I believe that God has appointed times and seasons. The book of Exodus tells the story of Jacob’s family who came to Egypt as 70 people and became a multitude of millions who became enslaved to Pharaoh for 430 years. It is easy to wonder why it took them 430 years to cry out to God to be released from their bondage, but again, the answer is simple. It was not God’s appointed time. Acts 7:17 says, “But when the time of the promise drew near which God had sworn to Abraham, the people grew and multiplied in Egypt”. When it was His appointed time for this part of His story to unfold, (time of Amorites was done), His people cried out and He came down to deliver them. God’s timing is PERFECT. There is 400 years between Malachi and Matthew. This is known as “the time of silence” because God did not speak through a prophet all those years. From Matthew 1, when Jesus was born, to the time of His ministry at age 30, Hebrews 1 says,

“God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds…”.

Silence for 400 years plus 30 years until the beginning of Jesus’ ministry is 430 years! It is the exact same “time of silence” in Exodus. It is so perfect that we can not take the credit or blame for any of it!

By God’s will, Joseph was sent into Egypt after being sold into slavery by his jealous brothers. He took on an Egyptian name and dress and was promoted to a position of royalty. When his brothers came to Egypt for provisions during the famine, Joseph was so Egyptian he was unidentifiable to them. But, at the “appointed time”, he gathered them in a room alone, took off his Egyptian garb and said in Hebrew, “I am Joseph, your brother, who you sold into Egypt.” (Genesis 45:4). Likewise, Jesus, in the third century, took on a gentile form with everything about His Jewish identity removed from Him. God purposely hid Him for 1800 years so all the gentile nations could come to know Him. But one day soon in the future when He returns to this earth, like Joseph, He will gather His Jewish brothers in Jerusalem,without His Greek identity, and say in Hebrew,”I am Yeshua, the One Whom you pierced.” (Zechariah 12:10)

Since the rebirth of Israel in 1948 there has been a prophetic shift and the church has had their eyes slowly opened to God’s plan and purpose for the land of Israel, for the Jewish people, and a hunger to discover our Jewish roots. Did we all of a sudden wake up and have understanding? No! It is getting close to the time God chose for His Jewish brothers to have their eyes open to the revelation that much of what they carry in their Jewish faith is about Jesus, and for the gentile believers to see that their true identity can only be found in the ancient Jewish root that Paul says in Romans 11 that we are grafted into. (Romans 11:16-18)

When Jewish people have a revelation that Jesus is their Messiah and we have revelation that our identity is found in the Jewish root that supports us, we will express what the Father has always wanted: “One new Man” (Ephesians 2:15), Jew and Gentile. We can not be mad at our church fathers or church leaders for keeping it from us. Rather, we should be thankful that through centuries of persecution and darkness, they were able to keep the gospel message alive. Faithful desert fathers and a remnant of faithful brothers and sisters from different Church denominations through 2,000 years of church history, kept the flame burning and kept the testimony of Jesus alive in their hearts and passed it on to most of us that are the fruit of their faith and labors.

God has ordained that the knowledge of our Jewish roots would be kept until this time in history. He allowed the Jewish people to faithfully carry a treasure box with precious jewels that help us know our Jewish Messiah and gives rich explanation and meaning to our Hebrew Bible. We are living in a time when Jesus, like Joseph, is removing His Greek exterior and is wanting to reveal to His Jewish AND gentile family, “I am Yeshua.”