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The Greatest Event of All Time–Past, Present, & Future

You can rest in this:  Jesus Christ has finished the work, & God’s Kingdom is now inevitable, not only because God is all-powerful but also because it legally/covenantally must succeed & conquer all, if for no other reason than the fact of Christ’s suffering, death, & resurrection. And the success of God’s kingdom is a glorious, a wonderful, a joyful thing for his covenantally faithful believers. It’s God’s promise of redemption for the earth, the heavens, all mankind. And it started with Christ’s coming to earth – the FIRST time!

Acts 10 describes Peter having a vision about unclean animals and the Lord telling him to eat them. Directly after those visions in a dream appeared at the door men from the Centurion Cornelius, who had seen a vision telling him to send for Peter. Even though Jesus had told his disciples that what goes into the mouth and belly does not make them “unclean” and even though he told them to make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:), Peter still didn’t fully understand what the point was. He still wanted to be a “good” Jew and not associate with the “unclean” Gentiles, and that was good Jewish living . . . before Jesus Christ came to earth and broke down the dividing wall.

“Wherefore remember, that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called the Circumcision in the flesh made by hands; That at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world: But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace; And that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby: And came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh. For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father.” Ephesians 2:11-18.

Even Jesus followed this rule. “And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil. But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away; for she crieth after us. But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel” Matthew 15:22-4.

So, what had happened? Why was it wrong for Peter to eat with Gentiles before Christ came but right for him to do so afterward? Clearly Christ, in His first coming, unleashed something incomparably great in the history of God’s world. It was so great that He was called the 2nd Adam, the new man who would bring about a new creation. This is why it was so important for the Jews of the 1st century to repent, for the kingdom of heaven was at hand. If they didn’t, if they clung to the old way and didn’t follow the prophets of their day – John the Baptist and Jesus Christ, as the Pharisees and Sadducees refused to do – they would be swept away in a new flood of judgment, a very carefully targeted flood of judgment, which I’ll discuss in a later post.

It was the end of the age, the last days of Jewish covenantal dominance of the world. And no matter how small a nation or how tiny or even non-existent their army or civil government or economy, they were the covenantally dominant, chosen sons of God, that is, before Christ, the only begotten came. They were dominant because God saw them, heard them, dealt with them, differently from “the nations.” See Genesis 15; 17; 21; Lev 18:1-5; Deut 14. No longer would God use the Jewish nation to represent Him to the rest of the world. Now his new covenant people in the Church, both Jew and Gentile, would be that. And this was no minor change; it was a massive change, so massive that Jesus would call the transition period like birth pangs – the birthing of something wholly new – and that the upheaval occurring would create tribulation unlike anything before or after those days.

And that leads us to a discussion of the timing of Matthew 24.