No One Knows The Hour (part 16)

Venturing on to the twenty-fifth verse, and not allowing for a breach in the continuous stream of thought, Jesus can be heard continuing to speak about the Temple and its corrupt rulers (though those who were Pharisees were not necessarily Temple authorities, nor is this necessarily true of the experts in the law, but they would represent that which stood behind the laws and traditions, which was the Temple) when He says “Woe to you, experts in the law and you Pharisees, hypocrites!  You clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgences.  Blind Pharisee!  First clean the inside of the cup, so that the outside may become clean too!” (Matthew 23:25-26)  Though a personal application is surely intended here, one should not allow the personal and individual application to completely override the major focus of the woeful discourse that is on offer from Jesus. 

With yet another statement that could be dually applicable to individual and Temple, Jesus adds “Woe to you, experts in the law and you Pharisees, hypocrites!  You are like whitewashed tombs that look beautiful on the outside but inside are full of the bones of the dead and of everything unclean.  In the same way, on the outside you look righteous to people, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness (23:27-28).  Piling on and making sure that it is well understood that Jesus still has the Temple not only as the setting (in view of His judging speech), He adds “For this reason I am sending you prophets and wise men and experts in the law, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town, so that on you will come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the Temple and the altar” (23:34-35).  With the close of this statement, Matthew and Jesus provide a reminder of the earlier mentions of Temple and altar, giving this portion of the statement even greater weight as it relates to the pronounced judgment.  Jesus then adds: “I tell you the truth, this generation will be held responsible for all these things!” (23:36) 

Now, what would His hearers have understood by “this generation”?  Most likely, they would have understood that phrase in its very plain and literal sense of “this generation,” meaning those that were hearing him would be held responsible for what has been outlined throughout His discourse---they would experience that which represented the Creator God’s judgment.  Jesus then goes on to say, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to you!  How often I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you would have none of it!” (23:37)  Then, while standing in the Temple courts, Jesus makes yet another very clear reference to the Temple, continuing His speech to Jerusalem and saying “Look, your house is left to you desolate!” (23:38)  The house, of course, is the Temple---the house of God. 

The desolation of the house could be a backwards and then-present reference to the fact that the shekinah glory of the Creator God had never rested in this particular Temple from the time that it was rebuilt in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah (though it was an ongoing project), or it could be a forward reference, encompassing the generation to be held responsible and pointing to the desolation of the Temple that would also be its destruction.  Though both are probably legitimate inferences to be drawn from the statement, Matthew’s narrative seems to clearly point toward the latter, as he moves his audience onward to learn that “as Jesus was going out of the Temple courts and walking away, His disciples came to show Him the Temple buildings” (24:1). 

...Like A Gentile Or Tax Collector (part 12)

What comes next in Matthew is rather suggestive that Ezra is in mind at this juncture, as Jesus offers up what has come to be known as the “Parable of the Unforgiving Slave.”  This parable becomes a picture of both the type of treatment desired by Jesus and forgiveness in action.  It does so along with a word of warning of the way that the Creator God will look upon those that do not abide by Jesus’ prescription.  Here, it is appropriate to reflect on the statement offered up by Ezra, originally called to mind through and following his use of “seventy-seven,” reflecting the experience of the returnees from Babylon during the era of Persian occupation, while also serving to adequately describe the prevailing situation in Israel under the Romans, which was “Although we are slaves, our God has not abandoned us in our servitude” (9:9a).  This lines up quite nicely with what will be found in the parable. 

Together with that, in an era in which the cry of Rome, which it sought to put on the lips of all upon whom it foisted its dominion, was “No king but Caesar,” the respondent cry of an Israel that would not be assimilated and subdued was “No King but our God!”  Owing to that, thoughts and hopes and dreams concerning the coming kingdom of their God were current; and of course, Matthew presents a Jesus that is primarily concerned with the advent of the kingdom of His God.  It is in the mindset created by this set of ideas---ongoing slavery, claims concerning kingship, and concerns about a kingdom---with which one presses forward into the parable. 

