Messiah

• Jews › believed Messiah would › reign over world as Prince of Peace

97:10.1Their lead­ers had taught the Is­raelites that they were a cho­sen peo­ple, not for spe­cial in­dul­gence and monopoly of di­vine fa­vor, but for the spe­cial ser­vice of car­ry­ing the truth of the one God over all to ev­ery na­tion. And they had prom­ised the Jews that, if they would ful­fill this des­tiny, they would be­come the spir­i­tual lead­ers of all peo­ples, and that the com­ing Mes­siah would reign over them and all the world as the Prince of Peace.

• Jews › vibrant with expectation of immediate appearance of M.

121:2.7The Jew­ish peo­ple of this time, al­though un­der Ro­man su­zer­ainty, en­joyed a con­sid­er­able de­gree of self-gov­ern­ment and, re­mem­ber­ing the then only re­cent heroic ex­ploits of de­liv­er­ance ex­e­cuted by Ju­das Mac­cabee and his im­me­di­ate suc­ces­sors, were vi­brant with the ex­pec­ta­tion of the im­me­di­ate ap­pear­ance of a still greater de­liv­erer, the long-ex­pected Mes­siah.

• Jews › vibrant with expectation of immediate appearance of M.

121:7.1By the times of Je­sus the Jews had ar­rived at a set­tled con­cept of their ori­gin, his­tory, and des­tiny. They had built up a rigid wall of sep­a­ra­tion be­tween them­selves and the gen­tile world; they looked upon all gen­tile ways with ut­ter con­tempt. They wor­shiped the let­ter of the law and in­dulged a form of self-righ­teous­ness based upon the false pride of de­scent. They had formed pre­con­ceived no­tions re­gard­ing the prom­ised Mes­siah, and most of these ex­pec­ta­tions en­vis­aged a Mes­siah who would come as a part of their na­tional and racial his­tory. To the He­brews of those days Jew­ish the­ol­ogy was ir­re­vo­ca­bly set­tled, for­ever fixed.

• Jesus › could never satisfy materialistic concept of M.

122:4.2In all these vis­i­ta­tions noth­ing was said about the house of David. Noth­ing was ever in­ti­mated about Je­sus’ be­com­ing a “de­liv­erer of the Jews,” not even that he was to be the long-ex­pected Mes­siah. Je­sus was not such a Mes­siah as the Jews had an­tic­i­pated, but he was the world’s de­liv­erer. His mis­sion was to all races and peo­ples, not to any one group.

122:4.3Joseph was not of the line of King David. Mary had more of the Da­vidic an­ces­try than Joseph. True, Joseph did go to the City of David, Beth­le­hem, to be reg­is­tered for the Ro­man cen­sus, but that was be­cause, six gen­er­a­tions pre­vi­ously, Joseph’s pa­ter­nal an­ces­tor of that gen­er­a­tion, be­ing an or­phan, was adopted by one Zadoc, who was a di­rect de­scen­dant of David; hence was Joseph also ac­counted as of the “house of David.”

• Jesus › prophecies distorted to fit Jesus long after

122:4.4Most of the so-called Mes­sianic prophe­cies of the Old Tes­ta­ment were made to ap­ply to Je­sus long af­ter his life had been lived on earth. For cen­turies the He­brew proph­ets had pro­claimed the com­ing of a de­liv­erer, and these promises had been con­strued by suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tions as re­fer­ring to a new Jew­ish ruler who would sit upon the throne of David and, by the re­puted mirac­u­lous meth­ods of Moses, pro­ceed to es­tab­lish the Jews in Pales­tine as a pow­er­ful na­tion, free from all for­eign dom­i­na­tion. Again, many fig­u­ra­tive pas­sages found through­out the He­brew scrip­tures were sub­se­quently mis­ap­plied to the life mis­sion of Je­sus. Many Old Tes­ta­ment say­ings were so dis­torted as to ap­pear to fit some episode of the Mas­ter’s earth life. Je­sus him­self one­time pub­licly de­nied any con­nec­tion with the royal house of David. Even the pas­sage, “a maiden shall bear a son,” was made to read, “a vir­gin shall bear a son.” This was also true of the many ge­nealo­gies of both Joseph and Mary which were con­structed sub­se­quent to Mi­chael’s ca­reer on earth. Many of these lin­eages con­tain much of the Mas­ter’s an­ces­try, but on the whole they are not gen­uine and may not be de­pended upon as fac­tual. The early fol­low­ers of Je­sus all too of­ten suc­cumbed to the temp­ta­tion to make all the olden pro­phetic ut­ter­ances ap­pear to find ful­fill­ment in the life of their Lord and Mas­ter.

• Joseph and Mary’s views

122:5.10The larger part of Joseph’s fam­ily be­came be­liev­ers in the teach­ings of Je­sus, but very few of Mary’s peo­ple ever be­lieved in him un­til af­ter he de­parted from this world. Joseph leaned more to­ward the spir­i­tual con­cept of the ex­pected Mes­siah, but Mary and her fam­ily, es­pe­cially her fa­ther, held to the idea of the Mes­siah as a tem­po­ral de­liv­erer and po­lit­i­cal ruler. Mary’s an­ces­tors had been promi­nently iden­ti­fied with the Mac­cabean ac­tiv­i­ties of the then but re­cent times.

• Jesus › could never satisfy materialistic concept of M.

126:3.6In the course of this year Je­sus found a pas­sage in the so-called Book of Enoch which in­flu­enced him in the later adop­tion of the term “Son of Man” as a des­ig­na­tion for his be­stowal mis­sion on Uran­tia. He had thor­oughly con­sid­ered the idea of the Jew­ish Mes­siah and was firmly con­vinced that he was not to be that Mes­siah. He longed to help his fa­ther’s peo­ple, but he never ex­pected to lead Jew­ish armies in over­throw­ing the for­eign dom­i­na­tion of Pales­tine. He knew he would never sit on the throne of David at Je­ru­sa­lem. Nei­ther did he be­lieve that his mis­sion was that of a spir­i­tual de­liv­erer or moral teacher solely to the Jew­ish peo­ple. In no sense, there­fore, could his life mis­sion be the ful­fill­ment of the in­tense long­ings and sup­posed Mes­sianic prophe­cies of the He­brew scrip­tures; at least, not as the Jews un­der­stood these pre­dic­tions of the proph­ets. Like­wise he was cer­tain he was never to ap­pear as the Son of Man de­picted by the Prophet Daniel.

126:3.7But when the time came for him to go forth as a world teacher, what would he call him­self? What claim should he make con­cern­ing his mis­sion? By what name would he be called by the peo­ple who would be­come be­liev­ers in his teach­ings?

126:3.8While turn­ing all these prob­lems over in his mind, he found in the syn­a­gogue li­brary at Naz­a­reth, among the apoc­a­lyp­tic books which he had been study­ing, this man­u­script called “The Book of Enoch”; and though he was cer­tain that it had not been writ­ten by Enoch of old, it proved very in­trigu­ing to him, and he read and reread it many times. There was one pas­sage which par­tic­u­larly im­pressed him, a pas­sage in which this term “Son of Man” ap­peared. The writer of this so-called Book of Enoch went on to tell about this Son of Man, de­scrib­ing the work he would do on earth and ex­plain­ing that this Son of Man, be­fore com­ing down on this earth to bring sal­va­tion to man­kind, had walked through the courts of heav­enly glory with his Fa­ther, the Fa­ther of all; and that he had turned his back upon all this grandeur and glory to come down on earth to pro­claim sal­va­tion to needy mor­tals. As Je­sus would read these pas­sages (well un­der­stand­ing that much of the East­ern mys­ti­cism which had be­come ad­mixed with these teach­ings was er­ro­neous), he re­sponded in his heart and rec­og­nized in his mind that of all the Mes­sianic pre­dic­tions of the He­brew scrip­tures and of all the the­o­ries about the Jew­ish de­liv­erer, none was so near the truth as this story tucked away in this only par­tially ac­cred­ited Book of Enoch; and he then and there de­cided to adopt as his in­au­gu­ral ti­tle “the Son of Man.” And this he did when he sub­se­quently be­gan his pub­lic work. Je­sus had an unerring abil­ity for the rec­og­ni­tion of truth, and truth he never hes­i­tated to em­brace, no mat­ter from what source it ap­peared to em­anate.

