Last Teaching at Pella

169:0.1Late on Mon­day evening, March 6, Je­sus and the ten apos­tles ar­rived at the Pella camp. This was the last week of Je­sus’ so­journ there, and he was very ac­tive in teach­ing the mul­ti­tude and in­struct­ing the apos­tles. He preached ev­ery af­ter­noon to the crowds and each night an­swered ques­tions for the apos­tles and cer­tain of the more ad­vanced dis­ci­ples re­sid­ing at the camp.

169:0.2Word re­gard­ing the res­ur­rec­tion of Laz­a­rus had reached the en­camp­ment two days be­fore the Mas­ter’s ar­rival, and the en­tire as­sem­bly was agog. Not since the feed­ing of the five thou­sand had any­thing oc­curred which so aroused the imag­i­na­tion of the peo­ple. And thus it was at the very height of the sec­ond phase of the pub­lic min­istry of the king­dom that Je­sus planned to teach this one short week at Pella and then to be­gin the tour of south­ern Perea which led right up to the fi­nal and tragic ex­pe­ri­ences of the last week in Je­ru­sa­lem.

169:0.3The Phar­isees and the chief priests had be­gun to for­mu­late their charges and to crys­tal­lize their ac­cu­sa­tions. They ob­jected to the Mas­ter’s teach­ings on these grounds:

169:0.41. He is a friend of pub­li­cans and sin­ners; he re­ceives the un­godly and even eats with them.

169:0.52. He is a blas­phe­mer; he talks about God as be­ing his Fa­ther and thinks he is equal with God.

169:0.63. He is a law­breaker. He heals dis­ease on the Sab­bath and in many other ways flouts the sa­cred law of Is­rael.

169:0.74. He is in league with dev­ils. He works won­ders and does seem­ing mir­a­cles by the power of Beelze­bub, the prince of dev­ils.