• A Composite Sign of Many Parts
    Awake!—1993 | March 22

    • As an example of a composite sign, consider the one that is given in the Bible to identify Jesus as the Messiah at the time of his first coming. It involved many events relative to the Messiah that were given in the Hebrew Scriptures. Jesus had told his disciples about some of these texts, but they had not understood their import. The disciples, like the Jews generally, wanted a Messiah who would overthrow Rome and rule the world with them as associates. So when he died, they were confused and devastated. After Jesus was resurrected, he met with them and said: “‘These are my words which I spoke to you while I was yet with you, that all the things written in the law of Moses and in the Prophets and Psalms about me must be fulfilled.’ Then he opened up their minds fully to grasp the meaning of the Scriptures.”​—Luke 24:44, 45.

      According to the Kingdom Interlinear translation of verse 45, Jesus did this by “putting together the Scriptures” from the Hebrew portion of the Bible that foretold the events and circumstances of the life of the promised Messiah who was to come, and he placed them alongside the events of Jesus’ life that had fulfilled them. Later on, the apostle Paul used this same method when “explaining and proving by references” that Jesus was the Messiah. (Acts 17:3) Again, it is the Kingdom Interlinear that clarifies the process by saying that he did so by “opening up thoroughly and putting alongside” the Messianic prophecies in the Hebrew Scriptures the events of Jesus’ life that fulfilled them. The accompanying box gives the substance of many of these Hebrew prophecies that were fulfilled by the events of Jesus’ life and that proved that he was the foretold Messiah. It illustrates what constitutes a composite sign.