126:3.9By this time he had quite thor­oughly set­tled many things about his forth­com­ing work for the world, but he said noth­ing of these mat­ters to his mother, who still held stoutly to the idea of his be­ing the Jew­ish Mes­siah.

126:3.10The great con­fu­sion of Je­sus’ younger days now arose. Hav­ing set­tled some­thing about the na­ture of his mis­sion on earth, “to be about his Fa­ther’s busi­ness”—to show forth his Fa­ther’s lov­ing na­ture to all man­kind—he be­gan to pon­der anew the many state­ments in the Scrip­tures re­fer­ring to the com­ing of a na­tional de­liv­erer, a Jew­ish teacher or king. To what event did these prophe­cies re­fer? Was not he a Jew? or was he? Was he or was he not of the house of David? His mother averred he was; his fa­ther had ruled that he was not. He de­cided he was not. But had the proph­ets con­fused the na­ture and mis­sion of the Mes­siah?

126:3.11Af­ter all, could it be pos­si­ble that his mother was right? In most mat­ters, when dif­fer­ences of opin­ion had arisen in the past, she had been right. If he were a new teacher and not the Mes­siah, then how should he rec­og­nize the Jew­ish Mes­siah if such a one should ap­pear in Je­ru­sa­lem dur­ing the time of his earth mis­sion; and, fur­ther, what should be his re­la­tion to this Jew­ish Mes­siah? And what should be his re­la­tion, af­ter em­bark­ing on his life mis­sion, to his fam­ily? to the Jew­ish com­mon­wealth and re­li­gion? to the Ro­man Em­pire? to the gen­tiles and their re­li­gions? Each of these mo­men­tous prob­lems this young Galilean turned over in his mind and se­ri­ously pon­dered while he con­tin­ued to work at the car­pen­ter’s bench, la­bo­ri­ously mak­ing a liv­ing for him­self, his mother, and eight other hun­gry mouths.

• Jesus › could never satisfy materialistic concept of M.

127:1.7By the end of this year he had just about made up his mind that he would, af­ter rear­ing his fam­ily and see­ing them mar­ried, en­ter pub­licly upon his work as a teacher of truth and as a re­vealer of the heav­enly Fa­ther to the world. He knew he was not to be­come the ex­pected Jew­ish Mes­siah, and he con­cluded that it was next to use­less to dis­cuss these mat­ters with his mother; he de­cided to al­low her to en­ter­tain what­ever ideas she might choose since all he had said in the past had made lit­tle or no im­pres­sion upon her and he re­called that his fa­ther had never been able to say any­thing that would change her mind. From this year on he talked less and less with his mother, or any­one else, about these prob­lems. His was such a pe­cu­liar mis­sion that no one liv­ing on earth could give him ad­vice con­cern­ing its pros­e­cu­tion.

• Jews › believed Messiah would › be son of David
• Jews › believed Messiah would › deliver Israel from its enemies

135:5.4While the Jews dif­fered greatly in their es­ti­mates of the na­ture of the com­ing king­dom, they were alike in their be­lief that the event was im­pend­ing, near at hand, even at the door. Many who read the Old Tes­ta­ment lit­er­ally looked ex­pec­tantly for a new king in Pales­tine, for a re­gen­er­ated Jew­ish na­tion de­liv­ered from its en­e­mies and pre­sided over by the suc­ces­sor of King David, the Mes­siah who would quickly be ac­knowl­edged as the right­ful and righ­teous ruler of all the world. An­other, though smaller, group of de­vout Jews held a vastly dif­fer­ent view of this king­dom of God. They taught that the com­ing king­dom was not of this world, that the world was ap­proach­ing its cer­tain end, and that “a new heaven and a new earth” were to usher in the es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom of God; that this king­dom was to be an ev­er­last­ing do­min­ion, that sin was to be ended, and that the cit­i­zens of the new king­dom were to be­come im­mor­tal in their en­joy­ment of this end­less bliss.

135:5.5All were agreed that some dras­tic purg­ing or pu­ri­fy­ing dis­ci­pline would of ne­ces­sity pre­cede the es­tab­lish­ment of the new king­dom on earth. The lit­er­al­ists taught that a world-wide war would en­sue which would de­stroy all un­be­liev­ers, while the faith­ful would sweep on to uni­ver­sal and eter­nal vic­tory. The spiri­tists taught that the king­dom would be ush­ered in by the great judg­ment of God which would rel­e­gate the un­righ­teous to their well-de­served judg­ment of pun­ish­ment and fi­nal de­struc­tion, at the same time el­e­vat­ing the be­liev­ing saints of the cho­sen peo­ple to high seats of honor and au­thor­ity with the Son of Man, who would rule over the re­deemed na­tions in God’s name. And this lat­ter group even be­lieved that many de­vout gen­tiles might be ad­mit­ted to the fel­low­ship of the new king­dom.

135:5.6Some of the Jews held to the opin­ion that God might pos­si­bly es­tab­lish this new king­dom by di­rect and di­vine in­ter­ven­tion, but the vast ma­jor­ity be­lieved that he would in­ter­pose some rep­re­sen­ta­tive in­ter­me­di­ary, the Mes­siah. And that was the only pos­si­ble mean­ing the term Mes­siah could have had in the minds of the Jews of the gen­er­a­tion of John and Je­sus. Mes­siah could not pos­si­bly re­fer to one who merely taught God’s will or pro­claimed the ne­ces­sity for righ­teous liv­ing. To all such holy per­sons the Jews gave the ti­tle of prophet. The Mes­siah was to be more than a prophet; the Mes­siah was to bring in the es­tab­lish­ment of the new king­dom, the king­dom of God. No one who failed to do this could be the Mes­siah in the tra­di­tional Jew­ish sense.

• Jews › believed Messiah would › be son of David

135:5.7Who would this Mes­siah be? Again the Jew­ish teach­ers dif­fered. The older ones clung to the doc­trine of the son of David. The newer taught that, since the new king­dom was a heav­enly king­dom, the new ruler might also be a di­vine per­son­al­ity, one who had long sat at God’s right hand in heaven. And strange as it may ap­pear, those who thus con­ceived of the ruler of the new king­dom looked upon him not as a hu­man Mes­siah, not as a mere man, but as “the Son of Man”—a Son of God—a heav­enly Prince, long held in wait­ing thus to as­sume the ruler­ship of the earth made new. Such was the re­li­gious back­ground of the Jew­ish world when John went forth pro­claim­ing: “Re­pent, for the king­dom of heaven is at hand!”

• Jews › vibrant with expectation of immediate appearance of M.

135:6.2It was ap­par­ent to all who heard John that he was more than a preacher. The great ma­jor­ity of those who lis­tened to this strange man who had come up from the Judean wilder­ness went away be­liev­ing that they had heard the voice of a prophet. No won­der the souls of these weary and ex­pec­tant Jews were deeply stirred by such a phe­nom­e­non. Never in all Jew­ish his­tory had the de­vout chil­dren of Abra­ham so longed for the “con­so­la­tion of Is­rael” or more ar­dently an­tic­i­pated “the restora­tion of the king­dom.” Never in all Jew­ish his­tory could John’s mes­sage, “the king­dom of heaven is at hand,” have made such a deep and uni­ver­sal ap­peal as at the very time he so mys­te­ri­ously ap­peared on the bank of this south­ern cross­ing of the Jor­dan.

