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We are now standing with Jesus on the threshold of his ministry, as he began to follow that course of action which should accomplish what the will of God, as revealed to him from the Scriptures, demanded as the first phase of the work of the Messiah. In this phase he was called to function as the Teacher of Righteousness of the Last Days, as the Prophet like Moses, to preach repentance to Israel and reveal the character of the Kingdom of God in which the redeemed would participate. Elijah had come in John the Baptist to present him with the very words to signal the opening of his campaign, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”
The Gospels look back on the activities of Jesus with the help afforded by the prophetic testimonies which the Nazoreans had zealously assembled as well as “created” as proof that he was the Messiah.
As an indication of his immediate function Jesus could use the words of Isaiah, 'The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord bath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord...' (Isa. 58:5). The region in which Jesus began to proclaim his message was in his native Galilee, among people of strongly independent spirit, whose faith and love of liberty made it hard for them to stomach the heathen domination of Rome and the immediate government of Antipas, son of their old enemy King Herod. Galileans were in the forefront of rebellious movements, and though at this time the zealots among them were relatively quiescent, they were ever ready to demonstrate passionately whenever a situation outraged their sentiments, and to resort to armed violence. If at this stage of his mission Jesus let it be known in Galilee that he was the Messiah the consequences could well be disastrous. To be the Messiah the Son of David, we must remember, meant that he was the legitimate king of Israel, to whom the militant elements would readily have rallied. He would openly be committing an act of treasonable sedition and treason which would not be tolerated by Rome and its representatives. However peaceful were his intentions, there would be outbreaks of violence. He would be hunted down by the Government forces, and either killed or seized and crucified. Even if by luck he managed to make his escape abroad the result would still have been complete failure. He would have been Messiah for a day, and patently a false Messiah into the bargain.
All this had long been known to Jesus, though most Christians even today have never given serious thought to the situation he faced. They simply have not realized the political implications, and how explosive the conditions were. But Jesus was well aware of them and proceeded circumspectly. He chose as his headquarters a small town on the shores of the Sea of Galilee which was essentially a commercial center with a fairly mixed population, including Roman and Jewish government officials. Capernaum was not the sort of place where the disaffected and those zealous for the Law of Moses congregated, which a conspirator would be likely to use as his base. When Jesus traveled round the country preaching the highly political as well as spiritual theme of the Kingdom of God along with “repentance and preparation for the imminent appearing Kingdom of God” he was forced to preach in parables, so that the spies and informers who made it their business to be present wherever crowds gathered round a public speaker would be unable to detect anything subversive or inflammatory in what he said. He conveyed that he was speaking cryptically in his parables by adding, “He who bath an ear to hear, let him hear,” in other words, “He who can catch my meaning, let him do so.”
Jesus was not interfered with at this time because so far as the State was concerned he gave the impression of being a harmless religious enthusiast. Some of his sayings, indeed, would meet with the full approval of the authorities. His instructions were excellent for these stubborn rebellious Galileans, and might help to keep them in order. “Resist not evil,” the preacher declared, “and whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.” And “whosoever shall force thee to go a mile, go with him two.” This was with reference to the angaria, military requisitioning of labor and transport. “'Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” Such was types of repentance preached to those in captivity by the Romans.
But Jesus was not acting as an unpaid Government agent, though he was intentionally warning the people against taking the law into their own hands and retaliating. If they resorted to violence, if they even nourished hatred in their hearts, not only would they be playing into the hands of their enemies to their own undoing, they would be abandoning the path God had marked out for them as a 'kingdom of priests and a holy nation' to win the heathen to God. They would be behaving like the rest of the nations, and would be unworthy to share in the Kingdom of God. Many of the Pharisees taught in the same vein.
While his call to repentance was going out to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, Jesus had to take double precautions. He had to prevent the abrupt interruption of his activities, as those of John the Baptist had been cut short, by getting himself arrested and imprisoned as a menace to public security. He had also to guard against some ill-advised contrivance by his followers, or spontaneous outburst by the people, to acclaim him as king. He was to meet with narrow escapes in this connection. In the early part of his ministry, when anyone most unwisely hailed him as Son of David he silenced him immediately. He was in any case walking on a knife-edge by creating faith in his powers of healing. What he was doing could not fail to cause excited speculation about who he was. The people were expecting a deliverer, and flocked to anyone who might be the medium of the fulfillment of their hopes. Jesus denounced the hypocrites and false prophets, and the false Messiahs as well, as much as he did the men of violence. All were misleading the nation and diverting it from carrying out the will of God, trading on the people's emotions and longings. “Wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat. But narrow is the gate and constricted the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.”
