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I can remember my shock the first time a friend of mine, whom I respect very much, mentioned to me that almost all of the many prophecies in the New Testament which are believed to be "fulfilled prophecies by Jesus" were in reality not fulfilled at all! He went on to say that in the Gospel of Matthew, for instance, that the prophecies that are believed by Christians to be "fulfilled" are really not “fulfilled” prophecies after all in spite of what the New Testament and the writer of the Book of Matthew said. At first I could not believe it; surely he was mistaken for at that time in my life my scholarship concerning the Bible was only at an infant state. All I could say was that I had been taught and heard preached that Jesus had fulfilled "what was written" because it said so and that my preacher had said so. After all when reading the New Testament these "thus being fulfilled what the prophet said" passages sure sounded like they had Divine authority and I cold remember reading something like that in the Old Testament before. After being challenged in this way the first thing I did was to look at my center reference in my study Bible and began to look for an Old Testament Scriptural references which would surely prove my friend wrong and my Christian religious belief system correct. As I was looking up my reference my friend said something that would change the course of my life: “But Craig, your Christian Bible is a fraudulent translation of the Jewish Hebrew Scriptures…the Jewish Masoretic Text (the Jewish Old Testament) does not read the same way your Christian Old Testament reads. I remember saying to myself: "Surely he is mistaken or even crazy." For after all as a Christian Jesus was my "Messiah." But that was then and now, some sixteen years later after years of hard-nosed dedicated scholarly study, I can no longer say and believe what I did then. I now realize that my friend was right; my Christian Bible was a fraud in many places and I never knew it. But I do now and I wish to inform you of this sad plight in hopes your worship of God be no longer be contaminated with idolatry because you own and believe in a forged translation of the Jewish Bible.
As you can imagine this information presented to me by my friend stopped me on a dime. I thought to myself “What evidence does he have to back up such a claim”. Surely, I thought to myself, he could not be correct.
After “growing up in the LORD” for these last 16 years I can say without a doubt that my friend was 100% correct in his assessment of the Christian Bible and its mistranslations. I had be led to believe that my Christian Bible was inspired and infallible since I was a child. I had lived my whole life, up to then, with the notion that my Christian KJV was inspired, infallible, and inerrant. I can remember my shock, my devastation, and my anger as it all settled in over the next few days and years. After a considerable time of intense study into this subject I came to the undeniable conclusion that I had a book that even my Pastors don’t know is altered in hundreds of places. If they did know then never told me. Now understand after 16 years of intense Bible study and after being awakened to this matter I cannot look at my Christian Bible and believe it without searching out the truths for myself. I had to begin a serious investigation of every line and ever precept. It has taken my 16 years to do this, and such results finally led to my resignation as a Pastor of a mega-church in Dallas. I had not been teaching the "truth" and had been associated with the greatest cover-up in the history of mankind. My repentance and tears flowed continually throughout the years as I tried to justify keeping my position as a Pastor. Finally my shame and my knowledge would have me "come out of the unclean thing." No longer could I justify with my presence a Replacement Religion that opposes the very things that Yeshua both loved, lived, and taught. I have today been able to master from the Jewish Masoretic Texts the problem passages which confront us in the Christian Bible. The rub comes for the Christian in the fact that the vast majority of these "corrupted and falsified and purposefully mistranslated passages" are Messianic in perspective.
Let me say up front that even though I can and will share with you how the Torah, Prophets, and Writings have been literally butchered over the centuries by various Bible translations, and even thought many of these when viewed from the Jewish text, turn out to be non-Messianic prophecies, I still hold a faith and belief that when Messiah comes it most likely will be Yeshua. But I could be wrong. It really does not matter but I am moved by 2000 years of history where this man, for better or worse, has been the center figure in the faith of over 2 billion people. Where there is smoke there is fire. I deal with this issue on this and other websites of this ministry where we look into why the prophecies, the real and true Jewish prophecies, were not fulfilled in the first century. No mater whom the Messiah was to be, they would not have been fulfilled and any Messianic movement was doomed to failure. But at the same time I refuse to “take away or add to the Word of God,” the Jewish Masoretic text, in order to create "fulfilled scripture" which makes it look as if Yeshua is the Messiah when the original texts never said the things the New Testament says they did. Many people have “beliefs” about Yeshua, and many varieties of them exist in the world today. Regardless, I want the truth and only the truth about this man. Falsification of Christian Bibles in order to create “fulfillments” about Yeshua that were never true in the first place does neither God nor me, or even you , any good.
"What are the mathematical odds of any one person fulfilling all of the messianic prophecy? Obviously the scriptures could only have been talking about Jesus."
On the face of it, this sounds like a good argument. And if you read all of the Christian scriptures, there are lots and lots of "prophecies" that needed to be fulfilled, and, according to your New Testament, Jesus fulfilled every one of those "prophecies" as they appear in the Christian bible. You need to understand that the reason that I put "prophecies" in quotes is that nearly every "prophecy" quoted in the book of Matthew is non-Messianic! Some of them are even made up. Many are “quotes” of non-existing Jewish Scriptures. And the one or two prophecies that are Messianic have been butchered to such a degree that they are untrue to the originals in the Masoretic text or taken out or purposefully taken out of context by the authors of the Christian bible.
Answer for yourself: Why was this done?
