Jerusalem temple

• Jerusalem temple

125:1.5Joseph saw how his son had sick­ened at the sight of the tem­ple rites and wisely led him around to view the “Gate Beau­ti­ful,” the artis­tic gate made of Corinthian bronze. But Je­sus had had enough for his first visit at the tem­ple. They re­turned to the up­per court for Mary and walked about in the open air and away from the crowds for an hour, view­ing the As­monean palace, the stately home of Herod, and the tower of the Ro­man guards. Dur­ing this stroll Joseph ex­plained to Je­sus that only the in­hab­i­tants of Je­ru­sa­lem were per­mit­ted to wit­ness the daily sac­ri­fices in the tem­ple, and that the dwellers in Gal­i­lee came up only three times a year to par­tic­i­pate in the tem­ple wor­ship: at the Pass­over, at the feast of Pen­te­cost (seven weeks af­ter Pass­over), and at the feast of taber­na­cles in Oc­to­ber. These feasts were es­tab­lished by Moses. They then dis­cussed the two later es­tab­lished feasts of the ded­i­ca­tion and of Purim. Af­ter­ward they went to their lodg­ings and made ready for the cel­e­bra­tion of the Pass­over.

• Jerusalem temple

150:1.3It was most as­tound­ing in that day, when women were not even al­lowed on the main floor of the syn­a­gogue (be­ing con­fined to the women’s gallery), to be­hold them be­ing rec­og­nized as au­tho­rized teach­ers of the new gospel of the king­dom. The charge which Je­sus gave these ten women as he set them apart for gospel teach­ing and min­istry was the eman­ci­pa­tion procla­ma­tion which set free all women and for all time; no more was man to look upon woman as his spir­i­tual in­fe­rior. This was a de­cided shock to even the twelve apos­tles. Not­with­stand­ing they had many times heard the Mas­ter say that “in the king­dom of heaven there is nei­ther rich nor poor, free nor bond, male nor fe­male, all are equally the sons and daugh­ters of God,” they were lit­er­ally stunned when he pro­posed for­mally to com­mis­sion these ten women as re­li­gious teach­ers and even to per­mit their trav­el­ing about with them. The whole coun­try was stirred up by this pro­ceed­ing, the en­e­mies of Je­sus mak­ing great cap­i­tal out of this move, but ev­ery­where the women be­liev­ers in the good news stood stanchly be­hind their cho­sen sis­ters and voiced no un­cer­tain ap­proval of this tardy ac­knowl­edg­ment of woman’s place in re­li­gious work. And this lib­er­a­tion of women, giv­ing them due rec­og­ni­tion, was prac­ticed by the apos­tles im­me­di­ately af­ter the Mas­ter’s de­par­ture, al­beit they fell back to the olden cus­toms in sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions. Through­out the early days of the Chris­tian church women teach­ers and min­is­ters were called dea­conesses and were ac­corded gen­eral rec­og­ni­tion. But Paul, de­spite the fact that he con­ceded all this in the­ory, never re­ally in­cor­po­rated it into his own at­ti­tude and per­son­ally found it dif­fi­cult to carry out in prac­tice.

172:4.1While the Al­pheus twins re­turned the don­key to its owner, Je­sus and the ten apos­tles de­tached them­selves from their im­me­di­ate as­so­ciates and strolled about the tem­ple, view­ing the prepa­ra­tions for the Pass­over. No at­tempt was made to mo­lest Je­sus as the San­hedrin greatly feared the peo­ple, and that was, af­ter all, one of the rea­sons Je­sus had for al­low­ing the mul­ti­tude thus to ac­claim him. The apos­tles lit­tle un­der­stood that this was the only hu­man pro­ce­dure which could have been ef­fec­tive in pre­vent­ing Je­sus’ im­me­di­ate ar­rest upon en­ter­ing the city. The Mas­ter de­sired to give the in­hab­i­tants of Je­ru­sa­lem, high and low, as well as the tens of thou­sands of Pass­over vis­i­tors, this one more and last chance to hear the gospel and re­ceive, if they would, the Son of Peace.

172:4.2And now, as the evening drew on and the crowds went in quest of nour­ish­ment, Je­sus and his im­me­di­ate fol­low­ers were left alone. What a strange day it had been! The apos­tles were thought­ful, but speech­less. Never, in their years of as­so­ci­a­tion with Je­sus, had they seen such a day. For a mo­ment they sat down by the trea­sury, watch­ing the peo­ple drop in their con­tri­bu­tions: the rich putting much in the re­ceiv­ing box and all giv­ing some­thing in ac­cor­dance with the ex­tent of their pos­ses­sions. At last there came along a poor widow, scant­ily at­tired, and they ob­served as she cast two mites (small cop­pers) into the trum­pet. And then said Je­sus, call­ing the at­ten­tion of the apos­tles to the widow: “Heed well what you have just seen. This poor widow cast in more than all the oth­ers, for all these oth­ers, from their su­per­fluity, cast in some tri­fle as a gift, but this poor woman, even though she is in want, gave all that she had, even her liv­ing.”

172:4.3As the evening drew on, they walked about the tem­ple courts in si­lence, and af­ter Je­sus had sur­veyed these fa­mil­iar scenes once more, re­call­ing his emo­tions in con­nec­tion with pre­vi­ous vis­its, not ex­cept­ing the ear­lier ones, he said, “Let us go up to Beth­any for our rest.” Je­sus, with Pe­ter and John, went to the home of Si­mon, while the other apos­tles lodged among their friends in Beth­any and Beth­page.

125:1.1Ev­ery­where Je­sus went through­out the tem­ple courts, he was shocked and sick­ened by the spirit of ir­rev­er­ence which he ob­served. He deemed the con­duct of the tem­ple throngs to be in­con­sis­tent with their pres­ence in “his Fa­ther’s house.” But he re­ceived the shock of his young life when his fa­ther es­corted him into the court of the gen­tiles with its noisy jar­gon, loud talk­ing and curs­ing, min­gled in­dis­crim­i­nately with the bleat­ing of sheep and the bab­ble of noises which be­trayed the pres­ence of the money-chang­ers and the ven­dors of sac­ri­fi­cial an­i­mals and sundry other com­mer­cial com­modi­ties.

125:1.4They now passed down to the priests’ court be­neath the rock ledge in front of the tem­ple, where the al­tar stood, to ob­serve the killing of the droves of an­i­mals and the wash­ing away of the blood from the hands of the of­fi­ci­at­ing slaugh­ter priests at the bronze foun­tain. The blood­stained pave­ment, the gory hands of the priests, and the sounds of the dy­ing an­i­mals were more than this na­ture-lov­ing lad could stand. The ter­ri­ble sight sick­ened this boy of Naz­a­reth; he clutched his fa­ther’s arm and begged to be taken away. They walked back through the court of the gen­tiles, and even the coarse laugh­ter and pro­fane jest­ing which he there heard were a re­lief from the sights he had just be­held.

125:2.1Five Naz­a­reth fam­i­lies were guests of, or as­so­ciates with, the fam­ily of Si­mon of Beth­any in the cel­e­bra­tion of the Pass­over, Si­mon hav­ing pur­chased the paschal lamb for the com­pany. It was the slaugh­ter of these lambs in such enor­mous num­bers that had so af­fected Je­sus on his tem­ple visit. It had been the plan to eat the Pass­over with Mary’s rel­a­tives, but Je­sus per­suaded his par­ents to ac­cept the in­vi­ta­tion to go to Beth­any.

125:2.3Even at this early date, though he said noth­ing about such mat­ters to his par­ents, Je­sus had be­gun to turn over in his mind the pro­pri­ety of cel­e­brat­ing the Pass­over with­out the slaugh­tered lamb. He felt as­sured in his own mind that the Fa­ther in heaven was not pleased with this spec­ta­cle of sac­ri­fi­cial of­fer­ings, and as the years passed, he be­came in­creas­ingly de­ter­mined some­day to es­tab­lish the cel­e­bra­tion of a blood­less Pass­over.

125:5.53. If God is a fa­ther who loves his chil­dren, why all this slaugh­ter of an­i­mals to gain di­vine fa­vor—has the teach­ing of Moses been mis­un­der­stood?

