The Lost Messiah

The Lost Messiah is the astonishing story of Sabbatai Sevi, a 17th-century rabbi who through the mysticism of the kabbalah convinced vast numbers of Jews throughout Europe, the Middle East and North Africa that he was the long-awaited Messiah. Many of his followers were disappointed when he embraced Islam on threat of execution from the Turkish sultan, but many others continued to believe in him. Some of them even converted to Islam, creating the sect known as the Donme - outwardly Muslim, yet clinging secretly to Judaism. Today, a few Sabbatians still secretly hold true to their beliefs, patiently waiting for their Messiah to return and lead them to redemption; they believe that Sabbatai is not dead but merely hidden from human view, despite more than three centuries having passed since he left them.

Rabbi Sabbatai Sevi is one of the most controversial religious figures in all history. In The Lost Messiah, acclaimed author John Freely follows Sevi's trail and the traces of the Jewish cult that grew up around him-one that still inspires belief today. Brilliantly evoking the vanished world of the seventeenth-century Jewish diaspora in the Ottoman Empire, the narrative moves from Sevi's birthplace in Izmir on the Aegean coast of Turkey, to the ghettos of Venice and Rome, the bazaars of Cairo, and the rabbinical schools of Jerusalem and Safed, all the while placing the exotic story into magnificent context with details of the state of the current Jewish communities in these areas. As Damian Thompson wrote in The Mail on Sunday, "Everything in this book is astonishing." The result of thirty years of research and travel, The Lost Messiahdeftly interweaves the work of respected scholars-including the pioneering writings of Gershom Scholem-along with Freely's own firsthand knowledge of ancient and contemporary Turkey and its environs. From the theoretical and practical background of Sevi's messianic movement and its emergence from the mysticism of the Kabbalah, Freely describes the many early unorthodoxies that turned many in Sevi's community against him and then goes on to provide explanations for how and why Sevi nevertheless acquired an international following that continued to support and believe in him-even after his shocking apostasy and conversion to Islam in the year 1666.

Two thousand years ago, an ingenious but dead-broke Roman intelligence officer is coerced into accepting a secret assignment to investigate what's going on in faraway Judea with a political "troublemaker" called Yeshua. At least that's what he's told! Boarding a rebellious little ship, surviving a shipwreck, an assassin's knife and a desert caravan attack south of Caesarea, he arrives in Jerusalem to find that Yeshua has been crucified on the hill of Golgotha between two common criminals. Fascinated, knee-deep already in intrigue, his life hanging in the balance by a thread, he begins his own investigation of the crucifixion and its aftermath. Mission over, escaping to the sea barely ahead of Governor Pontius Pilate's soldiers, he is told the truth about who he really is, why he is still alive, and the real reason he was sent on this strange and perilous task and the Shroud of Turin is on its way to Rome with the secret help of Pontius Pilate's wife.

The author shows how King Josiah's reform program to unify Israel and Judah around the Jerusalem temple, laid the foundation for the exilic thinkers who rescued Judaism from the obscurity of Babylonian defeat and exile.

Discover the Jewish Jesus! Teaching the Judaic roots of the Christian faith, fostering a deeper love for Yeshua, and sharing the Good News of Messiah with both Jew and Gentile. In Awakening to Messiah, Rabbi Kirt A. Schneider takes you on a personal journey, revealing how the Lord has appeared and has spoken to him over the past 30 years. You will vicariously experience some of the challenges he has faced as a Jewish believer in Messiah, including being kidnapped by a famous deprogrammer who hoped to destroy his faith in Jesus. More importantly, he shares lessons that the Holy Spirit has taught him, causing you to both consider and confirm your own beliefs. In this true adventure, you will discover how the Old and New Testaments connect like a hand in a glove!

Hitherto few scholars have treated John the Baptist as an independent personality, apart from the subordinate position accorded him in the Gospels of forerunner to Jesus. The policy of the Gospel writers, crystallized in the saying put into the mouth of the Baptist in the Fourth Gospel, “He must increase, but I must decrease,” was consistently directed to utilizing this historic figure as the supreme witness to the Messiahship of Jesus, and then, his purpose served, to relegate him to the limbo of forgetfulness. Here and there, however, even in the Gospels, we catch a glimpse of a higher role which many of his generation assigned to the Baptist. The history of the Baptists after the death of John is a very strange one, and still remains in many places obscure. Some further particulars, however, have in recent years become available by the publication of part of the literature of the Mandaeans of the lower Euphrates, the present-day survivors of the sect. This short introduction on the Baptist and his disciples will have served its purpose if it has drawn attention to the Messianic character of the life and teaching of John in the period of Jewish history which more than any other was full of Messianic expectation, and also to the undoubted fact that John was regarded as Messiah by a numerous following.