Rastafari Greetings
November 2nd sees us, as every year, celebrating the prophetic and wonderful event of the Coronation of His Imperial Majesty Qadamawi Haile Selassie who fulfils the promises made to Israel through the words of the prophets of the past.
With the titles of King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, Elect of God and Light of this World, Ras Tafari Makonnen is anointed with holy oil and takes his baptismal name Qadamawi Haile Selassie, The First – Power of the Trinity.
The Orthodox Church of Ethiopia, the family that preserves the form of Christianity closest to that of the origins, crowns him Negusa Negast, or King of Kings, Emperor of the oldest Christian kingdom on Earth. His Imperial Majesty is now the only ruler who sits on the throne of King David and Solomon of which he is in fact the direct descendant without interruption.
His Coronation ceremony takes place in the style of those of Saul and David. The spiritual intensity of this event is such as to inspire reflections and curiosities in the spirits of many Christians around the globe.
His titles, His lineage, the fact that His kingdom was considered the new Israel, the deep Christian tradition from which He comes, and numerous other reasons, cause people to search their Bibles if He could really be the Messiah returned to the world in His kingly characters.
The first Rastafari bredren in Jamaica had grown up within a Christian education but with an anti-colonial mentality. They also remembered well the sermons of Baptist preachers announcing the imminent return of the black Christ. After extensive research and an intense period of revelatory meditation, these early Rastafari evangelists declared to the world for the first time that Haile Selassie The First was in truth the Christ in His second coming.
Theirs was not an invention but a revelation.
The Old and New Testaments in fact announce that the Messiah, after His first appearance, will have to return to Earth again and in His second coming He will be a king. The exact term, in the language of Ethiopia, is Negus Mesih, the King Messiah.
The expectation of the King Messiah is the fulcrum, we could say, of the whole Bible. He will come as a sovereign to establish a messianic kingdom, founded on law and justice according to the will of the Father. His will not be a symbolic or metaphorical realm but a real country, a people, a place, a nation.
The Christian tradition is full of references, clues, prophecies and predictions of the Messiah’s return.
However, we know that the expectation of the King Messiah was born well before Christianity and is, in fact one of the fundamental precepts of Judaism.
In the past, we have dedicated various studies and reflections on the expectation and then messianic manifestation in a Christian environment and we will clearly continue to do so. This meditation today, however, wants to explain instead how Judaism and his Sages foresaw the coming of the Messiah.
In other words: according to Judaism, what are the traits and characteristics that allow us to recognize Meshiach, the Messiah?
A good question, not exactly obvious or simple. For centuries and centuries, Jewish sages have devoted themselves to delving into the question in depth. They wrote, commented, questioned, debated, speculated, studied the prophecies in depth to ensure that the advent of the Messiah King could be recognized and celebrated. It is precisely today that, on the commemoration of the Coronation of the King of Kings Qadamawi Haile Selassie, reading these words makes more sense than ever. Obviously, speculation on the Messianic expectation is a vast topic within the Jewish landscape and clearly, we will not be able to address all its aspects in these few pages. We will therefore focus on limited but fundamental elements with the promise of continuing to deepen the subject in the future.
Talking about the coming of the Messiah is such a vast field that we have to choose from which perspective we look at the subject. In an attempt to introduce a sort of “portrait of the Messiah” that the Jewish tradition has made over the centuries, we will start from the essential characteristics that the Anointed of Israel should have and compare them with the divine person of Haile Selassie The First, the Negus Mesih.
To do this we will analyse the sources of Jewish Kabbalah, Hasidism and Jewish mysticism.
Read the full document here:
The-King-Messiah-according-to-Judaism-ancient-mystics.-Ras-Julio.pdf
