MESSIAH MEANS A POLITICAL KING-PROPHET WHO WAGES WAR FOR HIS PEOPLE
Jesus used the word Messiah to describe himself and that is a politically loaded word. There is no getting away from how it implies a threat of violence against the enemies of the people.
The peaceful Messiah idea is pure Christian imagination and fundamentalist for it rips the term out of its context.
A Messiah could be a clear king like a successor to Herod. But Jesus just asserted he was Messiah. An ordinary man calling himself king or president is clearly a revolutionary. He is a potential terrorist. Today we are fooled into thinking Jesus meant he was a spiritual king. Would you affirm somebody using the title Pope then? Would you empty the word of all meaning then?
Jesus claimed to be the Messiah to his disciples and never once told them that he was a different kind of Messiah to what everybody expected, a political warrior king who would set up a kingdom for God on earth. So he must have been claiming to be that kind of king. The word meant that kind of king.
IF JESUS CLAIMED TO BE MESSIAH HE HAD TO HAVE RAISED ZEALOT INTEREST
A definite link is thought to exist between Jesus Christ and the Jewish Zealot terrorism of his day.
Jesus claimed to be the Messiah which means anointed one or king. He was secretive and then he admitted it openly later. The Mark gospel notes that coyness but does not say what was behind it.
It is foolish to argue that Jesus was afraid of being made into a political tool. Unless he denied he was Messiah, that was inevitable. If he had a royal bloodline as the gospel says it might not mean he was king but he was still going to gain the interest of revolutionaries. If he were just a popular self-styled king the same thing would happen.
He did not deny it when people said thought he was the Christ so he would have attracted lots of Zealots. They must have been welcomed for the gospels would be happy to tell us if they were not. Even his teaching and healings made people want to make him king suggesting that all believed he had royal blood and could become the king.
Jesus could have called himself Messiah for hearts, just like Diana was Queen of Hearts. He didn't. He even used the word kingdom and spoke of future wars. He talked all the time about the reign or the kingdom of God which he called basileia which word means empire. If he had not been a Zealot he would have avoided these political expressions which would only disturb the authorities and provoke them and make people misunderstand. Jesus should have waited to call himself the Messiah when the resurrection was passed. When he didn’t it shows he was trying to make inroads into politics.
If Jesus had been a Zealot it would imply that he was not a miracle-working Son of God at all but just a normal man with violent leanings. He did not expect to save the world by his death and resurrection but hoped to stir up a bloody revolution that would eject the Romans from his country. The faked resurrection could have been intended to create a new brand of Judaism that would be more like paganism and attract the Romans and win an easier time for the Jews.
Jesus said that if he asked his father, twelve legions of angels would be sent to rescue him from his unjust and impending execution - Matthew 26:52-54. That Jesus would use this option instead of simply just escaping with God's help shows a warmongering aggressive streak. It is obvious that he could have meant his disciples could fight but they needed the angels to arm them and back them up.
Ezekiel 37:1-14 gives us a parable about Israel written as bones being resurrected to life to make an army and are going to get the spirit of God to make them holy for evermore. The fact that that is a parable does not mean it could not have suggested the resurrection story to the New Testament people. Matthew even has an unknown number of people rising from the dead before the resurrection of Jesus. That could be understood as an attempt to say that an army led by Jesus was resurrected. It would fit the traditional Jewish view of a sword-bearing Messiah. Where is the army now? Fighting invisibly? The New Testament does speak of such a war.
In those days of endless skirmishes even in villages, do not fail to recognise what the Bible is saying when its God commands that we must hate evil and love good (Amos 5:14-15 and Romans 12:9). Jesus links evil with real people in Matthew 5:45 and 12:34,35. It is people who he says are evil. Mark 3:4 and John 5:29 have him affirming that evil is evil and there is nothing good about it. The hating of evil meant attacking people considered to be evil. Jesus put that teaching into action several times. When Jesus said that we must not resist the evil person but turn the other cheek to them he was asking us to see the person as so evil that they were not worth hitting back. As he seen evil as a power of some sort he probably felt the person's own evil would take care of them anyway so there was no point in us wasting time hitting them.
Incredibly we read that even when the disciples met the risen Jesus for the last time upon forty days of visions they still expected political intervention. In Acts we are told specifically that they asked him to restore the kingdom politically to Israel. They want to know when this would be done implying they were ready to fight. The idea of a revolutionary political and warring Messiah was still there. Jesus does not repudiate it either. So Rome had not just men causing trouble who though they were the Messiah to worry about. It had to worry about a man allegedly out of their grasp who had risen from the dead as well! They worried about the political not the spiritual to the very end! It was the last thing they even said to him!