• Jews › vibrant with expectation of immediate appearance of M.

136:0.1Je­sus be­gan his pub­lic work at the height of the pop­u­lar in­ter­est in John’s preach­ing and at a time when the Jew­ish peo­ple of Pales­tine were ea­gerly look­ing for the ap­pear­ance of the Mes­siah. There was a great con­trast be­tween John and Je­sus. John was an ea­ger and earnest worker, but Je­sus was a calm and happy la­borer; only a few times in his en­tire life was he ever in a hurry. Je­sus was a com­fort­ing con­so­la­tion to the world and some­what of an ex­am­ple; John was hardly a com­fort or an ex­am­ple. He preached the king­dom of heaven but hardly en­tered into the hap­pi­ness thereof. Though Je­sus spoke of John as the great­est of the proph­ets of the old or­der, he also said that the least of those who saw the great light of the new way and en­tered thereby into the king­dom of heaven was in­deed greater than John.

• anointed one
• Jews › believed Messiah would › be son of David
• Scriptures invoked to support contending views of M.

136:1.1The Jews en­ter­tained many ideas about the ex­pected de­liv­erer, and each of these dif­fer­ent schools of Mes­sianic teach­ing was able to point to state­ments in the He­brew scrip­tures as proof of their con­tentions. In a gen­eral way, the Jews re­garded their na­tional his­tory as be­gin­ning with Abra­ham and cul­mi­nat­ing in the Mes­siah and the new age of the king­dom of God. In ear­lier times they had en­vis­aged this de­liv­erer as “the ser­vant of the Lord,” then as “the Son of Man,” while lat­terly some even went so far as to re­fer to the Mes­siah as the “Son of God.” But no mat­ter whether he was called the “seed of Abra­ham” or “the son of David,” all were agreed that he was to be the Mes­siah, the “anointed one.” Thus did the con­cept evolve from the “ser­vant of the Lord” to the “son of David,” “Son of Man,” and “Son of God.”

136:1.2In the days of John and Je­sus the more learned Jews had de­vel­oped an idea of the com­ing Mes­siah as the per­fected and rep­re­sen­ta­tive Is­raelite, com­bin­ing in him­self as the “ser­vant of the Lord” the three­fold of­fice of prophet, priest, and king.

• Jesus › could never satisfy materialistic concept of M.
• Jesus › followers refused to see Jesus except as nationalist miracle worker
• Jews › believed Messiah would › deliver Israel from its enemies
• Jews › lost sight of personality of M.

136:1.3The Jews de­voutly be­lieved that, as Moses had de­liv­ered their fa­thers from Egyp­tian bond­age by mirac­u­lous won­ders, so would the com­ing Mes­siah de­liver the Jew­ish peo­ple from Ro­man dom­i­na­tion by even greater mir­a­cles of power and mar­vels of racial tri­umph. The rab­bis had gath­ered to­gether al­most five hun­dred pas­sages from the Scrip­tures which, not­with­stand­ing their ap­par­ent con­tra­dic­tions, they averred were pro­phetic of the com­ing Mes­siah. And amidst all these de­tails of time, tech­nique, and func­tion, they al­most com­pletely lost sight of the per­son­al­ity of the prom­ised Mes­siah. They were look­ing for a restora­tion of Jew­ish na­tional glory—Is­rael’s tem­po­ral ex­al­ta­tion—rather than for the sal­va­tion of the world. It there­fore be­comes ev­i­dent that Je­sus of Naz­a­reth could never sat­isfy this ma­te­ri­al­is­tic Mes­sianic con­cept of the Jew­ish mind. Many of their re­puted Mes­sianic pre­dic­tions, had they but viewed these pro­phetic ut­ter­ances in a dif­fer­ent light, would have very nat­u­rally pre­pared their minds for a rec­og­ni­tion of Je­sus as the ter­mi­na­tor of one age and the in­au­gu­ra­tor of a new and bet­ter dis­pen­sa­tion of mercy and sal­va­tion for all na­tions.

• Jews › believed Messiah would › restore Shekinah to temple; remove curse of Adam

136:1.4The Jews had been brought up to be­lieve in the doc­trine of the Shek­inah. But this re­puted sym­bol of the Di­vine Pres­ence was not to be seen in the tem­ple. They be­lieved that the com­ing of the Mes­siah would ef­fect its restora­tion. They held con­fus­ing ideas about racial sin and the sup­posed evil na­ture of man. Some taught that Adam’s sin had cursed the hu­man race, and that the Mes­siah would re­move this curse and re­store man to di­vine fa­vor. Oth­ers taught that God, in cre­at­ing man, had put into his be­ing both good and evil na­tures; that when he ob­served the out­work­ing of this ar­range­ment, he was greatly dis­ap­pointed, and that “He re­pented that he had thus made man.” And those who taught this be­lieved that the Mes­siah was to come in or­der to re­deem man from this in­her­ent evil na­ture.

• Jews › thought lack of sincere repentance delayed arrival

136:1.5The ma­jor­ity of the Jews be­lieved that they con­tin­ued to lan­guish un­der Ro­man rule be­cause of their na­tional sins and be­cause of the half­heart­ed­ness of the gen­tile pros­e­lytes. The Jew­ish na­tion had not whole­heart­edly re­pented; there­fore did the Mes­siah de­lay his com­ing. There was much talk about re­pen­tance; where­fore the mighty and im­me­di­ate ap­peal of John’s preach­ing, “Re­pent and be bap­tized, for the king­dom of heaven is at hand.” And the king­dom of heaven could mean only one thing to any de­vout Jew: The com­ing of the Mes­siah.

• Jews › believed Messiah would › be son of David

136:1.6There was one fea­ture of the be­stowal of Mi­chael which was ut­terly for­eign to the Jew­ish con­cep­tion of the Mes­siah, and that was the union of the two na­tures, the hu­man and the di­vine. The Jews had var­i­ously con­ceived of the Mes­siah as per­fected hu­man, super­hu­man, and even as di­vine, but they never en­ter­tained the con­cept of the union of the hu­man and the di­vine. And this was the great stum­bling block of Je­sus’ early dis­ci­ples. They grasped the hu­man con­cept of the Mes­siah as the son of David, as pre­sented by the ear­lier proph­ets; as the Son of Man, the super­hu­man idea of Daniel and some of the later proph­ets; and even as the Son of God, as de­picted by the au­thor of the Book of Enoch and by cer­tain of his con­tem­po­raries; but never had they for a sin­gle mo­ment en­ter­tained the true con­cept of the union in one earth per­son­al­ity of the two na­tures, the hu­man and the di­vine. The in­car­na­tion of the Cre­ator in the form of the crea­ture had not been re­vealed be­fore­hand. It was re­vealed only in Je­sus; the world knew noth­ing of such things un­til the Cre­ator Son was made flesh and dwelt among the mor­tals of the realm.

• Jesus › could never satisfy materialistic concept of M.
• Jews › believed Messiah would › usher in era of miraculous plenty

136:6.6The Jews were ex­pect­ing a Mes­siah who would do even greater won­ders than Moses, who was re­puted to have brought forth wa­ter from the rock in a desert place and to have fed their fore­fa­thers with manna in the wilder­ness. Je­sus knew the sort of Mes­siah his com­pa­tri­ots ex­pected, and he had all the pow­ers and pre­rog­a­tives to mea­sure up to their most san­guine ex­pec­ta­tions, but he de­cided against such a mag­nif­i­cent pro­gram of power and glory. Je­sus looked upon such a course of ex­pected mir­a­cle work­ing as a hark­ing back to the olden days of ig­no­rant magic and the de­graded prac­tices of the sav­age med­i­cine men. Pos­si­bly, for the sal­va­tion of his crea­tures, he might ac­cel­er­ate nat­u­ral law, but to tran­scend his own laws, ei­ther for the ben­e­fit of him­self or the over­aw­ing of his fel­low men, that he would not do. And the Mas­ter’s de­ci­sion was fi­nal.

