A Clash of Empires

Details: Category: Empire of Yahweh

In the first century, Jesus announces the Empire of Yahweh a.k.a. the Kingdom of God to the people of Israel who are under the imperial occupation of Rome. Through his teachings, miracles and parables, he demonstrates the principles of this upcoming Kingdom in contrast to the modus operandi of the Roman Empire. Jesus is captured, subjected to torture and mockery, and executed by the Empire as what he preached is not tolerable for the Empires of Men. At every step in his trial and execution, the Empire’s governors, client kings, religious authorities, and soldiers question his status as the king of this alternative kingdom that he proclaimed. In all of their eyes, he is a threat to Caesar.

The Trial

The Roman Governor charges Jesus with insurrection against the Empire when he asks him if he claims to be the king of the colonized Judean people.

Pilate asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” He answered him, “You say so.” Then the chief priests accused him of many things.
Mark 15:2-3

Jesus has preached the coming of an alternative society that shall be altogether different from the one under Rome and proclaimed himself as the king anointed by Yahweh. But it’s Caesar who’s supposed to appoint and anoint the king of the Judean colony, not Yahweh. If someone challenges that, the political and religious authorities installed by Rome in Jerusalem would be in danger. The need for self-preservation leads them to condemn him to death.

The Mockery

After Jesus is sentenced to death, the soldiers in the Roman legion use the same epithet that their Governor used, and mock him.

Then the soldiers led him into the courtyard of the palace (that is, the governor’s headquarters); and they called together the whole cohort. And they clothed him in a purple cloak; and after twisting some thorns into a crown, they put it on him. And they began saluting him, “Hail, King of the Jews!” They struck his head with a reed, spat upon him, and knelt down in homage to him. After mocking him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him out to crucify him.
Mark 15:16-20

The entire population in Joseph’s ancient Egyptian Empire had to pay reverence to the Pharaoh in order to survive. The same situation prevails in the times of Jesus under the Roman Empire where people have to literally worship Caesar and be his loyal subjects. And as Jesus has dared to contest that and claimed himself to be the actual Son of God, the soldiers employ all tools at their disposal to denigrate that claim as they torture him.

They clothe him with a purple cloak - a royal attire.
Caesar wears a laurel wreath crown. The soldiers brutally twist a crown of thorns on Jesus’ head.
The Roman Emperor is hailed everywhere as he goes around his colonies. They mock-hail Jesus while they strike him and spit on him.
Everyone prostrates before Caesar in worship. The soldiers kneel before Jesus paying mock homage.

The hostility shown by Caesar’s imperial army towards Yahweh’s Jesus is fierce. As the Empire’s minions, they want to humiliate this man and snuff out the anti-imperial views he espouses.

The Charge

After they crucify Jesus, they put up the charge against him on the cross.

It was nine o’clock in the morning when they crucified him. The inscription of the charge against him read, “The King of the Jews.”
Mark 15:25-26

The inscription lays out his crime. Calling himself the king of the Judeans, Jesus has rebelled against the “law and order” of the Roman Empire, where in reality the law protects only Caesar and his cronies, and the societal order is a system of oppression that sets peoples against each other to the sole benefit of the few at the top. And it is for this crime of rebellion against the Empire, Jesus is put to death.

Yahweh’s Response

On the third day after his execution, Jesus is witnessed alive by his followers. He has been raised from the dead by none other than Yahweh himself - as proof for whose Empire and which form of society will ultimately prevail in the Earth.

When they had carried out everything that was written about him, they took him down from the tree and laid him in a tomb. But God raised him from the dead; and for many days he appeared to those who came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, and they are now his witnesses to the people.
Acts 13:29-31

Jesus continues his acts of defiance against the Empire even after his crucifixion. The Roman Empire places women at the sub-human level and does not treat a woman’s testimony in court valid. But after rising from the violent death inflicted upon him by the Empire, Jesus shows up first to women and makes them the first witnesses of his resurrection. As the testimonies of those women still reverberate across space and time, Jesus sets the stage on how a Yahweh-driven egalitarian society would operate (Matthew 28:1-10; Mark 16:1-7; Luke 24:1-8; John 20:1-2).

In his post-resurrection appearances, Jesus teaches his followers further about the Kingdom of God that is to come on the Earth in order to replace manmade Empires including that of Rome.

