Who is failed messiah

They failed to see that the death of the Messiah was different from every other death—that it would achieve victory! The followers of Jesus also believed that death was divine punishment—a tenet that is indeed true at its core—but this theological point produced an irreconcilable conundrum for them concerning the death of Jesus.

If Jesus is the Messiah, the unique servant of God, then how is it that He suffers divine punishment? That death is divine punishment is an accurate theological truth. No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. With this mindset, the disciples viewed the death of Jesus and were puzzled. What made this even more unfathomable was that Jesus was crucified on a cross—that is, by a form of death that was reserved for those who were cursed by God Deut.

When Jesus died, His followers and the rest of the Jewish community thought that He was being punished by God. But if He was being punished, then how could He be the Messiah? However, the very point of this prophecy is that this was a faulty theological perspective. Isaiah proceeds to say in But He was pierced for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His wounds we are healed.

Yes, the Messiah was punished by God, but not for His own sins. The Messiah was punished for the sins of the sinners. Because the followers of Jesus failed to understand this role of the Messiah, they misinterpreted the nature of the death of Jesus, and they wrongly concluded that He had failed. Additionally, the death of the Messiah was an inconceivable and an unacceptable notion for the followers of Jesus.

The refusal to believe that the Messiah must suffer and die is clearly evident within Peter immediately following his confession that Jesus is the Messiah. This lack of belief is also what Jesus confronts the two men about on the road to Emmaus. Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into His glory?

In other words, the followers of Jesus failed to see and to believe the revelation concerning the death of the Messiah in the Scriptures. They refused to believe the fact that the death of the Messiah was the plan of God, and they missed that the death of the Messiah served a specific purpose. This was the purpose—redemption. Due to their unbelieving hearts, the followers of Jesus thought that Jesus was a failed Messiah because He died.

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He said that he had been a regular commenter on Failed Messiah but the new owners of the site had begun to delete his comments. He saw his new site as a place for the community of readers that had formerly gathered around Failed Messiah to regroup. Rosenberg, for his part, said that he is not tracking the new blogs closely.

Rosenberg said that even though he misses the daily contact with his readers, it is a relief not to have to run his own site anymore. Whether or not Rosenberg is paying attention, his emulators are keeping him in mind. Josh Nathan-Kazis is a staff writer for the Forward. He covers charities and politics, and writes investigations and longform.

It shut down in , about the same time Failed Messiah launched. As an independent blogger, Rosenberg spent countless hours hunched over a computer in his St. Paul, Minnesota apartment, uncovering secrets many in powerful positions sought to keep buried, tracking down legal documents, filing Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain others and interviewing sources. Once affiliated with Chabad and an outreach worker in Jerusalem, Rosenberg was driven to create Failed Messiah out of disillusionment with the movement.

In September , when he was a college student, Rosenberg wrote to the Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, asking that his well-connected movement of emissaries help Ethiopian Jews. He hoped that Chabad would help these black Jews much the way it had aided Persian Jews before and after the Iranian revolution.

Rosenberg said he received no response. He wrote a second letter that November but got no answer. Rosenberg was urged to post the response on the Internet. Soon Rosenberg began writing critically about messianism among Chabad Hasidim, who were convinced that the rebbe, who died in , was still alive.