Jerusalem

124:6.1Je­sus, hav­ing now reached the thresh­old of young man­hood and hav­ing been for­mally grad­u­ated from the syn­a­gogue schools, was qual­i­fied to pro­ceed to Je­ru­sa­lem with his par­ents to par­tic­i­pate with them in the cel­e­bra­tion of his first Pass­over. The Pass­over feast of this year fell on Sat­ur­day, April 9, A.D. 7. A con­sid­er­able com­pany (103) made ready to de­part from Naz­a­reth early Mon­day morn­ing, April 4, for Je­ru­sa­lem. They jour­neyed south to­ward Samaria, but on reach­ing Jezreel, they turned east, go­ing around Mount Gil­boa into the Jor­dan val­ley in or­der to avoid pass­ing through Samaria. Joseph and his fam­ily would have en­joyed go­ing down through Samaria by way of Ja­cob’s well and Bethel, but since the Jews dis­liked to deal with the Samar­i­tans, they de­cided to go with their neigh­bors by way of the Jor­dan val­ley.

124:6.2The much-dreaded Archelaus had been de­posed, and they had lit­tle to fear in tak­ing Je­sus to Je­ru­sa­lem. Twelve years had passed since the first Herod had sought to de­stroy the babe of Beth­le­hem, and no one would now think of as­so­ci­at­ing that af­fair with this ob­scure lad of Naz­a­reth.

124:6.3Be­fore reach­ing the Jezreel junc­tion, and as they jour­neyed on, very soon, on the left, they passed the an­cient vil­lage of Shunem, and Je­sus heard again about the most beau­ti­ful maiden of all Is­rael who once lived there and also about the won­der­ful works El­isha per­formed there. In pass­ing by Jezreel, Je­sus’ par­ents re­counted the do­ings of Ahab and Jezebel and the ex­ploits of Jehu. In pass­ing around Mount Gil­boa, they talked much about Saul, who took his life on the slopes of this moun­tain, King David, and the as­so­ci­a­tions of this his­toric spot.

124:6.4As they rounded the base of Gil­boa, the pil­grims could see the Greek city of Scythopo­lis on the right. They gazed upon the mar­ble struc­tures from a dis­tance but went not near the gen­tile city lest they so de­file them­selves that they could not par­tic­i­pate in the forth­com­ing solemn and sa­cred cer­e­monies of the Pass­over at Je­ru­sa­lem. Mary could not un­der­stand why nei­ther Joseph nor Je­sus would speak of Scythopo­lis. She did not know about their con­tro­versy of the pre­vi­ous year as they had never re­vealed this episode to her.

124:6.5The road now led im­me­di­ately down into the trop­i­cal Jor­dan val­ley, and soon Je­sus was to have ex­posed to his won­der­ing gaze the crooked and ever-wind­ing Jor­dan with its glis­ten­ing and rip­pling wa­ters as it flowed down to­ward the Dead Sea. They laid aside their outer gar­ments as they jour­neyed south in this trop­i­cal val­ley, en­joy­ing the lux­u­ri­ous fields of grain and the beau­ti­ful ole­an­ders laden with their pink blos­soms, while mas­sive snow-capped Mount Her­mon stood far to the north, in majesty look­ing down on the his­toric val­ley. A lit­tle over three hours’ travel from op­po­site Scythopo­lis they came upon a bub­bling spring, and here they camped for the night, out un­der the star­lit heav­ens.

124:6.6On their sec­ond day’s jour­ney they passed by where the Jab­bok, from the east, flows into the Jor­dan, and look­ing east up this river val­ley, they re­counted the days of Gideon, when the Mid­i­an­ites poured into this re­gion to over­run the land. To­ward the end of the sec­ond day’s jour­ney they camped near the base of the high­est moun­tain over­look­ing the Jor­dan val­ley, Mount Sartaba, whose sum­mit was oc­cu­pied by the Alexan­drian fortress where Herod had im­pris­oned one of his wives and buried his two stran­gled sons.

124:6.7The third day they passed by two vil­lages which had been re­cently built by Herod and noted their su­pe­rior ar­chi­tec­ture and their beau­ti­ful palm gar­dens. By night­fall they reached Jeri­cho, where they re­mained un­til the mor­row. That evening Joseph, Mary, and Je­sus walked a mile and a half to the site of the an­cient Jeri­cho, where Joshua, for whom Je­sus was named, had per­formed his renowned ex­ploits, ac­cord­ing to Jew­ish tra­di­tion.

124:6.8By the fourth and last day’s jour­ney the road was a con­tin­u­ous pro­ces­sion of pil­grims. They now be­gan to climb the hills lead­ing up to Je­ru­sa­lem. As they neared the top, they could look across the Jor­dan to the moun­tains be­yond and south over the slug­gish wa­ters of the Dead Sea. About half­way up to Je­ru­sa­lem, Je­sus gained his first view of the Mount of Olives (the re­gion to be so much a part of his sub­se­quent life), and Joseph pointed out to him that the Holy City lay just be­yond this ridge, and the lad’s heart beat fast with joy­ous an­tic­i­pa­tion of soon be­hold­ing the city and house of his heav­enly Fa­ther.

