The Last Temple Discourse

175:1.1“This long time have I been with you, go­ing up and down in the land pro­claim­ing the Fa­ther’s love for the chil­dren of men, and many have seen the light and, by faith, have en­tered into the king­dom of heaven. In con­nec­tion with this teach­ing and preach­ing the Fa­ther has done many won­der­ful works, even to the res­ur­rec­tion of the dead. Many sick and af­flicted have been made whole be­cause they be­lieved; but all of this procla­ma­tion of truth and heal­ing of dis­ease has not opened the eyes of those who refuse to see light, those who are de­ter­mined to re­ject this gospel of the king­dom.

175:1.2“In ev­ery man­ner con­sis­tent with do­ing my Fa­ther’s will, I and my apos­tles have done our ut­most to live in peace with our breth­ren, to con­form with the rea­son­able re­quire­ments of the laws of Moses and the tra­di­tions of Is­rael. We have per­sis­tently sought peace, but the lead­ers of Is­rael will not have it. By re­ject­ing the truth of God and the light of heaven, they are align­ing them­selves on the side of er­ror and dark­ness. There can­not be peace be­tween light and dark­ness, be­tween life and death, be­tween truth and er­ror.

175:1.3“Many of you have dared to be­lieve my teach­ings and have al­ready en­tered into the joy and lib­erty of the con­scious­ness of son­ship with God. And you will bear me wit­ness that I have of­fered this same son­ship with God to all the Jew­ish na­tion, even to these very men who now seek my de­struc­tion. And even now would my Fa­ther re­ceive these blinded teach­ers and these hyp­o­crit­i­cal lead­ers if they would only turn to him and ac­cept his mercy. Even now it is not too late for this peo­ple to re­ceive the word of heaven and to wel­come the Son of Man.

175:1.4“My Fa­ther has long dealt in mercy with this peo­ple. Gen­er­a­tion af­ter gen­er­a­tion have we sent our proph­ets to teach and warn them, and gen­er­a­tion af­ter gen­er­a­tion have they killed these heaven-sent teach­ers. And now do your will­ful high priests and stub­born rulers go right on do­ing this same thing. As Herod brought about the death of John, you like­wise now make ready to de­stroy the Son of Man.

175:1.5“As long as there is a chance that the Jews will turn to my Fa­ther and seek sal­va­tion, the God of Abra­ham, Isaac, and Ja­cob will keep his hands of mercy out­stretched to­ward you; but when you have once filled up your cup of im­pen­i­tence, and when once you have fi­nally re­jected my Fa­ther’s mercy, this na­tion will be left to its own coun­sels, and it shall speed­ily come to an in­glo­ri­ous end. This peo­ple was called to be­come the light of the world, to show forth the spir­i­tual glory of a God-know­ing race, but you have so far de­parted from the ful­fill­ment of your di­vine priv­i­leges that your lead­ers are about to com­mit the su­preme folly of all the ages in that they are on the verge of fi­nally re­ject­ing the gift of God to all men and for all ages—the rev­e­la­tion of the love of the Fa­ther in heaven for all his crea­tures on earth.

175:1.6“And when you do once re­ject this rev­e­la­tion of God to man, the king­dom of heaven shall be given to other peo­ples, to those who will re­ceive it with joy and glad­ness. In the name of the Fa­ther who sent me, I solemnly warn you that you are about to lose your po­si­tion in the world as the stan­dard-bear­ers of eter­nal truth and the cus­to­di­ans of the di­vine law. I am just now of­fer­ing you your last chance to come for­ward and re­pent, to sig­nify your in­ten­tion to seek God with all your hearts and to en­ter, like lit­tle chil­dren and by sin­cere faith, into the se­cu­rity and sal­va­tion of the king­dom of heaven.

175:1.7“My Fa­ther has long worked for your sal­va­tion, and I came down to live among you and per­son­ally show you the way. Many of both the Jews and the Samar­i­tans, and even the gen­tiles, have be­lieved the gospel of the king­dom, but those who should be first to come for­ward and ac­cept the light of heaven have stead­fastly re­fused to be­lieve the rev­e­la­tion of the truth of God—God re­vealed in man and man up­lifted to God.

