The Timing and Nature of the Kingdom Offer and the Cross
Question: Hello. On 9/11, you said that the case could be made that if Israel had accepted its Messiah, then Jesus would not have had to go to the cross. Does this mean that the kingdom offer actually began at the start of Jesus's ministry? Does this mean that the Holy Spirit did not have to come first (Pentecost) for the official offer to be made? Do you take the Old Testament suffering servant passages as conditional or a warning rather than a required prophecy?
The proposal that if Israel had accepted her Messiah He would not have gone to the cross is a debated but important question. It arises from considering both the genuine nature of the kingdom offer and the prophetic passages regarding the suffering of the Messiah. The question turns on how we understand prophecy, contingency, and the historical path that actually unfolded.
I hold that the Lord’s going to the cross is historically and theologically bound up with Israel’s rejection of Him. The cross, as it occurred, is the consequence of the nation’s refusal of their King and His kingdom. Yet some of the prophetic material about Messiah’s suffering, such as the "suffering servant" passages, was obscure enough that even the apostles did not grasp it beforehand. These texts came into clearer focus only in retrospect.
Passages like "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" must certainly be taken into account, and one must be cautious here. Nonetheless, there is room to explore whether some prophecies about the suffering of Messiah function as "shadows" that can be fulfilled in more than one way, or whose precise outworking is contingent upon human response. This is not an airtight system, but it is worthy of careful consideration.
Regarding the timing of the kingdom offer, I have in the past located the first bonafide national offer in the early chapters of Acts, especially in Peter’s preaching after Pentecost. My earlier assumption was that certain prophecies—particularly concerning the suffering of Messiah and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit—had to be fulfilled before a full, good faith kingdom offer could be set before Israel.
However, I now believe that the offer of both the King and the kingdom begins with the public ministry of Jesus and even with the ministry of John the Baptist. John’s call, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord," and the proclamation, "The kingdom of heaven is at hand," are best taken as a genuine presentation: Israel’s King is present and the kingdom is near in the sense of being available upon appropriate national response. The language "at hand" suggests nearness, not a distant, purely eschatological prospect.
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The early preaching of John, Jesus, and the apostles reflects the expectation that the kingdom could come quickly if Israel would receive her King. There were, of course, elements that needed to occur (such as the suffering of Messiah and other aspects of prophetic fulfillment), but some of these may involve a degree of contingency within God’s revealed plan. Thus I now affirm that the kingdom offer begins with the earthly ministry of Jesus, not only with Peter after Pentecost.
Concerning the Holy Spirit and Pentecost, I previously argued that the Spirit’s coming of necessity preceded any formal kingdom offer. That conclusion was largely drawn from passages like Joel 2, which speaks of the Spirit being poured out and the subsequent eschatological signs. On a straightforward reading, Joel 2:20--29 speaks of future restoration for Israel, the removal of enemies, abundant blessing, and the Lord dwelling in the midst of His people. Then we read:
"And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions." (Joel 2:28)
The term "afterward" and the sequence of events invite questions. If one insists on strict chronology, one must either detach some of the restoration language from the millennium or push the Spirit’s pouring out to after the millennium, which is untenable in light of new covenant passages that connect the Spirit with Israel’s future restoration. A more satisfying approach is to see these elements as belonging together in the messianic age, while acknowledging that the outworking can involve postponement and partial realization.
From this standpoint, Pentecost may be viewed not as the prerequisite for the first valid kingdom offer, but as a continuation or intensification of that offer, and as a kind of "down payment" (to use the language of Ephesians) of what the nation was rejecting. After the crucifixion, and in light of Jesus’s prayer, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do," Pentecost can be seen as God’s merciful extension of testimony—a foretaste of the powers and blessings of the kingdom age, granting Israel another opportunity to respond.
This model treats the Spirit’s coming as part of God’s further gracious dealing with Israel in the wake of rejection, rather than as the initial condition that made a kingdom offer possible. The offer was already present in the ministries of John and Jesus; the Pentecostal events then functioned as a deepened witness, not the starting point.
As to the Old Testament "suffering servant" passages, I do regard them as genuinely prophetic. However, they each have an immediate historical or literary context, such that they could have found a complete initial fulfillment in non-messianic circumstances, or in Israel’s own national suffering. In that sense, they are not strictly conditional prophecies (as in, "If you do X, then Y must occur"), but they are capable of more than one level of fulfillment. They can be wholly satisfied in an initial referent, or they can stand as shadows that are taken up more fully in the experience of Messiah.
If this is so, then one may say that the specific way in which these passages become fulfilled in Christ’s death is bound up with Israel’s rejection of Him. They are not "empty warnings"—they are real prophetic patterns—but their full christological realization takes shape in response to human history as it actually unfolds. The prophecies are thus certain in God’s omniscience, but the pathway by which they manifest in history can include genuine contingencies from the human vantage point.
This entire area deserves sustained, technical study: how contingency, shadow, and fulfillment function in kingdom prophecies, in the tribulation (the "day of Jacob’s trouble"), and particularly in the prophecies of Messiah’s suffering. For now, it is sufficient to say that there is a defensible case for (1) a genuine kingdom offer during Jesus’s earthly ministry, (2) Pentecost as an intensification and merciful extension of that offer rather than its starting point, and (3) suffering servant texts functioning as prophetic patterns that can be taken up in different ways depending on Israel’s response.
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