Another step Jesus took was to enlist a small band of close disciples. The first group were fishermen from the lakeside township of Bethsaida. We do not know for certain whether Jesus was previously acquainted with some of them, though this is stated in the Fourth Gospel. Men like the brothers Simon and Andrew, James and John, were valuable recruits. They were patriotic and had a simple direct faith: they were physically strong and their personal loyalty could be counted on. Jesus nicknamed Simon 'the Rock' (Kepha, Peter), and James and John 'the Stormy Ones' (Boanerges). They would make a useful bodyguard. They also had boats; so that if danger threatened, or the attentions of the crowds became too overwhelming, a line of escape or retreat was open across the lake to the independent territory of the Decapolis, a league of ten self-governing mainly Greek cities.
By these various devices and tactics Jesus assured for himself, so far as he could, safety and freedom of movement, and opportunity to deliver his message without hindrance. Already he was proving, and we should remark this, a skillful strategist and planner, alert and resourceful. He could be very gentle, but there was nothing meek about him. He is revealed as a man of inflexible determination and keen perception with all the qualities of the born leader.
There was one thing, however, which Jesus may not sufficiently have taken into account, the extent of his fame as a wonder worker. As the days passed into weeks it speedily became evident that his mission was being gravely hampered by the multitudes who thronged to him, not primarily to listen to his teaching, but to be cured of their complaints or bring their relations for healing. Sometimes he had the utmost difficulty in getting about because of the press of people. He was aware that the time available to him was short, and at his present rate of progress the ground he would be able to cover would be very limited.
Some of the things Jesus had to say in defense of his conduct were beginning to antagonize a small but influential section of his audience, the local Pharisees. At great pains this fraternity of devout Jews had labored for upwards of a century to promote a stricter obedience to the Law (the Torah) among the people, so that they might merit God's favor and salvation. This needs to be appreciated by Christians for this was the same work as taught and labored at by Jesus! It was uphill work because there was an ingrained resistance, especially in Galilee, to being told what to do and what not to do. Like the Essenes, the Pharisees among other things regarded the rigid keeping of the Sabbath as imperative, for it was a divine institution marking the difference between the holy and the profane, between Israel and the nations. It was written: “If thou call the Sabbath a delight, the holy day of the Lord, honorable; and shalt honor him, not doing shine own ways, nor finding shine own pleasure, nor speaking shine own words; then ... I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of the Lord bath spoken it” (Isa. 58:13-14).
Now what I say next needs to be fully understood and contrasted with the work of the Pharisees and Jesus. The Essenes had abandoned all present hope of converting the people to the exact performance of the requirements of the Torah, and had withdrawn into their own disciplined camps and communities. But the Pharisees struggled gamely on with their missionary and educational work. Sometimes in their zeal, as is often the way, they lost sight of the spirit of an institution in stressing its strict observance; but their intentions were good. The anti-Semitic writers of the New Testament have purposely severely miscast the Pharisees in the worst possible light. Nothing could be further from the truth as discernible from historical records.
The people listened gladly, but only a meagre handful responded But Jesus understood the whole nation was called to be a Priest of YHVH to the seventy nations and not only a few. Jesus knew time was short and that he needed to reach more than just a few with his message. The decision Jesus took was to appoint twelve of his more intimate followers as envoys (apostles). Their number was symbolic of the twelve tribes of Israel. They were to travel through the country on his behalf. He gave them precise instructions. They were to confine their mission to Israelites, and not visit Gentile territory or enter any city of the Samaritans. They were to travel light and in poverty, as the Essenes did. They were to stay where they were welcomed, but only long enough to deliver their message of repentance and preparation for the imminent appearance of the Kingdom of God. Let us not forget that Israel was to merit based upon their righteousness the fulfillment of prophecies regarding the Kingdom of God. Where they were not received they were not to delay, but shake the dust of that house or city from their feet. “I tell you positively,” he said, “it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Day of Judgment than for that city.” They must exercise the utmost care in their speech and conduct. “Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.”
