Journey XIV
Jesus Christ

Gate I showed us Jesus through Scripture.

A child is born in Bethlehem.
A voice speaks from heaven.
The sick are healed.
Demons flee.
The Kingdom is proclaimed.
The King is crucified.
The tomb is found empty.

But the Gospels themselves repeatedly hint that there is more happening than human eyes can see.

People look at Jesus and ask:

"Who is this?"

Yet sometimes the unseen world seems to recognize Him immediately.

And when we place the Gospel accounts beside Jewish writings circulating before and around the time of Jesus, an extraordinary world comes into view.

A world expecting...

Messiah.
Judgment.
Resurrection.
Angels and hostile spirits.
A final battle between light and darkness.

And a mysterious heavenly figure called:

The Son of Man.

The Baptism — Heaven Opens

Let us begin where Jesus' public ministry begins.

Jesus enters the Jordan.

John baptizes Him.

And then heaven opens.

The Spirit descends like a dove.

And the Father's voice declares:

"This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."

— Matthew 3:17

The Gospel presents something visible and audible breaking into the earthly scene.

The Son is in the water.
The Spirit descends.
The Father speaks from heaven.

Then something striking happens.

Immediately afterward Jesus enters the wilderness...

and Satan appears.

It is almost as though the public declaration of Jesus' identity is followed immediately by a confrontation from the unseen realm.

The ministry has begun.

And so has the battle.

The World Jesus Entered

First-century Judaism was not spiritually empty.

The Dead Sea Scrolls and other Second Temple Jewish writings show communities wrestling intensely with questions about God's Kingdom, evil, angels, resurrection, judgment and the coming age.

These writings are not the New Testament.

They do not have to be treated as Scripture to be valuable.

They allow us to hear some of the ideas and expectations circulating in the Jewish world into which Jesus stepped.

And suddenly several expressions in the Gospels sound less isolated.

Kingdom of God.
Messiah.
Son of Man.
Resurrection.
Light and darkness.
The coming judgment.

Jesus did not appear in a world without expectations.

He appeared in a world full of them.

1 Enoch — The Chosen One and Son of Man

We encountered 1 Enoch in earlier Journeys.

But now it becomes especially interesting.

In the section commonly called the Book of Parables or Similitudes of Enoch, we encounter an exalted figure described with titles including the Chosen One and Son of Man.

The language recalls Daniel 7.

This figure is associated with righteousness and judgment. Kings and the powerful are brought low. Evil does not rule forever.

1 Enoch 48 speaks mysteriously about his name being named before the heavenly lights were created.

Later, 1 Enoch describes the Son of Man seated in glory and associated with judgment.

This does not mean that 1 Enoch is secretly another Gospel.

Nor does it prove that Jesus derived His identity from Enoch.

But it reveals something important:

Before or around the beginnings of Christianity, Jewish thought could use Son of Man imagery in an extraordinarily exalted heavenly sense.

Now return to the Gospels.

Jesus repeatedly calls Himself:

THE SON OF MAN.

And near the end of His earthly ministry, standing before the high priest, Jesus combines imagery from Daniel 7 with Psalm 110:

"Ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven."

— Mark 14:62

To modern ears, "Son of Man" can sound almost humble.

Within this ancient world...

it could carry enormous weight.

Qumran — Waiting for the Messiah

The Dead Sea Scrolls reveal something else.

There was no single, perfectly uniform Jewish expectation of "the Messiah."

Different texts contain different expectations.

Some Qumran writings appear to anticipate both priestly and royal/anointed figures.

Others anticipate God's dramatic intervention at the end of the age.

One particularly fascinating text is commonly known as 4Q521 — the Messianic Apocalypse.

It describes a coming time associated with extraordinary works of God:

the poor receive good news,
the wounded are healed,
and the dead are raised.

Now listen to the answer Jesus gives when John the Baptist sends messengers asking whether He is truly the Coming One:

"The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them."

— Matthew 11:5

The language is rooted above all in biblical passages such as Isaiah.