As an obvious adjunct to what Jesus has just said, with no separation, division, nor delay, the parable begins with “For this reason, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his slaves” (Matthew 18:23).  The king, naturally, is the God of Israel.  The slaves are the people of His covenant.  “As he began settling his accounts, a man who owed ten thousand talents was brought to him” (18:24).  This man is one of the already referenced slaves.  He had an obligation to his king.  However, “Because he was not able to repay it, the lord ordered him to be sold, along with his wife, children, and whatever he possessed” (18:25). 

This demands a reach into the collective memory of the respective audiences, with a recollection of Israel’s obligation under its covenant to be a light to the people of the surrounding nations and to bearing the image of their God in representing His covenant to the world.  Israel had failed to fulfill their end of that covenant, and their ongoing subjection by Rome confirmed that their failure was ongoing.  They did not meet their obligation, so it was understood to be the case that their God had “sold” them into both Assyrian and Babylonian exile, with Rome now playing the role of those two empires. 

Proceeding, Jesus says “Then the slave threw himself to the ground before him, saying, ‘Be patient with me, and I will repay you everything.’” (18:26)  This, because of the mindset and self-identifying history in which the hearers are steeped, is reminiscent of the prayers of repentance and restoration from exile that are to be found in the second book of the Kings, the second book of the Chronicles, Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah. 

These prayers are best summed up with “if My people, who belong to Me, humble themselves, pray, seek to please Me, and repudiate their sinful practices, then I will respond from heaven, forgive their sin, and heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:14).  The audience goes on to learn that “The lord had compassion on that slave and released him, and forgave him the debt” (18:27).  Indeed, in spite of their covenant failures, and because of His faithfulness to His plan of redemption for His people and the world through them, because of their response to this demand, the Lord allowed His people to return to the land, to reconstruct the Temple, and to rebuild Jerusalem. 

...Like A Gentile Or Tax Collector (part 11)

Continuing this look at the usages of “seventy-seven” in Scripture (in connection to the report of Jesus calling for forgiveness to be offered seventy-seven times), in regards to the lambs sacrificed, of which there were seventy-seven as part of the sin offering, reference can be made to the fact that Matthew has already called attention to Jesus as a “lamb led to the slaughtering block” (Isaiah 53:7b) with his reference to the fourth verse of that same chapter of Isaiah’s prophetic work: “but He lifted up our illnesses, He carried our pain,” which is to be found in Matthew 8:17. 

With the sacrifice of Jesus becoming so inextricably linked to forgiveness (which is, in turn, inextricably linked in the historic narrative of Israel to the end of a period of judgment and exile), this connection becomes quite overt, strengthening the insistence that Jesus also has Ezra in mind when He uses this particular number in relation to the offering of forgiveness, which is a point that Matthew is sure to drive home through his tailoring of the narrative.  The twelve male goats that were put forth as a sin offering are easily connected to the twelve tribes of Israel, and by extension to the twelve chosen and named disciples of Jesus.  Naturally then, any talk of “three days,” which is the amount of time spent Ezra is said to have spent in Jerusalem at the initial point of the return (not to mention Ezra’s connection to the end of exile and the rebuilding of the Temple), would immediately call to mind the “three days” between the crucifixion and the Resurrection---the figurative tearing down and re-building of the Temple.   

Finally, as the wider story of Ezra would be under consideration (if indeed Ezra is in view at all), then also in view are thoughts of exile and exodus (Babylonian captivity and return to the land).  Though there had been an official decree by the king of Persia that the Jerusalem Temple was to rebuilt and that the people were to be allowed to return to the land, there was no sense of liberation communicated through the historic works that commemorate this declaration and return.  In the ninth chapter of Ezra, just a few words away from the report of the return to Jerusalem and the associated offerings (according to the way in which Ezra is presented), Ezra reports on the mindset of the people by saying that “Although we are slaves, our God has not abandoned us in our servitude.  He has extended kindness to us in the sight of the kings of Persia, in that He has revived us to restore the Temple of our God and to raise up its ruins and to give us a protective wall around Judah and Jerusalem” (9:9). 

Though they were indeed in their own land and though they had been given a degree of liberty, they were still subject to the king of Persia.  As such, their exodus remained incomplete and their state of exile continued.  So any implicit reference to Ezra would call to mind the general mindset there expressed and quite possibly still held by the people of Israel in Jesus’ time as they lived under the occupation of the Romans.  While they had a degree of liberty (based on the way that Rome operated), in no way would they have considered themselves to be free.  They were ruled over by Gentiles and their tax collectors.        