Many scholars believe that the sending out of the "seventy" is a later adaptation of the sending out of the twelve. After Jesus' Great Commission the story was later changed and applied to what was then understood to be the seventy nations of the world at that time. So it is quite possible that the story of the "seventy" is in reality nothing but the story of the "twelve."
This action on the part of Jesus reveals his recognition of the urgency of his task and that the time available to him was short. Despite these endeavors to make every minute work, however, he had soon to admit to himself that his message had largely fallen on deaf ears. The result of the sending out of the seventy sealed it! The apostles when they reported back told of demons (understood as sicknesses being healed in the first century) being subject to them, but not of any other success. Strangely lacking was any word of "repentance" or the "testimonies of repentance" from those which were sent out to preach "repentance for the Kingdom of God was nigh." It was evident that the call to repentance had largely gone unheeded. By failing in Galilee, his own land, Jesus had lost the whole country. Notice that mankind today is no different. Men flock to hear prosperity messages and to get their healings, but few respond when the message is to tear their hearts and not their garments. Repentance and the return to holiness and living the Commandments of God today is not popular; not was it then when Israel just wanted a quick fix against their Roman persecutors. Jesus saw that Israel needed a spiritual healing more than a physical one. The people were blind to such needs. Modernism, the sin of today, captivated them as it does us today. Repentance is something for other people and “not me.” The message of the seventy, lacking testimonies of tears of sorrow over sin, and the breaking of men’s hearts before God due to their sinful natures, the lacking of testimonies of the seventy indicating there was a spiritual turn around in the lives of the people, made Jesus face the harsh reality that stared him right in the face....Israel was not fit for the Kingdom of God:
Luke 9:62
62 And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God. (KJV)
Through his study of the Scriptures Jesus must have believed that his message would probably be rejected. But he was in duty bound to proclaim it. There was always the hope of a miracle. He spoke more than once of the Prophet Jonah, born at Gath-Hepher in Galilee not very far from Nazareth, whose tomb was a place of pilgrimage. Though God had declared by Jonah that in forty days Nineveh would be overthrown, yet the people (Gentiles no less) repented and turned from their evil way; and God had spared Nineveh and the prophecy did not come to pass. The same thing could happen again. Jesus had at one time had hope and faith that Israel would finally become worthy of her high calling as a Holy Nation and a Royal Priesthood for the world.
But it was not to be. Strangely absent from the culmination of the ministry of Jesus in Galilee, as seen in the analysis of the report of the seventy, was the total absence of any word of repentance. Nevertheless Jesus was deeply moved and hurt at his failure, even though it had not really looked as if he would succeed. And being human he was angry too, angry at the stupidity, the senseless waste, the awful suffering that was bound to come upon his nation. Contemplating this fearful prospect the certainty now of his own fate paled into insignificance.
Jesus found vent for his feelings in bitter and scathing words. “An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was a sign unto the Ninevites, so shall also the Son of Man be to this generation. The queen of the south shall rise up in the Judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, behold, what is greater than Solomon is here. The men of Nineveh shall rise up in the Judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and, behold, what is greater than Jonah is here. Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works, which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the Day of Judgment, than for you. And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shall be brought down to hell: for if the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I say unto you, that it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the Day of Judgment than for thee. Whereunto shall I liken this generation? It is like children sitting in the markets, and calling unto their fellows, and saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented. For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, He bath a devil. The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous, and a wine-bibber, a friend of tax collectors and sinners. But wisdom is justified of her children” (Matt 11:16-19, 21-23; Matt.12: 39-42; Luke 10:13-15, Luke 11: 29-32).
Yet it was of no avail for Jesus to be searingly reproachful, and useless to grieve. Luke alone reports a final effort in sending out seventy disciples to preach as previously he had sent out the twelve. The fact had to be faced that the ministry of Jesus had failed in accomplishing its goal. The Teacher of Righteousness, along with his message of repentance and preparation for leading the world to the Kingdom of God, had been rejected by Israel. The Christian need to understand this; Jesus as their Messiah deliverer was "not rejected" by the people for all wanted to be delivered from the Roman yoke, but Jesus the Prophet from God which brought them a message from God to "repent before the Kingdom of God could come" was rejected. Unhappily it had come to pass as foretold, “By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive: for this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should turn again, and I should heal them” (Isa. 7:9-10; Matt. 13:13-15).