173:1.1A huge com­mer­cial traf­fic had grown up in as­so­ci­a­tion with the ser­vices and cer­e­monies of the tem­ple wor­ship. There was the busi­ness of pro­vid­ing suit­able an­i­mals for the var­i­ous sac­ri­fices. Though it was per­mis­si­ble for a wor­shiper to pro­vide his own sac­ri­fice, the fact re­mained that this an­i­mal must be free from all “blem­ish” in the mean­ing of the Levit­i­cal law and as in­ter­preted by of­fi­cial in­spec­tors of the tem­ple. Many a wor­shiper had ex­pe­ri­enced the hu­mil­i­a­tion of hav­ing his sup­pos­edly per­fect an­i­mal re­jected by the tem­ple ex­am­in­ers. It there­fore be­came the more gen­eral prac­tice to pur­chase sac­ri­fi­cial an­i­mals at the tem­ple, and al­though there were sev­eral sta­tions on near-by Oli­vet where they could be bought, it had be­come the vogue to buy these an­i­mals di­rectly from the tem­ple pens. Grad­u­ally there had grown up this cus­tom of sell­ing all kinds of sac­ri­fi­cial an­i­mals in the tem­ple courts. An ex­ten­sive busi­ness, in which enor­mous prof­its were made, had thus been brought into ex­is­tence. Part of these gains was re­served for the tem­ple trea­sury, but the larger part went in­di­rectly into the hands of the rul­ing high-priestly fam­i­lies.

173:1.2This sale of an­i­mals in the tem­ple pros­pered be­cause, when the wor­shiper pur­chased such an an­i­mal, al­though the price might be some­what high, no more fees had to be paid, and he could be sure the in­tended sac­ri­fice would not be re­jected on the ground of pos­sess­ing real or tech­ni­cal blem­ishes. At one time or an­other sys­tems of ex­or­bi­tant over­charge were prac­ticed upon the com­mon peo­ple, es­pe­cially dur­ing the great na­tional feasts. At one time the greedy priests went so far as to de­mand the equiv­a­lent of the value of a week’s la­bor for a pair of doves which should have been sold to the poor for a few pen­nies. The “sons of An­nas” had al­ready be­gun to es­tab­lish their bazaars in the tem­ple precincts, those very mer­chan­dise marts which per­sisted to the time of their fi­nal over­throw by a mob three years be­fore the de­struc­tion of the tem­ple it­self.

173:1.3But traf­fic in sac­ri­fi­cial an­i­mals and sundry mer­chan­dise was not the only way in which the courts of the tem­ple were pro­faned. At this time there was fos­tered an ex­ten­sive sys­tem of bank­ing and com­mer­cial ex­change which was car­ried on right within the tem­ple precincts. And this all came about in the fol­low­ing man­ner: Dur­ing the As­monean dy­nasty the Jews coined their own sil­ver money, and it had be­come the prac­tice to re­quire the tem­ple dues of one-half shekel and all other tem­ple fees to be paid with this Jew­ish coin. This reg­u­la­tion ne­ces­si­tated that money-chang­ers be li­censed to ex­change the many sorts of cur­rency in cir­cu­la­tion through­out Pales­tine and other prov­inces of the Ro­man Em­pire for this or­tho­dox shekel of Jew­ish coin­ing. The tem­ple head tax, payable by all ex­cept women, slaves, and mi­nors, was one-half shekel, a coin about the size of a ten-cent piece but twice as thick. By the times of Je­sus the priests had also been ex­empted from the pay­ment of tem­ple dues. Ac­cord­ingly, from the 15^th to the 25^th of the month pre­ced­ing the Pass­over, ac­cred­ited money-chang­ers erected their booths in the prin­ci­pal cities of Pales­tine for the pur­pose of pro­vid­ing the Jew­ish peo­ple with proper money to meet the tem­ple dues af­ter they had reached Je­ru­sa­lem. Af­ter this ten-day pe­riod these money-chang­ers moved on to Je­ru­sa­lem and pro­ceeded to set up their ex­change ta­bles in the courts of the tem­ple. They were per­mit­ted to charge the equiv­a­lent of from three to four cents com­mis­sion for the ex­change of a coin val­ued at about ten cents, and in case a coin of larger value was of­fered for ex­change, they were al­lowed to col­lect dou­ble. Like­wise did these tem­ple bankers profit from the ex­change of all money in­tended for the pur­chase of sac­ri­fi­cial an­i­mals and for the pay­ment of vows and the mak­ing of of­fer­ings.

173:1.4These tem­ple money-chang­ers not only con­ducted a reg­u­lar bank­ing busi­ness for profit in the ex­change of more than twenty sorts of money which the vis­it­ing pil­grims would pe­ri­od­i­cally bring to Je­ru­sa­lem, but they also en­gaged in all other kinds of trans­ac­tions per­tain­ing to the bank­ing busi­ness. Both the tem­ple trea­sury and the tem­ple rulers prof­ited tremen­dously from these com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ties. It was not un­com­mon for the tem­ple trea­sury to hold up­wards of ten mil­lion dol­lars while the com­mon peo­ple lan­guished in pov­erty and con­tin­ued to pay these un­just levies.

173:1.5In the midst of this noisy ag­gre­ga­tion of money-chang­ers, mer­chan­dis­ers, and cat­tle sell­ers, Je­sus, on this Mon­day morn­ing, at­tempted to teach the gospel of the heav­enly king­dom. He was not alone in re­sent­ing this pro­fa­na­tion of the tem­ple; the com­mon peo­ple, es­pe­cially the Jew­ish vis­i­tors from for­eign prov­inces, also heart­ily re­sented this prof­i­teer­ing des­e­cra­tion of their na­tional house of wor­ship. At this time the San­hedrin it­self held its reg­u­lar meet­ings in a cham­ber sur­rounded by all this bab­ble and con­fu­sion of trade and barter.

173:1.6As Je­sus was about to be­gin his ad­dress, two things hap­pened to ar­rest his at­ten­tion. At the money ta­ble of a near-by ex­changer a vi­o­lent and heated ar­gu­ment had arisen over the al­leged over­charg­ing of a Jew from Alexan­dria, while at the same mo­ment the air was rent by the bel­low­ing of a drove of some one hun­dred bul­locks which was be­ing driven from one sec­tion of the an­i­mal pens to an­other. As Je­sus paused, silently but thought­fully con­tem­plat­ing this scene of com­merce and con­fu­sion, close by he be­held a sim­ple-minded Galilean, a man he had once talked with in Iron, be­ing ridiculed and jos­tled about by su­per­cil­ious and would-be su­pe­rior Judeans; and all of this com­bined to pro­duce one of those strange and pe­ri­odic up­ris­ings of in­dig­nant emo­tion in the soul of Je­sus.

173:1.7To the amaze­ment of his apos­tles, stand­ing near at hand, who re­frained from par­tic­i­pa­tion in what so soon fol­lowed, Je­sus stepped down from the teach­ing plat­form and, go­ing over to the lad who was driv­ing the cat­tle through the court, took from him his whip of cords and swiftly drove the an­i­mals from the tem­ple. But that was not all; he strode ma­jes­ti­cally be­fore the won­der­ing gaze of the thou­sands as­sem­bled in the tem­ple court to the far­thest cat­tle pen and pro­ceeded to open the gates of ev­ery stall and to drive out the im­pris­oned an­i­mals. By this time the as­sem­bled pil­grims were elec­tri­fied, and with up­roar­i­ous shout­ing they moved to­ward the bazaars and be­gan to over­turn the ta­bles of the money-chang­ers. In less than five min­utes all com­merce had been swept from the tem­ple. By the time the near-by Ro­man guards had ap­peared on the scene, all was quiet, and the crowds had be­come or­derly; Je­sus, re­turn­ing to the speaker’s stand, spoke to the mul­ti­tude: “You have this day wit­nessed that which is writ­ten in the Scrip­tures: ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all na­tions, but you have made it a den of rob­bers.’”

173:1.8But be­fore he could ut­ter other words, the great as­sem­bly broke out in hosan­nas of praise, and pres­ently a throng of youths stepped out from the crowd to sing grate­ful hymns of ap­pre­ci­a­tion that the pro­fane and prof­i­teer­ing mer­chan­dis­ers had been ejected from the sa­cred tem­ple. By this time cer­tain of the priests had ar­rived on the scene, and one of them said to Je­sus, “Do you not hear what the chil­dren of the Levites say?” And the Mas­ter replied, “Have you never read, ‘Out of the mouths of babes and suck­lings has praise been per­fected’?” And all the rest of that day while Je­sus taught, guards set by the peo­ple stood watch at ev­ery arch­way, and they would not per­mit any­one to carry even an empty ves­sel across the tem­ple courts.

