However,
in speaking of the necessity and salvation due to the Messiah’s suffering, the
prophets also predicted His resurrection from the dead and His subsequent
glory. Isaiah, describing the sufferings of Christ, concludes his narration
with the following words: “When Thou shalt make His soul an offering for
sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the
Lord shall prosper in His hand. He shall see the travail of His soul, and shall
be satisfied: by His knowledge shall My righteous
servant justify many; for He shall bear their iniquities. There will I divide
Him a portion with the great, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong” (Is.
53:10-12). In other words, the Messiah after death will come to life, in order
to head the Kingdom of the righteous and will be morally satisfied with the
results of His ordeals.
King David also predicted the resurrection of Christ in his 16th
psalm, in which in the voice of Christ it says: “I have set the Lord always
before me: because He is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. Therefore my
heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth: my flesh also shall rest in hope. For
thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to
see corruption. Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in Thy presence is fulness
of joy; at Thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16:8-11).
In the prophet Hosea there is a mention of a three-day resurrection, although
the wording in this prophecy is in the plural: “Come and let us return unto
the Lord: for He hath torn, and He will heal us; He hath smitten, and He will
bind us up. After two days will He revive us: in the third day He will raise us
up, and we shall live in His sight” (Hosea 6:1-2, see
1 Cor. 15:4).
Besides the direct prophecies about the immortality of the Messiah, in fact,
all those places in the Old Testament, in which the Messiah is called God,
attest to this (for example in Ps. 2, Ps. 45, Ps. 110, Is. 9:6, Jer. 23:5, Mic.
5:2, Mal. 3:1). God by His very essence is immortal. The immortality of the
Messiah can also be concluded after we read the predictions of His eternal
Kingdom (for example in Gen. 49:10; 2 Sam. 7:13; Ps. 2, Ps. 132:11; Eze. 7:27; Dan. 7:13). For an
eternal Kingdom presumes an eternal King!
In this way, summing up the contents of this chapter, we see that the Old
Testament prophets very definitely spoke of the expiatory sufferings, death,
and then — of the resurrection and glory of the Messiah. He was to die for the
redemption of human sins and rise to head the eternal Kingdom of those He
saved. These truths, first revealed by the prophets, later formed the basis of
the Christian faith.
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