messiah
    n 1: any expected deliverer [syn: messiah, christ]
    2: Jesus Christ; considered by Christians to be the promised
       deliverer
    3: the awaited king of the Jews; the promised and expected
       deliverer of the Jewish people
    4: an oratorio composed by Handel in 1742

Ghost dance \Ghost dance\
   A religious dance of the North American Indians, participated
   in by both sexes, and looked upon as a rite of invocation the
   purpose of which is, through trance and vision, to bring the
   dancer into communion with the unseen world and the spirits
   of departed friends. The dance is the chief rite of the

   Ghost-dance, or

   Messiah,

   religion, which originated about 1890 in the doctrines of
      the Piute Wovoka, the Indian Messiah, who taught that the
      time was drawing near when the whole Indian race, the dead
      with the living, should be reunited to live a life of
      millennial happiness upon a regenerated earth. The
      religion inculcates peace, righteousness, and work, and
      holds that in good time, without warlike intervention, the
      oppressive white rule will be removed by the higher
      powers. The religion spread through a majority of the
      western tribes of the United States, only in the case of
      the Sioux, owing to local causes, leading to an outbreak.
      [Webster 1913 Suppl.]

Messiah \Mes*si"ah\, n. [Heb. m[=a]sh[imac]akh anointed, fr.
   m[=a]shakh to anoint. Cf. Messias.]
   The expected king and deliverer of the Hebrews; the Savior;
   Christ.
   [1913 Webster]

         And told them the Messiah now was born.  --Milton.
   [1913 Webster]

Messiah
   (Heb. mashiah), in all the thirty-nine instances of its
   occurring in the Old Testament, is rendered by the LXX.
   "Christos." It means anointed. Thus priests (Ex. 28:41; 40:15;
   Num. 3:3), prophets (1 Kings 19:16), and kings (1 Sam. 9:16;
   16:3; 2 Sam. 12:7) were anointed with oil, and so consecrated to
   their respective offices. The great Messiah is anointed "above
   his fellows" (Ps. 45:7); i.e., he embraces in himself all the
   three offices. The Greek form "Messias" is only twice used in
   the New Testament, in John 1:41 and 4:25 (R.V., "Messiah"), and
   in the Old Testament the word Messiah, as the rendering of the
   Hebrew, occurs only twice (Dan 9:25, 26; R.V., "the anointed
   one").
   
     The first great promise (Gen. 3:15) contains in it the germ of
   all the prophecies recorded in the Old Testament regarding the
   coming of the Messiah and the great work he was to accomplish on
   earth. The prophecies became more definite and fuller as the
   ages rolled on; the light shone more and more unto the perfect
   day. Different periods of prophetic revelation have been pointed
   out, (1) the patriarchal; (2) the Mosaic; (3) the period of
   David; (4) the period of prophetism, i.e., of those prophets
   whose works form a part of the Old Testament canon. The
   expectations of the Jews were thus kept alive from generation to
   generation, till the "fulness of the times," when Messiah came,
   "made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were
   under the law." In him all these ancient prophecies have their
   fulfilment. Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, the great
   Deliverer who was to come. (Comp. Matt. 26:54; Mark 9:12; Luke
   18:31; 22:37; John 5:39; Acts 2; 16:31; 26:22, 23.)
   

Messiah, anointed