124:6.9On the east­ern slopes of Oli­vet they paused for rest in the bor­ders of a lit­tle vil­lage called Beth­any. The hos­pitable vil­lagers poured forth to min­is­ter to the pil­grims, and it hap­pened that Joseph and his fam­ily had stopped near the house of one Si­mon, who had three chil­dren about the same age as Je­sus—Mary, Martha, and Laz­a­rus. They in­vited the Naz­a­reth fam­ily in for re­fresh­ment, and a life­long friend­ship sprang up be­tween the two fam­i­lies. Many times af­ter­ward, in his event­ful life, Je­sus stopped in this home.

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.

124:6.11But they hur­ried on to Je­ru­sa­lem. It was now Thurs­day af­ter­noon. On reach­ing the city, they jour­neyed past the tem­ple, and never had Je­sus be­held such throngs of hu­man be­ings. He med­i­tated deeply on how these Jews had as­sem­bled here from the ut­ter­most parts of the known world.

124:6.12Soon they reached the place pre­ar­ranged for their ac­com­mo­da­tion dur­ing the Pass­over week, the large home of a well-to-do rel­a­tive of Mary’s, one who knew some­thing of the early his­tory of both John and Je­sus, through Zach­a­rias. The fol­low­ing day, the day of prepa­ra­tion, they made ready for the ap­pro­pri­ate cel­e­bra­tion of the Pass­over Sab­bath.

124:6.13While all Je­ru­sa­lem was astir in prepa­ra­tion for the Pass­over, Joseph found time to take his son around to visit the academy where it had been ar­ranged for him to re­sume his ed­u­ca­tion two years later, as soon as he reached the re­quired age of fif­teen. Joseph was truly puz­zled when he ob­served how lit­tle in­ter­est Je­sus evinced in all these care­fully laid plans.

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.

124:6.15On the day be­fore the Pass­over Sab­bath, flood tides of spir­i­tual il­lu­mi­na­tion swept through the mor­tal mind of Je­sus and filled his hu­man heart to over­flow­ing with af­fec­tion­ate pity for the spir­i­tu­ally blind and morally ig­no­rant mul­ti­tudes as­sem­bled for the cel­e­bra­tion of the an­cient Pass­over com­mem­o­ra­tion. This was one of the most ex­traor­di­nary days that the Son of God spent in the flesh; and dur­ing the night, for the first time in his earth ca­reer, there ap­peared to him an as­signed mes­sen­ger from Sal­ving­ton, com­mis­sioned by Im­manuel, who said: “The hour has come. It is time that you be­gan to be about your Fa­ther’s busi­ness.”

124:6.16And so, even ere the heavy re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of the Naz­a­reth fam­ily de­scended upon his youth­ful shoul­ders, there now ar­rived the ce­les­tial mes­sen­ger to re­mind this lad, not quite thir­teen years of age, that the hour had come to be­gin the re­sump­tion of the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of a uni­verse. This was the first act of a long suc­ces­sion of events which fi­nally cul­mi­nated in the com­ple­tion of the Son’s be­stowal on Uran­tia and the re­plac­ing of “the gov­ern­ment of a uni­verse on his hu­man-di­vine shoul­ders.”

124:6.17As time passed, the mys­tery of the in­car­na­tion be­came, to all of us, more and more un­fath­omable. We could hardly com­pre­hend that this lad of Naz­a­reth was the cre­ator of all Neb­a­don. Nei­ther do we nowa­days un­der­stand how the spirit of this same Cre­ator Son and the spirit of his Par­a­dise Fa­ther are as­so­ci­ated with the souls of man­kind. With the pass­ing of time, we could see that his hu­man mind was in­creas­ingly dis­cern­ing that, while he lived his life in the flesh, in spirit on his shoul­ders rested the re­spon­si­bil­ity of a uni­verse.

124:6.18Thus ends the ca­reer of the Naz­a­reth lad, and be­gins the nar­ra­tive of that ado­les­cent youth—the in­creas­ingly self-con­scious di­vine hu­man—who now be­gins the con­tem­pla­tion of his world ca­reer as he strives to in­te­grate his ex­pand­ing life pur­pose with the de­sires of his par­ents and his obli­ga­tions to his fam­ily and the so­ci­ety of his day and age.

• Jerusalem

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.

• Jerusalem

134:7.5Je­sus then started on his fi­nal tour, as a pri­vate in­di­vid­ual, through the heart of Pales­tine, go­ing from Beer­sheba in the south to Dan in the north. On this jour­ney north­ward he stopped at He­bron, Beth­le­hem (where he saw his birth­place), Je­ru­sa­lem (he did not visit Beth­any), Beeroth, Lebonah, Sy­char, Shechem, Samaria, Geba, En-Gan­nim, En­dor, Madon; pass­ing through Mag­dala and Ca­per­naum, he jour­neyed on north; and pass­ing east of the Wa­ters of Merom, he went by Karahta to Dan, or Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi.

• Jerusalem

134:9.2Je­sus and John stopped overnight at Beth­any with Laz­a­rus and his sis­ters, go­ing early the next morn­ing to Je­ru­sa­lem. They spent al­most three weeks in and around the city, at least John did. Many days John went into Je­ru­sa­lem alone while Je­sus walked about over the near-by hills and en­gaged in many sea­sons of spir­i­tual com­mu­nion with his Fa­ther in heaven.