Just because there is a mention of “seventy-seven” in Ezra, does that really mean that Jesus has Ezra in His purview with his insistence of “seventy-seven” acts of forgiveness that follows His directive to treat an at-fault or offending-but-not-yet-repentant brother as a Gentile or tax collector?  Along with that question, one must continue to consider the potential reasons that stand behind the particular structure that is to be found here in Matthew, as the author uses the words and stories of Jesus to construct an ideal in the church community through which love and forgiveness will be on offer, while also being sure to deal with the continuously contentious issues surrounding Gentile inclusion within the covenant people of God.

...Like A Gentile Or Tax Collector (part 10)

The second Scriptural use of “seventy seven” is in the book of Judges.  In the eighth chapter, as part of the story of Gideon (which would have been a very popular story for an occupied people such as the Israel of Jesus’ day, or a persecuted people such as the early church communities), Gideon is said to have “captured a young man from Succoth and interrogated him.  The young man wrote down for him the names of Succoth’s officials and city leaders---seventy-seven men in all” (8:14). 

It was at Succoth that Gideon, with he and his three hundred men pursuing the Midianites and exhausted, requested loaves of bread for his army.  The men of Succoth refused.  Gideon vowed vengeance and eventually took that vengeance, executing the city’s men (8:17).  Presumably, those executed first, if not exclusively, were those seventy-seven.  Again, if Jesus is speaking of the need for forgiveness instead of vengeance in the face of wrongs that are done, then it is more than possible that His insistence that forgiveness be offered seventy-seven times might very well be offered with this story in mind as well. 

The third and final use of “seventy-seven” in the Hebrew Scriptures comes from the book of Ezra.  Ezra is a post-exile work, chronicling the trials and travails of the Creator God’s people as many exiles returned to the land of their inheritance, joining those who had been able to remain in the land, and seeking to rebuild the Temple.  There, in the thirty-fifth verse of the eighth chapter (which, based on what is to be found there, seems as if it should be located after the second chapter), it is written that “The exiles who were returning from the captivity offered burnt offerings to the God of Israel, ninety-six rams, seventy-seven male lambs, along with twelve male goats as a sin offering.  All this was a burnt offering to the Lord.” 

Also in the eighth chapter, Ezra presents the record of his group’s travel to Jerusalem with the expressed purpose of re-building the Temple of their God.  Reading there, one finds “On the twelfth day of the first month we began traveling from the Ahava Canal to go to Jerusalem.  The hand of our God was upon us, and He delivered us from our enemy and from bandits along the way.  So we came to Jerusalem, and we stayed there for three days” (8:31-32). 

This itself is an interesting point of comparison, as Jesus Himself, in a way, was traveling to Jerusalem.  It will not be too far down the road in Matthew’s narrative that Jesus will be seen to be triumphantly entering Jerusalem and dramatically entering the Temple.  Of course, later on, as part of Jesus’ “trial,” there will be testimony that Jesus had said “I am able to destroy the Temple of God and rebuild it in three days” (26:61b), which is an allusion to an underlying motif of the Jesus tradition, not explicitly heard in Matthew, that Jesus saw Himself as a replacement for the Temple. 

The parallels with Ezra, and with the words previously quoted, are quite striking.  If Ezra is in mind when Jesus speaks words in regards to forgiveness (and based on what follows immediately thereafter, this doesn’t seem to be a stretch at all), then He is calling attention to the wider context and story in which this use of “seventy-seven” is to be found.  For those that will be hearing Matthew’s story, which will occur well after the Resurrection and after the various components of the oral (and written, to be sure) Jesus tradition have been relatively fixed, the resonances between the Ezra passage and Matthew’s narrative practically jump off the page. 

Love On John's Terms (part 6)

Why mention the Temple here and in connection with John’s conception of love?  It has to be mentioned because the presence of the Creator God among His covenant people, with Jesus understood to be serving as the Temple (especially in the light of the fact that at the time of these writings the Temple of Jerusalem no longer existed), signaled the end of exile.  The Creator God’s presence meant that exodus was at hand and that the new age of His rule on earth had begun. 

