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POSTED
01 JANUARY, 2007
Where Should the Messianic Movement be in 2107?
by
J.K. McKee
editor@tnnonline.net
One-hundred years from now—should the Lord have yet to
return—the world will be a much different place than it is
today. It will be the Twenty-Second Century. Technology will
have advanced much more than it has advanced in the past few
decades with the rise of the personal computer and the Internet.
Rather than having to dictate to a computer with a keyboard and
mouse, interactive voice communication and some kind of
artificial intelligence will assist people with their daily
affairs. Travel between continents will become even more
commonplace, and it is likely that man will probably have a
permanent presence on Earth’s moon, will have set foot on Mars,
and possibly even other celestial bodies in the Solar system.
But will the ills that plague the human condition have changed
at all? Will there still be poverty, disease, hunger, and
discrimination? Will there still be global terrorism? How will
the United States have changed? Will the center of world power
have shifted from the West to the East? What will the Middle
East look like? Will people have more freedoms, or fewer
freedoms?
Planet Earth in the year 2107 is undoubtedly an issue that few
of us today want to consider, because of the likelihood that
most of us will be dead when it arrives. I doubt that when going
on his missionary journeys in the 50s C.E. that the Apostle Paul
ever frequently asked the question of the legacy his work would
have left for those living in the 150s C.E. Did the Ancient
Israelites, entering into the Promised Land under Joshua, ever
think that their progeny would quickly fall into a cycle of sin,
rebellion against God, and then chastisement? They probably just
focused on the moment that they found themselves, not worrying
about the long-term affects on their grandchildren and
great-grandchildren.
When we look at what God is doing in our day through the
emerging Messianic movement, including the restoration of the
Torah to His people, where will we be in another century? Are we
presently—today—considering the legacy that we will be handing
to those who come after us if the Lord does not return in our
lifetimes? Are we going to leave something that the next
generations of Messianic Believers can build upon and use for
the situations that they will be facing?
God’s Timetable is Not Our Timetable
When any one of
us surveys the Bible, we should discover that many events occur
over a long, drawn-out period of time. Few of us are aware of
the fact that a name like “Israel” (or close derivatives) was
common in the Ancient Near East in 2300 B.C.E., at least five
centuries before the Patriarch Abraham was even born.[1]
What something like this shows the Biblical reader is that Jacob
being renamed Israel is certainly plausible, as Israel was a
name that existed in the ancient period and was not simply “made
up” by someone thinking that he had an encounter with God. But
the fact that when we read Scripture that time works in a much
different way than modern-day people perceive it, presents some
major challenges for us—especially if we are Americans.
Many of us run the risk of looking at things from too much of an
American perspective, where we are completely disconnected from
the fact that the Lord works from century-to-century and not
necessarily from year-to-year. Most of this comes from the
reality that here in the United States we are disconnected from
anything that is ancient. We do not have Medieval castles with a
drawbridge and moat in the countryside. We do not have aqueducts
or Roman ruins we can park our cars next to. We do not have any
of the things that our European neighbors have that are older
than 500 years. We think that when a sports stadium is 30 years
old that it needs to be torn down in favor of a new one. Are we
surprised that our lack of understanding things from
century-to-century affects our view of the Bible? It frequently
causes us to not have a long-term approach to the work that God
has placed us here to do.
Few that I know today are willing to ask the question: Where
should the Messianic movement be in 2107? The majority of
today’s Messianic community believes that by this time Yeshua
the Messiah will have returned and the world will be
experiencing His Millennial reign. We should certainly hope that
this will be the case—but what if it is not? What if we
are found wanting by the Lord for not performing some critical
spiritual work, as a result of putting it off because we thought
the Second Coming would absolutely occur in our
lifetimes? Surely, if we are performing the work of God—and then
the terrible things prophesied about in Scripture come crashing
down upon us—our training from the Scriptures and life
experience should have disciplined us enough so we can properly
encounter whatever we will face.
But in the meantime, as we wait for the Lord’s return, how much
of that spiritual work is not being performed? Consider the
Apostle Paul’s words to the Thessalonicans, who likewise
believed that Yeshua was absolutely going to return in
their lifetimes. Not only did they stop doing the daily work of
God’s Kingdom, many of them quit their jobs, thinking that
Yeshua could come at any time. He candidly tells them that the
person who does not work should not be allowed to eat:
“For even when we were with you, we used to give you this order:
if anyone is not willing to work, then he is not to eat, either.