Now, as the prophecies had indicated to Jesus, the second phase of the work of the Messiah would come into operation. There was no time to be wasted in vain regrets. Sadly but resolutely he braced himself to face the future, and carry out God's will to the end. Jesus understood that as every prior failed Messianic Movement had ended in the death of its “leader” so likewise was his fate. It was unavoidable. Jesus knew he would die not. It could NOT be prevented! The Kingdom would not come.
He would not be King. Israel would not repent and be worthy of the Priesthood to all nations. God would not intervene from Heaven and change the laws of nature. The Gentiles would not be at that time coming up to Zion to hear the words of the Torah. The dead will not be raised. The lamb would not be laying down with the lamb; there would not be world peace. And if that was not enough, the Messiah would be killed in a failed Messianic attempt. Israel would fail her day of visitation.
Did people think he was harsh when he refused one would-be follower's request to be permitted first to bury his father, and another's to take leave of his family? The words were drawn from an aching heart when he said, “Leave the dead to bury their dead” and, “No man, having put his hand to the plough and looking back, is fit for the Kingdom of God.”
In the next and final articles in this series I wish to trace in the New Testament what you just read. Upon planting , watering, and tilling the soil in which the Olive Tree of Israel has been planted, and seeing that there was not fruit in due season, Jesus would recognize that Israel had literally cursed itself.
The prophecy of John the Immerse was coming true:
Matt 3:10
10 And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree [Israel being symbolically represented as an Olive Tree in Scripture] which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.
Luke 3:8-9
8 Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance, and begin not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, That God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.
9 And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: every tree therefore which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.
Luke 3:9
In the absence of the fruit of repentance, Jesus had no recourse but to say when finally entering Jerusalem:
Luke 19:41-44
41 And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it,
42 Saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes.
43 For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side,
44 And shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.
He knew he was to die in light of the failure of the seventy to bring a good testimony...that Israel had brought forth fruits worthy of repentance. The prophecies would not be fulfilled. The Kingdom would not come. The Messiah, Jesus, would not fulfill them. YHVH would not allow His will to fulfill them. His agent, Jesus, as the anointed of Israel, would not be recognized as King by all mankind. The failure of the prophecies to be fulfilled in no way takes away for the man Jesus of the Bible.
In an attempt to explain away the failure of the Jewish Scriptures to be fulfilled by those believing Jesus to be the Messiah, the Gentile Church chose to use the Greek translation of the Jewish Scriptures which already been altered by the Greek Jews of Alexandria, Egypt, and began to attribute to Jesus events which were recorded by these Greek Essenic Jews which took such beliefs from their prior Pythagorean and Buddhist heritages. In this way parallels to his live could be read back into these texts and called "fulfillments" because there was no way one could look at the live of Jesus and the Jewish Scriptures as written by the Prophets along with the Writings and say they were fulfilled, let alone by Jesus.
Oral traditions were created about Jesus following his death by these Essenic Greek Jews and later Gentiles as well which found their origin in the mistranslations of the Jewish Bible by the Greek Jews of Alexandria which wrote into these volumes many of their myths of their sun-godmen who were crucified in the cosmos. Only in developing "fulfillments" that coincided with the sun-godmen of the Essene Phythagorean-Buddhists could Jesus be made to look as it he was fulfilling anything. Israel prevent the real fulfillments and the ball is in their court as well today.
The Jewish Old Testament Prophecies laid unfulfilled after his death and remain so today! The Jews familiar with the Tanakh knew it then and know it today. It is the Christians who have the grossly mistranslated Old Testaments in their Christian Bibles who are unaware!
One must understand that the Essenes which retired to the desert in 170 B.C.E. as a righteous Zaddok movement in defiance of the corrupt Temple practices were a far cry from existed as “Essenic beliefs” in the days of Jesus. The best account of this “spiritual de-evolution” that I have ever read or found in Martin Larson who documents the evolution of these Essenes. Let me recommend many of his books which will lay this out for you:
The Essene Christian Faith
The Story of Christian Origins
The Essene Heritage
The Religion Of The Occident
After getting one or all of the above works and reading them, along with books by Hugh Schonfield, a Jewish scholar who believes Jesus to be Messiah, these aspects of which I wrote become crystal clear.
Now in the next article...we will trace Jesus recognition that he was to die following the return of the seventy and the failure of them to recount the repentance of Israel in preparation of the Kingdom of God which was imminently to occur according to Daniel chapter 9.
Shalom.