In all ages there have been a great many religious usurpers who have caused confusion by the assumption of a prophetic office, have collected a crowd of followers round themselves and have eventually foundered and sunk into oblivion.. Such phenomenon can especially be observed in periods when the coming of the Messiah is tensely expected, as at the birth of Christ and also, significantly, around the middle of the nineteenth century. Judgment of truth and error becomes more difficult for those living at the time. The conservatives and the orthodox, who persist in their old traditions, have always been suspicious of true and false prophets alike, and if ever they commit themselves, it is quite often to the false ones. Was not the founder of Christianity also a trouble-maker, an innovator who disturbed the keepers of the old traditions in their rest? Was not he too rejected and persecuted by churchmen of his time as a usurper, while a Bar-Kochba, whose political activities matched the ambition of the people who had rejected Christ, was later greeted jubilantly as the Messiah? (57:1)

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