Transcription of the Video: The Time had Fully Come

Listen to the audio with the transcription: https://otter.ai/s/jiL8VGMNSsucWV5BkOuHnQ

The ancient land of Israel is a testimony, an evidence of the greatness of what God did in that country, a testimony to the truth of the words that we find in the pages of the Bible. 

Within Christianity, it often appears that the whole Christian faith was something brand new that suddenly appeared on the scene. Recent research, however, indicates that that's not true. Rather God had already prepared a whole movement of people, a world of ideas - a philosophy if you will - which anticipated Christianity. 

At Qumran, a settlement of an ancient people called the Essenes, we find a remarkable number of similarities between that ancient group who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls and early Christianity. 

We're sitting here on the side of a cliff, the edge of the Judean wilderness. Below us, the Dead Sea stretching to the south, and to the east of us, the hills of Moab, the country of Jordan. Today, over there in the distance, just in the haze, the city of Jericho. Behind us, caves and cliffs and clefts in the rock. And below us, the community we know as Qumran, the place of the Dead Sea Scrolls. 

Not so long ago-- in fact, beginning in 1947 in these caves around us - the caves down below thereby Qumran, the caves up above us here, and in the wadis around - discoveries were made of very ancient scrolls, which in a way have revolutionized our understanding of the Bible and of the people who lived in the New Testament period of the Bible times. And have even helped our understanding of what the Bible says about Jesus, though we certainly aren't going to say there's any evidence Jesus was ever here or was associated with this. But let's set the stage for what this is all about.

About 200 years before our era, 200 years before the birth of Jesus, the people who were ruling in Jerusalem were Jewish people called the Hasmoneans. We also know them as the Maccabees. And during the process of that period of time, without going into all the details, a high priest was appointed, a head of the Temple authority in Jerusalem. That was not acceptable to everybody. There were some who thought that he did not have the qualifications to be a high priest and that he didn't belong there. 

So a group of very religious people that we know as the Essenes moved out of their city, away from their Temple, and came out to places like this to set up what they considered to be alternative or appropriately holy ways of worshiping God. Their view was that the Temple structure in Jerusalem and all of the people connected with it were illegitimate, they didn't belong there. And so they came out here to isolate themselves from their community, from their society and established what they considered to be the true form of religion. 

The Essenes built this community apparently about 200 B.C. And they were here from that time until there was a very, very bad earthquake in this area in 31 B.C., and that community down there was basically destroyed. It remained empty until around 4 B.C. or so when Herod the Great died and Herod's son, Archelaus, became the king or the ruler in this area. And they came back here and re-established this settlement. They stayed here in that community from that time - about 4 B.C. until 68 A.D. when the Roman army was coming down from the Galilee from having destroyed places like Gamla on their way to Jerusalem and they came through this area and destroyed the community. And at that point, as far as we know, the Essenes disappeared from history. 

The Essenes were people who believed that they had been called to come out into the desert to isolate themselves, to make their lives right with God, to create a new system of purity and honor to God so that when the Messiah arrived, which they expected very shortly, that he would find people who were prepared to re-establish the true priesthood and the true kingship of David. And so they came out here to find holiness. They lived an ascetic kind of life, and in fact, they probably didn't live in those buildings you see down there. 

Those were community buildings, a dining hall, writing rooms possibly. They probably lived in huts or in tents or maybe even in caves in the area around and simply used that as their community center in the place where their various activities went on. 

They wrote extensively on copper, on leather, and on parchment. They wrote copies of Bible books. In fact, almost all the Bible books that are in our Old Testament appear in scroll form from these people. They wrote documents about their order, about how to live the Essene lifestyle. They wrote documents about the coming of the Messiah and the new age that was about to arrive and the exciting new era that they were prepared to go into. 

They wrote extensively, and for some reason, they would hide the documents in the caves around this area. Now some think they hid the documents because they had worn out and they had gotten old. But if you remember in the Jewish tradition, when religious things get old, you don't burn them or throw them away. You appropriately dispose of them. It's possible, some think as the Romans came through here, those Essenes believed that they would escape maybe that Roman attack, but they wanted to hide their very precious scrolls and documents.

