2025-08-13 - Jesus Christ is the Promised Messiah Part IV: Jesus is the King of Kings

Pursuing a false prophecy by denying that the Messiah is God incarnate, ensures that we will think God has abandoned us.  God’s chosen people have sometimes been described as “stiff-necked” in their resistance to the Word of God (ie the Holy Ghost).  We think that God’s intentions are intelligible to our senses and that His will should conform to our will.  A hardening of the heart toward’s God’s love occurs when we confuse our mortal standards of truth over and above God’s eternal truth.  Our perceptions of God’s truth may only be partly accurate (“seen through the glass, darkly”), causing our confusion. 

A dramatic illustration of this flawed behavior is seen in the woman’s rejection of God’s instruction not to eat the fruit from the tree of life in the garden of Eden, and her acceptance of the serpent’s temptation.  Her conversation with the serpent can be interpreted as an internal dialog between the woman’s soul and her emerging intellect/limited moral judgement (the serpent).  The resultant hardening of her heart undermines her piety, bringing she and Adam into direct conflict with God’s will, with disastrous consequences for all of creation. 

The solution to our susceptibility to sin is to subject ourselves to God’s will by cultivating an attitude of piety – the belief that Christ Jesus is our King of Kings.  Our own sanctification will follow as we open ourselves to God’s grace through pious behavior.  Acknowledging Christ as our King, and subjecting our wills to His, confirms that we accept that we are not masters of our own fate, a frightening proposition.  Piety opens the door to Grace, which is the father of theosis, our (and God’s) desired goal. 

The ancestral line of Judah was set aside by God to carry the responsibility for God’s Covenant with Israel; this is prophesied in Genesis.  King David (~1000 BC), Othniel, Solomon (David’s son) and Zerubabbel (~490 BC) are notable descendants in this line, and Christ Jesus is its terminus and final heir.  Solomon’s construction of the first Temple was inhabited by God, fulfilling the prophetic promise by Samuel.  But after the Assyrians conquered the northern tribes of Israel, this Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians ~ 550 BC, and the Jews lived in Babylonian exile for another ~ 60 years.  Disappointingly, Zerubabbel’s reconstruction of the Temple (~490 BC) was not re-inhabited by God.  From this point forward the earthly line of Judah slowly dissipated, although Jeremiah prophesied that The Lord Our Righteousness would save Judah.  This Lord would fill the role of both Priest and King.  Christ’s incarnation as a brilliant crescendo at the end of the line of Judah, transforms and extends God’s Covenant to all the faithful; this occurs just prior to 70 AD when the Romans destroy Zerubabbel’s temple, essentially ending the earthly line of Judah.