 This one section of scripture is all you need to prove that Jesus was and is the foretold Messiah. Don't miss this! So some of you know that I went to Israel last year and on that trip we had many interactions and encounters with Jewish folks on the ground. Those who would cling to much of the Old Testament as God's word but would reject the sentiment that Jesus is the Messiah. Beyond Jewish folks, non-Christians too will question the authenticity of Jesus' claims to be the Messiah and instead kind of regard him as a good teacher. But the truth is that scripture lays out something magnificent and interconnected that kind of blew my mind. To get a little context, we need to understand what is prophecy? What was prophecy in the Old Testament? When we think of prophets in the Old Testament, we can think of them as people who had a special connection with God. Yes, they were just people. They were not divine, but they had a special connection with God, a communication between them, and they passed on messages from God, whether it was to repent. So we think of Samuel and David when Samuel came to David and said, Hey, you got to repent for what you did with Bathsheba, calling them back to God, or stating something that will happen in the future that will take place. Now, if you do some digging, you come to find out that Jesus in his life, death, and resurrection fulfilled tens and tens of prophecies that were made hundreds of years before it actually happened. It's not hard to find a comprehensive list, but going one by one through all of them is kind of tedious. But over the years, I come back time and time again to this one passage. We're going to take a look at the book of Isaiah and based on my research, it was written about 700 years before Christ. Keep that in mind because you think about it. If I were to come to you today and say, I'm the Messiah, I'm the one, you know, that's going to save all of humanity, you would obviously question that and you might think I'm a crazy person, understandably, right? But if there was a guy 700 years ago that wrote down very specific things about my life that ultimately came true in my life and my death and I performed all these miracles that were performed, that were foretold about all of a sudden you should give me a lot more credence and begin to inspect a little bit closer or a lot bit closer. Thankfully, I'm not the Messiah, but that's what happened with Jesus. So let's take a look at Isaiah 53. For he grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground. He had no form or majesty that we should look at him and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief and as one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised and we esteemed him not. Remember guys, this is written 700 years before Jesus. This part here where he had no form of majesty that we should look at him, no beauty that we should desire him. He subjected himself to the muck and the mire of our world. He didn't come down with a halo, he came down as a baby. On the cross that was a culmination of the fact that he was despised and rejected by men. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted, but he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace and with his wounds we are healed. I love how this chapter so clearly illustrates the gospel that we were dead in our trespasses and sins, but through Christ and him taking our transgressions on himself, we could be made alive again and find peace with God. This is one of my favorite verses in the whole Bible. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way and the Lord has laid on him. That is Jesus, the iniquity of us all. Remember 700 years before Jesus was actually on the earth, this was written down. He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth, like a lamb that was led to the slaughter and like a sheep that was before its shearers is silent. He opened not his mouth. We remember before Jesus' crucifixion when he was being interrogated, how many times they would ask him questions and he would come back with either not answering the question or not answering it in the way that they wanted him to. There's even more to that chapter if you continue reading, but it illustrates an important fact, that last section, that it was God's plan from the beginning that Jesus would die to take the transgressions of his people that we would have peace with God. Ultimately that's a key difference between Christianity and the other Abrahamic religions is that Christianity teaches that we are not good, that if we stumble at one point in one aspect of the law, we are guilty of all of it, that we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, that we are dead in our trespasses and sins, incapable of doing good, but it is through Jesus and his sacrifice on our behalf that we can be made right with God, that he was good for us. That it's not about keeping God's law or trying to please him to earn his favor, but rather receiving the free gift of salvation that he offers to us and stepping into the new creation that he wants us to make us into. The truth is that the Word of God is so thick, it is so interconnected, and when you begin to just dig a little bit deeper, you begin to see all these connections throughout the Word of God, everything echoing of type or a shadow back to Jesus showing us our ultimate Messiah, that it's not just about these, you know, kind of loose stories in the Old Testament that are meaningless in a lot of ways, or just to teach us some moral lessons, but rather pointing to Jesus as the ultimate Messiah, the ultimate conqueror, the ultimate king, the ultimate priest. Oh, I could go on, but I'll leave you at that. Get in the Word for yourself, discover it for yourself. Thanks so much for watching this video, guys. If you enjoyed it, subscribe because I'm putting out new content like this all the time. I do want to let you know that actually I'm going back to Israel. I mentioned that I've been to Israel in 2022, and I'm going back in 2024, but I want to take you with me. So if you're interested in what that could look like, and the details associated with that, hit the link in my description there, and there'll be a code that you can enter that will bring you to the right trip, the correct trip, so you can learn all about that there. I'm going with one of my YouTuber buddies that I've just made, Brandon Snipe, and he's a great creator, and we're going to take some people down there to explore the biblical sites, explore the Holy Land. It's going to be a lot of fun, so I can't wait to see some of you down there. Thanks again for watching, guys, and I'll see you next time. God bless.