173:1.9When the chief priests and the scribes heard about these hap­pen­ings, they were dum­founded. All the more they feared the Mas­ter, and all the more they de­ter­mined to de­stroy him. But they were non­plused. They did not know how to ac­com­plish his death, for they greatly feared the mul­ti­tudes, who were now so out­spo­ken in their ap­proval of his over­throw of the pro­fane prof­i­teers. And all this day, a day of quiet and peace in the tem­ple courts, the peo­ple heard Je­sus’ teach­ing and lit­er­ally hung on his words.

173:1.10This sur­pris­ing act of Je­sus was be­yond the com­pre­hen­sion of his apos­tles. They were so taken aback by this sud­den and un­ex­pected move of their Mas­ter that they re­mained through­out the whole episode hud­dled to­gether near the speaker’s stand; they never lifted a hand to fur­ther this cleans­ing of the tem­ple. If this spec­tac­u­lar event had oc­curred the day be­fore, at the time of Je­sus’ tri­umphal ar­rival at the tem­ple at the ter­mi­na­tion of his tu­mul­tuous pro­ces­sion through the gates of the city, all the while loudly ac­claimed by the mul­ti­tude, they would have been ready for it, but com­ing as it did, they were wholly un­pre­pared to par­tic­i­pate.

173:1.11This cleans­ing of the tem­ple dis­closes the Mas­ter’s at­ti­tude to­ward com­mer­cial­iz­ing the prac­tices of re­li­gion as well as his de­tes­ta­tion of all forms of un­fair­ness and prof­i­teer­ing at the ex­pense of the poor and the un­learned. This episode also demon­strates that Je­sus did not look with ap­proval upon the re­fusal to em­ploy force to pro­tect the ma­jor­ity of any given hu­man group against the un­fair and en­slav­ing prac­tices of un­just mi­nori­ties who may be able to en­trench them­selves be­hind po­lit­i­cal, fi­nan­cial, or ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal power. Shrewd, wicked, and de­sign­ing men are not to be per­mit­ted to or­ga­nize them­selves for the ex­ploita­tion and op­pres­sion of those who, be­cause of their ide­al­ism, are not dis­posed to re­sort to force for self-pro­tec­tion or for the fur­ther­ance of their laud­able life projects.

125:6.7But the lad was equal to the oc­ca­sion. When you take into fair con­sid­er­a­tion all the fac­tors which com­bined to make up this sit­u­a­tion, you will be bet­ter pre­pared to fathom the wis­dom of the boy’s re­ply to his mother’s un­in­tended re­buke. Af­ter a mo­ment’s thought, Je­sus an­swered his mother, say­ing: “Why is it that you have so long sought me? Would you not ex­pect to find me in my Fa­ther’s house since the time has come when I should be about my Fa­ther’s busi­ness?”

171:4.7Then turn­ing to his apos­tles, Je­sus said: “From olden times the proph­ets have per­ished in Je­ru­sa­lem, and it is only be­fit­ting that the Son of Man should go up to the city of the Fa­ther’s house to be of­fered up as the price of hu­man big­otry and as the re­sult of re­li­gious prej­u­dice and spir­i­tual blind­ness. O Je­ru­sa­lem, Je­ru­sa­lem, which kills the proph­ets and stones the teach­ers of truth! How of­ten would I have gath­ered your chil­dren to­gether even as a hen gath­ers her own brood un­der her wings, but you would not let me do it! Be­hold, your house is about to be left to you des­o­late! You will many times de­sire to see me, but you shall not. You will then seek but not find me.” And when he had spo­ken, he turned to those around him and said: “Nev­er­the­less, let us go up to Je­ru­sa­lem to at­tend the Pass­over and do that which be­comes us in ful­fill­ing the will of the Fa­ther in heaven.”

135:6.4There was still an­other and a new fea­ture about the work of this Nazarite preacher: He bap­tized ev­ery one of his be­liev­ers in the Jor­dan “for the re­mis­sion of sins.” Al­though bap­tism was not a new cer­e­mony among the Jews, they had never seen it em­ployed as John now made use of it. It had long been the prac­tice thus to bap­tize the gen­tile pros­e­lytes into the fel­low­ship of the outer court of the tem­ple, but never had the Jews them­selves been asked to sub­mit to the bap­tism of re­pen­tance. Only fif­teen months in­ter­vened be­tween the time John be­gan to preach and bap­tize and his ar­rest and im­pris­on­ment at the in­sti­ga­tion of Herod An­tipas, but in this short time he bap­tized con­sid­er­ably over one hun­dred thou­sand pen­i­tents.

126:5.5The pay of a com­mon day-la­bor­ing car­pen­ter was slowly di­min­ish­ing. By the end of this year Je­sus could earn, by work­ing early and late, only the equiv­a­lent of about twenty-five cents a day. By the next year they found it dif­fi­cult to pay the civil taxes, not to men­tion the syn­a­gogue as­sess­ments and the tem­ple tax of one-half shekel. Dur­ing this year the tax col­lec­tor tried to squeeze ex­tra rev­enue out of Je­sus, even threat­en­ing to take his harp.

126:5.6Fear­ing that the copy of the Greek scrip­tures might be dis­cov­ered and con­fis­cated by the tax col­lec­tors, Je­sus, on his fif­teenth birth­day, pre­sented it to the Naz­a­reth syn­a­gogue li­brary as his ma­tu­rity of­fer­ing to the Lord.

157:1.1As Je­sus, with An­drew and Pe­ter, tar­ried by the lake near the boat­shop, a tem­ple-tax col­lec­tor came upon them and, rec­og­niz­ing Je­sus, called Pe­ter to one side and said: “Does not your Mas­ter pay the tem­ple tax?” Pe­ter was in­clined to show in­dig­na­tion at the sug­ges­tion that Je­sus should be ex­pected to con­tribute to the main­te­nance of the re­li­gious ac­tiv­i­ties of his sworn en­e­mies, but, not­ing a pe­cu­liar ex­pres­sion on the face of the tax col­lec­tor, he rightly sur­mised that it was the pur­pose to en­trap them in the act of re­fus­ing to pay the cus­tom­ary half shekel for the sup­port of the tem­ple ser­vices at Je­ru­sa­lem. Ac­cord­ingly, Pe­ter replied: “Why of course the Mas­ter pays the tem­ple tax. You wait by the gate, and I will pres­ently re­turn with the tax.”

157:1.3All of this had been over­heard by the se­cret mes­sen­ger of David who stood near by, and who then sig­naled to an as­so­ciate, fish­ing near the shore, to come in quickly. When Pe­ter made ready to go out in the boat for a catch, this mes­sen­ger and his fish­er­man friend pre­sented him with sev­eral large bas­kets of fish and as­sisted him in car­ry­ing them to the fish mer­chant near by, who pur­chased the catch, pay­ing suf­fi­cient, with what was added by the mes­sen­ger of David, to meet the tem­ple tax for the three. The col­lec­tor ac­cepted the tax, for­go­ing the penalty for tardy pay­ment be­cause they had been for some time ab­sent from Gal­i­lee.

122:9.1Moses had taught the Jews that ev­ery first-born son be­longed to the Lord, and that, in lieu of his sac­ri­fice as was the cus­tom among the hea­then na­tions, such a son might live pro­vided his par­ents would re­deem him by the pay­ment of five shekels to any au­tho­rized priest. There was also a Mo­saic or­di­nance which di­rected that a mother, af­ter the pass­ing of a cer­tain pe­riod of time, should pre­sent her­self (or have some­one make the proper sac­ri­fice for her) at the tem­ple for pu­rifi­ca­tion. It was cus­tom­ary to per­form both of these cer­e­monies at the same time. Ac­cord­ingly, Joseph and Mary went up to the tem­ple at Je­ru­sa­lem in per­son to pre­sent Je­sus to the priests and ef­fect his re­demp­tion and also to make the proper sac­ri­fice to in­sure Mary’s cer­e­mo­nial pu­rifi­ca­tion from the al­leged un­clean­ness of child­birth.

122:9.2There lin­gered con­stantly about the courts of the tem­ple two re­mark­able char­ac­ters, Sim­eon a singer and Anna a po­et­ess. Sim­eon was a Judean, but Anna was a Galilean. This cou­ple were fre­quently in each other’s com­pany, and both were in­ti­mates of the priest Zach­a­rias, who had con­fided the se­cret of John and Je­sus to them. Both Sim­eon and Anna longed for the com­ing of the Mes­siah, and their con­fi­dence in Zach­a­rias led them to be­lieve that Je­sus was the ex­pected de­liv­erer of the Jew­ish peo­ple.