136:6.7Je­sus sor­rowed for his peo­ple; he fully un­der­stood how they had been led up to the ex­pec­ta­tion of the com­ing Mes­siah, the time when “the earth will yield its fruits ten thou­sand­fold, and on one vine there will be a thou­sand branches, and each branch will pro­duce a thou­sand clus­ters, and each clus­ter will pro­duce a thou­sand grapes, and each grape will pro­duce a gal­lon of wine.” The Jews be­lieved the Mes­siah would usher in an era of mirac­u­lous plenty. The He­brews had long been nur­tured on tra­di­tions of mir­a­cles and leg­ends of won­ders.

136:6.8He was not a Mes­siah com­ing to mul­ti­ply bread and wine. He came not to min­is­ter to tem­po­ral needs only; he came to re­veal his Fa­ther in heaven to his chil­dren on earth, while he sought to lead his earth chil­dren to join him in a sin­cere ef­fort so to live as to do the will of the Fa­ther in heaven.

• Jews › believed Messiah would › usher in era of miraculous plenty

136:7.2Je­sus knew his fel­low coun­try­men were ex­pect­ing a Mes­siah who would be above nat­u­ral law. Well had he been taught that Scrip­ture: “There shall no evil be­fall you, nei­ther shall any plague come near your dwell­ing. For he shall give his an­gels charge over you, to keep you in all your ways. They shall bear you up in their hands lest you dash your foot against a stone.” Would this sort of pre­sump­tion, this de­fi­ance of his Fa­ther’s laws of grav­ity, be jus­ti­fied in or­der to pro­tect him­self from pos­si­ble harm or, per­chance, to win the con­fi­dence of his mis­taught and dis­tracted peo­ple? But such a course, how­ever grat­i­fy­ing to the sign-seek­ing Jews, would be, not a rev­e­la­tion of his Fa­ther, but a ques­tion­able tri­fling with the es­tab­lished laws of the uni­verse of uni­verses.

• Jews › believed Messiah would › usher in era of miraculous plenty

136:8.3Through­out all this mo­men­tous di­a­logue of Je­sus’ com­muning with him­self, there was pres­ent the hu­man el­e­ment of ques­tion­ing and near-doubt­ing, for Je­sus was man as well as God. It was ev­i­dent he would never be re­ceived by the Jews as the Mes­siah if he did not work won­ders. Be­sides, if he would con­sent to do just one un­nat­u­ral thing, the hu­man mind would know of a cer­tainty that it was in sub­servience to a truly di­vine mind. Would it be con­sis­tent with “the Fa­ther’s will” for the di­vine mind to make this con­ces­sion to the doubt­ing na­ture of the hu­man mind? Je­sus de­cided that it would not and cited the pres­ence of the Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster as suf­fi­cient proof of di­vin­ity in part­ner­ship with hu­man­ity.

• Jews › believed Messiah would › establish Jews as world rulers

136:9.2The Jews en­vis­aged a de­liv­erer who would come in mirac­u­lous power to cast down Is­rael’s en­e­mies and es­tab­lish the Jews as world rulers, free from want and op­pres­sion. Je­sus knew that this hope would never be re­al­ized. He knew that the king­dom of heaven had to do with the over­throw of evil in the hearts of men, and that it was purely a mat­ter of spir­i­tual con­cern. He thought out the ad­vis­abil­ity of in­au­gu­rat­ing the spir­i­tual king­dom with a bril­liant and daz­zling dis­play of power—and such a course would have been per­mis­si­ble and wholly within the ju­ris­dic­tion of Mi­chael—but he fully de­cided against such a plan. He would not com­pro­mise with the rev­o­lu­tion­ary tech­niques of Cali­gas­tia. He had won the world in po­ten­tial by sub­mis­sion to the Fa­ther’s will, and he pro­posed to fin­ish his work as he had be­gun it, and as the Son of Man.

• Jesus › followers refused to see Jesus except as nationalist miracle worker

136:9.7The idea of bat­tle, con­tention, and slaugh­ter was re­pug­nant to Je­sus; he would have none of it. He would ap­pear on earth as the Prince of Peace to re­veal a God of love. Be­fore his bap­tism he had again re­fused the of­fer of the Zealots to lead them in re­bel­lion against the Ro­man op­pres­sors. And now he made his fi­nal de­ci­sion re­gard­ing those Scrip­tures which his mother had taught him, such as: “The Lord has said to me, ‘You are my Son; this day have I be­got­ten you. Ask of me, and I will give you the hea­then for your in­her­i­tance and the ut­ter­most parts of the earth for your pos­ses­sion. You shall break them with a rod of iron; you shall dash them in pieces like a pot­ter’s ves­sel.’”

136:9.8Je­sus of Naz­a­reth reached the con­clu­sion that such ut­ter­ances did not re­fer to him. At last, and fi­nally, the hu­man mind of the Son of Man made a clean sweep of all these Mes­sianic dif­fi­cul­ties and con­tra­dic­tions—He­brew scrip­tures, pa­ren­tal train­ing, chazan teach­ing, Jew­ish ex­pec­ta­tions, and hu­man am­bi­tious long­ings; once and for all he de­cided upon his course. He would re­turn to Gal­i­lee and qui­etly be­gin the procla­ma­tion of the king­dom and trust his Fa­ther (the Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster) to work out the de­tails of pro­ce­dure day by day.

• Jesus › never again wholly denied he was M.

136:9.12In re­ject­ing these meth­ods of en­hanc­ing the com­ing king­dom in the eyes of the ex­pec­tant Jews, Je­sus made sure that these same Jews would cer­tainly and fi­nally re­ject all of his claims to au­thor­ity and di­vin­ity. Know­ing all this, Je­sus long sought to pre­vent his early fol­low­ers al­lud­ing to him as the Mes­siah.

• Jesus › followers refused to see Jesus except as nationalist miracle worker

137:5.2Af­ter sup­per that evening, in this home of Zeb­e­dee and Sa­lome, there was held one of the most im­por­tant con­fer­ences of all Je­sus’ earthly ca­reer. Only the six apos­tles were pres­ent at this meet­ing; Jude ar­rived as they were about to sep­a­rate. These six cho­sen men had jour­neyed from Cana to Beth­saida with Je­sus, walk­ing, as it were, on air. They were alive with ex­pectancy and thrilled with the thought of hav­ing been se­lected as close as­so­ciates of the Son of Man. But when Je­sus set out to make clear to them who he was and what was to be his mis­sion on earth and how it might pos­si­bly end, they were stunned. They could not grasp what he was telling them. They were speech­less; even Pe­ter was crushed be­yond ex­pres­sion. Only the deep-think­ing An­drew dared to make re­ply to Je­sus’ words of coun­sel. When Je­sus per­ceived that they did not com­pre­hend his mes­sage, when he saw that their ideas of the Jew­ish Mes­siah were so com­pletely crys­tal­lized, he sent them to their rest while he walked and talked with his brother Jude. And be­fore Jude took leave of Je­sus, he said with much feel­ing: “My fa­ther-brother, I never have un­der­stood you. I do not know of a cer­tainty whether you are what my mother has taught us, and I do not fully com­pre­hend the com­ing king­dom, but I do know you are a mighty man of God. I heard the voice at the Jor­dan, and I am a be­liever in you, no mat­ter who you are.” And when he had spo­ken, he de­parted, go­ing to his own home at Mag­dala.

• Jesus › never again wholly denied he was M.

