The Last Temple Discourse

175:4.1At the con­clu­sion of Je­sus’ last dis­course in the tem­ple, the apos­tles once more were left in con­fu­sion and con­ster­na­tion. Be­fore the Mas­ter be­gan his ter­ri­ble de­nun­ci­a­tion of the Jew­ish rulers, Ju­das had re­turned to the tem­ple, so that all twelve heard this lat­ter half of Je­sus’ last dis­course in the tem­ple. It is un­for­tu­nate that Ju­das Is­car­iot could not have heard the first and mercy-prof­fer­ing half of this farewell ad­dress. He did not hear this last of­fer of mercy to the Jew­ish rulers be­cause he was still in con­fer­ence with a cer­tain group of Sad­ducean rel­a­tives and friends with whom he had lunched, and with whom he was con­fer­ring as to the most fit­ting man­ner of dis­so­ci­at­ing him­self from Je­sus and his fel­low apos­tles. It was while lis­ten­ing to the Mas­ter’s fi­nal in­dict­ment of the Jew­ish lead­ers and rulers that Ju­das fi­nally and fully made up his mind to for­sake the gospel move­ment and wash his hands of the whole en­ter­prise. Nev­er­the­less, he left the tem­ple in com­pany with the twelve, went with them to Mount Oli­vet, where, with his fel­low apos­tles, he lis­tened to that fate­ful dis­course on the de­struc­tion of Je­ru­sa­lem and the end of the Jew­ish na­tion, and re­mained with them that Tues­day night at the new camp near Geth­sem­ane.

175:4.2The mul­ti­tude who heard Je­sus swing from his mer­ci­ful ap­peal to the Jew­ish lead­ers into that sud­den and scathing re­buke which bor­dered on ruth­less de­nun­ci­a­tion, were stunned and be­wil­dered. That night, while the San­hedrin sat in death judg­ment upon Je­sus, and while the Mas­ter sat with his apos­tles and cer­tain of his dis­ci­ples out on the Mount of Olives fore­telling the death of the Jew­ish na­tion, all Je­ru­sa­lem was given over to the se­ri­ous and sup­pressed dis­cus­sion of just one ques­tion: “What will they do with Je­sus?”

175:4.3At the home of Nicode­mus more than thirty promi­nent Jews who were se­cret be­liev­ers in the king­dom met and de­bated what course they would pur­sue in case an open break with the San­hedrin should come. All pres­ent agreed that they would make open ac­knowl­edg­ment of their al­le­giance to the Mas­ter in the very hour they should hear of his ar­rest. And that is just what they did.

175:4.4The Sad­ducees, who now con­trolled and dom­i­nated the San­hedrin, were de­sirous of mak­ing away with Je­sus for the fol­low­ing rea­sons:

175:4.51. They feared that the in­creased pop­u­lar fa­vor with which the mul­ti­tude re­garded him threat­ened to en­dan­ger the ex­is­tence of the Jew­ish na­tion by pos­si­ble in­volve­ment with the Ro­man au­thor­i­ties.

175:4.62. His zeal for tem­ple re­form struck di­rectly at their rev­enues; the cleans­ing of the tem­ple af­fected their pock­et­books.

175:4.73. They felt them­selves re­spon­si­ble for the preser­va­tion of so­cial or­der, and they feared the con­se­quences of the fur­ther spread of Je­sus’ strange and new doc­trine of the broth­er­hood of man.

175:4.8The Phar­isees had dif­fer­ent mo­tives for want­ing to see Je­sus put to death. They feared him be­cause:

175:4.91. He was ar­rayed in telling op­po­si­tion to their tra­di­tional hold upon the peo­ple. The Phar­isees were ul­tra­con­ser­va­tive, and they bit­terly re­sented these sup­pos­edly rad­i­cal at­tacks upon their vested pres­tige as re­li­gious teach­ers.

175:4.102. They held that Je­sus was a law­breaker; that he had shown ut­ter dis­re­gard for the Sab­bath and nu­mer­ous other le­gal and cer­e­mo­nial re­quire­ments.

175:4.113. They charged him with blas­phemy be­cause he al­luded to God as his Fa­ther.

175:4.124. And now were they thor­oughly an­gry with him be­cause of his last dis­course of bit­ter de­nun­ci­a­tion which he had this day de­liv­ered in the tem­ple as the con­clud­ing por­tion of his farewell ad­dress.

175:4.13The San­hedrin, hav­ing for­mally de­creed the death of Je­sus and hav­ing is­sued or­ders for his ar­rest, ad­journed on this Tues­day near mid­night, af­ter ap­point­ing to meet at ten o’clock the next morn­ing at the home of Cai­a­phas the high priest for the pur­pose of for­mu­lat­ing the charges on which Je­sus should be brought to trial.

175:4.14A small group of the Sad­ducees had ac­tu­ally pro­posed to dis­pose of Je­sus by as­sas­si­na­tion, but the Phar­isees ut­terly re­fused to coun­te­nance such a pro­ce­dure.

175:4.15And this was the sit­u­a­tion in Je­ru­sa­lem and among men on this event­ful day while a vast con­course of ce­les­tial be­ings hov­ered over this mo­men­tous scene on earth, anx­ious to do some­thing to as­sist their beloved Sov­er­eign but pow­er­less to act be­cause they were ef­fec­tively re­strained by their com­mand­ing su­pe­ri­ors.