But Qumran shows us something valuable:

people in the Jewish world before and around Jesus could connect such signs with God's coming salvation and the end-time hope.

Jesus does not merely answer John:

"Yes."

He points to what is happening.

Look at the signs.

The Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness

Another Qumran document takes us deeper into the unseen world.

The War Scroll (1QM) describes an eschatological conflict between:

The Sons of Light
and
The Sons of Darkness.

But this is more than human warfare.

The conflict includes angelic powers, while Belial is associated with the forces of darkness.

Earthly conflict and heavenly conflict overlap.

Then we open the Gospel of John:

"And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not."

— John 1:5

Jesus later declares:

"I am the light of the world."

— John 8:12

We should not claim that John's Gospel simply borrowed this language from Qumran.

Light and darkness already have deep roots in the Hebrew Scriptures.

But the Dead Sea Scrolls demonstrate how powerful this imagery had become within parts of Second Temple Judaism.

And into that world Jesus says:

I AM THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD.

The Demons Know

Now return to something strange in the Gospels.

Humans frequently misunderstand Jesus.

His own disciples struggle to understand Him.

Religious leaders debate His identity.

Crowds ask questions.

But hostile spirits sometimes seem to know immediately.

One cries:

"I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God."

— Mark 1:24

Others cry:

"Thou art Christ the Son of God."

— Luke 4:41

And in the region of the Gerasenes, the possessed man cries out:

"What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of the most high God?"

— Mark 5:7

Notice what is happening.

The humans are still trying to determine who Jesus is.

The demons are terrified of who He is.

And Jesus silences them.

This raises a fascinating question.

Perhaps the miracles of Jesus are not merely acts of compassion—although they certainly are that.

Perhaps some of them are also acts of invasion.

The Kingdom of God is entering territory claimed by darkness.

Jesus Himself gives us language remarkably close to that idea.

Binding the Strong Man

When Jesus is accused of casting out demons by demonic power, He responds:

"How can one enter into a strong man's house, and spoil his goods, except he first bind the strong man?"

— Matthew 12:29

That is warfare imagery.

A house.
A strong man.
Someone stronger enters.
The strong man is bound.
His possessions are taken.

And immediately before this Jesus says:

"If I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come unto you."

— Matthew 12:28

The exorcisms therefore reveal something about the Kingdom.

Jesus is not negotiating with darkness.

He is taking territory from it.

"I Saw Satan Fall"

Jesus later sends out His disciples.

They return astonished:

"Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through thy name."

— Luke 10:17

Jesus answers:

"I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven."

— Luke 10:18

Precisely how this saying should be understood has been debated.

Is Jesus describing a primordial event?
A visionary perception?
Or the defeat of Satan becoming visible through the advance of the Kingdom?

The text does not answer every question.

But the connection is striking.

The disciples announce that demons submit.

Jesus responds by speaking about Satan falling.

Something happening visibly on earth corresponds to something much larger.

Josephus — John the Baptist

Now we step outside Christian Scripture.

The first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus was not writing a Gospel.

Yet in Antiquities of the Jews he independently discusses John the Baptist.

Josephus describes John as a good man who urged Jews toward virtue, righteousness and baptism, and reports that Herod feared John's influence over the people and had him killed.

That is remarkable.

John is not merely a character preserved inside Christian tradition.

A Jewish historian writing in the first century remembers him as well.

The Gospels explain John's significance differently and much more deeply:

John was the voice preparing the way.

And the One whose way he prepared...
was Jesus.

Josephus — Jesus and James

Josephus also contains passages connected with Jesus.

Here we need to be careful.

The famous passage commonly called the Testimonium Flavianum (Antiquities 18) describes Jesus as a wise man and mentions His crucifixion under Pilate.

However, most modern scholars believe the surviving wording contains at least some later Christian editing or interpolation.

So we should not quote every sentence as though Josephus unquestionably wrote it exactly as it survives.

But there is another important reference.

When describing events surrounding the high priest Ananus, Josephus mentions:

"the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James."

That passage is generally regarded as much less textually controversial.

Josephus does not give us Christian theology.