• Jerusalem

140:7.2For weeks and weeks small groups of earnest truth seek­ers, to­gether with cu­ri­ous spec­ta­tors, had been com­ing to Beth­saida to see Je­sus. Al­ready word about him had spread over the coun­try­side; in­quir­ing groups had come from cities as far away as Tyre, Sidon, Da­mas­cus, Cae­sarea, and Je­ru­sa­lem. Here­to­fore, Je­sus had greeted these peo­ple and taught them con­cern­ing the king­dom, but the Mas­ter now turned this work over to the twelve. An­drew would se­lect one of the apos­tles and as­sign him to a group of vis­i­tors, and some­times all twelve of them were so en­gaged.

141:9.1On Mon­day, the last day of March, Je­sus and the apos­tles be­gan their jour­ney up the hills to­ward Je­ru­sa­lem. Laz­a­rus of Beth­any had been down to the Jor­dan twice to see Je­sus, and ev­ery ar­range­ment had been made for the Mas­ter and his apos­tles to make their head­quar­ters with Laz­a­rus and his sis­ters at Beth­any as long as they might de­sire to stay in Je­ru­sa­lem.

141:9.2The dis­ci­ples of John re­mained at Beth­any be­yond the Jor­dan, teach­ing and bap­tiz­ing the mul­ti­tudes, so that Je­sus was ac­com­pa­nied only by the twelve when he ar­rived at Laz­a­rus’s home. Here Je­sus and the apos­tles tar­ried for five days, rest­ing and re­fresh­ing them­selves be­fore go­ing on to Je­ru­sa­lem for the Pass­over. It was a great event in the lives of Martha and Mary to have the Mas­ter and his apos­tles in the home of their brother, where they could min­is­ter to their needs.

141:9.3On Sun­day morn­ing, April 6, Je­sus and the apos­tles went down to Je­ru­sa­lem; and this was the first time the Mas­ter and all of the twelve had been there to­gether.

152:7.1Sun­day, April 3, Je­sus, ac­com­pa­nied only by the twelve apos­tles, started from Beth­saida on the jour­ney to Je­ru­sa­lem. To avoid the mul­ti­tudes and to at­tract as lit­tle at­ten­tion as pos­si­ble, they jour­neyed by way of Gerasa and Phil­a­del­phia. He for­bade them to do any pub­lic teach­ing on this trip; nei­ther did he per­mit them to teach or preach while so­journ­ing in Je­ru­sa­lem. They ar­rived at Beth­any, near Je­ru­sa­lem, late on Wednes­day evening, April 6. For this one night they stopped at the home of Laz­a­rus, Martha, and Mary, but the next day they sep­a­rated. Je­sus, with John, stayed at the home of a be­liever named Si­mon, near the house of Laz­a­rus in Beth­any. Ju­das Is­car­iot and Si­mon Ze­lo­tes stopped with friends in Je­ru­sa­lem, while the rest of the apos­tles so­journed, two and two, in dif­fer­ent homes.

152:7.2Je­sus en­tered Je­ru­sa­lem only once dur­ing this Pass­over, and that was on the great day of the feast. Many of the Je­ru­sa­lem be­liev­ers were brought out by Ab­ner to meet Je­sus at Beth­any. Dur­ing this so­journ at Je­ru­sa­lem the twelve learned how bit­ter the feel­ing was be­com­ing to­ward their Mas­ter. They de­parted from Je­ru­sa­lem all be­liev­ing that a cri­sis was im­pend­ing.

152:7.3On Sun­day, April 24, Je­sus and the apos­tles left Je­ru­sa­lem for Beth­saida, go­ing by way of the coast cities of Joppa, Cae­sarea, and Ptole­mais. Thence, over­land they went by Ramah and Cho­ra­zin to Beth­saida, ar­riv­ing on Fri­day, April 29. Im­me­di­ately on reach­ing home, Je­sus dis­patched An­drew to ask of the ruler of the syn­a­gogue per­mis­sion to speak the next day, that be­ing the Sab­bath, at the af­ter­noon ser­vice. And Je­sus well knew that that would be the last time he would ever be per­mit­ted to speak in the Ca­per­naum syn­a­gogue.

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?”

97:6.4Said this fear­less prophet: “Righ­teous is our Lord, great in coun­sel and mighty in work. His eyes are open upon all the ways of all the sons of men, to give ev­ery one ac­cord­ing to his ways and ac­cord­ing to the fruit of his do­ings.” But it was con­sid­ered blas­phe­mous trea­son when, dur­ing the siege of Je­ru­sa­lem, he said: “And now have I given these lands into the hand of Neb­uchad­nez­zar, the king of Baby­lon, my ser­vant.” And when Jeremiah coun­seled the sur­ren­der of the city, the priests and civil rulers cast him into the miry pit of a dis­mal dun­geon.

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.”

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.

162:1.1Long be­fore they fled from Gal­i­lee, the fol­low­ers of Je­sus had im­plored him to go to Je­ru­sa­lem to pro­claim the gospel of the king­dom in or­der that his mes­sage might have the pres­tige of hav­ing been preached at the cen­ter of Jew­ish cul­ture and learn­ing; but now that he had ac­tu­ally come to Je­ru­sa­lem to teach, they were afraid for his life. Know­ing that the San­hedrin had sought to bring Je­sus to Je­ru­sa­lem for trial and re­call­ing the Mas­ter’s re­cently re­it­er­ated dec­la­ra­tions that he must be sub­ject to death, the apos­tles had been lit­er­ally stunned by his sud­den de­ci­sion to at­tend the feast of taber­na­cles. To all their pre­vi­ous en­treaties that he go to Je­ru­sa­lem he had replied, “The hour has not yet come.” Now, to their protests of fear he an­swered only, “But the hour has come.”

