Why has Christ remained away for 2000 years?

A person might ask: why has Christ remained away for 2000 years?

The answer does not lie in an appreciation of prophetic time periods. An understanding of prophecy merely postpones tackling the question. A slightly deeper question is: why is God absent/away at all for long periods of time?

The answer to this question has to do with free-will – the fact that God has created us as free creatures. This means that having given us his commands, he must step away and allow us to freely obey him. This is nothing more than parents do with their children.

We can now see where the answer lies to our opening question. God through Christ gave a substantial group of new commands and doctrines in the first century. Necessarily, he stepped away to allow us to freely act with this new revelation. This revelation was to be the last before the kingdom and for all the world to freely accept or reject.

Accordingly, Christ has been away for 2000 years because this is how long it has taken for the gospel, its doctrine and all its commands to go to all the world. The invention of the printing press, the creation of European empires with their associated missionary bodies, and now the Internet, has seen the light for the Gentiles spread worldwide.

We should have no difficulty with Christ being away for 2000 years. The Law was until John and it had been around for 1500 years or so by the time of John. However, this is not quite the same as the last 2000 years because, during the dispensation of the Law, God was away from Yehud after Malachi for about 400 years. The point here is that the restoration prophets had finished their revelation and God withdrew to see what his people would freely do with that completed revelation. How would they prepare for the messiah?

Sin and death is dealt with in the Law; the kingdom is the concern of the Prophets. Jesus’ ministry is the same. He spiritualized aspects of the Prophets so that they became relevant to his teaching about sin and death and the realization of the kingdom was placed in the future. Compared with the records of Jewish teaching in Jesus’ day, Jesus’ teaching was unique.

This revelation of the Spirit is why God has been away but the return of the Jews to the land in this day and age shows that God is about to come to the cities of Judah once again (Isaiah) and it shows that a kingdom on earth centred in Jerusalem was not spiritualized by Jesus. That was a mistake made by Christendom.