The Creator God’s personal presence in the Temple was the sign that Israel was free from its oppressors.  A new and glorious Temple (“the glory of the one and only, full of grace and truth---John 1:14b) would cause a hearer or reader to hearken back to the construction of the first Temple, under the reign of Solomon, when Israel’s glory was believed to have reached its full height and extent, and all nations came streaming to Israel and to Solomon, paying homage and tribute.  This could be understood to be a component of the Isaianic vision of the messianic banquet (shared by Luke and seemingly embraced by Jesus Himself), which itself was a marker of the Creator God’s love for the whole of His creation. 

This could also call attention to what is to be found in Ezra and the story of the establishment of the second Temple, in that those that had seen the glory of the first Temple wept.  If this situation of glory in relation to the Temple was again in effect (and the language suggests such thoughts), then the messianic age---the kingdom age---had dawned in and with Jesus.  Consequently, the remainder of the narrative, including the notion of the love modeled by Jesus, which was to be meted out to and in and for the world by Jesus’ disciples, must be heard as echoes of that fact.  Jesus’ words and actions can then be understood within that context, as they serve to reveal the love of the Creator God while providing the model for love for one another that will be what marks out the fact of the presence of the kingdom of the Creator God on earth that was inaugurated commensurate with all that was included in the life and mission of the One understood as the incarnated Word. 

In light of all of this, it will be the concrete activities of Jesus, as reported within John, that identify what is to be the lived-out love of the Christian community.  Therefore, the first instance of Jesus’ activity, apart from Him coming to be baptized at the hands of His forerunner, is the call to follow Him.  Surely, the greatest example of love to be expressed between the Christ’s disciples is the ongoing encouragement to follow Jesus and submit to Him as the Lord of all.  Of course, the idea of what it means to follow Jesus (and therefore love in the way that He loves---which is the way that God loves) must be rounded out and given its full orb through the procession of the presentation of His life, which is precisely the path of John’s narrative. 

Jesus first calls men to follow Him in the very the first chapter of John, as He answers a question posed to Him by two of John the Baptist’s disciples in regards to where He was lodging with a simple “Come and you will see” (1:39a).  In the forty-third verse, Jesus speaks to Philip and says “Follow me.”  These disciples will go on to learn about what it will mean to follow Him, as He reveals to them the kingdom of His God through His own proximate functioning as the Temple, which will also be the experience of those that hear or read this Gospel record.  To that end, the first chapter of John closes with Him telling these newly minted disciples: “I tell all of you the solemn truth---you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man” (1:51). 

These words, with the use of “Son of Man” language, are likely designed to evidence messianic and therefore kingdom of Creator God sensibilities while building on the Temple language previously used, while also causing the informed hearer to think of Genesis and “Jacob’s ladder.”  In that story, following the vision of his dream in which angels were going up and down on the ladder or stairway (depending on the translation), Jacob exclaimed, among other things, that “This is nothing else than the house of God” (28:17b), thus prompting him to name the place “Bethel” (house of God).  By using these words, the author makes clear the fact that Jesus is presenting Himself as the Temple (Bethel – the house of God), thus defining Himself to these would-be disciples as the locus of the Creator God’s activity and as the ordering principle of the life of the covenant people.  All of this serves to prepare for seeing Jesus as the Creator God in the flesh, and by extension, the outworking of the love of the Creator God that is to be the model for living life in the way of Jesus.        

Where Your Treasure Is (part 3)

Continuing on in chapter twelve of Luke, Jesus can be heard to say “Watch out and guard yourself from all types of greed, because one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions” (12:15).  This will be programmatic and quite significant for what comes later.  With this said, Jesus embarks upon a parable, saying “The land of a certain rich man produced an abundant crop” (12:16b).  With the mention of an abundant crop, and with the shared background of the knowledge of the Levitical/Deuteronomic blessings to be had for adherence to covenant responsibilities, Jesus’ hearers would likely and immediately take this as a sign that this man was blessed by the Creator God. 

