The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah Vol 1 - Predestination

men and Angels: * the Angel of the Great
Council,*'* probably *the Angel of the Face'—a
view fully confirmed by the rendering of the
Targum.' The silence of the Apocrypha about the
Person of the Messiah is so strange, as to be
scarcely explained by the consideration, that those
books were composed when the need of a Messiah
for the deliverance of Israel was not painfully
felt.^ All the more striking are the allusions in the
Pseudepigraphic Writings, although these also do
not carry us beyond our two inferences. Thus, the
third book of the Sibylline Oracles —which, with
few exceptions,® dates from more than a century
and ▼T. Mi-ao7 a half before Christ—presents a
picture of Messianic times,® generally admitted to
have formed the basis of Virgil's description of the
Golden Age, and of similar heathen expectations.
In these Oracles, 170 years before Christ, the
Messiah is * the King sent from heaven ' who
'TT.f85,J86 would 'judge every man in blood and
splendour of fire.'' Similarly, the vision of
Messianic times opens with a reference to *the
King Whom Ood will send from the ffwn.'*® That