162:1.2Dur­ing the feast of taber­na­cles Je­sus went boldly into Je­ru­sa­lem on sev­eral oc­ca­sions and pub­licly taught in the tem­ple. This he did in spite of the ef­forts of his apos­tles to dis­suade him. Though they had long urged him to pro­claim his mes­sage in Je­ru­sa­lem, they now feared to see him en­ter the city at this time, know­ing full well that the scribes and Phar­isees were bent on bring­ing about his death.

162:1.3Je­sus’ bold ap­pear­ance in Je­ru­sa­lem more than ever con­fused his fol­low­ers. Many of his dis­ci­ples, and even Ju­das Is­car­iot, the apos­tle, had dared to think that Je­sus had fled in haste into Phoeni­cia be­cause he feared the Jew­ish lead­ers and Herod An­tipas. They failed to com­pre­hend the sig­nif­i­cance of the Mas­ter’s move­ments. His pres­ence in Je­ru­sa­lem at the feast of taber­na­cles, even in op­po­si­tion to the ad­vice of his fol­low­ers, suf­ficed for­ever to put an end to all whis­per­ings about fear and cow­ardice.

162:1.4Dur­ing the feast of taber­na­cles, thou­sands of be­liev­ers from all parts of the Ro­man Em­pire saw Je­sus, heard him teach, and many even jour­neyed out to Beth­any to con­fer with him re­gard­ing the prog­ress of the king­dom in their home dis­tricts.

162:1.5There were many rea­sons why Je­sus was able pub­licly to preach in the tem­ple courts through­out the days of the feast, and chief of these was the fear that had come over the of­fi­cers of the San­hedrin as a re­sult of the se­cret di­vi­sion of sen­ti­ment in their own ranks. It was a fact that many of the mem­bers of the San­hedrin ei­ther se­cretly be­lieved in Je­sus or else were de­cid­edly averse to ar­rest­ing him dur­ing the feast, when such large num­bers of peo­ple were pres­ent in Je­ru­sa­lem, many of whom ei­ther be­lieved in him or were at least friendly to the spir­i­tual move­ment which he spon­sored.

162:1.6The ef­forts of Ab­ner and his as­so­ciates through­out Judea had also done much to con­sol­i­date sen­ti­ment fa­vor­able to the king­dom, so much so that the en­e­mies of Je­sus dared not be too out­spo­ken in their op­po­si­tion. This was one of the rea­sons why Je­sus could pub­licly visit Je­ru­sa­lem and live to go away. One or two months be­fore this he would cer­tainly have been put to death.

162:1.7But the au­da­cious bold­ness of Je­sus in pub­licly ap­pear­ing in Je­ru­sa­lem over­awed his en­e­mies; they were not pre­pared for such a dar­ing chal­lenge. Sev­eral times dur­ing this month the San­hedrin made fee­ble at­tempts to place the Mas­ter un­der ar­rest, but noth­ing came of these ef­forts. His en­e­mies were so taken aback by Je­sus’ un­ex­pected pub­lic ap­pear­ance in Je­ru­sa­lem that they con­jec­tured he must have been prom­ised pro­tec­tion by the Ro­man au­thor­i­ties. Know­ing that Philip (Herod An­tipas’s brother) was al­most a fol­lower of Je­sus, the mem­bers of the San­hedrin spec­u­lated that Philip had se­cured for Je­sus promises of pro­tec­tion against his en­e­mies. Je­sus had de­parted from their ju­ris­dic­tion be­fore they awak­ened to the re­al­iza­tion that they had been mis­taken in the be­lief that his sud­den and bold ap­pear­ance in Je­ru­sa­lem had been due to a se­cret un­der­stand­ing with the Ro­man of­fi­cials.

162:1.8Only the twelve apos­tles had known that Je­sus in­tended to at­tend the feast of taber­na­cles when they had de­parted from Ma­g­a­dan. The other fol­low­ers of the Mas­ter were greatly as­ton­ished when he ap­peared in the tem­ple courts and be­gan pub­licly to teach, and the Jew­ish au­thor­i­ties were sur­prised be­yond ex­pres­sion when it was re­ported that he was teach­ing in the tem­ple.

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.

162:1.10The mul­ti­tudes who lis­tened to the Mas­ter’s teach­ings were di­vided in their opin­ions. Some said he was a good man; some a prophet; some that he was truly the Mes­siah; oth­ers said he was a mis­chievous med­dler, that he was lead­ing the peo­ple astray with his strange doc­trines. His en­e­mies hes­i­tated to de­nounce him openly for fear of his friendly be­liev­ers, while his friends feared to ac­knowl­edge him openly for fear of the Jew­ish lead­ers, know­ing that the San­hedrin was de­ter­mined to put him to death. But even his en­e­mies mar­veled at his teach­ing, know­ing that he had not been in­structed in the schools of the rab­bis.

