i

The renunciation

In a recent post I noted the obscenity of the Papal dismissal of the crucifixion.  But it would be unfair of me to criticize the Pope and ignore the excesses at the heart of modern Protestantism.  The Pope is not alone in redacting whole chapters of the life of our Messiah.  Conservative Protestant theology has taken possession of an equally distasteful renunciation of the Messiah, a renunciation which goes unnoticed because it has been so thoroughly established in the culture of the last century, so well prepared in the preceding centuries of Catholicism.

The conservative Protestants do not wait for the crucifixion to demean their Lord.  They start a week early, on what is called Palm Sunday, the day of the ritual entry of Yeshua into Jerusalem riding on a donkey, in fulfillment of the prophecy of Zechariah.

His entry on a donkey was a culturally explicit declaration that he entered the city as king.  Accordingly he received the honor and adoration of the people as their king:

“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!  Peace in heaven and glory in the highest.”[1]

And, more specifically,

            “Blessed is the king of Israel.”[2]

And, indicating that he was seen as the rightful heir to the throne of David:

“Hosanna to the Son of David.”[3]

Were the people of Jerusalem guilty of hyperbole when they hailed Yeshua as their king?  The priests thought so, therefore they asked him to rebuke and silence his followers.  Yeshua responded with the suggestion that this was a moment which no force of history could impede:

“If they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”[4]

Yes. The arrival of Yeshua as king over Israel was so certain and so fundamental to the history of all the world, that, should we fail in recognition, then nature itself feels the wound and must give witness.  It is inconceivable that Yeshua would have accorded himself the form of entry into Jerusalem as king, coupled with the receipt of praise as king, were it not already certain that he, on his way to the cross, was in fact in full possession of his royal role and character.

Then what is the affront of the great majority of conservative Protestants and fundamentalists?   It is that they deny that Yeshua is king upon the eternal throne over Israel, transcendent Israel, the Israel of God.  Nor do they recognize the existence of this Israel.  They see only genetic Israel and the geopolitical construct of recent decades.  They seem to imagine that a seat of royal authority must be a gilded throne within view of the masses.  They fault the Creator of the universe for not having an office in downtown Jerusalem.  They confuse transcendent Israel with an earthly fabrication along lines of Zionist politics and genetic descent.

It has not always been so.  Prior to this century it was common to find members of the church who, given in their hearts to the Messiah of Israel, and not genetically Jewish, still saw themselves as citizens of the transcendent Israel of God.  Witness this hymn of John Newton[1725-1807]:

Glorious things of thee are spoken,
Zion, city of our God!
He, whose word cannot be broken,
Form’d thee for His own abode:
On the Rock of ages founded,
What can shake thy sure repose?
With salvation’s walls surrounded,
Thou may’st smile at all thy foes.

Bless’d inhabitants of Zion,
Wash’d in the Redeemer’s blood!
Jesus, whom their souls rely on,
Makes them kings and priests to God.
‘Tis His love His people raises
Over self to reign as kings,
And as priests, His solemn praises
Each for a thank-off’ring brings.

Saviour, if of Zion’s city
I through grace a member am,
Let the world deride or pity,
I will glory in Thy name:
Fading is the worldling’s pleasure,
All his boasted pomp and show:
Solid joys and lasting treasure,
None but Zion’s children know.

For John Newton, Zion is the home of all children of God, and we, the children of Yeshua, are to the manor born.  Like Abraham, Zion is our home, whether or not it is occupied by others, for we who have eternal life occupy the eternal promise which, in His own time, God will fulfill.

Corruption crept into Protestant thinking.  Belief in the kingship of Yeshua was thrown aside.  Toward the middle of the nineteenth century John Nelson Darby, [1800-1882], an Irish Anglican priest, began to formalize a theology which rested on 1.] the complete separation of the church and Israel, 2.] the belief that Yeshua came as “candidate” for kingship but was rejected by the Jewish people and so returned to heaven in failure, [his hopes dashed?], and 3.] a belief in two completely different destinies for genetic Israel and the church, the church to be raptured up into heaven at the beginning of the final seven years of tribulation, the Jews to remain on earth and tough it out, battling the Beast Kingdom, compensated only by the fact that they are finally rid of those annoying gentiles.  Such a theology has great utility to the Zionists, and brings great pleasure to the architects of Catholicism.