What would or should also come to mind is the passage from Deuteronomy that says “Be sure you do not forget the Lord your God by not keeping His commandments, ordinances, and statutes that I am giving you today.  When you eat your fill, when you build and occupy good houses, when your cattle and flocks increase, when you have plenty of silver and gold and when you have abundance of everything, be sure you do not feel self-important and forget the Lord your God who brought you from the land of Egypt, the place of slavery, and who brought you through the great, fearful desert of venomous serpents and scorpions, an arid place with no water” (8:11-15a). 

Such ideas would not be lost on a people that, though they occupied their promised land, stood under the yoke of Rome, and figuratively at least, were in the place of slavery.  Of course, this was the position of both Ezra and Nehemiah, who gave voice to a mindset that prevailed among the people through the hundreds of years following the return from Babylonian captivity and on into Jesus’ day,

(contrary to the Pharisaic claim of John 8:33 that “we are descendants of Abraham… and have never been anyone’s slaves”) as they insisted that even though the people of God had re-settled in the land, “we are slaves” (Ezra 9:9, Nehemiah 9:36).  According to what comes next in the eighth chapter of Deuteronomy, Jesus’ hearers would have expected the rich man to adhere to the proviso to “Be careful not to say, ‘My own ability and skill have gotten me this wealth’,” and to “remember the Lord your God, for He is the one who gives ability to get wealth” (8:18a).

This rich man, unfortunately, did not have the proper mindset, as “he thought to himself: ‘What should I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’” (Luke 12:17)  In answering this self-directed query, the appropriate response would have been to provide the excess to the poor of the land, as was repeatedly suggested to the covenant people in what is presumed to be their charter, but this was not the route that he chose, Jesus goes on to report that “he said, ‘I will do this; I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods.  And I will say to myself, “You have plenty of goods stored up for many years; relax, eat, drink, celebrate!”’” (12:18-19) 

It would seem that this theoretical rich man also has a portion of Deuteronomy in mind, though it may have been twisted and excerpted through his own personal translation.  The crowd that is listening to Jesus could have understood that this rich man with abundant crops that are clearly productive of excess, has selected portions of the fourteenth chapter of Deuteronomy, reading for himself “When He blesses you… you may spend the money however you wish for cattle, sheep, wine, beer, or whatever you desire.  You and your household may eat… and enjoy it” (14:24a,26a,c). 

They would have known that what he should have done was use the excess in such a way that “the resident foreigners, the orphans, and the widows of your villages may come and eat their fill so that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work you do” (14:29b).  Unfortunately, he did not choose this path of action, and Jesus insists that “God said to him, ‘You fool!  This very night your life will be demanded from you, but who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’” (Luke 12:20)  Jesus punctuates the parable with “So it is with the one who stores up riches for himself, but is not rich toward God” (12:21). 

Justified By Faithfulness (part 4)

While it is true that Jacob’s descendants (Israel) were given a set of covenant requirements to go along with the covenant mark of circumcision that had been established with Abraham, and that the overall history of those descendants that is presented in the Scriptures is one in which the predominant theme is a violation of those requirements, it can surely be said that their covenant was also based on a trusting belief in the faithfulness of the Creator God.  Regardless of the fact that there were required actions associated with receiving the blessings of the covenant, their performance of those actions, or avoidance of those actions, would still be based on a belief in their God, in His power, and in His faithfulness to carry out the associated promises. 

Ultimately, their justification (righteousness) was going to be based upon a belief in their God’s righteousness (His covenant faithfulness).  What can be seen in the Scriptures is that Israel ultimately did not believe in their God or His promises.  In the end, the historical narrative suggests that, by and large, there was no faith.  Ultimately, this would result in the division of Israel into northern and southern kingdoms (Israel and Judah), the destruction and captivity and dispersion of the northern kingdom (Israel) by Assyria, the destruction and captivity of the southern kingdom (Judah) by Babylon, and the ongoing subjugation of the land of promise to numerous world powers through the time of Roman domination that would be experienced by Jesus and the church. 