137:5.3That night Je­sus did not sleep. Don­ning his evening wraps, he sat out on the lake shore think­ing, think­ing un­til the dawn of the next day. In the long hours of that night of med­i­ta­tion Je­sus came clearly to com­pre­hend that he never would be able to make his fol­low­ers see him in any other light than as the long-ex­pected Mes­siah. At last he rec­og­nized that there was no way to launch his mes­sage of the king­dom ex­cept as the ful­fill­ment of John’s pre­dic­tion and as the one for whom the Jews were look­ing. Af­ter all, though he was not the Da­vidic type of Mes­siah, he was truly the ful­fill­ment of the pro­phetic ut­ter­ances of the more spir­i­tu­ally minded of the olden seers. Never again did he wholly deny that he was the Mes­siah. He de­cided to leave the fi­nal un­tan­gling of this com­pli­cated sit­u­a­tion to the out­work­ing of the Fa­ther’s will.

• apostles’ long-nourished ideas of

140:8.1Je­sus well knew that his apos­tles were not fully as­sim­i­lat­ing his teach­ings. He de­cided to give some spe­cial in­struc­tion to Pe­ter, James, and John, hop­ing they would be able to clar­ify the ideas of their as­so­ciates. He saw that, while some fea­tures of the idea of a spir­i­tual king­dom were be­ing grasped by the twelve, they stead­fastly per­sisted in at­tach­ing these new spir­i­tual teach­ings di­rectly onto their old and en­trenched lit­eral con­cepts of the king­dom of heaven as a restora­tion of David’s throne and the re-es­tab­lish­ment of Is­rael as a tem­po­ral power on earth. Ac­cord­ingly, on Thurs­day af­ter­noon Je­sus went out from the shore in a boat with Pe­ter, James, and John to talk over the af­fairs of the king­dom. This was a four hours’ teach­ing con­fer­ence, em­brac­ing scores of ques­tions and an­swers, and may most prof­itably be put in this rec­ord by re­or­ga­niz­ing the sum­mary of this mo­men­tous af­ter­noon as it was given by Si­mon Pe­ter to his brother, An­drew, the fol­low­ing morn­ing:

• Jews › believed Messiah would › usher in era of miraculous plenty

152:3.1The feed­ing of the five thou­sand by super­nat­u­ral en­ergy was an­other of those cases where hu­man pity plus cre­ative power equaled that which hap­pened. Now that the mul­ti­tude had been fed to the full, and since Je­sus’ fame was then and there aug­mented by this stu­pen­dous won­der, the project to seize the Mas­ter and pro­claim him king re­quired no fur­ther per­sonal di­rec­tion. The idea seemed to spread through the crowd like a con­ta­gion. The re­ac­tion of the mul­ti­tude to this sud­den and spec­tac­u­lar sup­ply­ing of their phys­i­cal needs was pro­found and over­whelm­ing. For a long time the Jews had been taught that the Mes­siah, the son of David, when he should come, would cause the land again to flow with milk and honey, and that the bread of life would be be­stowed upon them as manna from heaven was sup­posed to have fallen upon their fore­fa­thers in the wilder­ness. And was not all of this ex­pec­ta­tion now ful­filled right be­fore their eyes? When this hun­gry, un­der­nour­ished mul­ti­tude had fin­ished gorg­ing it­self with the won­der-food, there was but one unan­i­mous re­ac­tion: “Here is our king.” The won­der-work­ing de­liv­erer of Is­rael had come. In the eyes of these sim­ple-minded peo­ple the power to feed car­ried with it the right to rule. No won­der, then, that the mul­ti­tude, when it had fin­ished feast­ing, rose as one man and shouted, “Make him king!”

• apostles’ long-nourished ideas of

152:6.1While rest­ing at the home of a wealthy be­liever in the Gen­nesaret re­gion, Je­sus held in­for­mal con­fer­ences with the twelve ev­ery af­ter­noon. The am­bas­sadors of the king­dom were a se­ri­ous, sober, and chas­tened group of dis­il­lu­sioned men. But even af­ter all that had hap­pened, and as sub­se­quent events dis­closed, these twelve men were not yet fully de­liv­ered from their in­bred and long-cher­ished no­tions about the com­ing of the Jew­ish Mes­siah. Events of the pre­ced­ing few weeks had moved too swiftly for these as­ton­ished fish­er­men to grasp their full sig­nif­i­cance. It re­quires time for men and women to ef­fect rad­i­cal and ex­ten­sive changes in their ba­sic and fun­da­men­tal con­cepts of so­cial con­duct, philo­sophic at­ti­tudes, and re­li­gious con­vic­tions.

• Jesus › attacked concept of M.

153:1.2Je­sus com­pre­hended that he faced the im­me­di­ate dec­la­ra­tion of avowed and open war­fare by his in­creas­ing en­e­mies, and he elected boldly to as­sume the of­fen­sive. At the feed­ing of the five thou­sand he had chal­lenged their ideas of the ma­te­rial Mes­siah; now he chose again openly to at­tack their con­cept of the Jew­ish de­liv­erer. This cri­sis, which be­gan with the feed­ing of the five thou­sand, and which ter­mi­nated with this Sab­bath af­ter­noon ser­mon, was the out­ward turn­ing of the tide of pop­u­lar fame and ac­claim. Hence­forth, the work of the king­dom was to be in­creas­ingly con­cerned with the more im­por­tant task of win­ning last­ing spir­i­tual con­verts for the truly re­li­gious broth­er­hood of man­kind. This ser­mon marks the cri­sis in the tran­si­tion from the pe­riod of dis­cus­sion, con­tro­versy, and de­ci­sion to that of open war­fare and fi­nal ac­cep­tance or fi­nal re­jec­tion.

• Jesus › attacked concept of M.
• Jews › believed Messiah would › usher in era of miraculous plenty

153:2.6“Some of you, when you could not find me af­ter the feast­ing of the mul­ti­tude on the other side, hired the Tiberias fish­ing fleet, which a week be­fore had taken shel­ter near by dur­ing a storm, to go in pur­suit of me, and what for? Not for truth and righ­teous­ness or that you might the bet­ter know how to serve and min­is­ter to your fel­low men! No, but rather that you might have more bread for which you had not la­bored. It was not to fill your souls with the word of life, but only that you might fill the belly with the bread of ease. And long have you been taught that the Mes­siah, when he should come, would work those won­ders which would make life pleas­ant and easy for all the cho­sen peo­ple. It is not strange, then, that you who have been thus taught should long for the loaves and the fishes. But I de­clare to you that such is not the mis­sion of the Son of Man. I have come to pro­claim spir­i­tual lib­erty, teach eter­nal truth, and fos­ter liv­ing faith.

• apostles’ long-nourished ideas of

157:4.1Since the oc­ca­sions of Je­sus’ bap­tism by John and the turn­ing of the wa­ter into wine at Cana, the apos­tles had, at var­i­ous times, vir­tu­ally ac­cepted him as the Mes­siah. For short pe­ri­ods some of them had truly be­lieved that he was the ex­pected De­liv­erer. But hardly would such hopes spring up in their hearts than the Mas­ter would dash them to pieces by some crush­ing word or dis­ap­point­ing deed. They had long been in a state of tur­moil due to con­flict be­tween the con­cepts of the ex­pected Mes­siah which they held in their minds and the ex­pe­ri­ence of their ex­traor­di­nary as­so­ci­a­tion with this ex­traor­di­nary man which they held in their hearts.

• Jews › concept of M. did not include divine nature

157:5.1The new and vi­tal fea­ture of Pe­ter’s con­fes­sion was the clear-cut rec­og­ni­tion that Je­sus was the Son of God, of his un­ques­tioned di­vin­ity. Ever since his bap­tism and the wed­ding at Cana these apos­tles had var­i­ously re­garded him as the Mes­siah, but it was not a part of the Jew­ish con­cept of the na­tional de­liv­erer that he should be di­vine. The Jews had not taught that the Mes­siah would spring from di­vin­ity; he was to be the “anointed one,” but hardly had they con­tem­plated him as be­ing “the Son of God.” In the sec­ond con­fes­sion more em­pha­sis was placed upon the com­bined na­ture, the su­per­nal fact that he was the Son of Man and the Son of God, and it was upon this great truth of the union of the hu­man na­ture with the di­vine na­ture that Je­sus de­clared he would build the king­dom of heaven.

