The Passover at Jerusalem

142:1.1Through­out this month Je­sus or one of the apos­tles taught daily in the tem­ple. When the Pass­over crowds were too great to find en­trance to the tem­ple teach­ing, the apos­tles con­ducted many teach­ing groups out­side the sa­cred precincts. The bur­den of their mes­sage was:

142:1.21. The king­dom of heaven is at hand.

142:1.32. By faith in the fa­ther­hood of God you may en­ter the king­dom of heaven, thus be­com­ing the sons of God.

142:1.43. Love is the rule of liv­ing within the king­dom—su­preme de­vo­tion to God while lov­ing your neigh­bor as your­self.

142:1.54. Obe­di­ence to the will of the Fa­ther, yield­ing the fruits of the spirit in one’s per­sonal life, is the law of the king­dom.

142:1.6The mul­ti­tudes who came to cel­e­brate the Pass­over heard this teach­ing of Je­sus, and hun­dreds of them re­joiced in the good news. The chief priests and rulers of the Jews be­came much con­cerned about Je­sus and his apos­tles and de­bated among them­selves as to what should be done with them.

142:1.7Be­sides teach­ing in and about the tem­ple, the apos­tles and other be­liev­ers were en­gaged in do­ing much per­sonal work among the Pass­over throngs. These in­ter­ested men and women car­ried the news of Je­sus’ mes­sage from this Pass­over cel­e­bra­tion to the ut­ter­most parts of the Ro­man Em­pire and also to the East. This was the be­gin­ning of the spread of the gospel of the king­dom to the out­side world. No longer was the work of Je­sus to be con­fined to Pales­tine.