Obadiah recites an oracle that has not been fulfilled yet for it predicts the destruction of the nations apart from a righteous portion of Israel. It is taken as a prophecy of a violent Messiah or one who finds that a war is necessary. For Christians it refers to Jesus. It is no wonder we have the symbol of warlike retribution the iron sceptre in the Book of Revelation. That is what Jesus will carry according to Revelation 12:2-5. The way it promises that a part of Israel will be saved and the Temple Mount, Zion, will be dedicated to him implies that the people of the Law will get his special attention because of the Law for God wants to be served. Why else would Israel have been singled out? The Temple represented and expressed and was run by the Law so when the Temple is going to be restored the Law is going to be restored.
Jesus was alleged to have been nailed to a cross between two thieves. One repented saying he deserved to die but Jesus did not. That is just hearsay for the gospel does not even say where it came from or how it could be known. It is argued that as a king had a person from his court in the honorific position of being on his right and left, that the crucifixion was organised mockery. They say, "Jesus was in the middle wearing a crown of thorns perhaps with a murdering thief on each side of him - his subjects!. The cross was his mock throne." The Bible interestingly has not given any hint of having thought of that. So either Jesus is being called the king of bandits/thieves or he is plotted between them to say, “O he is just another one of them”. One thing is for sure, there is a zealot insinuation there. Usually a bandit was a zealot, had been or was sympathetic. Be sure, if Jesus really had a royal bloodline he would not have been crucified without incident. If people hated the thought that he was the Messiah that did not mean they wanted his bloodline to die with him.
Acts mentions the same three Messiah rebels who Josephus has. There were many so why just those three? Acts is stealing from Josephus. Acts like Josephus is unable to name the Egyptian revolutionary whose name you expect to be remembered considering the impact he made. It is best to hold that Josephus just does not want the man remembered which is why he does not grant him his name.
Josephus hated false Messiahs for they caused violent trouble or their followers were doing to do it for them if they didn't. He was careful not to advertise or publicise any that still had any clout or influence. He never discussed Jesus as Jesus had followers in his day. The silence of Josephus indicates that Jesus was a zealot.
John the Baptist was executed for political reasons even though it does not look like he was involved in politics. Josephus blames political fears and fears of upheaval for John's death. This over-caution shows us that Jesus would not have been allowed to minister as it would give rise to a new and worse problem. So he did not get into the Temple unless authorities were afraid of him which makes sense if the Zealots were behind him.
If we have established that Jesus was a Zealot then it follows that what Josephus was supposed to have written about him was forged for it never mentioned Jesus’ political activities.
Perhaps that was why so few wrote about him for he was a martyr for the Zealots and they wanted the public to forget him in case the Zealots would keep his memory alive to incite the people to revolt.
St Justin Martyr mentioned the Samaritan Simon of Gitto who lived in the time of Claudius Caesar who reigned from 41-54 AD and worked mighty miracles in Rome itself. Many of the Samaritans believed that Simon was God or the first God. An image of Simon was set up in Rome for the Romans to worship it as an idol. This is very interesting. Samaritanism was much the same as Judaism except it had extra gods inferior to the first God and worshipped at Mount Gerazim instead of Zion. When Rome accepted this devotion and did not accept Jesus who was no worse and perhaps better in many ways it suggests that Jesus must have been a hated Zealot.
When somebody wields amazing "magical" powers, they are always dogged by rumours that they used them to harm and kill their enemies. Nothing like that happened with Jesus. The miracle stories are a substitute for this man failing to give his dinner to the poor, to patch up a wound on a child and lifting up an old person who fell in the street. But what if they are also just padding? What if padding was needed for the writers of the gospels wanted to say nothing about his unsavoury terrorist activities? They needed something to write about. The lack of genuine concern for people from Jesus and magic having to do the good works for him alert us to something being terribly wrong about him.
FINALLY
Messiah and its other rendering, Son of David, implies a king who wages battle and who demands violence in the interest of righteousness. Jesus applied both terms to himself. If you read the Bible you will learn that real Christianity and the real Jesus, if there was one, were very far from pacifism. Very far and that could be dangerous for some of today's would be terrorists to find out if they have a Christian background. The silence about Zealotry in the New Testament clearly shows they were embarrassed about something. Something was being concealed.