At the Feast of Tabernacles

162:2.1The first af­ter­noon that Je­sus taught in the tem­ple, a con­sid­er­able com­pany sat lis­ten­ing to his words de­pict­ing the lib­erty of the new gospel and the joy of those who be­lieve the good news, when a cu­ri­ous lis­tener in­ter­rupted him to ask: “Teacher, how is it you can quote the Scrip­tures and teach the peo­ple so flu­ently when I am told that you are un­taught in the learn­ing of the rab­bis?” Je­sus replied: “No man has taught me the truths which I de­clare to you. And this teach­ing is not mine but His who sent me. If any man re­ally de­sires to do my Fa­ther’s will, he shall cer­tainly know about my teach­ing, whether it be God’s or whether I speak for my­self. He who speaks for him­self seeks his own glory, but when I de­clare the words of the Fa­ther, I thereby seek the glory of him who sent me. But be­fore you try to en­ter into the new light, should you not rather fol­low the light you al­ready have? Moses gave you the law, yet how many of you hon­estly seek to ful­fill its de­mands? Moses in this law en­joins you, say­ing, ‘You shall not kill’; not­with­stand­ing this com­mand some of you seek to kill the Son of Man.”

162:2.2When the crowd heard these words, they fell to wran­gling among them­selves. Some said he was mad; some that he had a devil. Oth­ers said this was in­deed the prophet of Gal­i­lee whom the scribes and Phar­isees had long sought to kill. Some said the re­li­gious au­thor­i­ties were afraid to mo­lest him; oth­ers thought that they laid not hands upon him be­cause they had be­come be­liev­ers in him. Af­ter con­sid­er­able de­bate one of the crowd stepped for­ward and asked Je­sus, “Why do the rulers seek to kill you?” And he replied: “The rulers seek to kill me be­cause they re­sent my teach­ing about the good news of the king­dom, a gospel that sets men free from the bur­den­some tra­di­tions of a for­mal re­li­gion of cer­e­monies which these teach­ers are de­ter­mined to up­hold at any cost. They cir­cum­cise in ac­cor­dance with the law on the Sab­bath day, but they would kill me be­cause I once on the Sab­bath day set free a man held in the bond­age of af­flic­tion. They fol­low af­ter me on the Sab­bath to spy on me but would kill me be­cause on an­other oc­ca­sion I chose to make a griev­ously stricken man com­pletely whole on the Sab­bath day. They seek to kill me be­cause they well know that, if you hon­estly be­lieve and dare to ac­cept my teach­ing, their sys­tem of tra­di­tional re­li­gion will be over­thrown, for­ever de­stroyed. Thus will they be de­prived of au­thor­ity over that to which they have de­voted their lives since they stead­fastly refuse to ac­cept this new and more glo­ri­ous gospel of the king­dom of God. And now do I ap­peal to ev­ery one of you: Judge not ac­cord­ing to out­ward ap­pear­ances but rather judge by the true spirit of these teach­ings; judge righ­teously.”

162:2.3Then said an­other in­quirer: “Yes, Teacher, we do look for the Mes­siah, but when he comes, we know that his ap­pear­ance will be in mys­tery. We know whence you are. You have been among your breth­ren from the be­gin­ning. The de­liv­erer will come in power to re­store the throne of David’s king­dom. Do you re­ally claim to be the Mes­siah?” And Je­sus replied: “You claim to know me and to know whence I am. I wish your claims were true, for in­deed then would you find abun­dant life in that knowl­edge. But I de­clare that I have not come to you for my­self; I have been sent by the Fa­ther, and he who sent me is true and faith­ful. By re­fus­ing to hear me, you are re­fus­ing to re­ceive Him who sends me. You, if you will re­ceive this gospel, shall come to know Him who sent me. I know the Fa­ther, for I have come from the Fa­ther to de­clare and re­veal him to you.”

162:2.4The agents of the scribes wanted to lay hands upon him, but they feared the mul­ti­tude, for many be­lieved in him. Je­sus’ work since his bap­tism had be­come well known to all Jewry, and as many of these peo­ple re­counted these things, they said among them­selves: “Even though this teacher is from Gal­i­lee, and even though he does not meet all of our ex­pec­ta­tions of the Mes­siah, we won­der if the de­liv­erer, when he does come, will re­ally do any­thing more won­der­ful than this Je­sus of Naz­a­reth has al­ready done.”