162:1.11Ev­ery time Je­sus went to Je­ru­sa­lem, his apos­tles were filled with ter­ror. They were the more afraid as, from day to day, they lis­tened to his in­creas­ingly bold pro­nounce­ments re­gard­ing the na­ture of his mis­sion on earth. They were un­ac­cus­tomed to hear­ing Je­sus make such pos­i­tive claims and such amaz­ing as­ser­tions even when preach­ing among his friends.

162:4.1The pres­ence of peo­ple from all of the known world, from Spain to In­dia, made the feast of taber­na­cles an ideal oc­ca­sion for Je­sus for the first time pub­licly to pro­claim his full gospel in Je­ru­sa­lem. At this feast the peo­ple lived much in the open air, in leafy booths. It was the feast of the har­vest in­gath­er­ing, and com­ing, as it did, in the cool of the au­tumn months, it was more gen­er­ally at­tended by the Jews of the world than was the Pass­over at the end of the win­ter or Pen­te­cost at the be­gin­ning of sum­mer. The apos­tles at last be­held their Mas­ter mak­ing the bold an­nounce­ment of his mis­sion on earth be­fore all the world, as it were.

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!

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.

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.

164:2.1Je­sus had at­tended the feast of taber­na­cles that he might pro­claim the gospel to the pil­grims from all parts of the em­pire; he now went up to the feast of the ded­i­ca­tion for just one pur­pose: to give the San­hedrin and the Jew­ish lead­ers an­other chance to see the light. The prin­ci­pal event of these few days in Je­ru­sa­lem oc­curred on Fri­day night at the home of Nicode­mus. Here were gath­ered to­gether some twenty-five Jew­ish lead­ers who be­lieved Je­sus’ teach­ing. Among this group were four­teen men who were then, or had re­cently been, mem­bers of the San­hedrin. This meet­ing was at­tended by Eber, Mata­dor­mus, and Joseph of Ari­mathea.

164:2.2On this oc­ca­sion Je­sus’ hear­ers were all learned men, and both they and his two apos­tles were amazed at the breadth and depth of the re­marks which the Mas­ter made to this dis­tin­guished group. Not since the times when he had taught in Alexan­dria, Rome, and in the is­lands of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean, had he ex­hib­ited such learn­ing and shown such a grasp of the af­fairs of men, both sec­u­lar and re­li­gious.

164:2.3When this lit­tle meet­ing broke up, all went away mys­ti­fied by the Mas­ter’s per­son­al­ity, charmed by his gra­cious man­ner, and in love with the man. They had sought to ad­vise Je­sus con­cern­ing his de­sire to win the re­main­ing mem­bers of the San­hedrin. The Mas­ter lis­tened at­ten­tively, but silently, to all their pro­pos­als. He well knew none of their plans would work. He sur­mised that the ma­jor­ity of the Jew­ish lead­ers never would ac­cept the gospel of the king­dom; nev­er­the­less, he gave them all this one more chance to choose. But when he went forth that night, with Na­than­iel and Thomas, to lodge on the Mount of Olives, he had not yet de­cided upon the method he would pur­sue in bring­ing his work once more to the no­tice of the San­hedrin.

164:2.4That night Na­than­iel and Thomas slept lit­tle; they were too much amazed by what they had heard at Nicode­mus’s house. They thought much over the fi­nal re­mark of Je­sus re­gard­ing the of­fer of the for­mer and pres­ent mem­bers of the San­hedrin to go with him be­fore the sev­enty. The Mas­ter said: “No, my breth­ren, it would be to no pur­pose. You would mul­ti­ply the wrath to be vis­ited upon your own heads, but you would not in the least mit­i­gate the ha­tred which they bear me. Go, each of you, about the Fa­ther’s busi­ness as the spirit leads you while I once more bring the king­dom to their no­tice in the man­ner which my Fa­ther may di­rect.”

121:8.7Isador es­caped from Je­ru­sa­lem in A.D. 70 af­ter the in­vest­ment of the city by the armies of Ti­tus, tak­ing with him to Pella a copy of Mat­thew’s notes. In the year 71, while liv­ing at Pella, Isador wrote the Gospel ac­cord­ing to Mat­thew. He also had with him the first four fifths of Mark’s nar­ra­tive.

170:2.25But he could not es­cape the use of the king­dom idea. It was more than fifty years later, not un­til af­ter the de­struc­tion of Je­ru­sa­lem by the Ro­man armies, that this con­cept of the king­dom be­gan to change into the cult of eter­nal life as its so­cial and in­sti­tu­tional as­pects were taken over by the rapidly ex­pand­ing and crys­tal­liz­ing Chris­tian church.

176:4.2Je­sus did, on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions and to many in­di­vid­u­als, de­clare his in­ten­tion of re­turn­ing to this world. As his fol­low­ers awak­ened to the fact that their Mas­ter was not go­ing to func­tion as a tem­po­ral de­liv­erer, and as they lis­tened to his pre­dic­tions of the over­throw of Je­ru­sa­lem and the down­fall of the Jew­ish na­tion, they most nat­u­rally be­gan to as­so­ciate his prom­ised re­turn with these catas­trophic events. But when the Ro­man armies lev­eled the walls of Je­ru­sa­lem, de­stroyed the tem­ple, and dis­persed the Judean Jews, and still the Mas­ter did not re­veal him­self in power and glory, his fol­low­ers be­gan the for­mu­la­tion of that be­lief which even­tu­ally as­so­ci­ated the sec­ond com­ing of Christ with the end of the age, even with the end of the world.

