But what was the good news or gospel of Jesus, originally? Look how “Matthew” (
5:13-14) understood those Messianists who neglect, forget, or abandon the “gospel.” To him, they were
This video presentation and the following essay dive into that question
Gospel Nextology
For both John the Baptist and Jesus, God was about to inaugurate
theocracy ( = kingdom of God) for Israel. Therefore, the gospels of both John and Jesus concerned Israelite theocracy. Since this was “coming up next,” neither John nor Jesus was “
eschatological” (meaning “last things,” a German category coined by 19th-century theologians).
Ancient agrarian peasants scratched out subsistence survival and viewed time very differently than we post-industrial Western people do. They didn’t speculate on the possible or imagine long-scale, distant future times. Hence, Jesus wasn’t anything like Washington Irving, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Gene Roddenberry, Isaac Asimov, or Frank Herbert.