John 14:16
And I will pray the Father, and he shall
send you another advocate (messiah), that he may be with you forever.
John 16:7
I tell you the truth; It is expedient for
you that I go away: for if I go not away, the advocate (messiah) will not come to you.
What does this mean? The Greek church fathers (who later
tried to explain and "clarify" what Yeshua had said), were not
Torah scholars and certainly knew nothing of the oral traditions. They saw things from their own perspective. They
believed in many gods, and it was natural to assume that a messiah was a
god.
Unfortunately, not understanding the
teaching about Messiah ben Joseph (the messiah that dies) and Messiah ben David
(the messiah that "shall teach you all things") lead to a belief that this
"other" advocate was the "Holy Spirit" bringing with it (as time went on) the
Christian doctrine of the trinity.
The idea that messiah was
God, however was NOT part of the doctrines taught by Yeshua and his disciples.
That is a controversy that developed much later.
To believe that Messiah
was God
would be a gross misunderstanding of first
century concepts and terminology.
So what happened? After all, Messiah ben
Joseph’s specific purpose and mission is to save Israel (the children of God
that were scattered abroad), a task that up to this point remains
unfulfilled.
As Martin Jaffee writes:
Early Jewish followers of Jesus of Nazareth,
of course, had seen in him the fulfillment of Messianic promises. But he had
died a criminal’s death and left