the Jewish people will return not only physically to the land but spiritually to God. In the Book of Hosea it is written:
The children of Israel shall abide many days without king or prince. . . . Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the LORD their God and David their king. 1
“According to the prophecy, after a long period of time without a kingdom or nation-state, the Jewish people will return, not just to their land but to ‘their God and David their king.’ You can only return to that which you’ve departed from or been separated from. So according to the prophecy, there would be a separation between the Jewish people and ‘David their king.’”
“Who is ‘David their king’?”
“When the prophecy was given, David had been dead for centuries. But the name David was used by the prophets to speak of the Messiah, the royal descendant of King David.”
“So then it’s saying that at the end of the age the Jewish people will return not only to the land but to the Messiah . . . But how can they return to their Messiah unless they first . . . ?”
“Left their Messiah,” said the Oracle, “You can only return to that which you first left.”
“‘Left,’ I said, “another word for departure.”
“And that is exactly what the mystery is pointing to . . . a spiritual departure. And when would that spiritual departure have taken place?”
“Somewhere around the time of the physical departure, when the Jewish people left the land . . . in the first century.”
“Can you think of any phenomenon that appeared in the first century . . . something spiritual, something major, something history changing and involving the Jewish people in the land of Israel?”
“Jesus?”
“Jesus,” said the Oracle, “something major, history changing, spiritual, involving the Jewish people, and taking place in the first century and in the land of Israel. It would fulfill every requirement.”
“But Christianity,” I said, “is foreign to the Jewish people.”
“It’s only foreign,” said the Oracle, “because it became foreign. And it only became foreign because it was departed from. But that only fulfills the requirement. It must be that which was departed from and two thousand years ago.”
“It’s not a different religion?”
“It was never called Christianity in the beginning,” he said, “And the word simply means the movement of the Messiah. And there’s only one people that are waiting for the Messiah.”
“Are you saying that Christianity is Jewish?”
“A faith named after the Messiah and concerning an Israeli Jewish man called Rabbi? It was and will always remain a Jewish faith. His real name wasn’t Jesus but the Hebrew Yeshua. In the Hebrew Scriptures it was prophesied that the Messiah of Israel would be born in the city of Bethlehem; ride a donkey into Jerusalem; be rejected, scourged, beaten, and delivered to death as a lamb to the slaughter; and give his life as a sacrifice for sin. He would overcome death to bring redemption, forgiveness, and salvation to all who would receive it. 2 And all this had to take place before the second Temple was destroyed . . . in other words, before the year AD 70.”
“Everything you just said describes Jesus . . . There’s no one else.”
“No,” said the Oracle, “there’s never been another candidate. And his first name, Yeshua, or Jesus, just happens to means salvation, and his second name—Messiah. And he just happens to be the central figure of human history and at the same time the only one who fulfilled the ancient prophecies of the Jewish Messiah.”
“But then why didn’t they accept him?”
“It’s the opposite,” he replied. “If they had accepted him, then he couldn’t have been the Messiah. The prophecies required that the Messiah of Israel be rejected by his people . . . until the appointed time.” 3
“But those who were not of Israel did accept him.”
“And that too was prophesied—the Jewish Messiah would become the ‘light to the Gentiles.’ 4 But even though Israel as a nation didn’t receive him, many within the nation did. All the first believers were Jewish, all the first disciples. There were thousands upon thousands of Jewish believers. It was Jewish believers who gave to the world this faith and who, by so doing, changed the course of human history.
“From the beginning Israel was called to be a light to the nations, to give the world the word of God, to teach the world the ways of God, to bring forth the Messiah, and to