FILLED WITH WRATH

 Jesus spoke the words of Isaiah which were His own Words to Isaiah. He read them but knew of what He wrote many years ago using Isaiah’s hand. He merely opened the Torah, went right to the heart of the Word, and read it. The people of the synagogue, His own people, didn’t like what He was proffering: This son of Joseph thinks he is God. That was blasphemy to their ears.
  When Jesus read Holy Scripture – the very words that He had inspired – there were three possible responses: (1) antipathy, (2) apathy, or (3) conformity (acceptance and harmony to what was read).  If they had listened closely, they would have understood; He came to give them liberty from false thinking (Luke 4:18). However, although they knew that He was quoting scripture, His own people rejected His Word. They could have heard and not cared (apathy), or heard and accepted His Words (conformity), but they chose antipathy. They demonstrated wrath (anger) to Jesus for just being the Flesh of God - which they should have believed from the prophet Isaiah.
  Let’s diverge for a moment. Jesus came to share the gospel because disbelieving Jews should be saved. Indeed, they should have believed His Words. Instead, they were angered by His Words. Later, Jesus spoke these Words: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). He was speaking to a Jewish Pharisee, Nicodemus, who knew Isaiah’s words, and is one of the Jews who should be saved. Not because Jesus was there, but because they knew of His coming. They also knew of His going and why so, as well, because Isaiah wrote about Jesus’s death. The Jews should have been safe already, based on God’s Word in former times, just as Abraham was safe by his faith in the coming Messiah. “Should” is implied, but in the Greek, means “not” and is descriptive of “perish” or destroyed. “Should” is not in that passage. There are at least three different translations: should not, will not, and shall not. The King James Version uses “should not.” It seems to be the correct translations and is not future indicative. “Shall” and “will” point toward the future whereas should is present tense.
  The Jews should not perish. They knew better but would perish because of their unbelief in Jesus’s Words! Neither should Christians perish who know the Words of Jesus, but many will (sometimes in the future). Would is a form of “will” and is future context. Likewise, Christians should be safe from perishing, and in the end, they shall be saved. We are without excuse because God came in the Flesh! The Jews were excused until the end of time. Unbelieving Jews and disbelieving Gentiles are either apathetic of antipathetic. Those who do not want to hear the Word are apathetic. They care less, they think, whether they go to Heaven of Hell because of unbelief.
  The Jews believed in Heaven, Hell, and the Messiah. They were in the synagogue listening to the Word directly. They even heard and understood. They should have believed because God was standing among them! However, they were wrathful. They believed Jesus would come, but didn’t want Him yet, although, if they were true believers, they would have welcome Jesus.  Their choice was wrath, and they were so full of anger that they would have killed their own Savior… the one who they were waiting and supposedly worshiping!
  If Jesus had said, Go on as you are, then things would have been different. But after reading, Jesus chastised them for being like the Jews in Elijah’s day shut up from the Heaven for 3-1/2 years. For 400 years of silence, Jesus had shut up the Heavens for Jews. They didn’t like the idea that they may be shut out of Paradise, and they surely weren’t thinking of Heaven but Israel. The Nazarenes to whom Jesus was speaking, were once part of Samaria, but at the time of Jesus it was in Judea, which was at that time greater than Judah had been. The Jews in old Samarian city of Nazareth had a different temple and a different holy mountain. Perhaps the Jews saw Jesus shutting them out of the holiest land!
  There was always antipathy between the Samaritans and the people of Judah. They surely took Jesus’s message wrong and became angry. They thought they were only killing the messenger, but He Was/IS/and Shall be the Message! The lesson here is that there are different responses people have to truth. With Jesus, they wanted to kill the messenger, but in modern churches they are more civil. If preachers preach the truth, as Jesus did, people according to  Jesus, “will be set free” (Luke 4:18). Free from what? Deception, distress, and eternally perishing (ibid). Like Lot’s wife years before when she was turned to stone, the Nazarenes did not want spiritual freedom and went wild.
  We still see that in many most churches to this day. People stomp out of churches when sin is preached against. They want to be as they want to be, and “TO BE” is what sin is, unless it is TO BE for Christ. Those Jews, who were shut out in Elijah’s day, were out for 3-1/2 years. Elijah returned at the transfiguration of Jesus to straighten that out with the Jews. It did not with most of them! By grace, during the Great Tribulation, the Jews will be shut out for 3-1/2 years, and 144,000 of them then allowed in for refusing to take the mark of the Beast.  The Jews who rejected Jesus did not see the light and represent the Jews who shall finally see the light during the final 3-1/2 years of the Great Tribulation.
  My suggestion is for angry people not to project wrath onto the preacher or Jesus. Anger is because people cannot obtain what they want. Perhaps they wanted Paradise now, and when they failed to get what they wanted, they became angry, even as they believed in Jesus. Will those same Jews be among the dead who arise first – that they are those who will after the first 3-1/2 years of tribulation? I don’t know, but perhaps when Jesus died, they came around. Only Jesus knows if they turned away from their wrath.

Nancy Pelosi (credit: Common Dreams)