122:9.3Zach­a­rias knew the day Joseph and Mary were ex­pected to ap­pear at the tem­ple with Je­sus, and he had pre­ar­ranged with Sim­eon and Anna to in­di­cate, by the salute of his up­raised hand, which one in the pro­ces­sion of first-born chil­dren was Je­sus.

122:9.4For this oc­ca­sion Anna had writ­ten a poem which Sim­eon pro­ceeded to sing, much to the as­ton­ish­ment of Joseph, Mary, and all who were as­sem­bled in the tem­ple courts. And this was their hymn of the re­demp­tion of the first-born son:

122:9.28On the way back to Beth­le­hem, Joseph and Mary were silent—con­fused and over­awed. Mary was much dis­turbed by the farewell salu­ta­tion of Anna, the aged po­et­ess, and Joseph was not in har­mony with this pre­ma­ture ef­fort to make Je­sus out to be the ex­pected Mes­siah of the Jew­ish peo­ple.

• first visit

124:6.10They pressed on, soon stand­ing on the brink of Oli­vet, and Je­sus saw for the first time (in his mem­ory) the Holy City, the pre­ten­tious palaces, and the in­spir­ing tem­ple of his Fa­ther. At no time in his life did Je­sus ever ex­pe­ri­ence such a purely hu­man thrill as that which at this time so com­pletely en­thralled him as he stood there on this April af­ter­noon on the Mount of Olives, drink­ing in his first view of Je­ru­sa­lem. And in af­ter years, on this same spot he stood and wept over the city which was about to re­ject an­other prophet, the last and the great­est of her heav­enly teach­ers.

• first visit

124:6.14Je­sus was pro­foundly im­pressed by the tem­ple and all the as­so­ci­ated ser­vices and other ac­tiv­i­ties. For the first time since he was four years old, he was too much pre­oc­cu­pied with his own med­i­ta­tions to ask many ques­tions. He did, how­ever, ask his fa­ther sev­eral em­bar­rass­ing ques­tions (as he had on pre­vi­ous oc­ca­sions) as to why the heav­enly Fa­ther re­quired the slaugh­ter of so many in­no­cent and help­less an­i­mals. And his fa­ther well knew from the ex­pres­sion on the lad’s face that his an­swers and at­tempts at ex­pla­na­tion were un­sat­is­fac­tory to his deep-think­ing and keen-rea­son­ing son.

• disillusioned and sickened by irreverence of

125:0.3From the time they left Naz­a­reth un­til they reached the sum­mit of the Mount of Olives, Je­sus ex­pe­ri­enced one long stress of ex­pec­tant an­tic­i­pa­tion. All through a joy­ful child­hood he had rev­er­ently heard of Je­ru­sa­lem and its tem­ple; now he was soon to be­hold them in re­al­ity. From the Mount of Olives and from the out­side, on closer in­spec­tion, the tem­ple had been all and more than Je­sus had ex­pected; but when he once en­tered its sa­cred por­tals, the great dis­il­lu­sion­ment be­gan.

• shocked Mary was restricted to women’s gallery

125:0.4In com­pany with his par­ents Je­sus passed through the tem­ple precincts on his way to join that group of new sons of the law who were about to be con­se­crated as cit­i­zens of Is­rael. He was a lit­tle dis­ap­pointed by the gen­eral de­meanor of the tem­ple throngs, but the first great shock of the day came when his mother took leave of them on her way to the women’s gallery. It had never oc­curred to Je­sus that his mother was not to ac­com­pany him to the con­se­cra­tion cer­e­monies, and he was thor­oughly in­dig­nant that she was made to suf­fer from such un­just dis­crim­i­na­tion. While he strongly re­sented this, aside from a few re­marks of protest to his fa­ther, he said noth­ing. But he thought, and thought deeply, as his ques­tions to the scribes and teach­ers a week later dis­closed.

125:1.2But most of all was his sense of pro­pri­ety out­raged by the sight of the frivolous cour­te­sans parad­ing about within this precinct of the tem­ple, just such painted women as he had so re­cently seen when on a visit to Sep­pho­ris. This pro­fa­na­tion of the tem­ple fully aroused all his youth­ful in­dig­na­tion, and he did not hes­i­tate to ex­press him­self freely to Joseph.

125:1.3Je­sus ad­mired the sen­ti­ment and ser­vice of the tem­ple, but he was shocked by the spir­i­tual ug­li­ness which he be­held on the faces of so many of the un­think­ing wor­shipers.

• questions in

125:5.2Be­fore the day had ended, the en­tire at­ten­tion of the chief dis­cus­sion group of the tem­ple had be­come fo­cused upon the ques­tions be­ing asked by Je­sus. Among his many ques­tions were:

125:5.31. What re­ally ex­ists in the holy of holies, be­hind the veil?

125:5.42. Why should moth­ers in Is­rael be seg­re­gated from the male tem­ple wor­shipers?

• aversion to politically appointed priesthood and commerce in

125:5.64. Since the tem­ple is ded­i­cated to the wor­ship of the Fa­ther in heaven, is it con­sis­tent to per­mit the pres­ence of those who en­gage in sec­u­lar barter and trade?

125:5.75. Is the ex­pected Mes­siah to be­come a tem­po­ral prince to sit on the throne of David, or is he to func­tion as the light of life in the es­tab­lish­ment of a spir­i­tual king­dom?

• aversion to politically appointed priesthood and commerce in

126:0.3As he grew older, Je­sus’ pity and love for the Jew­ish peo­ple deep­ened, but with the pass­ing years, there de­vel­oped in his mind a grow­ing righ­teous re­sent­ment of the pres­ence in the Fa­ther’s tem­ple of the po­lit­i­cally ap­pointed priests. Je­sus had great re­spect for the sin­cere Phar­isees and the hon­est scribes, but he held the hyp­o­crit­i­cal Phar­isees and the dis­hon­est the­olo­gians in great con­tempt; he looked with dis­dain upon all those re­li­gious lead­ers who were not sin­cere. When he scru­ti­nized the lead­er­ship of Is­rael, he was some­times tempted to look with fa­vor on the pos­si­bil­ity of his be­com­ing the Mes­siah of Jew­ish ex­pec­ta­tion, but he never yielded to such a temp­ta­tion.

• thought priests performed duties perfunctorily

127:3.3Je­sus did much think­ing as they jour­neyed through Samaria, par­tic­u­larly at Bethel and when drink­ing from Ja­cob’s well. He and his brother dis­cussed the tra­di­tions of Abra­ham, Isaac, and Ja­cob. He did much to pre­pare James for what he was about to wit­ness at Je­ru­sa­lem, thus seek­ing to lessen the shock such as he him­self had ex­pe­ri­enced on his first visit to the tem­ple. But James was not so sen­si­tive to some of these sights. He com­mented on the per­func­tory and heart­less man­ner in which some of the priests per­formed their du­ties but on the whole greatly en­joyed his so­journ at Je­ru­sa­lem.

• found teachers’ discussions puerile, insignificant

127:3.5Af­ter the Pass­over sup­per Mary sat down to talk with James while Martha, Laz­a­rus, and Je­sus talked to­gether far into the night. The next day they at­tended the tem­ple ser­vices, and James was re­ceived into the com­mon­wealth of Is­rael. That morn­ing, as they paused on the brow of Oli­vet to view the tem­ple, while James ex­claimed in won­der, Je­sus gazed on Je­ru­sa­lem in si­lence. James could not com­pre­hend his brother’s de­meanor. That night they again re­turned to Beth­any and would have de­parted for home the next day, but James was in­sis­tent on their go­ing back to visit the tem­ple, ex­plain­ing that he wanted to hear the teach­ers. And while this was true, se­cretly in his heart he wanted to hear Je­sus par­tic­i­pate in the dis­cus­sions, as he had heard his mother tell about. Ac­cord­ingly, they went to the tem­ple and heard the dis­cus­sions, but Je­sus asked no ques­tions. It all seemed so puerile and in­signif­i­cant to this awak­en­ing mind of man and God—he could only pity them. James was dis­ap­pointed that Je­sus said noth­ing. To his in­quiries Je­sus only made re­ply, “My hour has not yet come.”

• aversion to politically appointed priesthood and commerce in

127:6.5Je­sus passed on through Je­ru­sa­lem, only paus­ing to look upon the tem­ple and the gath­er­ing throngs of vis­i­tors. He had a strange and in­creas­ing aver­sion to this Herod-built tem­ple with its po­lit­i­cally ap­pointed priest­hood. He wanted most of all to see Laz­a­rus, Martha, and Mary. Laz­a­rus was the same age as Je­sus and now head of the house; by the time of this visit Laz­a­rus’s mother had also been laid to rest. Martha was a lit­tle over one year older than Je­sus, while Mary was two years younger. And Je­sus was the idol­ized ideal of all three of them.

