Messiah Vissarion?
 Did you know that Jesus Christ has come again and walks this sinful Earth in the remote parts of Siberian Taiga? He has founded and heads a religious movement known as the Church of the Last Testament with its head parish in Krasnoyarsk territory of the Russian Federation.
He has around 4,000 followers, (called Vissarionites), in around thirty villages in the immediate vicinity of his base at Sun City, and approximately 10,000 followers around the world. Born January 14, 1961, in Krasnodar, Russia, Sergey Torop is also known as Vissarion and proclaimed by his devout followers as the Word of God reincarnate! People come to him for healing, and the word of life, of course!
What is your first thought upon hearing this news? You know that the guy is a lunatic and his followers are deluded people, ignorant of the Word of God, right? What gives you authority to shrug this movement off as yet another false religious cult? Your faith that you know what the Word of God clearly predicts about the Second Coming of Jesus Christ is what enables you to throw this cult into the waste basket of human idolatry, right?
You firmly believe that the New Testament supplies you with enough clear-cut details as to what is to transpire upon Jesus’ arrival “in glory”! Until those things are fulfilled, nothing will persuade a good “New Testament” believer that Jesus has come again! You also know that the NT “predicts” the coming of many imposters that will try to take the “faithful” away from the truth!
 Now, let us apply the same logic to the story line of the New Testament itself, shall we? For thousands of years, the Church has been “teaching” us that Jews missed the “first coming of their long-awaited Messiah” and, therefore, forfeited the right and privilege to be God’s Chosen People, (whose place, quite naturally, was taken by the “faithful” Church!).
We know from the real Scriptures, the Hebrew Bible, that the person of the Jewish Messiah is relatively unimportant. His work and his mission, however, are absolutely vital! No believing Jew would have ever accepted any imposter as his Messiah until the predicted events related to his coming had come to pass! Are you following my logic?
 According to the Word of God, the Messiah was to fulfill the following feats:
- Lead the Jewish Nation to the ultimate victory over all the Gentile oppressors;
- Sit as human King over Israel and judge the nations around them;
- Gather in the Jewish exiles from the ends of the world to the Promised Land of Israel;
- Establish Zion and Jerusalem as the political and spiritual center of the world;
- Bring God’s glorious presence back to the Temple in Jerusalem;
- End all wars and usher in the universal peace and harmony;
- Fill the world with the knowledge and worship of One True God, - the Holy One of Israel;
Unfortunately, none of these things transpired either during Jesus’ ministry on Earth or has come to pass till our day and age; - they are still awaiting their full realization! (Even if Jesus is the Messiah, he is yet to fulfill the major work prescribed for him in the Word of God!)
Can you blame God’s faithful people for rejecting the “Messiah,” whose ministry:
- Advocated scrupulous taxpaying to the hated Roman oppressors. (Gospels portray Jesus’ entire family as loyal tax-payers to the Caesar!);
- Prescribed slavish obedience to the Gentile usurpers (the Greco-Roman occupiers);
- Resulted in the longest-lasting and most cruel dispersion of the Jewish Nation!
- Occasioned the desolation of Zion, Jerusalem and the entire Land of Israel;
- Led to the destruction of the Holy Temple;
- Caused more wars and bloodshed than any other religion;
- Filled the world with Trinitarian idolatry thus taking the Gentiles farther away from the One Living God of Israel!
Besides, the Holy Scriptures give us a stark warning concerning anything and anybody that may take our devotion from the Living God of Israel! (See it in Deuteronomy 13).
 So, just as you deem preposterous the case of Russian Jesus Christ, a.k.a. Vissarion (the Word of God in flesh), so think critically and biblically on the issue of Jewish rejection of the Church’s messiah as well! As a Christian you would have to reject “Messiah” Vissarion’s claims to divinity on the same basis and for the same reasons that the Jewish monotheists have consistently rejected the Church’s claims that Jesus is the Messiah promised in the Jewish Bible!
Salvation, beloved, comes only from the Living One of Israel. Only His Name is awesome and salvific! Only by coming to the LORD God of Israel, embracing His Torah and life of obedience to His commandments can we become His children, marching fearlessly onto life everlasting!
Are you in a good company?
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