First Summary

2 Questions to summarize:
1. First of all, how would I summarize everything written so far?
2. Second, what does this have to do with politics today?

I would conclude that with the prophecies; with Israel's immediate political concerns of that day; and with the world views and stories of their own past events, Israel expected a political/ military messiah who would usher in the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God was expected to be worldwide in that it forced all other rulers and nations to obedience, and it was expected to last forever through the reestablished bloodline of King David.

The kingdom however was more than political and military. Through military might and with God's help a new system of justice and righteousness would be established throughout the world in the wake of the takeover. Whether this takeover was the result of a revolution, military overthrow, or a complete act of God is uncertain. Perhaps there were opinions on different sides of this issue.

Before the new kingdom could be established, however, John the Baptist was expected to prepare for the kingdom by renewing hearts and right behavior among the people of Israel. It was his job to prepare Israel for the messiah king who would establish the new kingdom.

Some modern and not so modern theologians claim that Jesus himself held on to the same visions of political and military might. These writers believe that the disciples knew Jesus had political dreams, but because he died unexpectedly the disciples changed Jesus' teachings in order to delete those subjects that were obviously mistaken and embarrassing. The New Testament writers may have also taken politicly offensive material out of Jesus' teachings in order to avoid Roman backlash.

As I move through the Gospels it will be interesting to see if this can be found in the scriptures at all or if these writers are only projecting their own political views into the life of Jesus.

Before Jesus' birth we can see that people definately believed that his mission would be politically and militarily defined, and that's as far as we can take it at this point.

Joseph and Mary were probably not too happy about making a journey during the late months of pregnancy for the purpose of fulfilling some foreign ruler's obsession with counting and taxing his people. No doubt there was a lot of complaining among the people, but through this political act, God was bringing about the fulfilment of scripture that the messiah would be born in Bethlehem. Of this we are confident - God used the self interest of Caesar Augustus to further His kingdom.

God was in control politically then as he is now. We may not see good reasons for what modern rulers do, in fact, at times it is obvious that they serve their own interests. But these scripture passages show us that even though earthly rulers make decisions that negatively affect us all, God can and does use them for his own purposes.

Thus I conclude - God was in control, He is in control and He always will be in control.

Modern political pundits act and talk like God is not control and things are getting worse. They use fear, hatred and anger as tools to win and to keep followers. These three - fear, hatred and anger - I call the unholy triad. They are tools that are used by every side of political debate to convince followers and the undecided to join a particular opinion or a particular group.

I call these three the unholy triad because they contradict the holy triad - faith, hope and love - and they corrupt faith and trust in God. I will address more of this later as I study other books such as Romans, 2 Peter and Jude. For now suffice it to say that even though things look bad on the surface, we can learn from Caesar's self centered political action and how it affected Israel -GOD IS IN CONTROL!