• Jesus › endeavored partially to meet followers’ expectations

157:5.2Je­sus had sought to live his life on earth and com­plete his be­stowal mis­sion as the Son of Man. His fol­low­ers were dis­posed to re­gard him as the ex­pected Mes­siah. Know­ing that he could never ful­fill their Mes­sianic ex­pec­ta­tions, he en­deav­ored to ef­fect such a mod­i­fi­ca­tion of their con­cept of the Mes­siah as would en­able him par­tially to meet their ex­pec­ta­tions. But he now rec­og­nized that such a plan could hardly be car­ried through suc­cess­fully. He there­fore elected boldly to dis­close the third plan—openly to an­nounce his di­vin­ity, ac­knowl­edge the truth­ful­ness of Pe­ter’s con­fes­sion, and di­rectly pro­claim to the twelve that he was a Son of God.

• Jesus › could never satisfy materialistic concept of M.

157:6.6Je­sus had sin­cerely en­deav­ored to lead his fol­low­ers into the spir­i­tual king­dom as a teacher, then as a teacher-healer, but they would not have it so. He well knew that his earth mis­sion could not pos­si­bly ful­fill the Mes­sianic ex­pec­ta­tions of the Jew­ish peo­ple; the olden proph­ets had por­trayed a Mes­siah which he could never be. He sought to es­tab­lish the Fa­ther’s king­dom as the Son of Man, but his fol­low­ers would not go for­ward in the ad­ven­ture. Je­sus, see­ing this, then elected to meet his be­liev­ers part way and in so do­ing pre­pared openly to as­sume the role of the be­stowal Son of God.

• Jesus › could never satisfy materialistic concept of M.

157:6.12“And now can your faith com­pre­hend the truth of these dec­la­ra­tions in the face of my warn­ing you that the Son of Man will not meet the ex­pec­ta­tions of your fa­thers as they con­ceived the Mes­siah? My king­dom is not of this world. Can you be­lieve the truth about me in the face of the fact that, though the foxes have holes and the birds of heaven have nests, I have not where to lay my head?”

• apostles’ long-nourished ideas of

158:4.4The nine apos­tles were much sur­prised and con­sid­er­ably per­turbed when this man, ac­com­pa­nied by al­most forty other per­sons who were look­ing for Je­sus, sud­denly came upon them. At the time of the ar­rival of this group the nine apos­tles, at least the ma­jor­ity of them, had suc­cumbed to their old temp­ta­tion—that of dis­cussing who should be great­est in the com­ing king­dom; they were busily ar­gu­ing about the prob­a­ble po­si­tions which would be as­signed the in­di­vid­ual apos­tles. They sim­ply could not free them­selves en­tirely from the long-cher­ished idea of the ma­te­rial mis­sion of the Mes­siah. And now that Je­sus him­self had ac­cepted their con­fes­sion that he was in­deed the De­liv­erer—at least he had ad­mit­ted the fact of his di­vin­ity—what was more nat­u­ral than that, dur­ing this pe­riod of sep­a­ra­tion from the Mas­ter, they should fall to talk­ing about those hopes and am­bi­tions which were up­per­most in their hearts. And they were en­gaged in these dis­cus­sions when James of Safed and his fel­low seek­ers af­ter Je­sus came upon them.

• Jesus › said M. will not sit upon throne in Jerusalem; is not son of David

158:7.3In an­swer to An­drew, Je­sus said: “My breth­ren, it is be­cause you have con­fessed that I am the Son of God that I am con­strained to be­gin to un­fold to you the truth about the end of the be­stowal of the Son of Man on earth. You in­sist on cling­ing to the be­lief that I am the Mes­siah, and you will not aban­don the idea that the Mes­siah must sit upon a throne in Je­ru­sa­lem; where­fore do I per­sist in telling you that the Son of Man must pres­ently go to Je­ru­sa­lem, suf­fer many things, be re­jected by the scribes, the el­ders, and the chief priests, and af­ter all this be killed and raised from the dead. And I speak not a para­ble to you; I speak the truth to you that you may be pre­pared for these events when they sud­denly come upon us.” And while he was yet speak­ing, Si­mon Pe­ter, rush­ing im­petu­ously to­ward him, laid his hand upon the Mas­ter’s shoul­der and said: “Mas­ter, be it far from us to con­tend with you, but I de­clare that these things shall never hap­pen to you.”

• Jews › believed Messiah would › not come from Galilee

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.”

• Jews › believed Messiah would › not come from Galilee

162:6.4And Je­sus con­tin­ued to an­swer the ques­tions of both the mul­ti­tude and the Phar­isees. Some thought he was a prophet; some be­lieved him to be the Mes­siah; oth­ers said he could not be the Christ, see­ing that he came from Gal­i­lee, and that the Mes­siah must re­store David’s throne. Still they dared not ar­rest him.

• Jesus › endeavored partially to meet followers’ expectations

167:4.5Then said Je­sus: “But do you not un­der­stand that there are twelve hours of the day in which work may safely be done? If a man walks in the day, he does not stum­ble inas­much as he has light. If a man walks in the night, he is li­able to stum­ble since he is with­out light. As long as my day lasts, I fear not to en­ter Judea. I would do one more mighty work for these Jews; I would give them one more chance to be­lieve, even on their own terms—con­di­tions of out­ward glory and the vis­i­ble man­i­fes­ta­tion of the power of the Fa­ther and the love of the Son. Be­sides, do you not re­al­ize that our friend Laz­a­rus has fallen asleep, and I would go to awake him out of this sleep!”

• M. of kingdom became Redeemer of church

170:5.3But the great step which marked the trans­plan­ta­tion of the teach­ings of Je­sus from a Jew­ish to a gen­tile soil was taken when the Mes­siah of the king­dom be­came the Re­deemer of the church, a re­li­gious and so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion grow­ing out of the ac­tiv­i­ties of Paul and his suc­ces­sors and based on the teach­ings of Je­sus as they were sup­ple­mented by the ideas of Philo and the Per­sian doc­trines of good and evil.

170:5.4The ideas and ide­als of Je­sus, em­bod­ied in the teach­ing of the gospel of the king­dom, nearly failed of re­al­iza­tion as his fol­low­ers pro­gres­sively dis­torted his pro­nounce­ments. The Mas­ter’s con­cept of the king­dom was no­tably mod­i­fied by two great ten­den­cies:

170:5.51. The Jew­ish be­liev­ers per­sisted in re­gard­ing him as the Mes­siah. They be­lieved that Je­sus would very soon re­turn ac­tu­ally to es­tab­lish the world-wide and more or less ma­te­rial king­dom.

170:5.62. The gen­tile Chris­tians be­gan very early to ac­cept the doc­trines of Paul, which led in­creas­ingly to the gen­eral be­lief that Je­sus was the Re­deemer of the chil­dren of the church, the new and in­sti­tu­tional suc­ces­sor of the ear­lier con­cept of the purely spir­i­tual broth­er­hood of the king­dom.

• Jesus › followers refused to see Jesus except as nationalist miracle worker

171:0.2The ad­dress on the king­dom and the an­nounce­ment that he was go­ing to the Pass­over set all his fol­low­ers to think­ing that he was go­ing up to Je­ru­sa­lem to in­au­gu­rate the tem­po­ral king­dom of Jew­ish su­prem­acy. No mat­ter what Je­sus said about the non­ma­te­rial char­ac­ter of the king­dom, he could not wholly re­move from the minds of his Jew­ish hear­ers the idea that the Mes­siah was to es­tab­lish some kind of na­tion­al­is­tic gov­ern­ment with head­quar­ters at Je­ru­sa­lem.

