Why
Did God Choose the Middle East for Jesus – Part One
With the
world’s attention continuing to be drawn to the Middle East because of negative
/ harmful / military, political and economic issues, some Christians and others
have wondered: “Why Did God Choose the Middle East for Jesus…” to be born and
conduct His Earthly Ministry; to die and then return to the Father in Heaven;
with the promise to return to the Middle East. As with other questions raised
in this blog, we can not know definitively what is in the mind of God. But perhaps we can look at what He has told
us through the Bible Scripture, and what He has taught us over the years since
those writings.
In Genesis
Chapter One, Verse One, the Bible tells us that God / “Elohiym” “created
the heaven and the Earth”. Later in the Scripture we learned that it was the
Lord Jesus Christ, who was that part of the Triune Godhead, who actually
accomplished the Creation. (John 1: 1-3; Colossians 1: 15; Hebrews 1: 10; et
al.) With His foreknowledge of
what God would accomplish through His Creation of “Man” and other creatures,
the Lord Jesus designed and shaped the features of the Earth. Also having that foreknowledge, He had an
infinite number of options as to how this Earth would look.
Before
continuing with the discussion of the “Middle East”, I think it is appropriate
to examine further what the Bible tells us about “foreknowledge”.
“Foreknowledge”
is one of the special attributes of God that has shaped His interactions with
mankind from the beginning. Our Strong’s Expanded Concordance Greek
Dictionary of the Bible provides the following narrative to guide our
understanding, based on the noun “foreknowledge” (# 4268), and verbal forms of
that word: “foreknew”, and “foreknow” (# 4267).
# 4268: “Foreknowledge
is one aspect of omniscience; it is implied in God’s warnings, promises and
predictions. See Acts 15: 18. God’s
“foreknowledge” involves His electing grace, but this does not preclude human
will. He “foreknows” the exercise of
faith which brings salvation. The apostle Paul stresses especially the
actual purposes of God rather than the ground of the purposes, see e.g. Galatians
1: 16, Ephesians 1: 5, 11. The divine counsels will ever be
unthwartable.” (Emphasis added) [The
word :”foreknowledge” is used only twice in the Bible…in Acts 2: 23,
and 1 Peter 1: 2,]
# 4267: “To
know beforehand” is used (1) of the divine foreknowledge (1a) concerning believers, Romans 8: 29;
(1b) Israel 11: 2, (1c) Christ as the
Lamb of God, 1 Peter 1: 20, “foreordained”, (2) of human previous
knowledge, (2a) of a person, Acts 26:
5, “which knew”; (2b) of facts, 2 Peter 3: 17.” (Emphasis added) [The words “foreknew”
and “foreknow” are each used only once in the Bible…in Romans 11: 2,
and Romans 8: 29, respectively.]
Having that background
/ context, we can look more clearly at the path that the Lord Jesus followed
during His time on the Earth. Consider
these points:
·
He
foreknew that the first man Adam would be disobedient to His instructions and
thereby lose dominion over the Earth to the Enemy Satan. (Genesis 1: 26-28, 2:
15-17, 3: 1-6)
·
He
also foreknew that the descendants of Adam would not be able to resist /
overcome the temptations which led to Adam’s sin, specifically, 1) lust of
the flesh; 2) lust of the eyes; and 3) the pride of life / (desire for “god-like” power.) (Genesis
3: 5-6; 1 John 2: 15-16) …and that man’s behavior in these ways would
persist even beyond today.
·
By
definition, the Lord also foreknew that when given the opportunity, man would
exercise his covetous sin-nature by dominating other men. It would not be
sufficient for many to “simply desire” what belonged to someone else, They would be driven by “lust” / greed to
obtain what they want at any cost. That sin
began shortly after Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden, and their elder son
Cain killed his younger brother Abel. (Genesis 4: 1-16) That pattern continued for the next generations
and hundreds of years resulting in God’s bringing the Great Flood of Noah’s
time (Genesis Chapters Six through Eight) to give mankind another chance
to overcome his sin-nature. Even so, He foreknew that man would continue to
fail.
·
In
“starting over” with the family of Noah, God had innumerable options as to
where on the Earth He would bring the Ark to rest after the flood. Note the
landing on the mountains of Ararat.(Genesis 8: 4) (Strong’s Concordance Hebrew Dictionary
#780 says this is in Eastern Armenia. For geography, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenia ) That location did not happen by
chance.