He gives us something different:

a glimpse of Jesus and the movement surrounding Him from outside the New Testament.

The Cross — What did the Unseen World See?

Now we return to Jerusalem.

From the human perspective, the cross appears simple enough.

Rome arrests Jesus.
Pilate condemns Him.
Soldiers crucify Him.
His enemies mock Him.
His disciples flee.
Jesus dies.

Defeat.

But the New Testament gives us another perspective.

Paul writes:

"Having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it."

— Colossians 2:15

Think about that.

Human eyes see a man nailed to wood.
Paul sees the powers being disarmed.

Human eyes see humiliation.
Paul sees triumph.

Human eyes see the King defeated.
The New Testament sees something happening to the dominion of darkness.

This brings us to perhaps the central question of this Gate:

WHAT WAS THE UNSEEN WORLD SEEING?

At His baptism:
heaven opens.

In the wilderness:
Satan confronts Him.

During His ministry:
demons recognize Him.

As the Kingdom advances:
unclean spirits are driven out.

Jesus speaks of:
binding the strong man.

The disciples return saying:
demons submit in His name.

Jesus speaks of:
Satan falling.

And at the cross Paul speaks of:
principalities and powers being disarmed.

Perhaps the Gospel story has been showing us two battlefields all along.

One visible.
One unseen.

The Resurrection — The Enemy Called Death

Second Temple Jewish writings show that resurrection hope was already very much alive before Jesus.

Daniel had declared:

"Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake..."

— Daniel 12:2

And in 2 Maccabees 7, Jewish martyrs face torture while expressing confidence that God will raise them again.

So when Jesus speaks about resurrection, He speaks within a Jewish world where the question was already fiercely debated.

The Sadducees rejected resurrection.
The Pharisees affirmed it.

But Jesus makes an astonishing claim:

"I am the resurrection, and the life."

— John 11:25

Not merely:
I teach resurrection.

But:
I AM THE RESURRECTION.

Then Lazarus walks out of his tomb.

And later...
Jesus walks out of His own.

The expectation of resurrection has become an event.

The Ancient World Was Waiting

Place these sources beside one another carefully.

Daniel gives us the Son of Man and resurrection.

1 Enoch preserves extraordinary Jewish traditions about an exalted Son of Man/Chosen One and final judgment.

Qumran shows expectations of Messiah, restoration, resurrection imagery, light versus darkness and cosmic conflict.

2 Maccabees gives us Jewish martyrs expecting resurrection.

Josephus independently remembers John the Baptist, James, and—within a textually complicated passage—Jesus Himself.

None of these writings replaces the Gospel.

None needs to be called Scripture.

And none, by itself, "proves Christianity."

But together they do something extremely valuable.

They reconstruct part of the world surrounding Jesus.

And suddenly the Gospel vocabulary comes alive.

Messiah.
Son of Man.
Kingdom.
Resurrection.
Judgment.
Light.
Darkness.
Angels.
Demons.
Satan.
The age to come.

These were not meaningless words floating in a vacuum.

They belonged to a world waiting for God to act.

And then...
Jesus appeared.

Two Worlds — One Story

People saw a man walking the roads of Galilee.

But heaven had declared:
"This is my beloved Son."

People saw an exorcist commanding demons.

The demons cried:
"Son of the Most High God."

People saw a teacher speaking about a Kingdom.

Jesus said that when demons were driven out:
the Kingdom of God had arrived among them.

People saw a condemned man hanging on a cross.

Paul later saw:
the powers being disarmed.

People saw a sealed tomb.

Then...
the tomb was empty.

Perhaps the question is no longer merely:
Who did people think Jesus was?

There is another question.

WHO DID THE UNSEEN WORLD THINK HE WAS?

And now we have everything we need for the Third Gate.

Scripture.
Prophecy.
Ancient Jewish expectations.
The Son of Man.
The Passover Lamb.
The Temple.
The Kingdom.
The powers.
The Cross.
The Resurrection.
And even the strange chronological pattern we deliberately left waiting in Gate I.

Now we place everything on the table at once.