The
Only Person Ever Pre-Announced
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by Fulton J. Sheen (1895-1979)
History is full of men who
have claimed that they came from God, or that
they were gods, or that they bore messages
from God – Buddha, Mohammed, Confucius,
Christ, Lao-tze, and thousands of others,
right down to the person who founded a new
religion this very day. Each of them has a
right to be heard and considered. But as a
yardstick external to and outside of whatever
is to be measured is needed, so there must be
some permanent tests available to all men, all
civilizations, and all ages, by which they can
decide whether any one of these claimants, or
all of them, are justified in their claims.
These tests are of two kinds: reason
and history. Reason, because everyone
has it, even those without faith; history,
because everyone lives in it and should know
something about it.
Reason dictates that if any
one of these men actually came from God, the
least thing that God could do to support His
claim would be to pre-announce His coming.
Automobile manufacturers tell their customers
when to expect a new model. If God sent anyone
from Himself, or if He came Himself with a
vitally important message for all men, it
would seem reasonable that He would first let
men know when His messenger was coming, where
He would be born, where He would live, the
doctrine He would teach, the enemies He would
make, the program He would adopt for the
future, and the manner of His death. By the
extent to which the messenger conformed with
these announcements, one could judge the
validity of his claims.
Reason further assures us that if God did not
do this, then there would be nothing to
prevent any impostor from appearing in history
and saying, “I come from God,” or “An angel
appeared to me in the desert and gave me this
message.” In such cases there would be no
objective, historical way of testing the
messenger. We would have only his word for it,
and of course he could be wrong.
If a visitor came from a foreign country to
Washington and said he was a diplomat,
the government would ask him for his
passport and other documents testifying that
he represented a certain government. His
papers would have to antedate his coming. If
such proofs of identity are asked from
delegates of other countries, reason
certainly ought to do so with messengers who
claim to have come from God. To each
claimant reason says, “What record was there
before you were born that you were coming?”
With this test one can evaluate the
claimants. (And at this preliminary stage,
Christ is no greater than the others.)
Socrates had no one to foretell his birth.
Buddha had no one to pre-announce him and
his message or tell the day when he would
sit under the tree. Confucius did not have
the name of his mother and his birthplace
recorded, nor were they given to men
centuries before he arrived so that when he
did come, men would know he was a messenger
from God.
But, with Christ it was different. Because
of the Old Testament prophecies, His coming
was not unexpected. There were no
predictions about Buddha, Confucius,
Lao-tze, Mohammed, or anyone else; but there
were predictions about Christ. Others just
came and said, “Here I am, believe me.” They
were, therefore, only men among men and not
the Divine in the human. Christ alone
stepped out of that line saying, “Search the
writings of the Jewish people and the
related history of the Babylonians,
Persians, Greeks, and Romans.” (For the
moment, pagan writings and even the Old Testament may
be regarded only as historical documents, not
as inspired works.)
It is true that the prophecies of the Old
Testament can be best understood in the light
of their fulfillment. The language of prophecy
does not have the exactness of mathematics.
Yet if one searches out the various Messianic
currents in the Old Testament, and compares
the resulting picture with the life and work
of Christ, can one doubt that the ancient
predictions point to Jesus and the kingdom
which he established? God’s promise to the
patriarchs that through them all the nations
of the earth would be blessed; the prediction
that the tribe of Juda would be supreme among
the other Hebrew tribes until the coming of
Him Whom all nations would obey; the strange
yet undeniable fact that in the Bible of the
Alexandrian Jews, the Septuagint, one finds
clearly predicted the virgin birth of
the Messiah; the prophecy of Isaiah 53 about
the patient sufferer, the Servant of the Lord,
who will lay down his life as a guilt-offering
for his people’s offenses; the perspectives of
the glorious, everlasting kingdom of the House
of David – in
whom but Christ have these prophecies found
their fulfillment?
From an historical point of view alone, here
is uniqueness which sets Christ apart from all
other founders of world religions. And once
the fulfillment of these prophecies did
historically take place in the person of
Christ, not only did all prophecies cease in
Israel, but there was discontinuance of sacrifices
when the true Paschal Lamb was sacrificed.
Turn to pagan testimony. Tacitus, speaking
for the ancient Romans, says, “People were
generally persuaded in the faith of the
ancient prophecies, that the East was to
prevail, and that from Judea was to come the
Master and Ruler of the world.” Suetonius,
in his account of the life of Vespasian,
recounts the Roman tradition thus, “It was
an old and constant belief throughout the
East, that by indubitably certain
prophecies, the Jews were to attain the
highest power.”
China had the same expectation; but because
it was on the other side of the world, it
believed that the great Wise Man would be
born in the West. The Annals of the
Celestial Empire contain the statement:
In
the 24th year of Tchao-Wang of the dynasty
of the Tcheou, on the 8th day of the 4th
moon, a light appeared in the Southwest
which illumined the king’s palace. The
monarch, struck by its splendor,
interrogated the sages. They showed him
books in which this prodigy signified the
appearance of the great Saint of the West
whose religion was to be introduced into
their country.