175:1.8“This af­ter­noon my apos­tles stand here be­fore you in si­lence, but you shall soon hear their voices ring­ing out with the call to sal­va­tion and with the urge to unite with the heav­enly king­dom as the sons of the liv­ing God. And now I call to wit­ness these, my dis­ci­ples and be­liev­ers in the gospel of the king­dom, as well as the un­seen mes­sen­gers by their sides, that I have once more of­fered Is­rael and her rulers de­liv­er­ance and sal­va­tion. But you all be­hold how the Fa­ther’s mercy is slighted and how the mes­sen­gers of truth are re­jected. Nev­er­the­less, I ad­mon­ish you that these scribes and Phar­isees still sit in Moses’ seat, and there­fore, un­til the Most Highs who rule in the king­doms of men shall fi­nally over­throw this na­tion and de­stroy the place of these rulers, I bid you co-op­er­ate with these el­ders in Is­rael. You are not re­quired to unite with them in their plans to de­stroy the Son of Man, but in ev­ery­thing re­lated to the peace of Is­rael you are to be sub­ject to them. In all these mat­ters do what­so­ever they bid you and ob­serve the es­sen­tials of the law but do not pat­tern af­ter their evil works. Re­mem­ber, this is the sin of these rulers: They say that which is good, but they do it not. You well know how these lead­ers bind heavy bur­dens on your shoul­ders, bur­dens griev­ous to bear, and that they will not lift as much as one fin­ger to help you bear these weighty bur­dens. They have op­pressed you with cer­e­monies and en­slaved you by tra­di­tions.

175:1.9“Fur­ther­more, these self-cen­tered rulers de­light in do­ing their good works so that they will be seen by men. They make broad their phy­lac­ter­ies and en­large the bor­ders of their of­fi­cial robes. They crave the chief places at the feasts and de­mand the chief seats in the syn­a­gogues. They covet lauda­tory salu­ta­tions in the mar­ket places and de­sire to be called rabbi by all men. And even while they seek all this honor from men, they se­cretly lay hold of wid­ows’ houses and take profit from the ser­vices of the sa­cred tem­ple. For a pre­tense these hyp­ocrites make long prayers in pub­lic and give alms to at­tract the no­tice of their fel­lows.

175:1.10“While you should honor your rulers and rev­er­ence your teach­ers, you should call no man Fa­ther in the spir­i­tual sense, for there is one who is your Fa­ther, even God. Nei­ther should you seek to lord it over your breth­ren in the king­dom. Re­mem­ber, I have taught you that he who would be great­est among you should be­come the server of all. If you pre­sume to ex­alt your­selves be­fore God, you will cer­tainly be hum­bled; but whoso truly hum­bles him­self will surely be ex­alted. Seek in your daily lives, not self-glo­ri­fi­ca­tion, but the glory of God. In­tel­li­gently sub­or­di­nate your own wills to the will of the Fa­ther in heaven.

175:1.11“Mis­take not my words. I bear no mal­ice to­ward these chief priests and rulers who even now seek my de­struc­tion; I have no ill will for these scribes and Phar­isees who re­ject my teach­ings. I know that many of you be­lieve in se­cret, and I know you will openly pro­fess your al­le­giance to the king­dom when my hour comes. But how will your rab­bis jus­tify them­selves since they pro­fess to talk with God and then pre­sume to re­ject and de­stroy him who comes to re­veal the Fa­ther to the worlds?

175:1.12“Woe upon you, scribes and Phar­isees, hyp­ocrites! You would shut the doors of the king­dom of heaven against sin­cere men be­cause they hap­pen to be un­learned in the ways of your teach­ing. You refuse to en­ter the king­dom and at the same time do ev­ery­thing within your power to pre­vent all oth­ers from en­ter­ing. You stand with your backs to the doors of sal­va­tion and fight with all who would en­ter therein.

175:1.13“Woe upon you, scribes and Phar­isees, hyp­ocrites that you are! for you do in­deed en­com­pass land and sea to make one pros­e­lyte, and when you have suc­ceeded, you are not con­tent un­til you have made him two­fold worse than he was as a child of the hea­then.

175:1.14“Woe upon you, chief priests and rulers who lay hold of the prop­erty of the poor and de­mand heavy dues of those who would serve God as they think Moses or­dained! You who refuse to show mercy, can you hope for mercy in the worlds to come?

175:1.15“Woe upon you, false teach­ers, blind guides! What can be ex­pected of a na­tion when the blind lead the blind? They both shall stum­ble into the pit of de­struc­tion.

