The Messiah​—A Real Hope?

He called himself Moses. His real name, though, is lost to history. In the fifth century C.E., he traveled throughout the island of Crete, convincing the Jews there that he was the messiah they awaited. He told them that soon their oppression, their exile and captivity would be over. They believed. When their day of liberation came, the Jews followed “Moses” to a promontory overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. He told them that they had only to cast themselves into the sea and it would part before them. Many obeyed, plunging into a sea that was not inclined to part. A great many drowned; some were rescued by sailors and fishermen. Moses, however, was nowhere to be found. That messiah was gone.

WHAT is a messiah? The words “savior,” “redeemer,” and “leader” may come to mind. Many people think that a messiah is a figure who inspires hope and devotion in his followers, promising to lead them from oppression to freedom. Since human history is largely a history of oppression, it is not surprising that more than a few such messiahs have emerged over the centuries. (Compare Ecclesiastes 8:9.) But like the self-styled Moses of Crete, these messiahs have more often led their followers to disappointment and disaster than to liberation.

“This is the King Messiah!” That is how the esteemed rabbi Akiba ben Joseph greeted Simeon Bar Kokhba in the year 132 C.E. Bar Kokhba was a mighty man who commanded a powerful army. Here at last, thought many Jews, was the man to end their long oppression at the hands of the Roman World Power. Bar Kokhba failed; hundreds of thousands of his countrymen paid for that failure with their lives.

In the 12th century, another Jewish messiah emerged, this time in Yemen. When the caliph, or ruler, asked him for a sign of his messiahship, this messiah proposed that the caliph have him beheaded and let his swift resurrection serve as the sign. The caliph agreed to the plan​—and that was the end of the Yemen messiah. In that same century, a man named David Alroy told the Jews in the Middle East to prepare to follow him on the wings of angels back to the Holy Land. Many believed that he was the messiah. The Jews of Baghdad waited patiently on their rooftops, blissfully ignoring the thieves who plundered their belongings.

Sabbatai Zevi arose in the 17th century out of Smyrna. He proclaimed his messiahship to Jews throughout Europe. Christians, too, listened to him. Zevi offered his followers liberation​—apparently by letting them practice sin without restraint. His closest followers carried out orgies, nudism, fornication, and incest, then punished themselves with whippings, by rolling about naked in the snow, and by burying themselves neck-deep in the cold earth. When he traveled to Turkey, Zevi was seized and told that he must either convert to Islam or die. He converted. Many of his devotees were shattered. Yet, for the next two centuries, Zevi was still called messiah in some quarters.

Christendom has produced her share of messiahs as well. In the 12th century, a man named Tanchelm built up an army of adherents and dominated the town of Antwerp. This messiah called himself a god; he even sold his own bathwater for his followers to drink as a sacrament! Another “Christian” messiah was Thomas Müntzer of 16th-century Germany. He led an uprising against the local civil authorities, telling his followers that this was the battle of Armageddon. He promised that he would catch the enemies’ cannonballs in his sleeves. Instead, his people were massacred, and Müntzer was beheaded. Many other such messiahs emerged in Christendom over the centuries.

Other religions, too, have their messianic figures. Islam points to the Mahdi, or rightly guided one, who will usher in an age of justice. In Hinduism, some have claimed to be avatars, or incarnations, of various gods. And, as The New Encyclopædia Britannica notes, “even as unmessianic a religion as Buddhism has produced the belief, among Mahāyāna groups, in the future Buddha Maitreya who would descend from his heavenly abode and bring the faithful to paradise.”

20th-Century Messiahs

In our own century, the need for a genuine messiah has become more urgent than ever; not surprisingly, then, many have claimed the title. In the African Congo of the 1920’s, ’30’s, and ’40’s, Simon Kimbangu and his successor Andre “Jesus” Matswa were hailed as messiahs. They died, but their followers still expect them to return and usher in an African millennium.

This century has also seen the rise of “cargo cults” in New Guinea and Melanesia. Members expect a ship or an airplane to arrive, manned by messiahlike white men who will make them rich and usher in an age of happiness when even the dead will rise.

The industrialized nations have had their messiahs too. Some are religious leaders, such as Sun Myung Moon, a self-proclaimed successor to Jesus Christ who aims to purify the world by means of a united family of his devotees. Political leaders have also tried to assume messianic status, Adolf Hitler being the century’s most horrendous example with his grandiose talk of a Thousand Year Reich.

Political philosophies and organizations have likewise achieved messianic status. For example, The Encyclopedia Americana notes that Marxist-Leninist political theory has messianic overtones. And the United Nations organization, widely hailed as the only hope for world peace, seems to have become a sort of messiah substitute in the minds of many.

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A Messiah in Brooklyn?

Posters, billboards, and neon signs in Israel have recently proclaimed “Prepare for the coming of the Messiah.” This $400,000 publicity campaign has been mounted by the Lubavitchers, an ultraorthodox sect of Hasidic Jews. There is widespread belief among the 250,000-member group that their grand rabbi, Menachem Mendel Schneerson of Brooklyn, New York, is the Messiah. Why? Schneerson does teach that the Messiah will come in this generation. And according to Newsweek magazine, Lubavitcher officials insist that the 90-year-old rabbi will not die before the Messiah arrives. For centuries the sect has taught that each generation produces at least one man who qualifies to be Messiah. Schneerson seems such a man to his followers, and he has appointed no successor. Still, most Jews do not accept him as the Messiah, Newsweek says. According to the newspaper Newsday, 96-year-old rival rabbi Eliezer Schach has called him a “false messiah.”

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The belief that Moses of Crete was the messiah cost many people their lives