Rebuking & Rebuked (part 1 of 2)

He asked them, “But who do you say that I am?”  Peter answered Him, “You are the Christ.” – Mark 8:29  (NET)

Regardless of when the very popular book of Daniel had been penned (whether in the time of Daniel or a few centuries later), a denizen of first century Israel, with messianic expectations while living under the boot of Rome, would hold to the idea that it had been nearly five hundred years since the time that the prophecy of Daniel’s seventy weeks of years (four hundred ninety years) was thought to have commenced.  Accordingly, there was a general understanding that the time had come for God to act “to put an end to rebellion, to bring sin to completion, to atone for iniquity, to bring in perpetual righteousness, to seal up the prophetic visions, and to anoint a most holy place (Daniel 9:24b).  In that writing, these things are reported to have been said to Daniel, by the angel Gabriel, “concerning your people and your holy city” (9:24a).  So at the time in which the Christ walked the earth in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, in connection with aforementioned messianic expectation, these words from Daniel, for many, had become intimately connected to what the Creator God was finally going to do for His people, for Jerusalem, and for His Temple. 

Owing to this expectation and reckoning of the time (with a range of opinions on when that four hundred ninety year period began), many would-be messiah’s had risen up in Israel before Jesus’ day (others would continue to rise up after His day as well).  Yes, because Jesus was ultimately rejected as Israel’s Messiah, with that rejection being a very natural response to His crucifixion, other would-be Messiah’s would rise up after Him.  When men would rise up and begin to draw followers to themselves, one could almost naturally expect the claim of messiah to be either claimed by the individual or applied to him by his devotees.  Once the claim was verbalized, it would inevitably be spread around and draw more people to his movement. 

Now generally, this movement was revolutionary and violent in nature.  That is because Israel, by and large at that time, believed that their God was sending His messiah to them for a few specific reasons.  Naturally, there are exceptions and nuances to these generalization, but they believed that in the messiah, the Creator God would bring Israel’s history and purpose in and for this world to a climax.  They believed that the messiah was going to lead Israel to defeat its pagan oppressors and drive them from their land.  They believed that through the messiah, their God was going to re-establish His Temple and His presence in that Temple, so that the Lord God would dwell in their midst as had been long-promised.  They believed that their God was going to establish a new creation.  They believed that at long last, Israel’s exile, in which they did not control their land---their inheritance---was going to be brought to an end.  They believed that Israel was going to be set in power and authority over all nations. 

In their minds, the coming of messiah, and the working of messiah, was quite naturally going to involve and require a popular uprising that would be sparked and lead by the messiah himself.  Owing to hundreds of years of foreign subjugation, both inside and outside their land, there were many in Israel who eagerly looked forward to being able to participate in such actions.  So it is natural to conclude that any man who believed himself to be that messiah, and whose followers believed him to be that messiah, would want to noise such things abroad, in order to draw men in for the purpose of fighting in the battle to come, in which their God Himself was expected to have a heavy hand.  Indeed, that had largely been the case up to that point, so why would it be any different for Jesus?  Messianic aspirants had long attempted to rally fervent nationalistic support around the images and language of revolution achieved by the taking up of arms, to fight alongside their God.  Since Jesus had already drawn huge crowds and fed thousands of people at a time, and since, without a doubt, such things would have been being said about Him already, the disciples probably figured that Jesus represented the best opportunity to rally enough support to meet all of those prevailing expectations.