It is useful to the Zionists because it gets Protestants to back off from Israel and abandon their claims upon its destiny.  This allows the secular Zionist to claim for himself, on genetic grounds, all the ancient promises, in particular the promise to Abraham of a land “from the River of Egypt to the Euphrates.”

It is pleasurable to Catholic ambition because it causes Protestants to abandon every earthly claim to the kingdom of God and the promises to Abraham.  As consequence, the Messianic hopes of the church can remain in heaven, up in the sky: this sky within which the Catholic church has sequestered Christ since its inception.  Like the Zionists, therefore, the Vatican also is free to pursue its earthy objectives.  [It has always been the program of the Catholic institution to offer mankind the semblance of the knowledge of God while inserting itself between man and God and usurping to itself the power and authority which rightly belong to God alone, even making the Pope the Vicarius Filii Dei, the” Representative of the Son of God,”  the vicarious substitute for the presence and rule of Christ in the world.  They even ordain each priest with the blasphemous phrase, Tu es alter Christus, “you are another Christ,” further displacing Christ in their cosmology.]

As for the Protestants, this recent deformation of their theology, known academically as “premillennial dispensationalism,” renounces the kingship of Yeshua and hardly deserves a rebuttal, any more than we would wish to debate Scripture with that false prophet, Pope Francis.  Only let it be known that their impoverished line of thought has nothing to do with what is actually written in Scripture.

Nevertheless, Darby’s anemic philosophy broadly prevails within the halls of conservative Protestantism.  On the heels of Darby, who was not widely known, came C.I. Scofield and his vastly popular Scofield Reference Bible in which, through copious footnotes, he and his accomplices interpreted all of Scripture in the light of their redefinition of Israel and the church, in light of their gross mishandling of the triumph of Yeshua at the cross.  So who were his readers to believe? the Expert? or their own eyes?  In laziness they chose “the Expert,” by the thousands.  And with them went the leaders of the Evangelical church and the seminaries.

 

ii

Peter affirms the kingship of Yeshua

Anyone with a basic command of the English language and the ability to think for himself can figure out the falsehood of their pre-tribulation rapture by reading I Thessalonians 4.13-17 and II Thessalonians 2.1-10.  [They can also read the article, Boiling Frogs and the Return of the King, on this blogsite.]

Anyone who thinks Yeshua came as “candidate” for kingship has never read the Bible.

Anyone who thinks that the church of Yahveh and the Israel of Yahveh are mutually exclusive has done nothing but listen to sermons rather than read the Bible.

Anyone who wants to know if Yeshua is on the eternal throne at this moment should read carefully the following Scriptures – and should make personal discovery of the politics of Yeshua through swearing fealty to his person, through kneeling before him who is seated on the heavenly throne, and through opening the heart to the commanding presence of his Spirit.

On the Day of Pentecost when the Spirit of God first descended in power upon the people of God in Jerusalem, Peter addressed the onlookers, explaining that this was the fulfillment of the prophecies of Joel that the Spirit would be poured out.  Then he told them that even though they, the people of Israel, had crucified Christ, yet God had not abandoned Yeshua to the grave and he had risen from the dead.  Peter then reminded them that David also had prophesied about the coming Messiah, the coming anointed king, and had said,

“that God had promised him on oath that he would place one of his descendants on his throne.”[5]

Peter then continued to explain how recent events were the very groundwork of the fulfillment of the Messianic prophecy:

“Seeing what was ahead, he [David] spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to the grave, nor did his body see decay.  God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of the fact.  Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear….Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Yeshua, whom you crucified, both Lord and Anointed King [Christ].”[6]

Yes, Pentecost and the pouring out of the Holy Spirit is the evidence that Yeshua is on the throne of heaven reaching out into all the world to all his subjects in power and healing and instruction.  The Holy Spirit is the matrix and the cement of the kingdom through which Yeshua is able to rule in our hearts as no other king can rule.