· Remember
from Genesis Chapter One, after God created man (male and female) the Scripture
says: “28 And God blessed them, and
God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth,
and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over
the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. 29 And
God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon
the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree
yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.” (Genesis
1: 28-29)
· God’s
Plan was for mankind to overspread the entire Earth and have
dominion over all of it. He possibly chose a “centralized” location for
Jesus’ Incarnation, Ministry, and Second Coming so that all mankind would have ready
access to Him. Many scholars theorize
that the global landscape / topography was
markedly changed after the Great Flood of “Noah’s Time”, including a shift of
the Earth’s axis (Genesis 6: 1 through 9: 19; 10: 25); but Scriptural
explanations are limited to what the LORD said to Noah and his family: “While the earth remaineth,
seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and
night shall not cease.” (Genesis 8: 22) ; …and, while listing the
descendants of Noah’s son Shem: “And unto Eber were born
two sons: the name of one was Peleg; for in his days was the earth
divided.” (Genesis 10: 25)
·
After the Flood, Noah’s descendants gathered
at the Tower of Babel in an
effort to reject the LORD’s instructions to “Be fruitful, and
multiply and replenish the earth” (Genesis 9: 1,7; 11: 1-7).
God then acted to confound man’s languages, and scatter them “upon the
face of all the earth.” (Genesis 11: 7-9) The result was therefore consistent with
God’s Plan for mankind to overspread the entire Earth, even though man
had lost dominion to the Enemy as recorded in Genesis Chapter Three.
· It was not a coincidence that in His
foreknowledge, God introduced Nimrod at the Tower of Babel, the first
man who would assume a leadership role in purposely leading mankind
into the path of sin / rebellion against the LORD. Nimrod
labored on behalf of the Enemy, and was described in the Scripture in the
following manner: “ And Cush (one of the grandsons of Noah) begat Nimrod:
he began to be a mighty one in the Earth.
·
9 He was a mighty hunter
before the Lord: wherefore it
is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord
10 And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel,…in the land of Shinar. (Genesis 10: 8-10) (Emphasis added)
[A further description of Nimrod includes the
following: from Strong’s Concordance Hebrew Dictionary # 05248: “Nimrod =
‘rebellion’ or ‘the valiant’; a mighty hunter, he established an empire in
the area of Babylon and Assyria.” Another
reference is from the noted Roman-Jewish Historian Flavius Josephus, who
cites the following regarding Nimrod’s impact at the Tower of Babel, saying: “Now it was Nimrod who excited them to such an
affront and contempt of God….a bold man, and of great strength of hand. He
persuaded them not to ascribe it to God , as if it was through his means they
were happy, but to believe that it was their own courage which procured that
happiness. He also gradually changed the government into tyranny, seeing no
other way of turning men from the fear of God, but to bring them into constant
dependence upon his power.” ((See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiquities_of_the_Jews ; and from his writings: “Ant. i. c. 4. 2”) Nimrod was regarded as a “hunter of men”,
not as we traditionally think of “hunters of animals”. Some of his teachings have carried through to
some “non-Christian beliefs / religions” even today.]
·
With
that in mind, and foreknowing the plans of the descendants of Noah’s
family to remain centralized at the Tower of Babel, God disrupted their plans
by confounding their language and scattering the families of Noah’s three sons as
He had previously instructed them to do. (Genesis Chapter Ten)
As we look
again at the title of this post asking the question: “Why Did God Choose the Middle East for
Jesus?”, we now note at least two important facts. (1) The Middle East was
the area of the first man’s sin of disobedience to God in the Garden of
Eden; and (2) It was also the area of the
first collective man’s sin of disobedience to God at the Tower of
Babel. Both of these demonstrated the
power and influence of the Enemy to control man’s decisions away from what God
had instructed. Therefore it would be
there in the Middle East that God would claim and demonstrate His Authority and
Power over the Enemy to redeem mankind, as He had committed in the Garden of
Eden (Genesis 3: 14-15).
In Part Two
of this post under the same title, we will look further at this geographic area
called the Middle East from a Biblical perspective. We will also look at some
of the traits of mankind that might likely have influenced our Lord Jesus’ decisions
regarding His Pre-Incarnation and Incarnation there.
Dr. W. A.
(Bill) Robinson
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