Our path from Darkness to Light takes us through a time when Scripture was not written. Yet, we find the New Testament opens onto a world very far different from that left by the prophecy of Malachi. A lot of things happened, and I cover the historical details in other places. Here's an outline:
When things got exciting for the Jews, they often wondered if this or that hero was the Messiah. We have signs they wondered about Zerubbabel, as they did the Maccabean brothers. Notice how it seems directly related to their activities in politics, the possibility of delivering on the False Messianic Expectations. Those expectations were partly the result of a very fundamental corruption of the Hebraic world-view with Hellenism.
Notice the crazy thing here. By no means did the Jews resist Hellenism. What they resisted was the overt removal of their supposed ancient ways of doing, not the displacement of their ways of thinking. While it is safe to assume God blessed the half-measure of the Maccabees in returning to Judaism, it had no underlying power to keep that success. The victory was hollow, and collapsed upon itself. The minuscule level of independence under Roman rule was the perfect context for Jesus to show the utter impotence of Hellenized Judaism.
The Messiah had been promised from the very beginning (Genesis 3:15). This was the single thread tying together the entire Old Testament narrative. The sole purpose for Israel's existence, when reduced to its essence, was to provide the channel by which the Messiah would arrive on earth. Once He came, and accomplished His mission, the Nation of Israel and the Covenant of Moses no longer had a purpose. It was closed. But what if Israel had somehow managed to keep their identity, and keep some semblance of faithfulness? It would never have divided. The Northern Ten Tribes would never have disappeared. There would have been no Exile to Babylon. God would have kept her independent in the midst of the maelstrom of wars and political maneuvering by the surrounding nations and empires. Instead, the Messiah would have been born the new King of Israel as an existing kingdom. They would have rejoiced, embraced Him, learned from His more perfect understanding of the Law. The Temple rituals and priesthood would have dissolved peacefully, as the whole world would see what nations should have looked like all along under Noah. But it would not have changed a whit the greater outcome of the Messiah sacrificing Himself for the sins of the world, because somebody would have killed Him one way or another.
Sin will always reject Truth. It's hard to imagine a scene of that sort which still does not destroy Israel. Had they been the willing followers of the Messiah, they would have been attacked by every nation on earth. Instead, the pitiful little human organization He did have was destroyed in that sense. Their focus and purpose moved to the spiritual, and their earthly loss was of no consequence. So instead of a New Israel mostly built from a nation of Hebrew DNA, it was built from a tiny circle of Hebrew men. The rest of the nation was excluded by choices made, one at a time, over many centuries. Their end came with the Cross; they saved their hides, as it were, but lost their souls. The nation into which Jesus was born was a parody of its former self.
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By Ed Hurst
12 May 2009
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