Catholics are willing to call Yeshua king as long as he stays at a distance, the tragically abused child of their “Queen of Heaven.”  Their churches often have Latin slogans naming Yeshua as Rex, though not king of the Jews but king of “the kingdom.”  [Rex Regnum Sum.]  This causes them no pain because Yeshua has been shelved in the heavens, co-opted by his mother Mary, and now the Pope wears the actual crown of authority.  In fact his blasphemous crown has three rings or tiers, signifying that he has taken upon himself ultimate ecclesiastical authority, ultimate temporal authority, and ultimate cosmic authority!

Protestants are willing to see Yeshua as their coming king, while in present time he is merely their personal savior.  They expect him to have royal authority in the future, although for all their skill in interpreting the Bible, no one identifies the scenario of the future coronation.

 

iii

Daniel identifies the kingship of the Messiah in the course of history

Daniel, however, received from God quite a different timeline.  For Daniel the royalty of the Messiah and his kingship over his people does not come at the end of history.  It all comes about within the course of the political doings of the kings of the earth.

In the second chapter of the book of Daniel, we find him interpreting a dream of Nebuchadnezzar.  The king has envisioned a statue with a head of gold, chest and arms of silver, belly and thighs of bronze, legs of iron, feet partly iron and partly baked clay.  Prophetically, Daniel shares the divine interpretation that the elements of the statue represent the great kingdoms of history, beginning with Nebuchadnezzar as the head of gold.  The subsequent kingdoms are now recognized as the Medo-Persian Empire [silver], the Greek Empire [bronze], the Roman Empire [iron]… and a later confederation of Rome with other powers, in a ten part division…sounding something like the coming partnership and dominion of the Vatican [Rome], the UN, and Islam [OIC].  And where does the kingdom of Yeshua fit in?  Daniel describes its entry and the outcome.

Daniel says to Nebuchadnezzar  that

“while you were watching [the statue], a rock was cut out, but not by human hands.”[7]

In the interpretation Daniel explains,

”In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people.”[8]

As for the outcome, in the dream it was noticed,

“It [the rock] struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them.  Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were broken to pieces at the same time and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer.  The wind swept them away without leaving a trace.  But the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth.”[9]

As interpretation, Daniel says,

“It [the kingdom created in the time of those kings] will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever.”[10]

In other words it is in the course of history, not at the end of history, that we are to find Yeshua as king over his people.  Yeshua first appeared as king within the dominion of Rome.  Now, in a world where every national leader kisses the ring of the Pope, we are in the amalgam of Rome with “baked clay.”  And throughout all this we see the remnants of Babylon and Greece and Persia.  But, in transcendence, the kingdom of Yeshua is more real than every kingdom.

Gideon had thirty- two thousand nominal soldiers, but God told him to take only three hundred tested soldiers.  Three hundred were given victory over the entire army of Midian.  So for us today.  The handful of faithful on earth will march with the armies of heaven and in the coming years will see the victory of Yeshua over the nations who cynically join themselves together, thinking that they will take ownership of the earth.

 

                                                            iv

Prophetically, David sees God’s chosen king besieged by the nations

The second Psalm similarly creates a picture of the Messianic king who has not yet assumed power over brick and dust, who, as Lord over a transcendent Zion, is also “in the time of those kings,” beleaguered by national powers in opposition to his sovereign power.  It is especially now, in the approach of the new global society, that we see revealed the depth and ancient roots of the conspiracy of rebellion to establish a world without the laws of the covenant and without the people of the covenant:

“Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain?  The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the Lord and against his Anointed One.  “Let us break their chains,” they say, “and throw off their fetters.”  The One enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord scoffs at them.  Then he rebukes them in his anger and terrifies them in his wrath, saying, “I have installed my King on Zion, my holy hill.”[11]

Be he in the dust of Zion or on the heavenly throne, the living Messiah, Yeshua, rules substantially in the hearts of his subjects through the power and presence of his Spirit reaching into us and binding us to himself with cords of steel.  We are the ones who have the responsibility to stand in our faith, to own the covenant and to live as the people of the covenant.  Only ignorance and cowardice can cause people to abandon a covenant sealed by the blood of Yeshua.