175:1.16“Woe upon you who dis­sim­u­late when you take an oath! You are trick­sters since you teach that a man may swear by the tem­ple and break his oath, but that whoso swears by the gold in the tem­ple must re­main bound. You are all fools and blind. You are not even con­sis­tent in your dis­hon­esty, for which is the greater, the gold or the tem­ple which has sup­pos­edly sanc­ti­fied the gold? You also teach that, if a man swears by the al­tar, it is noth­ing; but that, if one swears by the gift that is upon the al­tar, then shall he be held as a debtor. Again are you blind to the truth, for which is the greater, the gift or the al­tar which sanc­ti­fies the gift? How can you jus­tify such hypocrisy and dis­hon­esty in the sight of the God of heaven?

175:1.17“Woe upon you, scribes and Phar­isees and all other hyp­ocrites who make sure that they tithe mint, anise, and cumin and at the same time dis­re­gard the weight­ier mat­ters of the law—faith, mercy, and judg­ment! Within rea­son, the one you ought to have done but not to have left the other un­done. You are truly blind guides and dumb teach­ers; you strain out the gnat and swal­low the camel.

175:1.18“Woe upon you, scribes, Phar­isees, and hyp­ocrites! for you are scrupu­lous to cleanse the out­side of the cup and the plat­ter, but within there re­mains the filth of ex­tor­tion, ex­cesses, and de­cep­tion. You are spir­i­tu­ally blind. Do you not rec­og­nize how much bet­ter it would be first to cleanse the in­side of the cup, and then that which spills over would of it­self cleanse the out­side? You wicked repro­bates! you make the out­ward per­for­mances of your re­li­gion to con­form with the let­ter of your in­ter­pre­ta­tion of Moses’ law while your souls are steeped in in­iq­uity and filled with mur­der.

175:1.19“Woe upon all of you who re­ject truth and spurn mercy! Many of you are like whited sepul­chres, which out­wardly ap­pear beau­ti­ful but within are full of dead men’s bones and all sorts of un­clean­ness. Even so do you who know­ingly re­ject the coun­sel of God ap­pear out­wardly to men as holy and righ­teous, but in­wardly your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and in­iq­uity.

175:1.20“Woe upon you, false guides of a na­tion! Over yon­der have you built a mon­u­ment to the mar­tyred proph­ets of old, while you plot to de­stroy Him of whom they spoke. You gar­nish the tombs of the righ­teous and flat­ter your­selves that, had you lived in the days of your fa­thers, you would not have killed the proph­ets; and then in the face of such self-righ­teous think­ing you make ready to slay him of whom the proph­ets spoke, the Son of Man. Inas­much as you do these things, are you wit­ness to your­selves that you are the wicked sons of them who slew the proph­ets. Go on, then, and fill up the cup of your con­dem­na­tion to the full!

175:1.21“Woe upon you, chil­dren of evil! John did truly call you the off­spring of vipers, and I ask how can you es­cape the judg­ment that John pro­nounced upon you?

175:1.22“But even now I of­fer you in my Fa­ther’s name mercy and for­give­ness; even now I prof­fer the lov­ing hand of eter­nal fel­low­ship. My Fa­ther has sent you the wise men and the proph­ets; some you have per­se­cuted and oth­ers you have killed. Then ap­peared John pro­claim­ing the com­ing of the Son of Man, and him you de­stroyed af­ter many had be­lieved his teach­ing. And now you make ready to shed more in­no­cent blood. Do you not com­pre­hend that a ter­ri­ble day of reck­on­ing will come when the Judge of all the earth shall re­quire of this peo­ple an ac­count­ing for the way they have re­jected, per­se­cuted, and de­stroyed these mes­sen­gers of heaven? Do you not un­der­stand that you must ac­count for all of this righ­teous blood, from the first prophet killed down to the times of Zechariah, who was slain be­tween the sanc­tu­ary and the al­tar? And if you go on in your evil ways, this ac­count­ing may be re­quired of this very gen­er­a­tion.

175:1.23“O Je­ru­sa­lem and the chil­dren of Abra­ham, you who have stoned the proph­ets and killed the teach­ers that were sent to you, even now would I gather your chil­dren to­gether as a hen gath­ers her chick­ens un­der her wings, but you will not!

175:1.24“And now I take leave of you. You have heard my mes­sage and have made your de­ci­sion. Those who have be­lieved my gospel are even now safe within the king­dom of God. To you who have cho­sen to re­ject the gift of God, I say that you will no more see me teach­ing in the tem­ple. My work for you is done. Be­hold, I now go forth with my chil­dren, and your house is left to you des­o­late!”

175:1.25And then the Mas­ter beck­oned his fol­low­ers to de­part from the tem­ple.