"Lord," the disciples asked the risen Jesus, "is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?" His answer was: "It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority." —Acts 1:6-7
The question was a reasonable one for disciples who had earlier heard Jesus imply future glory for the city of Jerusalem when the times of Gentile political domination were past (Luke 21:24). Here in Acts such standard hopes of Jewish end-times theology (or "eschatology") that included political sovereignty were not denied but apparently deferred. For now the concern to which the disciples were directed was a worldwide evangelistic mission radiating out from Jerusalem, instead of a focus on political rule in Jerusalem.
Fast forward to the late 19th century. When nonreligious Jews sought to create a secular Jewish state, many Orthodox Jews objected that the Zionists were jumping the gun. The Zionists were "flying in the face of heaven," they said, and they should wait until the Messiah came to take the people of Israel back to their ancestral land.
The Orthodox Jewish stance has a remarkable affinity to Jesus' answer to the disciples, because both depend on traditional Jewish eschatology, which says it is the Messiah who will restore Israel to the land where justice and peace may be enjoyed. In Acts 1, Jesus, as the Messiah, is personally to restore the kingdom to Israel, and the timing is to be God's. The context suggests that when Jesus returns from heaven it will be his role to carry out this Messianic task: "This same Jesus, who has been taken up from you to heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven" (Acts 1:11).
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