Newsletter for Sunday 17 December 2017

15 Dec

JESUS is the True Messiah

As I wrote last week, in the Liturgy during Advent we hear a lot from the prophets about the One who is to come. Some of these prophets are Isaiah, Jeremiah, Malachi and finally the greatest of the prophets, John the Baptist from whom we hear again in this week’s Gospel. And when we read through these prophecies we realise that for over a thousand years before His coming, the prophets were able to foretell the actual events of Our Lord’s life with such accuracy and precision, so that when He finally came we would be able to recognise JESUS as the One sent by God.

So Our Lord’s coming was pre-announced. The prophets were able to foretell these future events simply because God had revealed it to them by the Holy Spirit. And I think it’s very good for us to reflect upon the fact that this fulfilment of messianic prophecy is something which is totally unique to Christianity. History is full of people who claimed they were sent by God or who said they had a special message from God, but without a jot of evidence to back it up. But God gave the world all the evidence it needed to recognise the True Messiah. The true prophets all point to our Lord JESUS Christ – the one true Lord and Saviour of the world. In Him alone are all the prophecies concerning the Messiah in the Old Testament brought to fulfilment. JESUS is the promised One who would come to save us from our sins. There is salvation under no other name. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but might have eternal life” (John 3:16).

Fr Paul Gillham IC

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