Kingdom Come

“Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.” (Matthew 10:34-36)

The household of the King of Israel was his cadre of ministers.

Jesus is declaring war on the establishment.

By Jesus’ day both the Aaronic lineage of priests and the Davidic royal dynasty had been supplanted by first the Hasmoneans then the Herodians. If scripture was going to be fulfilled, they had to be replaced.

The Hasmonean dynasty was founded by the priestly family that successfully led a revolt against Antiochus Epiphanes. As the Seleucid Empire disintegrated their rule over the province of Judea expanded into Samaria, Galilee, Iturea, Perea, and Idumea, and they took the title “basileus” [Greek for “king” or “emperor]. The dynasty survived for 103 years until Rome turned Judea into a client state with the help of the Edomite Herod, rewarding him with the Herodian dynasty in 37 BCE.

During the era of the Greek empire, its pervasive influence of a secular democracy eliminated the concept of a national god ruling through his “son” the human representative. For the sake of the commoners, the rulers still gave lip service to Marduk or YHVH or “whoever, yawn” but all the rulers had become secular humanists, full of themselves. The priests denied certain cultic rights to the king and increasingly challenged the king in defining the law. In Israel, this power was seized by the Liberal scribes who reinterpreted Mosaic law to adapt to changing cultures brought by the latest dominant empire – Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman – and the Conservative legalistic Pharisees who reserved to themselves the authority to demand rigid adherence to the tiniest possible interpretative detail of the law.

One of the most significant issues Jesus and his followers were dealing with is that the praiseworthy revolt by devout Levitical priests against the false king Antiochus Epiphenes had turned into a coup d’etat against the true king Melchizedek.

“The Lord hath sworn in truth unto David; he will not turn from it; Of the fruit of thy body will I set upon thy throne…

I will also clothe her priests with salvation: and her saints shall shout aloud for joy.” (Psalm 132:8-18)

So “While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, Saying, What think ye of Christ? whose son is he?” he is exposing their anti-sacral kingship stance. And sure enough, they give a legally passable answer but avoid the spiritual when “They [sulkily] say unto him, The son of David.” “He saith unto them, How then doth David in spirit call him Lord?

“For thy servant David’s sake turn not away the face of thine anointed [chosen for a future role, like a President-elect but not yet in office, “Christ” in Greek]

The LORD hath sworn in truth unto David; he will not turn from it; Of the fruit of thy body / AKA son will I set upon thy throne..I make the horn of David to bud [picturesque phrasing for fertiliity].” (Psalm 132:10-17)

The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed / Christ / future sacral king, saying, Let us break their [the LORD and his human sacral king] bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us…Yet…I will declare the decree / make the proclamation through my spokesman: the LORD hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee…I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.”

Be instructed, ye judges of the earth [in context, the Pharisees] Serve the LORD with fear…Kiss the Son [universal sign of unity in submission], lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.” (Psalm 2)

And no man was able to answer him a word, neither durst any man from that day forth ask him any more questions.” (Matthew 22:41-46)

Because the Pharisees were entrenched in a politically expedient relationship with Rome in this lifetime and were only paying lip service to religion as a socially elevated job. Exactly like today. I can’t begin to count all the men I know who don’t have the capacity to get an education and hold down a job that provides the income and comfortable living they enjoy as preachers paraphrasing a dumbed down version of what was taught in a denominationally-biased uncredentialled “Bible School”.

Jesus’ Melchizedekian role over the whole earth is expressed throughout Luke’s biography.

“And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee…[That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying…Galilee of the Gentiles; The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up. From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. (Matthew 4:14-17)]

 “he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read. And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord…And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.” (Luke 4:14-21)

What is not noted in the brief summary of Jesus’ reading from that short chapter was the part stating “ye shall be named the Priests of the LORD…the Ministers of our God..so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations.” (Isaiah 61:6-11)

We must recognize that this is a reprise of the initial offer at Mount Sinai through Melchizedek Moses, which they had rejected.

“And Moses went up unto God, and the LORD called unto him out of the mountain, saying, Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel…

• if ye will obey my voice / commandments indeed, and keep my covenant,
• then ye shall be…unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation.” (Exodus 19:3-8)en

YHVH’s coming King of Israel was Moses’ replacement, the Melchizedek Prophet-Priest-King of the whole earth,

He was the whole package of Son of God Sacral King supreme and total authority of one nation under God, eliminating the power structure of the government officials.

“For the LORD is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king; he will save us.” (Isaiah 33:22)

With this background information, we can best understand the open hostility in the exchanges between Jesus and the self appointed humanist Supreme Court adding to and subtracting from God’s laws.

“Then spake Jesus to the multitude, and to his disciples, Saying The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat [i.e. in MY seat!]…

• they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers…
• all their works they do for to be seen of men…And love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues, And greetings in the markets, and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi / legal scholar.
  • But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ [that’s ME, folks!]…
  • Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ / ME!…
• But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in…
• Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation…
• Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves…
• Woe unto you, ye fools and blind guides…
• Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone…
• Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess…
• Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.
• Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous…ye are the children of them which killed the prophets..Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers.
• Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?…(Matthew 23)

The writer of Hebrews, unquestionably a Pharisee given his knowledge of the law, figured out what Jesus was claiming.

Hebrews is a legal defense of Jesus’s claim to be, not just the king of Israel, but the Melchi-zedek, righteous human ruler of all creation. Visualize a lawyer delivering his opening argument in a courtroom filled with biased opponents and oppressed people yearning to breathe free.

“God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things.” (Hebrews 1:1-13)