The Difficulty of Seeing Messiah in the OT

​When you first come to this faith walk, this “Torah Keeping worldview,” you undoubtedly gain a new appreciation for the Tanakh (“Old Testament”). For most Christians, the OT is there to conveniently be used from time to time to prove Jesus is the Messiah, and beyond that, it gets shelved. But when a believer has their eyes opened to the continuing validity of Torah, the OT seems to get a whole new light shed on it.
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One of the difficulties, however, for any student of Scripture, can be finding Yeshua Messiah specifically in the OT. Now don’t get me wrong, I agree He’s everywhere in the OT; but it’s subtle. References aren’t overt most of the time. And this can be difficult, especially when dealing with anti-missionaries. If you quote Isaiah 53 to them, they often say, “Nowhere in Isaiah 53 does it say that’s about the Messiah. It’s about Israel.” While I won’t be addressing that here, I will say that it’s a faulty interpretation for several reasons. (Not the least of which is that it fails to answer the question of how "Israel" can be punished for "our" [Israel's, from Isaiah's point of view] sin).

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