The Resurrection of Lazarus

168:3.1Even though the tes­ti­mony of this man raised from the dead did much to con­sol­i­date the faith of the mass of be­liev­ers in the gospel of the king­dom, it had lit­tle or no in­flu­ence on the at­ti­tude of the re­li­gious lead­ers and rulers at Je­ru­sa­lem ex­cept to has­ten their de­ci­sion to de­stroy Je­sus and stop his work.

168:3.2At one o’clock the next day, Fri­day, the San­hedrin met to de­lib­er­ate fur­ther on the ques­tion, “What shall we do with Je­sus of Naz­a­reth?” Af­ter more than two hours of dis­cus­sion and ac­ri­mo­nious de­bate, a cer­tain Phar­isee pre­sented a res­o­lu­tion call­ing for Je­sus’ im­me­di­ate death, pro­claim­ing that he was a men­ace to all Is­rael and for­mally com­mit­ting the San­hedrin to the de­ci­sion of death, with­out trial and in de­fi­ance of all prece­dent.

168:3.3Time and again had this au­gust body of Jew­ish lead­ers de­creed that Je­sus be ap­pre­hended and brought to trial on charges of blas­phemy and nu­mer­ous other ac­cu­sa­tions of flout­ing the Jew­ish sa­cred law. They had once be­fore even gone so far as to de­clare he should die, but this was the first time the San­hedrin had gone on rec­ord as de­sir­ing to de­cree his death in ad­vance of a trial. But this res­o­lu­tion did not come to a vote since four­teen mem­bers of the San­hedrin re­signed in a body when such an un­heard-of ac­tion was pro­posed. While these res­ig­na­tions were not for­mally acted upon for al­most two weeks, this group of four­teen with­drew from the San­hedrin on that day, never again to sit in the coun­cil. When these res­ig­na­tions were sub­se­quently acted upon, five other mem­bers were thrown out be­cause their as­so­ciates be­lieved they en­ter­tained friendly feel­ings to­ward Je­sus. With the ejec­tion of these nine­teen men the San­hedrin was in a po­si­tion to try and to con­demn Je­sus with a sol­i­dar­ity bor­der­ing on una­nim­ity.

168:3.4The fol­low­ing week Laz­a­rus and his sis­ters were sum­moned to ap­pear be­fore the San­hedrin. When their tes­ti­mony had been heard, no doubt could be en­ter­tained that Laz­a­rus had been raised from the dead. Though the trans­ac­tions of the San­hedrin vir­tu­ally ad­mit­ted the res­ur­rec­tion of Laz­a­rus, the rec­ord car­ried a res­o­lu­tion at­tribut­ing this and all other won­ders worked by Je­sus to the power of the prince of dev­ils, with whom Je­sus was de­clared to be in league.

168:3.5No mat­ter what the source of his won­der-work­ing power, these Jew­ish lead­ers were per­suaded that, if he were not im­me­di­ately stopped, very soon all the com­mon peo­ple would be­lieve in him; and fur­ther, that se­ri­ous com­pli­ca­tions with the Ro­man au­thor­i­ties would arise since so many of his be­liev­ers re­garded him as the Mes­siah, Is­rael’s de­liv­erer.

168:3.6It was at this same meet­ing of the San­hedrin that Cai­a­phas the high priest first gave ex­pres­sion to that old Jew­ish adage, which he so many times re­peated: “It is bet­ter that one man die, than that the com­mu­nity per­ish.”

168:3.7Al­though Je­sus had re­ceived warn­ing of the do­ings of the San­hedrin on this dark Fri­day af­ter­noon, he was not in the least per­turbed and con­tin­ued rest­ing over the Sab­bath with friends in Beth­page, a ham­let near Beth­any. Early Sun­day morn­ing Je­sus and the apos­tles as­sem­bled, by pre­ar­range­ment, at the home of Laz­a­rus, and tak­ing leave of the Beth­any fam­ily, they started on their jour­ney back to the Pella en­camp­ment.