• spent 2 months observing temple in A.D. 22

129:2.6But let us go back to ob­serve Je­sus in Je­ru­sa­lem. For al­most two months he spent the greater part of his time lis­ten­ing to the tem­ple dis­cus­sions with oc­ca­sional vis­its to the var­i­ous schools of the rab­bis. Most of the Sab­bath days he spent at Beth­any.

129:2.7Je­sus had car­ried with him to Je­ru­sa­lem a let­ter from Sa­lome, Zeb­e­dee’s wife, in­tro­duc­ing him to the for­mer high priest, An­nas, as “one, the same as my own son.” An­nas spent much time with him, per­son­ally tak­ing him to visit the many academies of the Je­ru­sa­lem re­li­gious teach­ers. While Je­sus thor­oughly in­spected these schools and care­fully ob­served their meth­ods of teach­ing, he never so much as asked a sin­gle ques­tion in pub­lic. Al­though An­nas looked upon Je­sus as a great man, he was puz­zled as to how to ad­vise him. He rec­og­nized the fool­ish­ness of sug­gest­ing that he en­ter any of the schools of Je­ru­sa­lem as a stu­dent, and yet he well knew Je­sus would never be ac­corded the sta­tus of a reg­u­lar teacher inas­much as he had never been trained in these schools.

• cleansing of temple

141:3.6The pic­tures of Je­sus have been most un­for­tu­nate. These paint­ings of the Christ have ex­erted a dele­te­ri­ous in­flu­ence on youth; the tem­ple mer­chants would hardly have fled be­fore Je­sus if he had been such a man as your artists usu­ally have de­picted. His was a dig­ni­fied man­hood; he was good, but nat­u­ral. Je­sus did not pose as a mild, sweet, gen­tle, and kindly mys­tic. His teach­ing was thrillingly dy­namic. He not only meant well, but he went about ac­tu­ally do­ing good.

142:1.1Through­out this month Je­sus or one of the apos­tles taught daily in the tem­ple. When the Pass­over crowds were too great to find en­trance to the tem­ple teach­ing, the apos­tles con­ducted many teach­ing groups out­side the sa­cred precincts. The bur­den of their mes­sage was:

142:1.21. The king­dom of heaven is at hand.

142:1.32. By faith in the fa­ther­hood of God you may en­ter the king­dom of heaven, thus be­com­ing the sons of God.

142:1.43. Love is the rule of liv­ing within the king­dom—su­preme de­vo­tion to God while lov­ing your neigh­bor as your­self.

142:1.54. Obe­di­ence to the will of the Fa­ther, yield­ing the fruits of the spirit in one’s per­sonal life, is the law of the king­dom.

142:1.6The mul­ti­tudes who came to cel­e­brate the Pass­over heard this teach­ing of Je­sus, and hun­dreds of them re­joiced in the good news. The chief priests and rulers of the Jews be­came much con­cerned about Je­sus and his apos­tles and de­bated among them­selves as to what should be done with them.

142:1.7Be­sides teach­ing in and about the tem­ple, the apos­tles and other be­liev­ers were en­gaged in do­ing much per­sonal work among the Pass­over throngs. These in­ter­ested men and women car­ried the news of Je­sus’ mes­sage from this Pass­over cel­e­bra­tion to the ut­ter­most parts of the Ro­man Em­pire and also to the East. This was the be­gin­ning of the spread of the gospel of the king­dom to the out­side world. No longer was the work of Je­sus to be con­fined to Pales­tine.

• taught in Solomon’s Porch

162:1.9Al­though his dis­ci­ples had not ex­pected Je­sus to at­tend the feast, the vast ma­jor­ity of the pil­grims from afar who had heard of him en­ter­tained the hope that they might see him at Je­ru­sa­lem. And they were not dis­ap­pointed, for on sev­eral oc­ca­sions he taught in Sol­o­mon’s Porch and else­where in the tem­ple courts. These teach­ings were re­ally the of­fi­cial or for­mal an­nounce­ment of the di­vin­ity of Je­sus to the Jew­ish peo­ple and to the whole world.

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.

• taught in Solomon’s Porch

162:7.1On the af­ter­noon of the last day of the feast and af­ter the apos­tles had failed in their ef­forts to per­suade him to flee from Je­ru­sa­lem, Je­sus again went into the tem­ple to teach. Find­ing a large com­pany of be­liev­ers as­sem­bled in Sol­o­mon’s Porch, he spoke to them, say­ing:

164:5.1All of the time this Sab­bath-break­ing ses­sion of the San­hedrin was in prog­ress in one of the tem­ple cham­bers, Je­sus was walk­ing about near at hand, teach­ing the peo­ple in Sol­o­mon’s Porch, hop­ing that he would be sum­moned be­fore the San­hedrin where he could tell them the good news of the lib­erty and joy of di­vine son­ship in the king­dom of God. But they were afraid to send for him. They were al­ways dis­con­certed by these sud­den and pub­lic ap­pear­ances of Je­sus in Je­ru­sa­lem. The very oc­ca­sion they had so ar­dently sought, Je­sus now gave them, but they feared to bring him be­fore the San­hedrin even as a wit­ness, and even more they feared to ar­rest him.

164:5.2This was mid­win­ter in Je­ru­sa­lem, and the peo­ple sought the par­tial shel­ter of Sol­o­mon’s Porch; and as Je­sus lin­gered, the crowds asked him many ques­tions, and he taught them for more than two hours. Some of the Jew­ish teach­ers sought to en­trap him by pub­licly ask­ing him: “How long will you hold us in sus­pense? If you are the Mes­siah, why do you not plainly tell us?” Said Je­sus: “I have told you about my­self and my Fa­ther many times, but you will not be­lieve me. Can you not see that the works I do in my Fa­ther’s name bear wit­ness for me? But many of you be­lieve not be­cause you be­long not to my fold. The teacher of truth at­tracts only those who hunger for the truth and who thirst for righ­teous­ness. My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they fol­low me. And to all who fol­low my teach­ing I give eter­nal life; they shall never per­ish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand. My Fa­ther, who has given me these chil­dren, is greater than all, so that no one is able to pluck them out of my Fa­ther’s hand. The Fa­ther and I are one.” Some of the un­be­liev­ing Jews rushed over to where they were still build­ing the tem­ple to pick up stones to cast at Je­sus, but the be­liev­ers re­strained them.

164:5.3Je­sus con­tin­ued his teach­ing: “Many lov­ing works have I shown you from the Fa­ther, so that now would I in­quire for which one of these good works do you think to stone me?” And then an­swered one of the Phar­isees: “For no good work would we stone you but for blas­phemy, inas­much as you, be­ing a man, dare to make your­self equal with God.” And Je­sus an­swered: “You charge the Son of Man with blas­phemy be­cause you re­fused to be­lieve me when I de­clared to you that I was sent by God. If I do not the works of God, be­lieve me not, but if I do the works of God, even though you be­lieve not in me, I should think you would be­lieve the works. But that you may be cer­tain of what I pro­claim, let me again as­sert that the Fa­ther is in me and I in the Fa­ther, and that, as the Fa­ther dwells in me, so will I dwell in ev­ery one who be­lieves this gospel.” And when the peo­ple heard these words, many of them rushed out to lay hands upon the stones to cast at him, but he passed out through the tem­ple precincts; and meet­ing Na­than­iel and Thomas, who had been in at­ten­dance upon the ses­sion of the San­hedrin, he waited with them near the tem­ple un­til Josiah came from the coun­cil cham­ber.

164:5.4Je­sus and the two apos­tles did not go in search of Josiah at his home un­til they heard he had been cast out of the syn­a­gogue. When they came to his house, Thomas called him out in the yard, and Je­sus, speak­ing to him, said: “Josiah, do you be­lieve in the Son of God?” And Josiah an­swered, “Tell me who he is that I may be­lieve in him.” And Je­sus said: “You have both seen and heard him, and it is he who now speaks to you.” And Josiah said, “Lord, I be­lieve,” and falling down, he wor­shiped.