162:2.5When the Phar­isees and their agents heard the peo­ple talk­ing this way, they took coun­sel with their lead­ers and de­cided that some­thing should be done forth­with to put a stop to these pub­lic ap­pear­ances of Je­sus in the tem­ple courts. The lead­ers of the Jews, in gen­eral, were dis­posed to avoid a clash with Je­sus, be­liev­ing that the Ro­man au­thor­i­ties had prom­ised him im­mu­nity. They could not oth­er­wise ac­count for his bold­ness in com­ing at this time to Je­ru­sa­lem; but the of­fi­cers of the San­hedrin did not wholly be­lieve this ru­mor. They rea­soned that the Ro­man rulers would not do such a thing se­cretly and with­out the knowl­edge of the high­est gov­ern­ing body of the Jew­ish na­tion.

162:2.6Ac­cord­ingly, Eber, the proper of­fi­cer of the San­hedrin, with two as­sis­tants was dis­patched to ar­rest Je­sus. As Eber made his way to­ward Je­sus, the Mas­ter said: “Fear not to ap­proach me. Draw near while you lis­ten to my teach­ing. I know you have been sent to ap­pre­hend me, but you should un­der­stand that noth­ing will be­fall the Son of Man un­til his hour comes. You are not ar­rayed against me; you come only to do the bid­ding of your mas­ters, and even these rulers of the Jews ver­ily think they are do­ing God’s ser­vice when they se­cretly seek my de­struc­tion.

162:2.7“I bear none of you ill will. The Fa­ther loves you, and there­fore do I long for your de­liv­er­ance from the bond­age of prej­u­dice and the dark­ness of tra­di­tion. I of­fer you the lib­erty of life and the joy of sal­va­tion. I pro­claim the new and liv­ing way, the de­liv­er­ance from evil and the break­ing of the bond­age of sin. I have come that you might have life, and have it eter­nally. You seek to be rid of me and my dis­qui­et­ing teach­ings. If you could only re­al­ize that I am to be with you only a lit­tle while! In just a short time I go to Him who sent me into this world. And then will many of you dili­gently seek me, but you shall not dis­cover my pres­ence, for where I am about to go you can­not come. But all who truly seek to find me shall some­time at­tain the life that leads to my Fa­ther’s pres­ence.”

162:2.8Some of the scoffers said among them­selves: “Where will this man go that we can­not find him? Will he go to live among the Greeks? Will he de­stroy him­self? What can he mean when he de­clares that soon he will de­part from us, and that we can­not go where he goes?”

162:2.9Eber and his as­sis­tants re­fused to ar­rest Je­sus; they re­turned to their meet­ing place with­out him. When, there­fore, the chief priests and the Phar­isees up­braided Eber and his as­sis­tants be­cause they had not brought Je­sus with them, Eber only replied: “We feared to ar­rest him in the midst of the mul­ti­tude be­cause many be­lieve in him. Be­sides, we never heard a man speak like this man. There is some­thing out of the or­di­nary about this teacher. You would all do well to go over to hear him.” And when the chief rulers heard these words, they were as­ton­ished and spoke taunt­ingly to Eber: “Are you also led astray? Are you about to be­lieve in this de­ceiver? Have you heard that any of our learned men or any of the rulers have be­lieved in him? Have any of the scribes or the Phar­isees been de­ceived by his clever teach­ings? How does it come that you are in­flu­enced by the be­hav­ior of this ig­no­rant mul­ti­tude who know not the law or the proph­ets? Do you not know that such un­taught peo­ple are ac­cursed?” And then an­swered Eber: “Even so, my mas­ters, but this man speaks to the mul­ti­tude words of mercy and hope. He cheers the down­hearted, and his words were com­fort­ing even to our souls. What can there be wrong in these teach­ings even though he may not be the Mes­siah of the Scrip­tures? And even then does not our law re­quire fair­ness? Do we con­demn a man be­fore we hear him?” And the chief of the San­hedrin was wroth with Eber and, turn­ing upon him, said: “Have you gone mad? Are you by any chance also from Gal­i­lee? Search the Scrip­tures, and you will dis­cover that out of Gal­i­lee arises no prophet, much less the Mes­siah.”

162:2.10The San­hedrin dis­banded in con­fu­sion, and Je­sus with­drew to Beth­any for the night.