“Perceiving then that they were about to come and take Him by force to make Him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by Himself” (John 6:15)
Jesus sent the disciples off in their boat. He could deal with the crowd better without them, because they too had imbibed the enthusiasm of the moment. They wanted to make our Lord their king. All the Jews were frustrated and angry. John the Baptist was alone in having the audacity to stand up to Herod and condemn him for sinning in the palace. Now he was dead. They turned to the obvious successor, Jesus the rabbi and wonderworker from Galilee. They would make Him their champion and leader, to rise in revolt against the wicked king Herod and overthrow the Romans who invaded their country and made Herod their puppet ruler. It was what our government calls regime change. Conquest by force, rebellion against those in power.
Hitler convinced the German people that the Treaty of Versailles that punished their country for waging World War I was excessive and humiliating. His followers inaugurated World War II.
Lenin led the coup that overthrew Emperor Nicholas II and installed a Communist dictatorship in Russia that lasted for over seventy years. Another regime change.
Our nation, the United States, decided that Iraq was one of the sources of terrorism, its leader Saddam Hussein had to be cast out of office; and they try to sanitize the invasion of a nation by calling it regime change. Do we wonder why the Iraqis resent it?
Imagine that Jesus Christ had agreed to accept the role of revolutionary leader. Suppose He had considered that the fame it would bring might have a positive effect. As the most popular Jew of the time, He would be listened to, indeed obeyed, even by the Pharisees and Sadduccees who despised Him and harassed Him at every occasion. It was the third of the temptations offered to Him by Satan in the wilderness—You can have all the Kingdoms of the world under Your influence. Simon bar Kochba just a generation after our Lord was crucified led such a rebellion. It ended up a disaster for the Jewish people.
Visualize what might have been achieved had our Lord taken advantage of the moment, with His enormous popularity and the situation ripe for revolution. Just envision a temporary success, something like that of the Maccabee brothers, who held the temple for eight days. Rather than being loathed to this day, the name of Jesus of Nazareth might be honored among all Jews for having given His people a mini-victory against the hated Romans.
But at what price? We would never have known salvation. The Romans probably would have crucified Him anyway, the sign describing His “crime” would be held in honor by the Jews rather than wanting it altered. He may have been a temporary hero—KING OF THE JEWS would be a mark of honor even for Pharisees and Sadduccees—but there would be no Christian people to know Him as Lord, Master and Son of God. No Church to provide salvation to those who seek an alternative to the ways of the world, survival of the fittest, history a sad sequence of one regime change following another, the same promises, moments of glory ending in disillusion and dissipation.
More, mankind would never know that they had been created to live for all eternity among the angels, offered the gift of joy in praising and glorifying Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the God of love who wants nothing more than to have us realize His love, and to return that love in the only true and lasting Kingdom.