164:5.5When Josiah learned that he had been cast out of the syn­a­gogue, he was at first greatly down­cast, but he was much en­cour­aged when Je­sus di­rected that he should im­me­di­ately pre­pare to go with them to the camp at Pella. This sim­ple-minded man of Je­ru­sa­lem had in­deed been cast out of a Jew­ish syn­a­gogue, but be­hold the Cre­ator of a uni­verse lead­ing him forth to be­come as­so­ci­ated with the spir­i­tual no­bil­ity of that day and gen­er­a­tion.

164:5.6And now Je­sus left Je­ru­sa­lem, not again to re­turn un­til near the time when he pre­pared to leave this world. With the two apos­tles and Josiah the Mas­ter went back to Pella. And Josiah proved to be one of the re­cip­i­ents of the Mas­ter’s mirac­u­lous min­istry who turned out fruit­fully, for he be­came a life­long preacher of the gospel of the king­dom.

• foretold destruction of

172:3.10Je­sus was light­hearted and cheer­ful as they moved along un­til he came to the brow of Oli­vet, where the city and the tem­ple tow­ers came into full view; there the Mas­ter stopped the pro­ces­sion, and a great si­lence came upon all as they be­held him weep­ing. Look­ing down upon the vast mul­ti­tude com­ing forth from the city to greet him, the Mas­ter, with much emo­tion and with tear­ful voice, said: “O Je­ru­sa­lem, if you had only known, even you, at least in this your day, the things which be­long to your peace, and which you could so freely have had! But now are these glo­ries about to be hid from your eyes. You are about to re­ject the Son of Peace and turn your backs upon the gospel of sal­va­tion. The days will soon come upon you wherein your en­e­mies will cast a trench around about you and lay siege to you on ev­ery side; they shall ut­terly de­stroy you, in­so­much that not one stone shall be left upon an­other. And all this shall be­fall you be­cause you knew not the time of your di­vine vis­i­ta­tion. You are about to re­ject the gift of God, and all men will re­ject you.”

• cleansing of temple

173:2.1On Sun­day the tri­umphal en­try into Je­ru­sa­lem so over­awed the Jew­ish lead­ers that they re­frained from plac­ing Je­sus un­der ar­rest. To­day, this spec­tac­u­lar cleans­ing of the tem­ple like­wise ef­fec­tively post­poned the Mas­ter’s ap­pre­hen­sion. Day by day the rulers of the Jews were be­com­ing more and more de­ter­mined to de­stroy him, but they were dis­traught by two fears, which con­spired to de­lay the hour of strik­ing. The chief priests and the scribes were un­will­ing to ar­rest Je­sus in pub­lic for fear the mul­ti­tude might turn upon them in a fury of re­sent­ment; they also dreaded the pos­si­bil­ity of the Ro­man guards be­ing called upon to quell a pop­u­lar up­ris­ing.

• foretold destruction of

176:0.1This Tues­day af­ter­noon, as Je­sus and the apos­tles passed out of the tem­ple on their way to the Geth­sem­ane camp, Mat­thew, call­ing at­ten­tion to the tem­ple con­struc­tion, said: “Mas­ter, ob­serve what man­ner of build­ings these are. See the mas­sive stones and the beau­ti­ful adorn­ment; can it be that these build­ings are to be de­stroyed?” As they went on to­ward Oli­vet, Je­sus said: “You see these stones and this mas­sive tem­ple; ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you: In the days soon to come there shall not be left one stone upon an­other. They shall all be thrown down.” These re­marks de­pict­ing the de­struc­tion of the sa­cred tem­ple aroused the cu­rios­ity of the apos­tles as they walked along be­hind the Mas­ter; they could con­ceive of no event short of the end of the world which would oc­ca­sion the de­struc­tion of the tem­ple.

176:1.1In an­swer­ing Na­than­iel’s ques­tion, Je­sus said: “Yes, I will tell you about the times when this peo­ple shall have filled up the cup of their in­iq­uity; when jus­tice shall swiftly de­scend upon this city of our fa­thers. I am about to leave you; I go to the Fa­ther. Af­ter I leave you, take heed that no man de­ceive you, for many will come as de­liv­er­ers and will lead many astray. When you hear of wars and ru­mors of wars, be not trou­bled, for though all these things will hap­pen, the end of Je­ru­sa­lem is not yet at hand. You should not be per­turbed by famines or earth­quakes; nei­ther should you be con­cerned when you are de­liv­ered up to the civil au­thor­i­ties and are per­se­cuted for the sake of the gospel. You will be thrown out of the syn­a­gogue and put in prison for my sake, and some of you will be killed. When you are brought up be­fore gov­er­nors and rulers, it shall be for a tes­ti­mony of your faith and to show your stead­fast­ness in the gospel of the king­dom. And when you stand be­fore judges, be not anx­ious be­fore­hand as to what you should say, for the spirit will teach you in that very hour what you should an­swer your ad­ver­saries. In these days of tra­vail, even your own kins­folk, un­der the lead­er­ship of those who have re­jected the Son of Man, will de­liver you up to prison and death. For a time you may be hated by all men for my sake, but even in these per­se­cu­tions I will not for­sake you; my spirit will not desert you. Be pa­tient! doubt not that this gospel of the king­dom will tri­umph over all en­e­mies and, even­tu­ally, be pro­claimed to all na­tions.”

176:1.2Je­sus paused while he looked down upon the city. The Mas­ter re­al­ized that the re­jec­tion of the spir­i­tual con­cept of the Mes­siah, the de­ter­mi­na­tion to cling per­sis­tently and blindly to the ma­te­rial mis­sion of the ex­pected de­liv­erer, would pres­ently bring the Jews in di­rect con­flict with the pow­er­ful Ro­man armies, and that such a con­test could only re­sult in the fi­nal and com­plete over­throw of the Jew­ish na­tion. When his peo­ple re­jected his spir­i­tual be­stowal and re­fused to re­ceive the light of heaven as it so mer­ci­fully shone upon them, they thereby sealed their doom as an in­de­pen­dent peo­ple with a spe­cial spir­i­tual mis­sion on earth. Even the Jew­ish lead­ers sub­se­quently rec­og­nized that it was this sec­u­lar idea of the Mes­siah which di­rectly led to the tur­bu­lence which even­tu­ally brought about their de­struc­tion.

176:1.3Since Je­ru­sa­lem was to be­come the cra­dle of the early gospel move­ment, Je­sus did not want its teach­ers and preach­ers to per­ish in the ter­ri­ble over­throw of the Jew­ish peo­ple in con­nec­tion with the de­struc­tion of Je­ru­sa­lem; where­fore did he give these in­struc­tions to his fol­low­ers. Je­sus was much con­cerned lest some of his dis­ci­ples be­come in­volved in these soon-com­ing re­volts and so per­ish in the down­fall of Je­ru­sa­lem.

176:1.4Then An­drew in­quired: “But, Mas­ter, if the Holy City and the tem­ple are to be de­stroyed, and if you are not here to di­rect us, when should we for­sake Je­ru­sa­lem?” Said Je­sus: “You may re­main in the city af­ter I have gone, even through these times of tra­vail and bit­ter per­se­cu­tion, but when you fi­nally see Je­ru­sa­lem be­ing en­com­passed by the Ro­man armies af­ter the re­volt of the false proph­ets, then will you know that her des­o­la­tion is at hand; then must you flee to the moun­tains. Let none who are in the city and around about tarry to save aught, nei­ther let those who are out­side dare to en­ter therein. There will be great tribu­la­tion, for these will be the days of gen­tile vengeance. And af­ter you have de­serted the city, this dis­obe­di­ent peo­ple will fall by the edge of the sword and will be led cap­tive into all na­tions; and so shall Je­ru­sa­lem be trod­den down by the gen­tiles. In the mean­time, I warn you, be not de­ceived. If any man comes to you, say­ing, ‘Be­hold, here is the De­liv­erer,’ or ‘Be­hold, there is he,’ be­lieve it not, for many false teach­ers will arise and many will be led astray; but you should not be de­ceived, for I have told you all this be­fore­hand.”

176:1.5The apos­tles sat in si­lence in the moon­light for a con­sid­er­able time while these as­tound­ing pre­dic­tions of the Mas­ter sank into their be­wil­dered minds. And it was in con­for­mity with this very warn­ing that prac­ti­cally the en­tire group of be­liev­ers and dis­ci­ples fled from Je­ru­sa­lem upon the first ap­pear­ance of the Ro­man troops, find­ing a safe shel­ter in Pella to the north.

