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During world War 2 different countries joined the action at different stages.
Likewise is the process in relation to the "ultimate and complete redemption", or the "Messianic era".
The "Private redemption" will come before the "General redemption". In other words private people will experience the redemption before their peers do, this all depends on how early on, you involve yourself...
It's important to understand that Messiah's arrival will NOT be something huge, instant and miraculous, which will "fix EVERYTHING".
As Maimonides says in his book on Jewish Law called: "the strong hand" in the last chapter, he says that the transition between exile and The Redemption, will be a Natural one.
The thing is that, "the world to come" can mean 2 things.
1. It could mean "heaven" or "the garden of Eden".
2. Or it could be referring to "the world of Moshiach/Messiah" which takes place here, in THIS PHYSICAL WORLD.
As humanity - morally and ethically - moves forward and perfects its behavior in this world, in acting according to the will of G-d, as G-d outlined in the Holy Bible, they are laying the groundwork for THIS WORLD to be G-d's home.
Maimonides writes that there are 3 main obstacles that must be overcome, and which complete the last Stage of world perfection, and link us into the Messianic Era and further into the ultimate and complete redemption via messiah, and they are:
1. Crowning a Orthodox Jewish King.
2. Building the Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
3. Destroying the nation of Amalek.
He writes They must be done in that order as well.
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It's important to express the significance Maimonides adds to Jewish law, because the Jewish Law is decided as is his opinion in this case, the reason being as follows:
Maimonides has a status of a "Rishon" which lines him up with another 2 Rabbis who wrote Jewish law like he did in his time, the 3 of them carried a comparable exceptional study and understanding of the Bible at a depth and level most of us will never arrive at, just to Name one significant thing that Maimonides contributed to the clarity of Jewish Law as derived from the Bible, was that he was the first Jewish Leader who was able to make a organized list of all of the 613 commandments in the bible and bring the sources from the bible etc.
He elaborated on EVERY law, including the Laws of the "future" such as the laws connected to the Temple, Messiah, Jewish Kings, Animal Sacrifice, and so on.
The reality is that the other 2 Torah/Bible giants in his time did not focus on establishing the laws of the bible that weren't of immediate fulfillment during their time, to them, the laws of Sabbath, Kosher, and family Purity were priority.
It's turns out that the laws of Jewdaisim applicable TODAY were to be judged by Maimonides and the 2 other great Rabbis in his Time. If they disagreed then we would follow the majority, but turns out that there are many laws that only Maimonides discussed, thus the law would be like him on most things related to Messiah. Seems they barely had an opinion on The Messianic laws, and only Maimonides
Discussed them, thus the law on this topic is usually as Maimonides wrote "without any resistance".
[This is a lesson for us, and we can learn from Maimonides to not only focus on today, but rather we should develop a vision of our future, we should develop a truth that will be always relevant and stand the test of time, and not be distracted by our current situation so much so that it blinds us of our mission, vision and goal. Of course, one cannot blame the Rabbis of old for not having the Maimonides vision, as history had it, Jewish persecution and suffering was high in those times, but today we don't have that excuse...]
This includes the order of the events discussed above which is written as the Jewish law by Maimonides.
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Back to the main topic, if we look at what Maimonides says about the "Messianic era" we see that he discusses 2 stages:
The first stage of the "Messianic era" will be the "all natural" stage, were the main differences between "exile" and this first stage will be that the nations of the world will stop harassing the Jews and allow them to serve G-d, we see this today and yes, according to the Jewish Leader The Rebbe King Moshiach Shlit"a, we have entered this stage without a shadow of a doubt.
Maimonides explained the verse "and the fox will live with the sheep" to be a parable for the first stage of Redemption to "the nations will live with the Jews" however, at this stage, the Jews will still be under the rule of foreign Powers as we see today.
At this first stage we are experiencing miracles and wonders throughout the world (like the stability of the land of Israel and the Arabs fighting and the fall of corrupt government) but they are still within the boundaries of Nature and not like the "splitting of the sea" were G-d bended nature.
The second stage of the redemption WILL include miracles that "bend nature" and will include the "resurrection of the dead" and many prophetic wonders will come to pass,
Maimonides however makes the most important distinction between the first stage and the second by saying that in essence, they will "blend" very well, but the true start of the second stage will be when the Jews elect a Jewish King.