After his suffering he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.
Acts 1:3

When they ask him about the liberation of Israel from Rome, he expands their remit beyond their narrow nationalistic view, onto the ends of the Earth.

So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
Acts 1:6-8

He envisions a universal restoration for all nations on Earth.

Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.
Luke 24:44-47

Jesus connects the dots between Yahweh’s anti-imperial Laws, the aspirations of the prophets and the dreams of the psalms for a fair and just society, and asks his followers to preach to the people of all nations, starting from Israel, to repent from the ways of the Empire where people see their neighbor as the despicable ‘other’ and instead turn to the ways of Yahweh where one loves their neighbor as one’s own self (Luke 24:44-49). He asks them to proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God, the alternative society of Yahweh, to the ends of the earth. And that is what they set out to do –

But when they believed Philip as he proclaimed the good news of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women. Acts 8:12.
Paul entered the synagogue and spoke boldly there for three months, arguing persuasively about the kingdom of God. Acts 19:8.
They arranged to meet Paul on a certain day, and came in even larger numbers to the place where he was staying. He witnessed to them from morning till evening, explaining about the kingdom of God, and from the Law of Moses and from the Prophets he tried to persuade them about Jesus. Acts 28:23.
For two whole years Paul stayed there in his own rented house and welcomed all who came to see him. He proclaimed the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ—with all boldness and without hindrance! Acts 28:30-31.

The Roman Empire and its cronies had acted swiftly in capturing and executing Jesus within his three-and-a-half-year ministry of proclaiming the Empire of Yahweh. The imperial machine thought of him as yet another casualty of its resoluteness to maintain absolute power, yet another potential usurper who challenged Caesar and met a gruesome end. They had crushed him to death - just as they had ploughed through millions of people before – the vanquished ‘others’ and the surviving zombie slaves serving the imperial aristocracy. But the Empire did not anticipate Yahweh’s response, which Jesus had predicted to his disciples. Back in the Pharoah’s times, Yahweh parted the Red Sea in a mighty act of rescue, giving hope to his people for a new type of society where there will be freedom, justice and peace. In the times of Caesar, he does it again – this time he resurrects the Empire’s Most Wanted Man in Israel. And this mighty act of resurrection fires up the followers of Jesus who ignite a movement that spreads the good news of the Empire of Yahweh like wildfire across the length and breadth of the Roman Empire.

The Kingdom To Come

Jesus, Yahweh’s anointed king, proves invincible to the Roman Empire. Caesar’s machinery cannot seem to destroy his legacy. The followers of Jesus spread his message of God’s kingdom that is to arrive on the Earth in order to not only balance the books that have been so far rigged in favor of those in power, but also to restore dignity and care for every human being.

Peter stands up in Solomon’s Portico in the Temple, which was then the seat of the authorities installed by the imperial powers, and delivers the call -

Repent therefore, and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the LORD, and that he may send the Messiah appointed for you, that is, Jesus, who must remain in heaven until the time of universal restoration that God announced long ago through his holy prophets.
Acts 3:20-21

He promises “times of refreshing” to come and a “time of universal restoration”. Jesus himself calls these as the time of “renewal of all things” (Matthew 19:28). For those in the crowd who might be wondering if Peter is introducing some new terminology here, he quells any such doubts and declares that those particular times have been announced not only by Jesus but also much earlier by Yahweh’s holy prophets of long ago.

Yes, the prophets describe the Kingdom of God in graphic detail. Let’s see some samples from Isaiah and Micah.

He will give rain for the seed with which you sow the ground, and grain, the produce of the ground, which will be rich and plenteous. On that day your cattle will graze in broad pastures. Isaiah 30:23.
They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. Isaiah 65:21.
They shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid; for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken. Micah 4:4.

The prophets are unambiguous that there will be no poverty among the people in God’s Kingdom. The people will have their food, shelter and all their needs. Everyone will not only be satisfied, but also feel safe. There will be no Pharaoh or Caesar to threaten them or take away their belongings. The land will be owned by the people, not by those in power.

As people continue to suffer under the Empires of Men even in the twenty-first century, this good news from the first century about the upcoming Empire of Yahweh still gives hope and purpose to humanity that justice, equality and peace will come to the Earth.