176:1.6Even af­ter this ex­plicit warn­ing, many of Je­sus’ fol­low­ers in­ter­preted these pre­dic­tions as re­fer­ring to the changes which would ob­vi­ously oc­cur in Je­ru­sa­lem when the reap­pear­ing of the Mes­siah would re­sult in the es­tab­lish­ment of the New Je­ru­sa­lem and in the en­large­ment of the city to be­come the world’s cap­i­tal. In their minds these Jews were de­ter­mined to con­nect the de­struc­tion of the tem­ple with the “end of the world.” They be­lieved this New Je­ru­sa­lem would fill all Pales­tine; that the end of the world would be fol­lowed by the im­me­di­ate ap­pear­ance of the “new heav­ens and the new earth.” And so it was not strange that Pe­ter should say: “Mas­ter, we know that all things will pass away when the new heav­ens and the new earth ap­pear, but how shall we know when you will re­turn to bring all this about?”

176:1.7When Je­sus heard this, he was thought­ful for some time and then said: “You ever err since you al­ways try to at­tach the new teach­ing to the old; you are de­ter­mined to mis­un­der­stand all my teach­ing; you in­sist on in­ter­pret­ing the gospel in ac­cor­dance with your es­tab­lished be­liefs. Nev­er­the­less, I will try to en­lighten you.”

• accused of desiring to destroy temple

184:3.7The first time any two of their wit­nesses ap­proached even the sem­blance of an agree­ment was when two men tes­ti­fied that they had heard Je­sus say in the course of one of his tem­ple dis­courses that he would “de­stroy this tem­ple made with hands and in three days make an­other tem­ple with­out hands.” That was not ex­actly what Je­sus said, re­gard­less of the fact that he pointed to his own body when he made the re­mark re­ferred to.

• accused of desiring to destroy temple

184:5.6This en­tire pro­ce­dure was ir­reg­u­lar and wholly con­trary to the Jew­ish laws. No two wit­nesses had agreed on any mat­ter ex­cept those who tes­ti­fied re­gard­ing Je­sus’ state­ment about de­stroy­ing the tem­ple and rais­ing it again in three days. And even con­cern­ing that point, no wit­nesses spoke for the de­fense, and nei­ther was Je­sus asked to ex­plain his in­tended mean­ing.

121:6.8Through­out the whole wide world, no mat­ter where the Jews found them­selves dis­persed by com­merce or op­pres­sion, all with one ac­cord kept their hearts cen­tered on the holy tem­ple at Je­ru­sa­lem. Jew­ish the­ol­ogy did sur­vive as it was in­ter­preted and prac­ticed at Je­ru­sa­lem, not­with­stand­ing that it was sev­eral times saved from obliv­ion by the timely in­ter­ven­tion of cer­tain Baby­lo­nian teach­ers.

121:6.9As many as two and one-half mil­lion of these dis­persed Jews used to come to Je­ru­sa­lem for the cel­e­bra­tion of their na­tional re­li­gious fes­ti­vals. And no mat­ter what the the­o­logic or philo­sophic dif­fer­ences of the East­ern (Baby­lo­nian) and the West­ern (Hel­lenic) Jews, they were all agreed on Je­ru­sa­lem as the cen­ter of their wor­ship and in ever look­ing for­ward to the com­ing of the Mes­siah.

164:4.2But they did not call Je­sus be­fore them; they feared to. In­stead, they sent forth­with for Josiah. Af­ter some pre­lim­i­nary ques­tion­ing, the spokesman for the San­hedrin (about fifty mem­bers be­ing pres­ent) di­rected Josiah to tell them what had hap­pened to him. Since his heal­ing that morn­ing Josiah had learned from Thomas, Na­than­iel, and oth­ers that the Phar­isees were an­gry about his heal­ing on the Sab­bath, and that they were likely to make trou­ble for all con­cerned; but Josiah did not yet per­ceive that Je­sus was he who was called the De­liv­erer. So, when the Phar­isees ques­tioned him, he said: “This man came along, put clay upon my eyes, told me to go wash in Siloam, and I do now see.”

164:4.3One of the older Phar­isees, af­ter mak­ing a lengthy speech, said: “This man can­not be from God be­cause you can see that he does not ob­serve the Sab­bath. He vi­o­lates the law, first, in mak­ing the clay, then, in send­ing this beg­gar to wash in Siloam on the Sab­bath day. Such a man can­not be a teacher sent from God.”

164:4.4Then one of the younger men who se­cretly be­lieved in Je­sus, said: “If this man is not sent by God, how can he do these things? We know that one who is a com­mon sin­ner can­not per­form such mir­a­cles. We all know this beg­gar and that he was born blind; now he sees. Will you still say that this prophet does all these won­ders by the power of the prince of dev­ils?” And for ev­ery Phar­isee who dared to ac­cuse and de­nounce Je­sus one would arise to ask en­tan­gling and em­bar­rass­ing ques­tions, so that a se­ri­ous di­vi­sion arose among them. The pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer saw whither they were drift­ing, and in or­der to al­lay the dis­cus­sion, he pre­pared fur­ther to ques­tion the man him­self. Turn­ing to Josiah, he said: “What do you have to say about this man, this Je­sus, whom you claim opened your eyes?” And Josiah an­swered, “I think he is a prophet.”

157:1.2Now Pe­ter had spo­ken hastily. Ju­das car­ried their funds, and he was across the lake. Nei­ther he, his brother, nor Je­sus had brought along any money. And know­ing that the Phar­isees were look­ing for them, they could not well go to Beth­saida to ob­tain money. When Pe­ter told Je­sus about the col­lec­tor and that he had prom­ised him the money, Je­sus said: “If you have prom­ised, then should you pay. But where­with will you re­deem your prom­ise? Will you again be­come a fish­er­man that you may honor your word? Nev­er­the­less, Pe­ter, it is well in the cir­cum­stances that we pay the tax. Let us give these men no oc­ca­sion for of­fense at our at­ti­tude. We will wait here while you go with the boat and cast for the fish, and when you have sold them at yon­der mar­ket, pay the col­lec­tor for all three of us.”

157:1.4It is not strange that you have a rec­ord of Pe­ter’s catch­ing a fish with a shekel in its mouth. In those days there were cur­rent many sto­ries about find­ing trea­sures in the mouths of fishes; such tales of near mir­a­cles were com­mon­place. So, as Pe­ter left them to go to­ward the boat, Je­sus re­marked, half-hu­mor­ously: “Strange that the sons of the king must pay trib­ute; usu­ally it is the stranger who is taxed for the up­keep of the court, but it be­hooves us to af­ford no stum­bling block for the au­thor­i­ties. Go hence! maybe you will catch the fish with the shekel in its mouth.” Je­sus hav­ing thus spo­ken, and Pe­ter so soon ap­pear­ing with the tem­ple tax, it is not sur­pris­ing that the episode be­came later ex­panded into a mir­a­cle as re­corded by the writer of Mat­thew’s Gospel.

157:1.5Je­sus, with An­drew and Pe­ter, waited by the seashore un­til nearly sun­down. Mes­sen­gers brought them word that Mary’s house was still un­der surveil­lance; there­fore, when it grew dark, the three wait­ing men en­tered their boat and slowly rowed away to­ward the east­ern shore of the Sea of Gal­i­lee.

125:0.5He passed through the con­se­cra­tion rit­u­als but was dis­ap­pointed by their per­func­tory and rou­tine na­tures. He missed that per­sonal in­ter­est which char­ac­ter­ized the cer­e­monies of the syn­a­gogue at Naz­a­reth. He then re­turned to greet his mother and pre­pared to ac­com­pany his fa­ther on his first trip about the tem­ple and its var­i­ous courts, gal­leries, and cor­ri­dors. The tem­ple precincts could ac­com­mo­date over two hun­dred thou­sand wor­shipers at one time, and while the vast­ness of these build­ings—in com­par­i­son with any he had ever seen—greatly im­pressed his mind, he was more in­trigued by the con­tem­pla­tion of the spir­i­tual sig­nif­i­cance of the tem­ple cer­e­monies and their as­so­ci­ated wor­ship.

• brilliantly illuminated by candelabras, torches

162:4.2This was the feast of feasts, since any sac­ri­fice not made at the other fes­ti­vals could be made at this time. This was the oc­ca­sion of the re­cep­tion of the tem­ple of­fer­ings; it was a com­bi­na­tion of va­ca­tion plea­sures with the solemn rites of re­li­gious wor­ship. Here was a time of racial re­joic­ing, min­gled with sac­ri­fices, Levit­i­cal chants, and the solemn blasts of the sil­very trum­pets of the priests. At night the im­pres­sive spec­ta­cle of the tem­ple and its pil­grim throngs was bril­liantly il­lu­mi­nated by the great can­de­labras which burned brightly in the court of the women as well as by the glare of scores of torches stand­ing about the tem­ple courts. The en­tire city was gaily dec­o­rated ex­cept the Ro­man cas­tle of An­to­nia, which looked down in grim con­trast upon this fes­tive and wor­ship­ful scene. And how the Jews did hate this ever-pres­ent re­minder of the Ro­man yoke!