I'd like to pause for a moment and clarify the difference between "a standard Jewish King" and "Messiah/Moshiach".
A Jewish king can be established with the king meeting standards of a typical learned, ultra Orthodox, G-d fearing Jew which will strive to bring about everything the bible tells us (at this point, this description is a far cry from today's Israeli government establishment) , and he does not need to be a descendent of king David.
however the "king messiah" needs the following requirements:
1. he must be son after son, from king David (such as is the case with the Rebbe king Moshiach Shlit"a).
2. He must influence the entire Jewish world as well as the world in general, to go in the ways of the written Bible as well as the "oral tradition" which was passed down by heart from the time of mount Sinai and later written up in the Talmud. (the Rebbe king Moshiach Shlit"a has been the ONLY Jewish leader to do just that till today).
If he does the 2 things above, he has effectively retained the status of "probably Messiah" or in Hebrew "בחזקת משיח".
according to the Jewish law, if one recognizes such a person he has to accept him as KING.
in order to fulfill the biblical commandment of: "שום תשים עליך מלך".
in English: "you shall put upon yourself a king".
At this stage its important to know that unlike you may have assumed, NATURAL death, does not disqualify a candidate,
This is because "Moshiach/Messiah can be from the living or from the dead" as discussed in the Talmud, where the students would say "if messiah is from the living, then it is surely Rabeinu Hakadosh, and if he is from the dead, he is surly Reb Yehuda Hanasi".
The only disqualifying occurrence would be a MURDER , as was the case with Bar Kochba in the time of Rabbi Akiva (or Jesus for that matter).
Also important to note that Maimonides is giving ways to "detect" who messiah is BEFORE it is obvious without a doubt, unlike building the temple and destroying amalek, which are commandments not currently applicable. The search for a Jewish king, or Messiah/Moshiach is always relevant, it's the "gateway commandment" from exile to the redemption. And applies during "exile".
Moreover, it ESPECIALLY applies to exile, because ESTABLISHING a king is much harder than maintaining a king...
As time progresses, and with the help and acceptance of the people, the "probably Messiah" candidate, should start going in the direction of the next few steps Messiah should be taking,
Just like in a modern election, it's important to see that the candidate is going in the direction of the promises he made during his campaign, so too Messiah, yet again, it's important to stress "אין מלך בלא עם" There is no king without a nation, this means, that even if we have a candidate for the position of Messiah, if he is not followed by the People, his power is close to useless, this is a fact that we see throughout Jewish history, were there were those who found it important to cut ties and argue with Moses in the desert and so on.
Till now we discussed what the CANDIDATE needs to do, Maimonides continues with what Messiah can accomplish Once the entire nation has fully accepted him as Messiah. And that is:
3. He must fight the "wars of G-d and he must be victorious.
4. He must build the temple.
5. Gather the exiled Jews to the holy land.
If he does all that, he is for sure Messiah.
But again, take for example, building the temple, there is no permission according to Jewish law for THE JEWISH PEOPLE AS A WHOLE nor for the king Messiah alone, to build the temple, before THE NATION ACCEPTS A KING MESSIAH.
So to say that: "if he is really messiah, why did he not build the temple" shows on ignorance of the law.
Likewise to say "he cannot be Messiah because he died" is ignorance of the law as explained above at length.
Also for Jews to say "looking for a Messiah sounds more like a Christian idea then a Jewish thing" is completely ignorant, that would be like saying that because there are seventh day adventist Christians who keep Shabbos/Sabbath, we Jews shouldn't... If anything Christianity is a partly successful ripoff of Jewdaisim.
So, hopefully with all that being said, you are now wiser in understanding the law of Messiah.
I'd like to make a point, it took me many years of learning about Messiah/Moshiach in many sources in Jewdaisim to arrange and be able to present the topic as I did above, I did not get into everything, nor did I add sources to everything, I do encourage our readers to review the material here, side by side with Maimonides open in front of them, also, this is a culmination of many different dialogs on the topic discussed in multiple publications which discuss this topic.
We would be glad to answer any questions you may have on this topic.
please feel free to contact the board of "Moshiach News" at: Graphicpoint77@gmail.com
Article by: Yosef Edery