Fortunately for us, those caves, for the most part, stayed hidden up until about 1947. A couple of Bedouin came to this area. They discovered a cave. What had been found were scrolls, documents dating back from the time of Jesus. 

Now that has been a tremendous find for a number of reasons. One is because it provides us an insight on the theological thinking of people like this from Jesus' time. Another thing that it gave us is before those scrolls were found, the oldest documents we had of the Hebrew Old Testament date back only about 1,000 years. So people ask if those oldest copies we have date back only 1,000 years, how do we know that Isaiah, who was written 1,500 years before that is accurate?

And lo and behold, as these scrolls were found and people began to look at them, they discovered that with very few exceptions, the Old Testament documents we have 1,000 years later confirm that the Bible really has changed very, very little. And I think that's a real affirmation, a real confidence for us to know that God has always protected his Bible.  

But what's most fascinating, I think, is to discover that this community provides us some insights on how people were thinking at Jesus' time. And I'd like to suggest that what we see here and what we read in those very old scrolls is remarkably similar to what many of the early Christians were teaching and thinking. I want to be very careful here. I'm not suggesting they were the early Christians. I don't believe that to be the case. I think this was a Jewish community that existed here and also up in Jerusalem and in other places. I think they were attempting to purify the Jewish system of worship. But in the process, they began to sound certain theological concepts that are remarkably close to what we think and what we believe. 

I'm excited about that because it suggests that Christianity didn't suddenly drop out of Heaven but rather that God had prepared a very fertile seedbed for this faith that he was about to plant here. And a lot of the ideas and concepts come out of this particular community. 

First of all, they used language that would sound very similar. They called themselves the New Israel. They said, "We've come out into the desert to prepare the way of the Lord." And I'd always understood the way of the Lord to mean like a road. But the way of the Lord, to their understanding, was a system of obedience, God's way in other words, God's walk. They thought of themselves as living at the end of time, that the Messiah would appear at any moment, that they're at the end of the age, and that kind of language suggests a similarity to things that appear in the New Testament when Jesus talks about the end of the age and that before these things happen, this generation will not have passed away, and concepts like that.

Second, this community uses a Scripture interpretation method that's similar to the one that the early Christians used. Let me show you how. They believed, for example, that the writings in the prophets applied to them. They really thought of themselves as the people for whom the prophesies were written. For example, they would often quote a prophesy and say, "And that's now fulfilled in us." I was just thinking, for example, from Acts 2, how similar that is to what happened on Pentecost, where Peter says, "In the last days, God says from the book of Joel, 'I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions.'" And he quotes an entire prophesy and then he says, "And that's what's happening here today."

And that's a method that the community down here of the Dead Sea Scrolls used exactly. They used a system of saying, "Here's what the prophets said, and that's applied to us." So in method, they're very similar. 

The third thing and probably the most profound of all is the fact that this community practiced a communal style that's very similar to early Christianity. For example, in this town down here, the Essenes apparently practiced a community meal, where they gathered for a sacramental kind of meal, and the leading priest, the teacher of righteousness would bless the bread and the wine, and then they would have a communal meal together. 

That's very similar to the communion feast that we say Jesus Christ instituted after his Last Supper. They practiced a form of baptism. In fact, some have even said that John the Baptist may have been part of this community because his message about repent for the end of the world is coming is very similar. They practiced community of goods. When you joined for one year, you were initiated. At the end of one year, you would join your goods together with the community. No one would use them. And at the end of the second year, if you had been initiated properly and had followed the rules properly, your property became part of the community. 

They talked about being justified by faith. That's often referred to - very similar to -Paul's comment about by faith being justified. They talked about the way of the Lord. They talked about the coming Messiah as the Son of God, the Son of the Most High. One theme that was very clear in the writings of this community and in the scrolls that were found, is the theme of the conflict between light and darkness. 

They saw themselves as the sons of light, and they believed that they were the warriors of a new coming battle against the sons of darkness. And that battle was going to be going on and when it came, they had to be prepared to fight it, because it was through the sons of light that the Messiah was going to come and reclaim this dark creation.

Let me just read to you from 2 Corinthians 6, which could almost come from the Dead Sea scrolls. Paul says, "Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common or what fellowship can light have with darkness?"