• brilliantly illuminated by candelabras, torches

162:5.1On the evening of the next to the last day of the feast, when the scene was bril­liantly il­lu­mi­nated by the lights of the can­de­labras and the torches, Je­sus stood up in the midst of the as­sem­bled throng and said:

• emblem of grape and vine decorated entrance to

180:2.3The Jews had long taught that the Mes­siah would be “a stem aris­ing out of the vine” of David’s an­ces­tors, and in com­mem­o­ra­tion of this olden teach­ing a large em­blem of the grape and its at­tached vine dec­o­rated the en­trance to Herod’s tem­ple. The apos­tles all re­called these things while the Mas­ter talked to them this night in the up­per cham­ber.

• court of gentiles

121:2.5Each Jew­ish syn­a­gogue tol­er­ated a fringe of gen­tile be­liev­ers, “de­vout” or “God-fear­ing” men, and it was among this fringe of pros­e­lytes that Paul made the bulk of his early con­verts to Chris­tian­ity. Even the tem­ple at Je­ru­sa­lem pos­sessed its or­nate court of the gen­tiles. There was very close con­nec­tion be­tween the cul­ture, com­merce, and wor­ship of Je­ru­sa­lem and An­ti­och. In An­ti­och Paul’s dis­ci­ples were first called “Chris­tians.”

• holy of holies

125:2.5The next day’s ser­vices at the tem­ple were more ac­cept­able to Je­sus and did much to re­lieve the un­pleas­ant mem­o­ries of the pre­vi­ous day. The fol­low­ing morn­ing young Laz­a­rus took Je­sus in hand, and they be­gan a sys­tem­atic ex­plo­ration of Je­ru­sa­lem and its en­vi­rons. Be­fore the day was over, Je­sus dis­cov­ered the var­i­ous places about the tem­ple where teach­ing and ques­tion con­fer­ences were in prog­ress; and aside from a few vis­its to the holy of holies to gaze in won­der as to what re­ally was be­hind the veil of sep­a­ra­tion, he spent most of his time about the tem­ple at these teach­ing con­fer­ences.

• holy of holies

135:1.2John took the same life vows that had been ad­min­is­tered to his il­lus­tri­ous pre­de­ces­sors, Sam­son and the prophet Samuel. A life Nazarite was looked upon as a sanc­ti­fied and holy per­son­al­ity. The Jews re­garded a Nazarite with al­most the re­spect and ven­er­a­tion ac­corded the high priest, and this was not strange since Nazarites of life­long con­se­cra­tion were the only per­sons, ex­cept high priests, who were ever per­mit­ted to en­ter the holy of holies in the tem­ple.

• court of women
• Nazarite corner of women’s court

135:2.1Af­ter an ill­ness of sev­eral months Zach­a­rias died in July, A.D. 12, when John was just past eigh­teen years of age. This was a time of great em­bar­rass­ment to John since the Nazarite vow for­bade con­tact with the dead, even in one’s own fam­ily. Al­though John had en­deav­ored to com­ply with the re­stric­tions of his vow re­gard­ing con­tam­i­na­tion by the dead, he doubted that he had been wholly obe­di­ent to the re­quire­ments of the Nazarite or­der; there­fore, af­ter his fa­ther’s burial he went to Je­ru­sa­lem, where, in the Nazarite cor­ner of the women’s court, he of­fered the sac­ri­fices re­quired for his cleans­ing.

• Beautiful Gate
• court of Israel

162:4.3Sev­enty bul­locks were sac­ri­ficed dur­ing the feast, the sym­bol of the sev­enty na­tions of hea­then­dom. The cer­e­mony of the out­pour­ing of the wa­ter sym­bol­ized the out­pour­ing of the di­vine spirit. This cer­e­mony of the wa­ter fol­lowed the sun­rise pro­ces­sion of the priests and Levites. The wor­shipers passed down the steps lead­ing from the court of Is­rael to the court of the women while suc­ces­sive blasts were blown upon the sil­very trum­pets. And then the faith­ful marched on to­ward the Beau­ti­ful Gate, which opened upon the court of the gen­tiles. Here they turned about to face west­ward, to re­peat their chants, and to con­tinue their march for the sym­bolic wa­ter.

• court of priests beneath rock ledge

162:4.4On the last day of the feast al­most four hun­dred and fifty priests with a cor­re­spond­ing num­ber of Levites of­fi­ci­ated. At day­break the pil­grims as­sem­bled from all parts of the city, each car­ry­ing in the right hand a sheaf of myr­tle, wil­low, and palm branches, while in the left hand each one car­ried a branch of the par­a­dise ap­ple—the cit­ron, or the “for­bid­den fruit.” These pil­grims di­vided into three groups for this early morn­ing cer­e­mony. One band re­mained at the tem­ple to at­tend the morn­ing sac­ri­fices; an­other group marched down be­low Je­ru­sa­lem to near Maza to cut the wil­low branches for the adorn­ment of the sac­ri­fi­cial al­tar, while the third group formed a pro­ces­sion to march from the tem­ple be­hind the wa­ter priest, who, to the sound of the sil­very trum­pets, bore the golden pitcher which was to con­tain the sym­bolic wa­ter, out through Ophel to near Siloam, where was lo­cated the foun­tain gate. Af­ter the golden pitcher had been filled at the pool of Siloam, the pro­ces­sion marched back to the tem­ple, en­ter­ing by way of the wa­ter gate and go­ing di­rectly to the court of the priests, where the priest bear­ing the wa­ter pitcher was joined by the priest bear­ing the wine for the drink of­fer­ing. These two priests then re­paired to the sil­ver fun­nels lead­ing to the base of the al­tar and poured the con­tents of the pitch­ers therein. The ex­e­cu­tion of this rite of pour­ing the wine and the wa­ter was the sig­nal for the as­sem­bled pil­grims to be­gin the chant­ing of the Psalms from 113 to 118 in­clu­sive, in al­ter­na­tion with the Levites. And as they re­peated these lines, they would wave their sheaves at the al­tar. Then fol­lowed the sac­ri­fices for the day, as­so­ci­ated with the re­peat­ing of the Psalm for the day, the Psalm for the last day of the feast be­ing the eighty-sec­ond, be­gin­ning with the fifth verse.

• chamber of hewn stone

184:3.2This was not a reg­u­larly called meet­ing of the San­hedrin and was not held in the usual place, the cham­ber of hewn stone in the tem­ple. This was a spe­cial trial court of some thirty San­hedrists and was con­vened in the palace of the high priest. John Zeb­e­dee was pres­ent with Je­sus through­out this so-called trial.

• chamber of hewn stone

186:1.1It was about half past eight o’clock this Fri­day morn­ing when the hear­ing of Je­sus be­fore Pi­late was ended and the Mas­ter was placed in the cus­tody of the Ro­man sol­diers who were to cru­cify him. As soon as the Ro­mans took pos­ses­sion of Je­sus, the cap­tain of the Jew­ish guards marched with his men back to their tem­ple head­quar­ters. The chief priest and his San­hedrist as­so­ciates fol­lowed close be­hind the guards, go­ing di­rectly to their usual meet­ing place in the hall of hewn stone in the tem­ple. Here they found many other mem­bers of the San­hedrin wait­ing to learn what had been done with Je­sus. As Cai­a­phas was en­gaged in mak­ing his re­port to the San­hedrin re­gard­ing the trial and con­dem­na­tion of Je­sus, Ju­das ap­peared be­fore them to claim his re­ward for the part he had played in his Mas­ter’s ar­rest and sen­tence of death.

121:2.6The cen­tral­iza­tion of the Jew­ish tem­ple wor­ship at Je­ru­sa­lem con­sti­tuted alike the se­cret of the sur­vival of their mono­the­ism and the prom­ise of the nur­ture and send­ing forth to the world of a new and en­larged con­cept of that one God of all na­tions and Fa­ther of all mor­tals. The tem­ple ser­vice at Je­ru­sa­lem rep­re­sented the sur­vival of a re­li­gious cul­tural con­cept in the face of the down­fall of a suc­ces­sion of gen­tile na­tional over­lords and racial per­se­cu­tors.