 

 

                                                                        v

The anointing of Yeshua

The great truths of Scripture, the ponderous informing moments in the life of our Lord, are not intelligible to the masses.  No matter what we have been taught, the great truths of faith are esoteric, not exoteric.  Yeshua delighted in making himself obscure to those who claimed they knew it all.  And when Peter saw what others could not see, Yeshua remarked that it was only through the voice of the Father that he could know such things.

To anyone who does not know Yeshua intimately, the cross is a mystery.  Similarly the anointing of Yeshua is not apparent to the eye of the world, as it expects to witness the affirmation of a Westminster Abbey, of pomp and ceremony.  The anointing of Yeshua is esoterically and spiritually perceived.

To anoint is to ordain or to consecrate.   To ordain is to select and, by virtue of authority, to appoint.  To consecrate is to set apart, to devote.  Mere application of substance, even special oil, by a person without specific authority, could not make anyone the Messiah.   And what oil would the Father use to add gravity to his appointment and consecration of his Son as ruler over his holy people and ruler over all Creation?  Surely nothing could be more grave than his own hand and his own word.

David could not have been anointed by Samuel as king on the throne of Israel, were it not that Samuel acted under the direction and command of God.  Through Samuel, Yahveh himself chose David.  The oil of anointing was merely a witness to the presence of the voice of Yahveh in the selection.

In the appointment of Yeshua, the voice of Yahveh alone, emanating from the heavens, is sufficient.  That moment in which Mary of Bethany broke open the costly container of nard and anointed Yeshua was a moment of powerful significance in the heart of Yeshua.  But it was not within her sphere of power to anoint Yeshua as Messiah. She was a simple woman enacting a very special custom of appreciation.  Yeshua said that her act had special meaning as it looked forward to his burial.  But she did not anoint him as Messiah.

Only the Father can own the authority to choose and appoint and devote his Son to the role of eternal king over his holy people.  Whether or not there has been or is yet to be a day of visible anointing with oil is not a determinant factor.  What is determinant is the explicit act of the Father to designate Yeshua as king over his holy people.

King David had three anointings.  David’s first anointing occurred on the day that Yahveh revealed his choice of David to Samuel.  He was definitively chosen to replace Saul as king over Israel, though the assumption of power was yet to come.

“Then the Lord said, ‘Rise and anoint him, he is the one.’  So Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the presence of his brothers, and from that day on the Spirit of the Lord came upon David in power.”[12]

It was not just a tentative or nominal anointing as evidenced by the fact that “the Spirit of the Lord came upon David in power.”  Prior to the anointing David was a shepherd.  Subsequent to the anointing he was a prince of Israel surrounded by a hedge of God’s presence and power.

Soon after the death of Saul, God told David to move to Hebron.  There he received a second anointing.

“Then the men of Judah came to Hebron and there they anointed David king over the house of Judah.”[13]

Now he was made ruling king over the tribe into which he was born, the tribe which has always owned the great Messianic promise.  These were his people.  And it was God’s will to establish him as king over them.

Soon Abner, the commander of Saul’s army, led the way in preparing all Israel to recognize David as their king, even conferring with the elders of Israel and telling them,

“The Lord promised David, ‘By my servant David I will rescue my people Israel from the hand of the Philistines and from the hand of all their enemies.’”[14]

David had been chosen by God to be king over Israel, and he was now ruling as king over the people of Judah.  With the third anointing he would assume sovereign power over all Israel:

“When all the elders of Israel had come to King David at Hebron, the king made a compact with them at Hebron before the Lord, and they anointed David king over Israel.”[15]

If David were not already in possession of royal authority he could not have made a compact [covenant] with the people.  A covenant is an oath defining allegiance between a king and his people.

The life of David and the series of anointings sealing his kingship are given to us as a type and as a key to understanding the anointings of Yeshua.

Up to this time we see Yeshua anointed twice in the course of his life on earth, in circumstances analogous to those of David.  It seems that there may come yet a third anointing when at last the rift is healed between Judah and Israel, so enabling the day when Yeshua will freely exercise his sovereignty over all of Israel.