187:1.5Cru­ci­fix­ion was not a Jew­ish mode of pun­ish­ment. Both the Greeks and the Ro­mans learned this method of ex­e­cu­tion from the Phoeni­cians. Even Herod, with all his cru­elty, did not re­sort to cru­ci­fix­ion. The Ro­mans never cru­ci­fied a Ro­man cit­i­zen; only slaves and sub­ject peo­ples were sub­jected to this dis­hon­or­able mode of death. Dur­ing the siege of Je­ru­sa­lem, just forty years af­ter the cru­ci­fix­ion of Je­sus, all of Gol­go­tha was cov­ered by thou­sands upon thou­sands of crosses upon which, from day to day, there per­ished the flower of the Jew­ish race. A ter­ri­ble har­vest, in­deed, of the seed-sow­ing of this day.

97:9.22The next king, Amaziah, had trou­ble with the re­volt­ing tax-pay­ing Edom­ites and their neigh­bors. Af­ter a sig­nal vic­tory he turned to at­tack his north­ern neigh­bors and was just as sig­nally de­feated. Then the ru­ral folk re­volted; they as­sas­si­nated the king and put his six­teen-year-old son on the throne. This was Azariah, called Uzziah by Isa­iah. Af­ter Uzziah, things went from bad to worse, and Ju­dah ex­isted for a hun­dred years by pay­ing trib­ute to the kings of As­syria. Isa­iah the first told them that Je­ru­sa­lem, be­ing the city of Yah­weh, would never fall. But Jeremiah did not hes­i­tate to pro­claim its down­fall.

193:3.1Early Thurs­day morn­ing, May 18, Je­sus made his last ap­pear­ance on earth as a mor­ontia per­son­al­ity. As the eleven apos­tles were about to sit down to break­fast in the up­per cham­ber of Mary Mark’s home, Je­sus ap­peared to them and said:

193:3.2“Peace be upon you. I have asked you to tarry here in Je­ru­sa­lem un­til I as­cend to the Fa­ther, even un­til I send you the Spirit of Truth, who shall soon be poured out upon all flesh, and who shall en­dow you with power from on high.” Si­mon Ze­lo­tes in­ter­rupted Je­sus, ask­ing, “Then, Mas­ter, will you re­store the king­dom, and will we see the glory of God man­i­fested on earth?” When Je­sus had lis­tened to Si­mon’s ques­tion, he an­swered: “Si­mon, you still cling to your old ideas about the Jew­ish Mes­siah and the ma­te­rial king­dom. But you will re­ceive spir­i­tual power af­ter the spirit has de­scended upon you, and you will pres­ently go into all the world preach­ing this gospel of the king­dom. As the Fa­ther sent me into the world, so do I send you. And I wish that you would love and trust one an­other. Ju­das is no more with you be­cause his love grew cold, and be­cause he re­fused to trust you, his loyal breth­ren. Have you not read in the Scrip­ture where it is writ­ten: ‘It is not good for man to be alone. No man lives to him­self’? And also where it says: ‘He who would have friends must show him­self friendly’? And did I not even send you out to teach, two and two, that you might not be­come lonely and fall into the mis­chief and mis­eries of iso­la­tion? You also well know that, when I was in the flesh, I did not per­mit my­self to be alone for long pe­ri­ods. From the very be­gin­ning of our as­so­ci­a­tions I al­ways had two or three of you con­stantly by my side or else very near at hand even when I com­muned with the Fa­ther. Trust, there­fore, and con­fide in one an­other. And this is all the more need­ful since I am this day go­ing to leave you alone in the world. The hour has come; I am about to go to the Fa­ther.”

193:3.3When he had spo­ken, he beck­oned for them to come with him, and he led them out on the Mount of Olives, where he bade them farewell prepara­tory to de­part­ing from Uran­tia. This was a solemn jour­ney to Oli­vet. Not a word was spo­ken by any of them from the time they left the up­per cham­ber un­til Je­sus paused with them on the Mount of Olives.

193:5.1It was al­most half past seven o’clock this Thurs­day morn­ing, May 18, when Je­sus ar­rived on the west­ern slope of Mount Oli­vet with his eleven silent and some­what be­wil­dered apos­tles. From this lo­ca­tion, about two thirds the way up the moun­tain, they could look out over Je­ru­sa­lem and down upon Geth­sem­ane. Je­sus now pre­pared to say his last farewell to the apos­tles be­fore he took leave of Uran­tia. As he stood there be­fore them, with­out be­ing di­rected they knelt about him in a cir­cle, and the Mas­ter said:

193:5.2“I bade you tarry in Je­ru­sa­lem un­til you were en­dowed with power from on high. I am now about to take leave of you; I am about to as­cend to my Fa­ther, and soon, very soon, will we send into this world of my so­journ the Spirit of Truth; and when he has come, you shall be­gin the new procla­ma­tion of the gospel of the king­dom, first in Je­ru­sa­lem and then to the ut­ter­most parts of the world. Love men with the love where­with I have loved you and serve your fel­low mor­tals even as I have served you. By the spirit fruits of your lives im­pel souls to be­lieve the truth that man is a son of God, and that all men are breth­ren. Re­mem­ber all I have taught you and the life I have lived among you. My love over­shad­ows you, my spirit will dwell with you, and my peace shall abide upon you. Farewell.”

