Anyone with the in-dwelling Spirit of God is able (not always willing, but able - enabled to be more accurate)to discern the Word of God. The nation of Israel and the disciples of Jesus’ day did not have the indwelling Holy Spirit. That came after His ascension on Pentecost.
Everything you’ve been questioning here about the [earthly] kingdom of God and Israel’s failure to comprehend that Christ had to die FIRST before this could be established can be understood in light of this actuality. When Christ appears to the disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24) He confronts them about this very idea. Their messiah was dead. Their idea about Him setting up His kingdom came crashing down around them.They were heading home. Then the risen Christ appears and finds them having a sad conversation about Christ’s apparent failure. He chides them, “O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?” And then we read: “ And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.” They needed a serious bible study to stir their minds up sufficiently to what they understood about OT teaching and how Christ came to fulfill it ON HIS/GOD’S TERMS and not theirs. Later, when they go back to Jerusalem, having been enabled to see the OT scriptures in their proper light, they hurry back to Jerusalem to tell the other disciples. When they join up with them there Christ again appears:
Luke 24:44 And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me.
Luk 24:45 Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures,
Luk 24:46 And said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day:
Luk 24:47 And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.
Luk 24:48 And ye are witnesses of these things.
Luk 24:49 And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high.
That power is the Holy Spirit which He gave to those first followers (at Pentecost - these were all Jews, by the way). He now freely gives the same Spirit to all His followers that they might “have the mind of Christ” [1Co 2:16 For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.]
I am not alone in “being right.” That is not even the way to describe it. I am saved. I have been taken out of the kingdom of darkness and translated into the kingdom of light. The believer didn’t do anything to deserve this, to earn this, to gain this. The believer has simply acknowledged his/her sinfulness, the desperate condition that this leaves one in before a holy God and accepts the free gift of salvation that God has provided in sending His Son to the cross to bear our sin in His own body on the tree, where He paid the penalty for it. Everyone who has the Spirit of God knows and understands these things, is waiting for His return and will be a part of His Kingdom.
Oh, I agree with you on that one. In fact, one might almost say there was no such concept in Jewish tradition about a Holy Spirit as you perceive it today. It was invented... (you would say revealed) after Jesus was crucified.
Everything you’ve been questioning here about the [earthly] kingdom of God and Israel’s failure to comprehend that Christ had to die FIRST before this could be established can be understood in light of this actuality...
Yes, exactly! That is exactly what my point has been all along: that no one had any concept of Christ's mission being what people now think it to be ...until after it was all over, and their initial expectations were disappointed.
Do you understand the implications of this?
When Christ appears to the disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24) He confronts them about this very idea. Their messiah was dead. Their idea about Him setting up His kingdom came crashing down around them.
The question I keep asking is, why did they think this in the first place? Until we can come to an agreement on this, this starting point, there is no point trying to figure out anything that happened after he was crucified. First we need to understand what people thought he was doing there in the first place, and why they thought it.