The perfect time

I find it interesting to think about God's timing, in this case of when he chose to send Jesus to live on earth.  Biblical teachers and scholars have spoken many times of the fact that it was while the Middle East was under Roman rule, for example, and how their transportation network and the common language of the day over a broad geographic area contributed to the rapid spread of the Gospel after Jesus’ death and resurrection.

But what I also find interesting – and I’m not sure I’ve ever heard someone speak about this – is how God chose to send Jesus before the human advent of mass media.  From a human understanding, how wise it would have been for God to send his only son at a time such as this when the whole world could have known about him instead of just one tiny region.  People from the world over could then have seen for themselves the first coming of the world’s only Messiah.  Also, it would have shaved millennia off the time it took to spread the Gospel to the farthest, most isolated reaches of the globe.  How many missed out on the hope of eternal life during that time?

But the flip side of this scenario might have been equally scary.  There were enough religious leaders in that tiny part of the world trying to vilify and even kill Jesus, afraid of losing their respect before men and the wealth and prestige that come along with it.  How many more so if his arrival had been broadcast globally in an age of mass transportation!

In addition, the mass media is notorious for distorting and warping the character of people and the nature of events, shaping them to fit their agenda or belief system.  It is enough that many people were doing this even as Jesus performed miracles right before their eyes.  How much more would Jesus and his miracles have been distorted had he been under the constant microscope of reporters and television cameras!

Instead, God chose to bring Jesus into a world where the only effective means of communication was personal; Jesus reached out to people on a one-by-one basis.  Even if he was speaking to a large crowd, the people were seeing and hearing him in person, and in many cases before and after they had an opportunity to have one-on-one interaction with him.  And following his death and resurrection, after the Holy Spirit first entered believers in Jesus on the Day of Pentecost, the Gospel was once again spread in the same manner:  one-on-one or in the presence of crowds within earshot.

In a sense, then, God intended for the Gospel to be introduced to the world then spread in a manner consistent with God’s nature:  personal.  Not in the distant, detached, and distorted manner that the modern mass media has introduced into the world.