the Lord sent Isaiah to tell His people some pretty scary stuff about the judgment coming if they persisted in their sin. That was not all though. He gave Isaiah details of the life of a Messiah who was to come and rescue the people of God – his birth, his life, his suffering. He gave him a truckload of corroborative evidence for the people who would encounter anyone who claimed that he was THE promised Messiah, and for the people who would come after Him who were not eyewitnesses of this said Messiah. Isaiah began what, if you would, we could call a checklist📜 of things that a Messiah had to satisfy in order to establish that his claim was true. Without wasting time, Isaiah gets straight to business in the next chapter [Chapter 7 verse 14]:

The Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son🤱🏽, and shall call His name Immanuel.

I’m sure I don’t have to explain this too much, but out of abundance of caution, let me remind you the circumstances surrounding the conception of Jesus. Mary was minding her own business💅🏽 one day, with no clue that her 60-year old pregnant cousin, Elizabeth, was pregnant with John the Baptist. The infamous angel Gabriel appeared to her and gave her one of the strangest news in history – she will conceive and give birth to a son, and she will name Him Jesus. Mary’s response was:

“But how can this happen?😳 I am a virgin.” – Luke 1:34

This came over 700 years after Isaiah. I know what you’re thinking. Isaiah said the Messiah would be called Immanuel, Gabriel said Jesus. Inconsistency? No. Let me explain.

In Chapter 9:6, Isaiah writes:

For a child is born to us, a son is given to us. The government will rest on his shoulders. And He will be called: Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

I mean, how many names could Jesus possibly have, brethren and sistren?😂 What was Isaiah talking about then? In Genesis 2:23, when Adam saw Eve and was bedazzled by her charm, he said:

This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called ‘Woman’, because she was taken out of Man.

But woman had a name – Eve. In Hebrew, ‘to be called’ and ‘to be’ were used interchangeably – the root word for both expressions is ‘pa’al‘. So the expression ‘to be called’ could merely mean the attributes of this person the writer was talking about. Notice the explanation Adam gave for calling Eve woman? It was her nature, which was that she was taken from the side of man. In the same way, Isaiah provided the attributes of the Messiah. Immanuel – that God was now with us [John 1]. In Chapter 9 which I referenced, Isaiah was talking about Jesus’ government after writing about God’s revelation on the Assyrian government. He talked about the Messiah’s government, its nature and the nature of the One who will sit on the throne – that He shall be wonderful, counsellor, prince of peace, etc. What’s interesting to note is that the name Jesus translates to the same meaning as Isaiah – ‘God is Salvation’. I think that’s absolutely dope!😊

It was my hope to exhaust the prophecies of the Prophet Isaiah concerning the Messiah in this piece, but let’s not overload the brain😊. If the Lord gives us next Monday, I shall definitely return with more😉. Have a wonderful week! 😎

Love,

RAD!🌟