When the people of the southern kingdom, under the rule of Persia and under the leadership of Ezra, returned to the land of Judah (remembering that it was only a portion of the people that were deported, and only a portion of the deported that returned), they would do so with the clear understanding that the destruction, deportation, and subjugation that had come upon them was the fulfillment of their God’s promised curses for disobedience to His law.  Scripture provides an indication that the covenant people no longer needed to be convinced of their God’s power and righteousness.  They no longer lacked understanding of what it would take for them to be justified.  From that point, with direction from both Ezra and Nehemiah, there would be what seems like an enthusiastic effort to uphold the covenantal requirements, so that their God would provide His people with His blessings, and that they might become a blessing to the nations. 

This sense of responsibility to the covenant, with knowledge of their ongoing subjugation to foreign powers and ongoing exile from the full covenant blessings of their God hanging thickly in the air, continued on in to Jesus’ day, with the Pharisees acting as the upholders and enforcers of the terms of the covenant.  By then, the three basic covenant requirements of avoiding idolatry, keeping the Sabbaths, and reverencing the sanctuary, together with circumcision---with idolatry seeming to have been effectively dealt with and now practically non-existent among the Jews---had morphed into the keeping of kosher laws, purity laws, and the keeping of Sabbath.   

These were the things that were then looked to as the marks of their God’s covenant, and these were the things that were held to so as to effectively delineate the Creator God’s covenant people.  It could be insisted upon that, almost without a doubt, these things were being held to because of a belief in the power and promises of their God, as many desperately hoped to achieve their God’s promised blessings, according to the covenant that provided the collective and defining history of their people.  Taken together, these covenantal standards came to be known in popular parlance as the “works of the law.”

Four Hundred Ninety Years (part 1 of 2)

Seventy weeks have been determined concerning your people and your holy city 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 vision, and to anoint a most holy place. – Daniel 9:24  (NET

This was popularly understood to be seventy weeks of years, or four hundred ninety years.  Further information about the significance of this period of time is provided in the following verse, which says, “So know and understand: From the issuing of the command to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until an anointed one, a prince arrives, there will be a period of seven weeks and sixty two weeks” (9:25a).  This apparently served to color the expectation of the people in the days of Jesus.  At the time in which Jesus lived, the four hundred ninety year period, as many saw it, had been completed, and a great many of the people, partially owing to the ongoing subjection to Rome, were looking for their “anointed one,” their “prince,” their messiah” to appear. 

Over five hundred years prior to the time of Jesus, groups of people had returned to the land of Israel and the area of Jerusalem under the leadership of Ezra, with this coinciding with the decree from Cyrus, the king of Persia, to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem.  Though there had been a return to their land of promise, because the people were still under the rule of a foreign power, the people of the Creator God people did not yet consider themselves to have fully and truly exodused from the state of exile.  Rather, a popular conception amongst the people was that they remained under the promised curses of their faithful, covenant God. 

Due to subsequent rule by Greece, Egypt, Rome, and others, this popular mindset would persist through Jesus’ day.  In the days of Nehemiah, though they lived in their land, the people readily confessed that “today we are slaves!  In the very land You gave to our ancestors to eat its fruit and to enjoy its good things---we are slaves.  Its abundant produce goes to the kings you have placed over us due to our sins.  They rule over our bodies and our livestock as they see fit, and we are in great distress!” (Nehemiah 9:36-37)  This self-understanding is also reflected in the book of Ezra.  This way of comprehending their position lined up with the curses of Leviticus and Deuteronomy that were associated with the Creator God’s covenant with His people. 

So though they lived in (and many possessed ownership of) their own land,  Israel waited for its messiah.  A number of potential messiahs came and went, with one failure after another.  As Daniel’s four hundred ninety year period began to draw to a completion, something of a fever pitch was created amongst the people.  Many insisted that their God, if He was indeed as faithful as He was believed to be, had to act according to His promises.  It must be remembered that the promises of their God, in accordance with the covenant, coupled with the dramatic display of the exodus that was such an important part of the way that Israel defined itself, were part and parcel of the way that members of the nation of Israel looked upon the world. 

This way of thinking concerning the way that the promises were to come to fruition, and especially the messianic way that those promises were viewed through the lens of prophets such as Isaiah, produced a substantial number of messianic movements, a great deal of high-minded words, a substantial amount of activity on behalf of more than a few well-intentioned (for the most part) members of the covenant people to establish themselves as the messiah, and ultimately many empty and futile claims.