171:0.3What Je­sus said in his Sab­bath ser­mon only tended to con­fuse the ma­jor­ity of his fol­low­ers; very few were en­light­ened by the Mas­ter’s dis­course. The lead­ers un­der­stood some­thing of his teach­ings re­gard­ing the in­ner king­dom, “the king­dom of heaven within you,” but they also knew that he had spo­ken about an­other and fu­ture king­dom, and it was this king­dom they be­lieved he was now go­ing up to Je­ru­sa­lem to es­tab­lish. When they were dis­ap­pointed in this ex­pec­ta­tion, when he was re­jected by the Jews, and later on, when Je­ru­sa­lem was lit­er­ally de­stroyed, they still clung to this hope, sin­cerely be­liev­ing that the Mas­ter would soon re­turn to the world in great power and ma­jes­tic glory to es­tab­lish the prom­ised king­dom.

171:0.4It was on this Sun­day af­ter­noon that Sa­lome the mother of James and John Zeb­e­dee came to Je­sus with her two apos­tle sons and, in the man­ner of ap­proach­ing an Ori­en­tal po­ten­tate, sought to have Je­sus prom­ise in ad­vance to grant what­ever re­quest she might make. But the Mas­ter would not prom­ise; in­stead, he asked her, “What do you want me to do for you?” Then an­swered Sa­lome: “Mas­ter, now that you are go­ing up to Je­ru­sa­lem to es­tab­lish the king­dom, I would ask you in ad­vance to prom­ise me that these my sons shall have honor with you, the one to sit on your right hand and the other to sit on your left hand in your king­dom.”

• Jesus › followers refused to see Jesus except as nationalist miracle worker

171:1.3In a gen­eral way, most of Je­sus’ im­me­di­ate fol­low­ers un­der­stood that the camp at Pella had been aban­doned, but they re­ally thought this in­di­cated that their Mas­ter at last in­tended to go to Je­ru­sa­lem and lay claim to David’s throne. A large ma­jor­ity of his fol­low­ers never were able to grasp any other con­cept of the king­dom of heaven; no mat­ter what he taught them, they would not give up this Jew­ish idea of the king­dom.

• Jesus › followers refused to see Jesus except as nationalist miracle worker

171:2.6Im­me­di­ately af­ter speak­ing these words, Je­sus, lead­ing the twelve, started off on the way to Hes­h­bon, fol­lowed by about five hun­dred. Af­ter a brief de­lay the other half of the mul­ti­tude went on up to Je­ru­sa­lem. His apos­tles, to­gether with the lead­ing dis­ci­ples, thought much about these words, but still they clung to the be­lief that, af­ter this brief pe­riod of ad­ver­sity and trial, the king­dom would cer­tainly be set up some­what in ac­cor­dance with their long-cher­ished hopes.

• Jesus › followers refused to see Jesus except as nationalist miracle worker

172:0.2That evening, Je­sus re­ceived many vis­i­tors, and the com­mon folks of Beth­any and Beth­page did their best to make him feel wel­come. Al­though many thought Je­sus was now go­ing into Je­ru­sa­lem, in ut­ter de­fi­ance of the San­hedrin’s de­cree of death, to pro­claim him­self king of the Jews, the Beth­any fam­ily—Laz­a­rus, Martha, and Mary—more fully re­al­ized that the Mas­ter was not that kind of a king; they dimly felt that this might be his last visit to Je­ru­sa­lem and Beth­any.

• prophecy of Book of Zechariah
• Scriptures invoked to support contending views of M.

172:3.4Hav­ing de­cided upon mak­ing a pub­lic en­trance into Je­ru­sa­lem, the Mas­ter was con­fronted with the ne­ces­sity of choos­ing a proper method of ex­e­cut­ing such a re­solve. Je­sus thought over all of the many more or less con­tra­dic­tory so-called Mes­sianic prophe­cies, but there seemed to be only one which was at all ap­pro­pri­ate for him to fol­low. Most of these pro­phetic ut­ter­ances de­picted a king, the son and suc­ces­sor of David, a bold and ag­gres­sive tem­po­ral de­liv­erer of all Is­rael from the yoke of for­eign dom­i­na­tion. But there was one Scrip­ture that had some­times been as­so­ci­ated with the Mes­siah by those who held more to the spir­i­tual con­cept of his mis­sion, which Je­sus thought might con­sis­tently be taken as a guide for his pro­jected en­try into Je­ru­sa­lem. This Scrip­ture was found in Zechariah, and it said: “Re­joice greatly, O daugh­ter of Zion; shout, O daugh­ter of Je­ru­sa­lem. Be­hold, your king comes to you. He is just and he brings sal­va­tion. He comes as the lowly one, rid­ing upon an ass, upon a colt, the foal of an ass.”

• Jews › believed Messiah would › be son of David

172:3.9Be­fore they started, the Al­pheus twins put their cloaks on the don­key and held him while the Mas­ter got on. As the pro­ces­sion moved to­ward the sum­mit of Oli­vet, the fes­tive crowd threw their gar­ments on the ground and brought branches from the near-by trees in or­der to make a car­pet of honor for the don­key bear­ing the royal Son, the prom­ised Mes­siah. As the merry crowd moved on to­ward Je­ru­sa­lem, they be­gan to sing, or rather to shout in uni­son, the Psalm, “Hosanna to the son of David; blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the high­est. Blessed be the king­dom that comes down from heaven.”

• Jesus › said M. will not sit upon throne in Jerusalem; is not son of David

174:4.6When no more ques­tions were forth­com­ing, and as the noon hour was near, Je­sus did not re­sume his teach­ing but was con­tent merely to ask the Phar­isees and their as­so­ciates a ques­tion. Said Je­sus: “Since you ask no more ques­tions, I would like to ask you one. What do you think of the De­liv­erer? That is, whose son is he?” Af­ter a brief pause one of the scribes an­swered, “The Mes­siah is the son of David.” And since Je­sus knew that there had been much de­bate, even among his own dis­ci­ples, as to whether or not he was the son of David, he asked this fur­ther ques­tion: “If the De­liv­erer is in­deed the son of David, how is it that, in the Psalm which you ac­credit to David, he him­self, speak­ing in the spirit, says, ‘The Lord said to my lord, sit on my right hand un­til I make your en­e­mies the foot­stool of your feet.’ If David calls him Lord, how then can he be his son?” Al­though the rulers, the scribes, and the chief priests made no re­ply to this ques­tion, they like­wise re­frained from ask­ing him any more ques­tions in an ef­fort to en­tan­gle him. They never an­swered this ques­tion which Je­sus put to them, but af­ter the Mas­ter’s death they at­tempted to es­cape the dif­fi­culty by chang­ing the in­ter­pre­ta­tion of this Psalm so as to make it re­fer to Abra­ham in­stead of the Mes­siah. Oth­ers sought to es­cape the dilemma by dis­al­low­ing that David was the au­thor of this so-called Mes­sianic Psalm.

• Jews › nationalistic concept caused turbulence which led to nation’s destruction

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.

• Jews › believed Messiah would › establish New Jerusalem as world capital

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?”

