Christ. He forbade the demons
He had cast out of those possessed to
confess that He was the
Christ (Luke 4:41). And when Peter—in reply to
Jesus’ direct question
“Who do you say that I am?”—responded that He
was the Messiah, Jesus
strictly commanded the disciples to tell no one
that He was the Christ
(Matthew 16:15-16, 20).
He answered the question
of the imprisoned John the Baptist (“Are
You the Coming One, or do
we look for another?”) by directing him
to the proofs of His
messianic claims—His teachings and His works
(Matthew 11:2-6).
But there were a few
occasions where He affirmed His messianic
identity quite plainly.
For example, He revealed who He was to the
Samaritan woman at the
well. “I know that Messiah is coming,” she
told Him—to which Jesus
responded, “I who speak to you am He”
(John 4:25-26). Even at
the beginning of His ministry, He accepted the
confession of His first
disciples when they acknowledged Him to be the
Messiah (John 1:41-50).
Jesus privately on
occasion accepted the titles “Messiah” and “Son
of God,” but publicly He
avoided such designations. What He would
have intended by these
titles and the way in which the Jews would
have taken them were two
different things. Jesus couldn’t deny who
He was nor what He
intended to do, but He was careful to explain
the nature of the future
Kingdom and dispel misapprehensions about
His mission.
Jesus understood what His
people were looking for in a Messiah. It’s
probably partially for
that reason that He usually refrained from claiming the title for Himself and
discouraged others from using it. To fulfill
the mission of His first
coming, He did not want to spark a popular
uprising of Jews anxious
to establish their own independent kingdom
against the despised
Roman rule at that time.
Moreover, had Jesus proclaimed
Himself as the Messiah, it would
have provoked immediate
confrontation between Himself and the Jewish and Roman authorities, thereby
bringing about His execution prematurely. Yet when it was time, Jesus affirmed
to both the Jewish and
Roman authorities that
this was who He was.
Jesus the King
At Jesus’ trial the high
priest asked him, “Are You the Christ, the Son
of the Blessed?” Jesus
answered: “I am. And you will see the Son of
Man sitting at the right
hand of the Power, and coming with the clouds
of heaven” (Mark
14:61-62). The high priest immediately accused Jesus
of blasphemy and
deserving of death (verse 64).
Yes, Jesus was indeed the
Messiah, sent from God and born to be king.
He made this fact clear
when He stood before Pilate. However, Jesus had
preached the Kingdom of
God rather than the kingdom of Israel.
The Jews accused Him
before Pilate of claiming to be “Christ, a King,”
which would make Him a
direct threat to Roman authority (Luke 23:2).
Pilate, concerned about
this allegation, asked Jesus about the charge.
Jesus answered by saying,
“My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, My servants
would fight, so that I should not
be delivered to the Jews;
but now My kingdom is not from here” (John
18:36). Pilate pressed
Jesus further, asking if He were indeed a king.
Jesus replied: “You say
rightly that I am a king. For this cause I was
born, and for this cause
I have come into the world” (verse 37).
However, Pilate got the
impression that Caesar’s kingdom was under
no threat from Jesus.
Yet, in the end, the Jews convinced Pilate to have
Him executed on the
grounds that He claimed to be a king (John 19:12).
Pilate even had the title
“Ki n g o f t h e Je w s ” placed above Jesus’
head as
He was crucified (verse
19-22).
After having ordered
Jesus to be scourged, Pilate brought Him out to
the crowd and announced,
“Behold your King,” apparently thinking the
heinous beating He had
endured would satisfy them. “But they cried out,
‘Away with Him, away with
Him! Crucify Him!’ Pilate said to them,
‘Shall I crucify your
King?’ The chief priests answered, ‘We have no
king but Caesar!’” (John
19:14-15).
They didn’t recognize
their own King.
The future Kingdom
Jesus plainly told Pilate
His Kingdom was not then, not there. It
would not be one of the
kingdoms of this present world—of this present
age of man.
But there is a future age
coming, in which His Kingdom will
be established on the
earth to rule all nations.
Many prophecies about
Jesus’ role as the Messiah were indeed fulfilled by Him during His 3 & HALF
year ministry. But the
fulfillment of many
more—those about the
establishment of the Kingdom of God over the
whole earth—are
yet to be fulfilled
by Jesus Christ.
When Jesus began to speak
about the Kingdom of God, the people
did not fully understand.
In the thinking of most first-century Jews, there
was no distinction
between the prophecies of the Messiah’s first coming
and those of His second.
To the people of His day,
the prophecies of the Messiah and the Messianic Kingdom were like looking at
the stars. They all appear to be as a
canopy above us, all
about the same distance. But in reality there are vast
distances between the
stars. With the naked eye, we cannot tell which
ones are closer and which
are farther away. The messianic prophecies
Jesus Christ: The Real Story
appeared like that to the
Jews. Most expected all prophecies to be fulfilled
in a single coming of the
Messiah.
His second coming
Although most people
missed Jesus’ first coming,
no one
will miss
His second. Jesus said
all the people of the earth “will see the Son of
Man coming on the clouds
of heaven with power and great glory”
(Matthew 24:30).
But when He comes the
second time, will He be accepted then? What
will people expect? Will
the Jews think that He will come just to them?
Will Christians think
they are going to be taken away from the earth?
Will the world think He
is an invader from somewhere?
Jesus gave a vision to
His apostle John, recorded for us in the book
of Revelation. In it
Jesus completes the prophecies He gave during
His earthly ministry.
It’s most interesting to note that
He will not be
accepted by the world the
second time,
just as He wasn’t
accepted at His
first coming. When He
comes the second time, He won’t come as one
announcing
the Kingdom of God, He
will come as Ruler to
establish
the Kingdom of God!
Make no mistake—the
nations will again reject Him. He speaks of
the time of His return as
being “the great day of His wrath,” when the
nations are angry at
God’s intervention (Revelation 6:16-17; 11:17-18).
Leaders of the world will
“gather
...
to the battle of that
great day of God
Almighty,” in which they
will fight against Him (Revelation 16:14).
At Jesus’ second coming
He is pictured as One who “judges and
makes war” (Revelation
19:11). He will “strike the nations” with a sword
and tread “the winepress
of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God”
(verse 15).
Such passages make it
clear that the world will not receive Christ with
open arms when He comes
back. This is the other side of the picture of
Jesus that is not taught
very much today. When He returns, He will meet
with a hostile reception
from the world—just as He did the first time.
This leads us to ask the
question, do we really know the real Jesus?
Do we really know what He
is doing? Are we really preparing ourselves
to be accepted and
rewarded by Him when He establishes His Kingdom? And what is that Kingdom all
about? We’ll address those crucial
questions in the next
chapter.
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