193:5.3When the mor­ontia Mas­ter had thus spo­ken, he van­ished from their sight. This so-called as­cen­sion of Je­sus was in no way dif­fer­ent from his other dis­ap­pear­ances from mor­tal vi­sion dur­ing the forty days of his mor­ontia ca­reer on Uran­tia.

193:5.4The Mas­ter went to Eden­tia by way of Je­ru­sem, where the Most Highs, un­der the ob­ser­va­tion of the Par­a­dise Son, re­leased Je­sus of Naz­a­reth from the mor­ontia state and, through the spirit chan­nels of as­cen­sion, re­turned him to the sta­tus of Par­a­dise son­ship and su­preme sov­er­eignty on Sal­ving­ton.

193:5.5It was about seven forty-five this morn­ing when the mor­ontia Je­sus dis­ap­peared from the ob­ser­va­tion of his eleven apos­tles to be­gin the as­cent to the right hand of his Fa­ther, there to re­ceive for­mal con­fir­ma­tion of his com­pleted sov­er­eignty of the uni­verse of Neb­a­don.

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.”

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.

176:1.4Then 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.

176:1.7When 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.”

176:2.6“And now con­cern­ing the tra­vail of Je­ru­sa­lem, about which I have spo­ken to you, even this gen­er­a­tion will not pass away un­til my words are ful­filled; but con­cern­ing the times of the com­ing again of the Son of Man, no one in heaven or on earth may pre­sume to speak. But you should be wise re­gard­ing the ripen­ing of an age; you should be alert to dis­cern the signs of the times. You know when the fig tree shows its ten­der branches and puts forth its leaves that sum­mer is near. Like­wise, when the world has passed through the long win­ter of ma­te­rial-mind­ed­ness and you dis­cern the com­ing of the spir­i­tual spring­time of a new dis­pen­sa­tion, should you know that the sum­mer­time of a new vis­i­ta­tion draws near.

178:3.3“You look down on yon­der city in sor­row, for you have heard my words telling of the end of Je­ru­sa­lem. I have fore­warned you lest you should per­ish in her de­struc­tion and so de­lay the procla­ma­tion of the gospel of the king­dom. Like­wise do I warn you to take heed lest you need­lessly ex­pose your­selves to peril when they come to take the Son of Man. I must go, but you are to re­main to wit­ness to this gospel when I have gone, even as I di­rected that Laz­a­rus flee from the wrath of man that he might live to make known the glory of God. If it is the Fa­ther’s will that I de­part, noth­ing you may do can frus­trate the di­vine plan. Take heed to your­selves lest they kill you also. Let your souls be valiant in de­fense of the gospel by spirit power but be not mis­led into any fool­ish at­tempt to de­fend the Son of Man. I need no de­fense by the hand of man; the armies of heaven are even now near at hand; but I am de­ter­mined to do the will of my Fa­ther in heaven, and there­fore must we sub­mit to that which is so soon to come upon us.

178:3.4“When you see this city de­stroyed, for­get not that you have en­tered al­ready upon the eter­nal life of end­less ser­vice in the ever-ad­vanc­ing king­dom of heaven, even of the heaven of heav­ens. You should know that in my Fa­ther’s uni­verse and in mine are many abodes, and that there awaits the chil­dren of light the rev­e­la­tion of cities whose builder is God and worlds whose habit of life is righ­teous­ness and joy in the truth. I have brought the king­dom of heaven to you here on earth, but I de­clare that all of you who by faith en­ter therein and re­main therein by the liv­ing ser­vice of truth, shall surely as­cend to the worlds on high and sit with me in the spirit king­dom of our Fa­ther. But first must you gird your­selves and com­plete the work which you have be­gun with me. You must first pass through much tribu­la­tion and en­dure many sor­rows—and these tri­als are even now upon us—and when you have fin­ished your work on earth, you shall come to my joy, even as I have fin­ished my Fa­ther’s work on earth and am about to re­turn to his em­brace.”

187:1.6As the death pro­ces­sion passed along the nar­row streets of Je­ru­sa­lem, many of the ten­der­hearted Jew­ish women who had heard Je­sus’ words of good cheer and com­pas­sion, and who knew of his life of lov­ing min­istry, could not re­frain from weep­ing when they saw him be­ing led forth to such an ig­no­ble death. As he passed by, many of these women be­wailed and lamented. And when some of them even dared to fol­low along by his side, the Mas­ter turned his head to­ward them and said: “Daugh­ters of Je­ru­sa­lem, weep not for me, but rather weep for your­selves and for your chil­dren. My work is about done—soon I go to my Fa­ther—but the times of ter­ri­ble trou­ble for Je­ru­sa­lem are just be­gin­ning. Be­hold, the days are com­ing in which you shall say: Blessed are the bar­ren and those whose breasts have never suck­led their young. In those days will you pray the rocks of the hills to fall on you in or­der that you may be de­liv­ered from the ter­rors of your trou­bles.”

