September 2, 2025
We are closer than ever to the Third Temple being built. The temple furniture and the holy garments have already been made, and Levitical priests are in training. The end times are upon us. God’s prophetic clock is about to restart. Daniel’s 70th week predicted it. Or did it?
According to this popular futuristic prophetic view, Jesus came to set up an earthly kingdom for Israel. Then when Israel rejected Him as their Messiah yelling for His crucifixion, God’s prophetic clock for Israel stopped – causing God’s plans for the 70th week to be postponed until end times. According to this view, the present 2,000-year-long church age was not predicted in the OT. Is this true?
Rather than rely on our own ideas of how and when various OT prophecies should be fulfilled, let’s listen to King Jesus and His Holy Spirit inspired apostles. To state this another way, it is essential we view the OT through the NT lens – not vice versa.
Crucifixion: The Center of God’s Plans for Israel
The Jews rejection of Jesus as their Messiah changed nothing. Rather, it was part of God’s plan, fulfilling such predictions as Isaiah 53:3-5: “He was despised and rejected by men… But he was pierced for our transgressions.”
Listen to Peter: “[Jesus], being delivered up by the determined counsel and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by the hand of lawless men, crucified and killed” (Acts 2:23).
Listen to the apostles in prayer: “For truly, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, to do whatever your hand and your counsel foreordained to happen” (Acts 4:27-28).
A person may then say, “If God foreordained that the Jews would reject Jesus resulting in His crucifixion, then it’s not their fault.” However, the Gospels relate that the Jews often wanted to kill Jesus. In fact, Jesus providentially slipped out of their hands twice – once when they were about to push Him off a cliff (Luke 4:29-30) and once when they were about to stone Him (John 8:59). In contrast, when it was God’s time, Jesus did not resist but let the Jews do what they always wanted to do.
In short, the Jews pushing Pilate to crucify Jesus was God’s “foreordained” “determined counsel.” Far from changing any of God’s plans for the Jews, far from stopping God’s prophetic clock, the Jewish rejection of their Messiah was an integral part of God’s plan for them – and us – to bring salvation through Jesus’ blood and death. As the well-known verse says, “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures [the OT]” (1 Cor 15:3).
The Gospel: God’s Plan for Jews and Gentiles
The gospel was not “Plan B” that God came up with when the Jews rejected their Messiah. The gospel was the predicted plan both for our salvation and theirs!
Listen to Jesus after His resurrection: “This is what I told you while I was still with you, that all things which are written in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms concerning me must be fulfilled… Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name to all the nations, beginning at Jerusalem” (Luke 24:44-47).
Listen to Peter: “All the prophets testify about him, that through his name everyone who believes in him will receive remission of sins” (Acts 10:43).
Listen to Paul: “The Gospel of God, which he promised before through his prophets in the holy Scriptures” (Rom. 1:1-2).
As cited in Insight #364, “The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the Gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, ‘In you all the nations will be blessed'” (Gal. 3:8).
Indeed, on the Pentecost following Jesus’ death, burial, resurrection, and ascension – the day the gospel was first preached as a fact of history, and the day the church of Jesus was born – Peter opened his sermon by explaining the current events and quoting OT prophecy: “This is what has been spoken through the prophet Joel;” and then he quotes Joel (Acts 2:16ff). To state it another way, on the first day that Jews responded to the gospel invitation – on the day Jesus’ church was born – Peter by the Holy Spirit said that Joel’s prophecy was being fulfilled! Yes, the Church Age was indeed predicted in the OT.
The gospel is not God’s plan for Gentiles until He can fulfill His promises to Israel. Rather, Paul, speaking of Jesus, the physical descendent of David, said, “From this man’s offspring, God has brought salvation to Israel according to his promise” (Acts 13:23). The present age is not just salvation for Gentiles. The gospel of salvation through the Jewish Messiah was and is God’s promised plan for the Jews!
God’s Plans Were Fulfilled on Schedule
The Gospel Age, the Church Age – or whatever you want to call the age we live in – is the age predicted in the OT.
What is more important in the entire history of the Jews and Jerusalem than the death (with resurrection) of Jesus – with the subsequent new covenant, forgiveness of sin, and hope of eternal life? The gospel was God’s plan for the Jews and Jerusalem and all nations of the world. Nothing could be better for them or us.
God used the Jewish rebellion, unbelief, and rejection of the Jewish Messiah as His means to accomplish the sacrifice of His Son upon the cross for their own salvation – and ours! God used the Jews (plus Pilate and Roman soldiers) to bring about the Messiah’s sacrifice for your sins and mine! Everything was accomplished on schedule.