The
Greeks expected Him, for Aeschylus in his Prometheus
six centuries before His coming, wrote, “Look
not for any end, moreover, to this curse
until God appears, to accept upon His Head
the pangs of thy own sins vicarious.”
How did the Magi of the East know of His
coming? Probably from the many prophecies
circulated through the world by the Jews
as well as through the prophecy made to
the Gentiles by Daniel centuries before
His birth.
Cicero, after recounting the sayings of
the ancient oracles and the Sibyls about a
“King whom we must recognize to be saved,”
asked in expectation, “To what man and to
what period of time do these predictions
point?” The Fourth Eclogue of Virgil
recounted the same ancient tradition and
spoke of “a chaste woman, smiling on her
infant boy, with whom the iron age would
pass away.”
Suetonius quoted a contemporary author to
the effect that the Romans were so fearful
about a king who would rule the world that
they ordered all children born that year
to be killed—an order that was not
fulfilled, except by Herod.
Not only were the Jews expecting the birth
of a Great King, a Wise Man and a Savior,
but Plato and Socrates also spoke of the Logos
and of the Universal Wise Man “yet to
come.” Confucius spoke of “the Saint” the
Sibyls, of a “Universal King” the Greek
dramatist, of a savior and redeemer to
unloose man from the “primal eldest
curse.” All these were on the Gentile side
of the expectation. What separates Christ
from all men is that first He was
expected; even the Gentiles had a longing
for a deliverer, or
redeemer. This fact alone distinguishes Him
from all other religious leaders.
A second distinguishing fact is that once He
appeared, He struck history with such impact
that He split it in two, dividing it into two
periods: one before His coming, the other
after it. Buddha did not do this, nor any of
the great Indian philosophers. Even those who
deny God must date their attacks upon Him,
A.D. so and so, or so many years after His
coming.
A third fact separating Him from all the
others is this: every other person who
ever came into this world came into it to
live. He came into it to die.
Death was a stumbling block to Socrates—it
interrupted his teaching. But to Christ, death
was the goal and fulfillment of His life, the
gold that He was seeking. Few of His words or
actions are intelligible without reference to
His Cross. He presented Himself as a Savior
rather than merely as a Teacher. It meant
nothing to teach men to be good unless He also
gave them the power to be good, after rescuing
them from the frustration of guilt.
The story of every human life begins with
birth and ends with death. In the Person of
Christ, however, it was His death that was
first and His life that was last. The
scripture describes Him as “the Lamb slain as
it were, from the beginning of the world.” He
was slain in intention by the first sin and
rebellion against God. It was not so much that His birth
cast a shadow on His life and thus led to His
death; it was rather that the Cross was first,
and cast its shadow back to His birth. His has
been the only life in the world that was ever
lived backward. As the flower in the crannied
wall tells the poet of nature, and as the atom
is the miniature of the solar system, so too,
His birth tells the mystery of the gibbet. He
went from the known to the known, from the
reason of His coming manifested by His name
“Jesus” or “Savior” to the fulfillment of His
coming, namely, His death on the Cross.
John gives us His eternal prehistory; Matthew,
His temporal prehistory, by way of His
genealogy. It is significant how much His
temporal ancestry was connected with sinners and
foreigners! These blots on the escutcheon of His
human lineage suggest a pity for the sinful and
for the strangers to the Covenant. Both these
aspects of His compassion would later on be
hurled against Him as accusations: “He is a
friend of sinners” “He is a Samaritan.” But the
shadow of a stained past foretells His future
love for the stained. Born of a woman, He was a
man and could be one with all humanity; born of
a Virgin, who was overshadowed by the Spirit and
“full of grace,” He would also be outside that
current of sin which infected all men.
This
article is adapted from Life of Christ,
Chapter 1, (c) by Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen
1958, published by Ignatius Press, San
Francisco, with forward by Fr. Benedict
Groeschel.
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Archbishop
Fulton
J. Sheen (1895-1979) was an
American theologian and bishop,
first in New York City and then in
Rochester, New York. He became
well-known for his preaching,
especially on television and
radio. He hosted the night-time
radio program The Catholic
Hour for twenty years
(1930–1950) before moving to
television and presenting a weekly
program called, Life Is Worth
Living. The show ran from
1951 until 1957, drawing as many
as 30 million people on a weekly
basis. He wrote 73 books and
numerous articles and columns.
Mother Theresa of Calcutta always
kept a copy of Sheen’s book, Life
of Christ, with her wherever
she traveled for daily reflection
and meditation. |
Photo
(top) credit: Corcovado Mountain with
Christ the Redeemer Statue in Clouds on
Sunset in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, (c) by
Dabldy at Bigstock.com
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