187:1.7These women of Je­ru­sa­lem were in­deed coura­geous to man­i­fest sym­pa­thy for Je­sus, for it was strictly against the law to show friendly feel­ings for one who was be­ing led forth to cru­ci­fix­ion. It was per­mit­ted the rab­ble to jeer, mock, and ridicule the con­demned, but it was not al­lowed that any sym­pa­thy should be ex­pressed. Though Je­sus ap­pre­ci­ated the man­i­fes­ta­tion of sym­pa­thy in this dark hour when his friends were in hid­ing, he did not want these kind­hearted women to in­cur the dis­plea­sure of the au­thor­i­ties by dar­ing to show com­pas­sion in his be­half. Even at such a time as this Je­sus thought lit­tle about him­self, only of the ter­ri­ble days of tragedy ahead for Je­ru­sa­lem and the whole Jew­ish na­tion.

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.

185:1.5An­other thing which brought him into great dis­fa­vor with the Jews was that he dared to take money from the tem­ple trea­sury to pay for the con­struc­tion of a new aque­duct to pro­vide in­creased wa­ter sup­ply for the mil­lions of vis­i­tors to Je­ru­sa­lem at the times of the great re­li­gious feasts. The Jews held that only the San­hedrin could dis­burse the tem­ple funds, and they never ceased to in­veigh against Pi­late for this pre­sump­tu­ous rul­ing. No less than a score of ri­ots and much blood­shed re­sulted from this de­ci­sion. The last of these se­ri­ous out­breaks had to do with the slaugh­ter of a large com­pany of Galileans even as they wor­shiped at the al­tar.

188:3.1Through­out this Sab­bath day the dis­ci­ples and the apos­tles re­mained in hid­ing, while all Je­ru­sa­lem dis­cussed the death of Je­sus on the cross. There were al­most one and one-half mil­lion Jews pres­ent in Je­ru­sa­lem at this time, hail­ing from all parts of the Ro­man Em­pire and from Mes­o­po­ta­mia. This was the be­gin­ning of the Pass­over week, and all these pil­grims would be in the city to learn of the res­ur­rec­tion of Je­sus and to carry the re­port back to their homes.

47:10.3Paul also had a view of the as­cen­dant-cit­i­zen corps of per­fect­ing mor­tals on Je­ru­sem, for he wrote: “But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the liv­ing God, the heav­enly Je­ru­sa­lem, and to an in­nu­mer­able com­pany of an­gels, to the grand as­sem­bly of Mi­chael, and to the spir­its of just men be­ing made per­fect.”

143:6.6Je­sus and the twelve camped on Mount Ger­izim un­til the end of Au­gust. They preached the good news of the king­dom—the fa­ther­hood of God—to the Samar­i­tans in the cities by day and spent the nights at the camp. The work which Je­sus and the twelve did in these Samar­i­tan cities yielded many souls for the king­dom and did much to pre­pare the way for the mar­velous work of Philip in these re­gions af­ter Je­sus’ death and res­ur­rec­tion, sub­se­quent to the dis­per­sion of the apos­tles to the ends of the earth by the bit­ter per­se­cu­tion of be­liev­ers at Je­ru­sa­lem.

93:2.4Within a few years Mel­chiz­e­dek had gath­ered around him­self a group of pupils, dis­ci­ples, and be­liev­ers who formed the nu­cleus of the later com­mu­nity of Salem. He was soon known through­out Pales­tine as the priest of El Elyon, the Most High, and as the sage of Salem. Among some of the sur­round­ing tribes he was of­ten re­ferred to as the sheik, or king, of Salem. Salem was the site which af­ter the dis­ap­pear­ance of Mel­chiz­e­dek be­came the city of Je­bus, sub­se­quently be­ing called Je­ru­sa­lem.

97:9.11And it was by such meth­ods and out of such peo­ple that David built up the fic­tion of a di­vine king­dom of Ju­dah as the suc­ces­sor of the her­itage and tra­di­tions of the van­ish­ing north­ern king­dom of Ephraimite Is­rael. David’s cos­mopoli­tan tribe of Ju­dah was more gen­tile than Jew­ish; nev­er­the­less the op­pressed el­ders of Ephraim came down and “anointed him king of Is­rael.” Af­ter a mil­i­tary threat, David then made a com­pact with the Je­busites and es­tab­lished his cap­i­tal of the united king­dom at Je­bus (Je­ru­sa­lem), which was a strong-walled city mid­way be­tween Ju­dah and Is­rael. The Phil­is­tines were aroused and soon at­tacked David. Af­ter a fierce bat­tle they were de­feated, and once more Yah­weh was es­tab­lished as “The Lord God of Hosts.”

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.

97:9.21But the north­ern king­dom did not van­ish from his­tory un­til the king of Is­rael con­spired with the king of Egypt and re­fused to pay fur­ther trib­ute to As­syria. Then be­gan the three years’ siege fol­lowed by the to­tal dis­per­sion of the north­ern king­dom. Ephraim (Is­rael) thus van­ished. Ju­dah—the Jews, the “rem­nant of Is­rael”—had be­gun the con­cen­tra­tion of land in the hands of the few, as Isa­iah said, “Adding house to house and field to field.” Pres­ently there was in Je­ru­sa­lem a tem­ple of Baal along­side the tem­ple of Yah­weh. This reign of ter­ror was ended by a mono­the­is­tic re­volt led by the boy king Joash, who cru­saded for Yah­weh for thirty-five years.