Main news for 19 June 2019

The first messianic predictions in the yahvist history are connected with the name of one of the biggest prophets of Israel Isaiah of Jerusalem. It is him who called for the first time the Messiah "root" or "the branch", and afterward this definition was fixed in the yahvist traditions, as one of the names of the Messiah promised by God.

Certainly, the image of the Messiah to Isaiah is still close to the traditional image of a righteous governor, as it appeared to the previous prophets. Besides, Isaiah was sure that the Messiah will come already very soon, and His coming will be preceded by serious cataclysms, which will become a test of the faith of the people of God. What is it: the error of the prophet? The aberration of a historic sight? And maybe, not the first, nor the second?

Of course, when the matter concerns the projection of such big spiritual events, as, for example, the coming of the Messiah, on the earth history, errors in chronology are not only possible, but also are almost inevitable: the intervals of time are really too big, which it is necessary to seize with a spiritual glance. But the important, probably, is not all the same in the aberration of the historic vision. The important is that there is no predetermination in God's plans. God has no date defined beforehand for the coming of the Messiah, quite as He has no date beforehand defined for His return. In the one, as in the other case the variants are possible. Everything depends on the spiritual state of the people of God and of the humanity in general.

And when as it was during Hezekiah's governance and sermons of Isaiah, the people dwell in the state of spiritual exaltation, the probability of the coming of the Messiah indeed increases. From the point of view of history we would have been able to say, that such a state of the people approaches objectively the coming of the Messiah, quite as the state of spiritual decline moves it objectively far away, and sometimes vaguely distant, in the future. And the prophet sees only the spiritual state of the people and the possibilities opening. Not more, not less.