Yeshua’s first anointing came at the time of his baptism in the Jordan.  In that moment Yahveh clearly marked him as the Messiah of Israel’s expectation, and the power of the Spirit of God was brought upon him.  Yeshua’s second anointing came on the Mount of Transfiguration.  In this moment he was again marked as Yahveh’s chosen king, and his children were called to fealty.   In each of these events Yahveh ordained Yeshua as Messiah by speaking highly significant phrases from the heavens in the hearing of those on the ground.  In each anointing he said the words,

“This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”[16]

We see that these are the words of divine anointing once we see that they, by God’s own word, announce the fulfillment in Yeshua of the Messianic prophecy, and this we will demonstrate.  First, however, to look at the record of the anointing at the Jordan.

Matthew’s account is as follows:

“As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water.  At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him.  And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.’”[17]

Mark’s account is similar:

“At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.  As Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove.  And a voice came from heaven: ‘You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.’”[18]

What must be shown from Scripture is the significance of these words in the speech of the Father.  But we must also consider the account of what Yahveh spoke on the Mount of Transfiguration.

As the time approached for Yeshua to enter Jerusalem and go to the cross, and being near Mount Hermon, he stopped with his disciples in Caesarea Phillippi, a place devoted to the worship of Roman gods.  Surrounded by the artifacts of false gods, Yeshua asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”  and he asked Peter, “Who do you say I am?”

Peter answered, “You are the Christ [ha Mashiach, the anointed king], the Son of the living God.”[19] Peter had come to know this, and, since the anointing at the Jordan, this was explicitly true.  Yeshua assured Peter that this was esoteric knowledge, that “this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven.”[20]  And then Yeshua “warned his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Christ.”  Yes, at this moment he was the anointed king.  But he was not yet in a position to assume power over all the people of the nation.  He was on course toward the assumption of power over the few, over his very own, over those who hold to him and recognize his sovereignty.  Therefore it was important that he not be hailed as mundane Messiah over the mundane nation.  Furthermore he was directed moment by moment toward the cross, which would become his first great royal achievement for his people.  He wanted no pointless adulation to come in the way of his mission.  For this purpose he insisted that his disciples tell no one that he was the Christ.

A week later Yeshua took Peter, John and James and “went up onto a mountain to pray,”[21] probably onto nearby Mount Hermon.

“As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning.”[22]

[Now he had the appearance which John attributes to him[23] in his vision of Yeshua in heaven after the resurrection and ascension into the heavens.]  And now, on the mountain,

“Two men, Moses and Elijah, appeared in glorious splendor, talking with Jesus.  They spoke about his departure, which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem.”[24]

But the Greek for “departure” is exodus, and in this context they are referring to much more than his change of address from earth to heaven, but rather the Exodus which would soon be made possible at the cross as he “would deliver his people from the bondage of sin and bring to fulfillment the work of both Moses and Elijah.”[25]

“Peter and his companions were very sleepy, but when they became fully awake, they saw his glory and the two men standing with him.  As the men were leaving Jesus, Peter said to him, ‘Master, it is good for us to be here.  Let us put up three shelters – one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.’ [He did not know what he was saying.]”[26]

Even though Peter had been given the insight that Yeshua is the Christ, there still seemed to be limits to his understanding of Yeshua’s divinity, and he imagined Yeshua sharing some sort of architectural honor equally with Elijah and Moses.  Then the voice of Yahveh entered the scene in the hearing of Peter, James and John, and in the hearing of Moses and Elijah:

“While he was still speaking, a bright cloud enveloped them, and a voice from the cloud said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.   Listen to him!’”

This time there is an additional appointment: Listen to him!  According to the construction in the Greek, “Listen to him” [Akouete autou] is acceptable but not strong enough.  Because autou is in the genitive case, a preferred translation would be “hearken to him and obey him.”  Yahveh is formally affirming that full authority now belongs to Yeshua.

With this anointing Yeshua is not only marked and set aside for kingship, he is now free to establish a covenant between himself and his people, free to act on their behalf, to undertake the Exodus which will lead them out of bondage to the enemy.  In the final weeks of Yeshua’s life he will act to affirm the actuality of his sovereign power.

 

vi

The prophetic content of the words of anointing

So now at last we look at the origin of the unusually simple words with which Yahveh appointed Yeshua as our great and eternal king.