For we hear that some among you are leading an undisciplined
life, doing no work at all, but acting like busybodies. Now such
persons we command and exhort in the Lord Yeshua the Messiah to
work in quiet fashion and eat their own bread. But as for you,
brethren, do not grow weary of doing good” (2 Thessalonians
3:10-13).
How much work has gone unfinished because of this attitude? How
many of us are ill-equipped to deal with the daily struggles
that the world delivers us as Messianic Believers—to say nothing
of the rise of the antimessiah/antichrist or beginning of the
Great Tribulation?
The modern Messianic movement has been around for almost forty
years. Many attribute its growth to the recapturing of Jerusalem
in 1967 by the State of Israel and the high prophetic
expectations that were on the horizon. Many of the Messianic
Jewish pioneers of the early 1970s likely thought that the world
of the year 2000 would have been much different than the world
they were living in. Certainly, many evangelical Christians in
the past thought that Jesus Christ would have returned by 2000.
Seven years ago there was a great uproar about Y2k and the
thought that it would have brought about the “End of the Age.”
We have all been subject to seeing teachers and ministries rise
up and declare that “this is the year” the Messiah will return,
and this has contributed to some major Kingdom work
not
being completed. Many more previous generations have thought
that they were the ones that would see Yeshua return, but as of
yet, He has not.
The Messianic movement has certainly achieved some major things
in the past forty years. It has restored the need to see Yeshua
the Messiah, our Lord and Savior, as a First Century Jew. It has
allowed us to recognize that Jews who come to faith in Yeshua do
not have to give up their Jewishness. It has shown us the need
to understand that our belief in Yeshua and His teachings are
intimately connected to the Torah and Tanach. And, it has given
rise to many non-Jewish Believers being exposed to the Hebraic
Roots of their faith and the need to live lives fully like the
Messiah and Apostles.
But what has not been accomplished during the past forty years
that could have been? The modern Messianic movement has not been
subject to the same kind of circumstances that the late First
Century Believers were subject to. No Messianic has had to
worship or live in catacombs for fear of his or her life. None
of us have had to worry about the government coming in and
arresting us for keeping Shabbat or eating kosher. To my
knowledge, none of us have been subjected to martyrdom. At most,
we have been harassed for our beliefs and have been socially
ostracized by a few. For some, the lack of resources and
financial support have been the major obstacles. And when
compared to the martyrdom of some of the early Believers, these
things are not that bad. On the whole, we have had it pretty
easy compared to the others who have gone before us, and our
brothers and sisters in the third world who do face martyrdom on
a regular basis.
For a movement that largely considers itself to be one that will
significantly, if not radically, change the face of our
faith—certainly more could have been accomplished in the past
forty years. This is evidenced in some of the current
theological controversies that we are facing today, that will
have to be remedied in the next forty, if not one-hundred years
should the Lord tarry. Do we have a basic theology about God?
Where are all of the Messianic commentaries on
all books
of the Bible? How do we relate to our modern age? These are only
a few of the things that should have probably been addressed
earlier, but are only now being discussed by Messianic
Believers.
As the Lord expands and grows the Messianic movement, we have to
be aware of these things so we can truly be that light to the
world that God has called His people to be. We have to know the
areas where we need to make some major improvement, while
continuing to empower people for the challenges that they face
right now in their daily lives. While we do this, we also have
to avoid the mistake made in the past of force-feeding an
American view of time onto the Scriptures, which demands that
change be almost instantaneous. We certainly need to be looking
for our Master’s return, but not forget the daily work of His
Kingdom that He has imparted to us.
In this article, I have laid out three long-term areas where I
believe we can commit ourselves to improvement
now. This
will not only affect the current work that the Lord has given
us, but will enable us to hand over a legacy to those who come
after us. Should we indeed arrive at the year 2107, substantial
progress should be made in these aspects of our faith.
J.K. McKee (B.A., University of Oklahoma; M.A.,
Asbury Theological Seminary) is the editor of
TNN Online (www.tnnonline.net)
and is a Messianic apologist.
He is a 2009
recipient of the Zondervan Biblical Languages
Award for Greek.
He is author of several books,
including: The New Testament Validates Torah, Torah In the
Balance, Volume I, and When Will the Messiah Return?
He has also written many articles on theological issues, and is presently focusing on Messianic
commentaries on various books of the Bible.
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