The last similarity is the evidence that this community looked for two Messiahs - a king Messiah in the line of David who would come with power and authority and drive out the sons of darkness, who probably refer to the Romans. And a priest Messiah after the order of Aaron or several references here to Melchizedek, that strange priest that Abraham met in the Old Testament and who had superhuman powers as far as these people were concerned.

So the Messiahs they looked for were both a king and a priest figure. It's remarkable that that's exactly how the New Testament defines Jesus. Jesus is a king after the order of David. But he's also a priest. And so the early Christians thought of a two-part Messiah except they put them together in one person.

God had prepared here a community and throughout the country, actually, a way of thinking that provided the roots of what that early Christian community was all about. I'd like to draw three conclusions from that as our faith lesson.

The first is simply again to realize that God's work in history is not a sudden, quick-change but through the workings and the lives of people, God gradually and slowly is in the process of unfolding his plan to reclaim his world. 

And it wasn't that the Old Testament ended and then suddenly there was nothing and all of a sudden like lightning, here came Jesus and everything was suddenly different. But rather, God worked through that Jewish community so that the ideas were there, the concepts were there, the people were there who were already thinking in the direction that Jesus would go. And God used that Jewish community and people like the Essenes or the writers of the scrolls to make everything ready. 

It seems to me that the faith lesson from that is not only do we have Jewish roots then? And here they are. But even more than that, God continues to work the same way. And if we sit back and wait for sudden, drastic changes to happen, we miss the point that God is going to work through people like us who are preparing God's way. 

And so there's a continuous line back to Abraham, racially through the Jewish people, but spiritually through the Jewish people right into our own roots. And the more we recognize that our understanding, our faith is rooted in the soil right here in places like this, the better we'll appreciate that to separate ourselves from our Jewish roots is really to separate ourselves from what God is doing.

The second thing that I thought about is the idea of this community seeing so clearly the stark contrast between good and evil and their awareness that one could not be both. You can't let your life mingle in terms of your values and your beliefs with the world of darkness and expect to be a son or daughter of light. 

It seems to me we have a lot to learn. It's very easy, I know, in my own life to compromise with things in my own life, in my own culture that is not right or not just the way they should be. And I think this community is saying, "It can't be like that. There's either light or there's darkness." And as this community said and Paul echoes in 1 Corinthians 6, "What does light have to do with darkness? You can't mix them. You mix them, and it will all be darkness."

And I think that's part of our call, again, as we think back to our challenge here to be cultural transformers. We need to know that we are sons and daughters of light. And that means we have to complete, as much as we can, remove whatever darkness is in our own hearts, our own minds, and our own lives. And we have to become like sons and daughters of light. And they can say that's the heart of what was going on here. 

The third part of the faith lesson I think for me at least is in a way a little bit negative. Because I think these people came here because they saw their world as being evil, and they came out here to be ready for the next step, to be those who prepared the way of the Lord. But it seems to me what they said is, "The truth is out here. If you want it, come and find it. If you want to be part of this new thing that's going on, here we are. Come and join us."

I think there's a tendency in Christianity to think the same way. One main difference between Christianity and this community was Christianity’s passionate belief that we have something that God has given us that needs to be brought, that needs to be carried to, that needs to be made a part of the experience of others. And very similar to the Monastic movement in Christianity, it seems to me this community sat back and isolated itself and focused on its own theology and its own holiness at the expense of having any impact on the very sons of darkness that they had hoped to affect.

I'm so impressed when I stand here and I think, "Man, in this land, God didn't suddenly say, 'Okay. Now it's time for the new step.'" God came here and he had everything prepared. He had the Romans in place for the road system and the Greeks in place for the language, and he had people like this in place so that when the Jewish people heard Jesus, they understood what he was talking about. They didn't all agree. But they understood because it was a language and a set of concepts and an idea that they were familiar with. I love God for doing it that way because that puts me in that same line and that same tradition. 

I also am impressed by people who believed so passionately in the truth and in what's right that they would completely separate themselves from the darkness that they were against. And boy, in our culture as I think of Christianity, I really worry sometimes whether we're not too easily compromised by the very darkness we want to bring light to. Our message is different in the sense we don't isolate here. But we take what we've been given and we bring and we become light givers.