Sophiee:

I loved your point about a lone resurrection story being no proof of jeesus being the Messiah.   I think you made an excellent point which I might add to.   Miracles may punctuate the tenure of the Messiah, but it is not the miracles themselves which are proof of his being the Messiah.  We don't believe Moses or any legitimate prophet simply on the basis of miracles.  Likewise, with the Messianic Candidate.  What proves and verifies those claims is his bringing with him, in his lifetime, the Messianic Age.  The Prophets and Sages foretold of a reunited Israel,  Tribal identity and realignment, the rebuilding of the Third and final Temple, the reestablishment of the Davidic Dynasty, the acceptance by and the worship of all the nations of ONE G-d (and it ain't jeesus or Allah), the return of the Shechina, the return of earth to a Gan Eden state.  All these are merely just the thrust of the Messianic Age and no candidate has ever brought this with him-- be he Judah of Galilee, Yeshu HaNotzri, Bar Kochba (who in the post Temple age was closer to being the ideal than anyone), Shabbatai Tzvi or the great Rebbe (a near second in terms of his erudition and Ruach).  Once they died, with them went their possibility of being the Messiah.

As Rabbi Kahn pointed out in his lecture "the Messiah" (which is available on Aish.com),  xians separated two inseparable and intimately linked realities:  that being the Messiah and the Messianic age.  The Messianic Age (which is categorized by the 18 things the Messiah is to do in his lifetime) must accompany the Messianic candidate.  Only then can anyone rightfully begin to assume that the candidate could be the Messiah.  However, even so, the candidate must still pass the interviewing and confirmation stages which can only be done when there is a standing Sanhedrin.  Only when the job qualifications are met and ratified is the candidate considered to be the Messiah.  And if he is the Messiah, it will be self-evident and completely verifiable.

That being said, a group of people coming 50 years after their "messiah" has died claiming he resurrected and will come again to complete the task, a messiah does not make.  The fact that mankind has deteriorated into abase and wanton murder, pillaging, raping, exploitation, crusades, jihads, pogroms, inquisitions, forced expulsions, a Holocaust, a genocide, continued bloodletting and abject moral justification for its crimes is PROOF that the Messiah has NOT arrived!  Neither has it come in light of all the natural disasters humanity has experienced since Yeshu, wanton disregard for the earth by even his followers, the vagrant raping and polluting of the land by crusaders and missionaries sent in his name, the sheer disdain for anything that cannot be sold or exploited.

The most blatant FACT which irrefutably destroys the claim of anyone's group that their guy is the messiah is the fact that we are NOT sitting in the Messianic Age.  Ten thousand "proof texts" and ten million devotees with their "second coming" blathering can do absolutely nothing to rectify this stinging fact.    

We therefore do not have to worry about "missing out" on anything.  As the sages and the prophets have delineated, once the true Messiah and the true Messianic age have come, ALL creation will be made quite aware of its arrival, sans miracles reported 50 years after the fact, sans billboards plastered abroad with their "the end will come May 21st, 2011" and sans billions of dollars being spent to convert the people to whom the very concept and the very keys of the Messiah were given.   On THAT day, ".... He will be One and His Name will be One".