My thoughts recently have been with the church, namely where we are and were we’ve been. So I thought it’d be a good idea to study some of what the bible said about it, so Acts 1 it is. I had always read this as the evangelism pep rally verse which is mostly due to how it was presented.

⁶So when they had come together, they were asking Him, saying, “Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?” ⁷He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority; ⁸but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.”

The thing that popped out to me as I read it this time is the question before the verse 8 bomb. “is it at this time you are restoring the kingdom to Israel”. They were asking a very specific question regarding their own desires, probably to be out from the rule of the Romans. Jesus comes back and says ‘none of your business guys, BUT you’re going to be a part of this restoration you asked about through the power the Holy Spirit and the world will see it’.

With new perspective comes new understanding.

I see this as less of a ‘go, tell everyone you know about Jesus’ and more of an invitation and foretelling of the world they were about to change by ushering in the Kingdom of heaven to earth, not the other way around. In our culture there seems to be a lot of emphasis on spreading the good news to get people to heaven while leaving the earth in a trash heap which I obviously think is the infection of our society on the Gospel. That’s not to say that we are not to evangelize, but as the last thing Jesus said on earth I think it’s important to realize we are part of His kingdom and our world just happens to be the playing field. We are to be witnesses, but through the different lenses.

~Israel