• Jesus › said M. will not sit upon throne in Jerusalem; is not son of David

176:2.3In fur­ther an­swer to Pe­ter’s ques­tion, Je­sus said: “Why do you still look for the Son of Man to sit upon the throne of David and ex­pect that the ma­te­rial dreams of the Jews will be ful­filled? Have I not told you all these years that my king­dom is not of this world? The things which you now look down upon are com­ing to an end, but this will be a new be­gin­ning out of which the gospel of the king­dom will go to all the world and this sal­va­tion will spread to all peo­ples. And when the king­dom shall have come to its full fruition, be as­sured that the Fa­ther in heaven will not fail to visit you with an en­larged rev­e­la­tion of truth and an en­hanced dem­on­stra­tion of righ­teous­ness, even as he has al­ready be­stowed upon this world him who be­came the prince of dark­ness, and then Adam, who was fol­lowed by Mel­chiz­e­dek, and in these days, the Son of Man. And so will my Fa­ther con­tinue to man­i­fest his mercy and show forth his love, even to this dark and evil world. So also will I, af­ter my Fa­ther has in­vested me with all power and au­thor­ity, con­tinue to fol­low your for­tunes and to guide in the af­fairs of the king­dom by the pres­ence of my spirit, who shall shortly be poured out upon all flesh. Even though I shall thus be pres­ent with you in spirit, I also prom­ise that I will some­time re­turn to this world, where I have lived this life in the flesh and achieved the ex­pe­ri­ence of si­mul­ta­ne­ously re­veal­ing God to man and lead­ing man to God. Very soon must I leave you and take up the work the Fa­ther has in­trusted to my hands, but be of good cour­age, for I will some­time re­turn. In the mean­time, my Spirit of the Truth of a uni­verse shall com­fort and guide you.

• Jews › believed Messiah would › be son of David

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.

• apostles’ long-nourished ideas of

180:6.9When the eleven had heard him speak, they said to each other: “Be­hold, he does speak plainly to us. Surely the Mas­ter did come forth from God. But why does he say he must re­turn to the Fa­ther?” And Je­sus saw that they did not even yet com­pre­hend him. These eleven men could not get away from their long-nour­ished ideas of the Jew­ish con­cept of the Mes­siah. The more fully they be­lieved in Je­sus as the Mes­siah, the more trou­ble­some be­came these deep-rooted no­tions re­gard­ing the glo­ri­ous ma­te­rial tri­umph of the king­dom on earth.

• false M. at Mount Gerizim

185:1.6It is sig­nif­i­cant that, while this vac­il­lat­ing Ro­man ruler sac­ri­ficed Je­sus to his fear of the Jews and to safe­guard his per­sonal po­si­tion, he fi­nally was de­posed as a re­sult of the need­less slaugh­ter of Samar­i­tans in con­nec­tion with the pre­ten­sions of a false Mes­siah who led troops to Mount Ger­izim, where he claimed the tem­ple ves­sels were buried; and fierce ri­ots broke out when he failed to re­veal the hid­ing place of the sa­cred ves­sels, as he had prom­ised. As a re­sult of this episode, the lega­tus of Syria or­dered Pi­late to Rome. Tiberius died while Pi­late was on the way to Rome, and he was not reap­pointed as procu­ra­tor of Judea. He never fully re­cov­ered from the re­gret­ful con­dem­na­tion of hav­ing con­sented to the cru­ci­fix­ion of Je­sus. Find­ing no fa­vor in the eyes of the new em­peror, he re­tired to the prov­ince of Lau­sanne, where he sub­se­quently com­mit­ted sui­cide.

• Jews › believed Messiah would › deliver Israel from its enemies

185:5.6Pi­late was an­gered at the sight of the chief priests clam­or­ing for the par­don of a no­to­ri­ous mur­derer while they shouted for the blood of Je­sus. He saw their mal­ice and ha­tred and per­ceived their prej­u­dice and envy. There­fore he said to them: “How could you choose the life of a mur­derer in pref­er­ence to this man’s whose worst crime is that he fig­u­ra­tively calls him­self the king of the Jews?” But this was not a wise state­ment for Pi­late to make. The Jews were a proud peo­ple, now sub­ject to the Ro­man po­lit­i­cal yoke but hop­ing for the com­ing of a Mes­siah who would de­liver them from gen­tile bond­age with a great show of power and glory. They re­sented, more than Pi­late could know, the in­ti­ma­tion that this meek-man­nered teacher of strange doc­trines, now un­der ar­rest and charged with crimes wor­thy of death, should be re­ferred to as “the king of the Jews.” They looked upon such a re­mark as an in­sult to ev­ery­thing which they held sa­cred and hon­or­able in their na­tional ex­is­tence, and there­fore did they all let loose their mighty shouts for Barab­bas’s re­lease and Je­sus’ death.

• Jesus › could never satisfy materialistic concept of M.

185:8.1Here stood the Son of God in­car­nate as the Son of Man. He was ar­rested with­out in­dict­ment; ac­cused with­out ev­i­dence; ad­judged with­out wit­nesses; pun­ished with­out a ver­dict; and now was soon to be con­demned to die by an un­just judge who con­fessed that he could find no fault in him. If Pi­late had thought to ap­peal to their pa­tri­o­tism by re­fer­ring to Je­sus as the “king of the Jews,” he ut­terly failed. The Jews were not ex­pect­ing any such a king. The dec­la­ra­tion of the chief priests and the Sad­ducees, “We have no king but Cae­sar,” was a shock even to the un­think­ing pop­u­lace, but it was too late now to save Je­sus even had the mob dared to es­pouse the Mas­ter’s cause.

• Jesus › quoted Scripture regarding M.

190:5.4As they walked along, Je­sus said to them: “How slow you are to com­pre­hend the truth! When you tell me that it is about the teach­ings and work of this man that you have your dis­cus­sions, then may I en­lighten you since I am more than fa­mil­iar with these teach­ings. Do you not re­mem­ber that this Je­sus al­ways taught that his king­dom was not of this world, and that all men, be­ing the sons of God, should find lib­erty and free­dom in the spir­i­tual joy of the fel­low­ship of the broth­er­hood of lov­ing ser­vice in this new king­dom of the truth of the heav­enly Fa­ther’s love? Do you not re­call how this Son of Man pro­claimed the sal­va­tion of God for all men, min­is­ter­ing to the sick and af­flicted and set­ting free those who were bound by fear and en­slaved by evil? Do you not know that this man of Naz­a­reth told his dis­ci­ples that he must go to Je­ru­sa­lem, be de­liv­ered up to his en­e­mies, who would put him to death, and that he would arise on the third day? Have you not been told all this? And have you never read in the Scrip­tures con­cern­ing this day of sal­va­tion for Jew and gen­tile, where it says that in him shall all the fam­i­lies of the earth be blessed; that he will hear the cry of the needy and save the souls of the poor who seek him; that all na­tions shall call him blessed? That such a De­liv­erer shall be as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. That he will feed the flock like a true shep­herd, gath­er­ing the lambs in his arms and ten­derly car­ry­ing them in his bo­som. That he will open the eyes of the spir­i­tu­ally blind and bring the pris­on­ers of de­spair out into full lib­erty and light; that all who sit in dark­ness shall see the great light of eter­nal sal­va­tion. That he will bind up the bro­ken­hearted, pro­claim lib­erty to the cap­tives of sin, and open up the prison to those who are en­slaved by fear and bound by evil. That he will com­fort those who mourn and be­stow upon them the joy of sal­va­tion in the place of sor­row and heav­i­ness. That he shall be the de­sire of all na­tions and the ev­er­last­ing joy of those who seek righ­teous­ness. That this Son of truth and righ­teous­ness shall rise upon the world with heal­ing light and sav­ing power; even that he will save his peo­ple from their sins; that he will re­ally seek and save those who are lost. That he will not de­stroy the weak but min­is­ter sal­va­tion to all who hunger and thirst for righ­teous­ness. That those who be­lieve in him shall have eter­nal life. That he will pour out his spirit upon all flesh, and that this Spirit of Truth shall be in each be­liever a well of wa­ter, spring­ing up into ev­er­last­ing life. Did you not un­der­stand how great was the gospel of the king­dom which this man de­liv­ered to you? Do you not per­ceive how great a sal­va­tion has come upon you?”