We look first at one of the earliest Messianic prophecies which refer specifically to the Messianic occupation of royal power.  Here, uniquely, we find Yahveh characterizing the tenure of the role of Messiah in terms of a unique relationship which shall hold between himself and the anointed king over the holy people.  The prophet Nathan relayed to David the words of Yahveh promising David that from his offspring would come the eternal king, and here, as never previously, Yahveh identified the Messiah as his Son:

“’I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, …and I will establish his kingdom.  He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.  I will be his father and he will be my son….My love will never be taken away from him.  Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever.’”[27]

Later, David, prophetically, recalls the words of this foundational prophecy in the words of the second Psalm:

“I have installed my King on Zion, my holy hill.”  I will proclaim the decree of Yahveh: He said to me, “You are my Son; today I have become your Father.  Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession.”[28]

So with the prophecies of Nathan and of David, this unique event in which Yahveh calls someone his Son, this becomes an identifier of the coming eternal king over Israel.  Now then we look at the second phrase spoken each time from the heavens: “With you I am well pleased.” This also has its roots in Messianic prophecy, in Isaiah 42, where Yahveh promises the coming of the one who rules in union with his own will, who is given all the power of the Spirit, and who rules and brings justice to all the earth:

“Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him and he will bring justice to the nations… In faithfulness he will bring forth justice; he will not falter or be discouraged till he establishes justice on the earth.  In his law the islands will put their hope… This is what God Yahveh says – he who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and all that comes out of it, who gives breath to its people, and life to those who walk on it:   ‘I, Yahveh, have called you in righteousness; I will take hold of your hand.  I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles, to open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness.’”[29]

Yahveh, in each event, spoke from the heavens, combining these two key phrases known to be prophetic references to the coming Messiah, and in speaking those phrases in each event, as his Son stood before John and the people gathered in search of righteousness at the river Jordan, and later as his Son stood glorified before the earthly witness of James and Peter and John and the heavenly witness of Moses and Elijah, so Yahveh poured out on Yeshua his absolute appointment of Yeshua as king over his holy people.

 

vii

Yeshua has assumed power over his people, transcendent Israel.  In the coming time he will assume power over all the earth.

Out of the anointing of Yeshua came the affirmation of his royal power.  Yeshua, knowing that the established powers of the Temple were seeking his death, entered Jerusalem as king and received the honor of his people as their true king.  Then, as king, Yeshua went to the cross, so standing in for his people, taking upon himself the penalty of their every shame, setting them free from the curse of death which clings to our sin, bringing to us the freedom to come into the presence of God.   Resurrected from the grave, Yeshua gave us a call to obedient fealty to him, and a mission to carry the gospel of the kingdom into all the world, empowered by the life of his Spirit within our bodies, assuring us at his ascension that,

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.  And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”[30]

Yes, it is the gospel of an actual kingdom that must be held up for men to see, especially at this time as the kingdoms of the world descend into what appears to be a conspiracy of global war. Our hope lies only with our king in his transcendent kingdom.  The renewal of all things awaits the completion of our mission.

“And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”[31]

Why does the church not see Yeshua ruling as king over them?  For the simple reason that they are happy to have his salvation, his counsel, and his blessings, but they reject his sovereign authority over them.

 

L.S. Jones

lawrencestewartjones@gmail.com

[1] Luke 19.38

[2] John 12.13

[3] Matthew 21.9

[4] Luke 19.40

[5] Acts 2.30

[6] Acts 2.31-36 excerpts

[7] Daniel 2.34

[8] Daniel 2.44

[9] Daniel 2.34,35

[10] Daniel 2.44

[11] Psalm 2.1-6

[12] I Samuel 16.12,13

[13] II Samuel 2.4

[14] II Samuel 3.18

[15] II Samuel 5.3

[16] Matthew 3.17

[17] Matthew 3.16,17

[18] Mark 1.9-11

[19] Matthew 16.16

[20] Matthew 16.17

[21] Luke 9.28

[22] Luke 9.29

[23] Revelation  1.13-18

[24] Luke 9.31

[25] NIV footnote on Luke 9.30, NIV Self-Study Bible, Concordia 1986

[26] Luke 9.32-34

[27] II Samuel 7.12-17 excerpts

[28] Psalm 2.6-8

[29] Isaiah 42.1-7 excerpts

[30] Matthew 28.18-20

[31] Matthew 24.14