Simply said, since the original prophecies in the Jewish Tanakh were not fulfilled by anyone in the first century, then in the selling of Jesus as "the" Messiah to the Gentile nations, who never knew the prophecies in the first place, it was necessary to alter then in order that Jesus of the Gentile Church could "fulfill" them. The unsuspecting and Tanakh deficient Gentiles would never know the difference. This would work for the Biblically ignorant Gentiles but it is an entirely different story with the Jews who were familiar with the Jewish Palestinian Text and could spot the forgery! That is why the LXX (Septuagint) was never accepted by those who could read Hebrew in the first century; they knew better. With the dying out of Hebrew and the Jews only able later to speak Greek then the Greek LXX had to be used. The errors and the purposefully alterations, over time, were not noticed any longer. For those who knew Hebrew and the Palestinian Masoretic Text in the first century it was impossible to believe in any Jewish Messianic pretender who did not fulfill the prophecies that they had both cherished and looked forward to for over hundreds and thousands of years.
There is a specific structure that is used in the Christian bible that manipulates (sentences) in the Tanakh (Yeshua’s Bible). I will provide an example using contemporary terms.
Let me give you again the mechanics involved in textual manipulation whereby we end up with something different in meaning that the original author intended.
1. Jewish texts and phrases are lifted out of their places in the Hebrew Scriptures and given meanings which, at best, are forced.
2. Preceding many of the prophetic verses which are quoted is the assertion, "What was said through the prophet was thus fulfilled." In this way the writers of the Christian Scriptures endeavored to show that the Tanakh anticipated and predicted the events recorded in the New Testament and associated with the life of Jesus. In other words, events in his life were back-written and given prophetic authority as it they had been "prophesied."
3. Those happenings, then, are presented as the fulfillment of the Hebrew Scriptures and are considered proof texts.
4. The techniques employed to establish proof include citation of verses out of context, mistranslation, and misquotation.
5. Sometimes a figurative or poetic phrase is mistaken for a straightforward statement and vice versa.
6. Sometimes sayings of different writers, living in different places, and in different centuries are run together.
7. Often two or more of these methods are used in a single quotation.
8. Often there was never such a prophecy and the reference to one is “made up”. Even if it was a prophecy, it has nothing to do with the Messiah.
There are a dozen "prophecies" in the book of Matthew. In the examples that follow, will see that they all fall into one or more of these none deceptive categories above.
The answer is simple. When you have a result that you want to prove, it's a lot easier to start from the end and go backwards. Having a religious belief then you proof text to find passages that support your position, and not finding them or enough of them, then you create them! Again we must understand the Jews will know the difference, but if you are targeting another group, like the non-Jews often hundreds and thousands of miles away, a little deception with the texts will be noticed by no one; except God who knows better!
Answer for yourself: Do you know what the Jewish Masoretic Text/Palestinian Text is, and do you have one or have you ever read it? Have you ever compared it line upon line whereby the "Messianic passages" are compared to see if they read the same?
Before you say "yes," since your Christian Bible often says that it is taken from the Masoretic text, you must realize how Bibles are put together. Your Christian Bible is an eclectic text. This is a fancy word meaning the "best manuscripts" were consulted and some were taken from here and others from there. It is more like a collage or a mixture of "best" texts, at least in the mind of the Bible committee which put it together and decided what was "best" depending on their existing denominational religious belief system. Of what I am speaking is the Jewish Tanakh which is faithful to the Jewish Masoretic text from start to finish. The Christian OT cannot make that claim since a knowledgeable comparison will reveal the alterations of which I speak. This is important for this reason: Since every New Testament quote in the New Testament is taken from the corresponding Christian Old Testament, then it is of major importance to the Christian if it can be shown that the Christian Old Testament is not faithful to the Jewish Scriptures!
So when you read or hear a passage from the New Testament and identify it as a “Messianic fulfillment” since you have never owned or read the true uncorrupted Jewish Palestinian Canon or the Jewish Masoretic Text, you are unable to recognize a “misquote, or a mistranslation, or a verse taken completely out of the context intended by the original author! Since lacking such a text that is faithful to the Jewish Masoretic text, the Bible Yeshua both knew and used, and since most Christians today do not have the skills to read Hebrew, then you would never know of these purposeful mistranslations, misquotations, and verses which have been twisted out of their original context.
Since not possessing this knowledge then it is easy to be misled by one who comes to you and shows you a Christian translation of the Jewish Bible or quotes passages in the New Testament supposedly taken accurately from the Jewish Bible or says: "What are the mathematical odds of any one person fulfilling all of the messianic prophecy? Obviously the scriptures could only have been talking about Jesus."
Hosea 4:6 6 My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, ... (KJV)
The unprepared Christian, not knowing any different, is led astray every time. And the other side of this coin is that when you provide the refuting evidence for the supposed "fulfilled prophecy", most will discount it as “impossible” and fewer still will take the challenge and procure a Jewish Tanakh (Jewish Masoretic Text) and compare the wordings between the Jewish Texts and their Christian Bible to see who’s correct and who’s in error.
Isa 28:10 10 For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little: (KJV)
If we but followed the admonition of Isaiah the Prophet you would not have this problem, but few study like this. If they only knew the great need for such disciplined study.
So the purpose of these articles that follow is to inform you of this sad situations that exists in Christianity which so few know or understand has happened. We will begin to elaborate on this point by presenting the "prophecies" in the order in which they occur in the book of Matthew along with the evidence which will either prove them to be “fulfilled” or “fraudulent”. You can be the judge and make an intelligent decision once you know the facts from fiction.
