Sabbath

74:3.9When the sixth day of their so­journ on earth was over, Adam and Eve rested for the first time in their new home in “the east of Eden.” The first six days of the Uran­tia ad­ven­ture had been very busy, and they looked for­ward with great plea­sure to an en­tire day of free­dom from all ac­tiv­i­ties.

74:4.6And this was the ori­gin of the Sab­bath-day tra­di­tion. Al­ways in Eden the sev­enth day was de­voted to the noon­tide as­sem­bly at the tem­ple; long it was the cus­tom to de­vote this day to self-cul­ture. The forenoon was de­voted to phys­i­cal im­prove­ment, the noon­time to spir­i­tual wor­ship, the af­ter­noon to mind cul­ture, while the evening was spent in so­cial re­joic­ing. This was never the law in Eden, but it was the cus­tom as long as the Adamic ad­min­is­tra­tion held sway on earth.

74:8.1The story of the cre­ation of Uran­tia in six days was based on the tra­di­tion that Adam and Eve had spent just six days in their ini­tial sur­vey of the Gar­den. This cir­cum­stance lent al­most sa­cred sanc­tion to the time pe­riod of the week, which had been orig­i­nally in­tro­duced by the Dala­ma­tians. Adam’s spend­ing six days in­spect­ing the Gar­den and for­mu­lat­ing pre­lim­i­nary plans for or­ga­ni­za­tion was not pre­ar­ranged; it was worked out from day to day. The choos­ing of the sev­enth day for wor­ship was wholly in­ci­den­tal to the facts here­with nar­rated.

147:6.4But the spies did not have long to wait for their op­por­tu­nity to ac­cuse Je­sus and his as­so­ciates of Sab­bath break­ing. As the com­pany passed along the nar­row road, the wav­ing wheat, which was just then ripen­ing, was near at hand on ei­ther side, and some of the apos­tles, be­ing hun­gry, plucked the ripe grain and ate it. It was cus­tom­ary for trav­el­ers to help them­selves to grain as they passed along the road, and there­fore no thought of wrong­do­ing was at­tached to such con­duct. But the spies seized upon this as a pre­text for as­sail­ing Je­sus. When they saw An­drew rub the grain in his hand, they went up to him and said: “Do you not know that it is un­law­ful to pluck and rub the grain on the Sab­bath day?” And An­drew an­swered: “But we are hun­gry and rub only suf­fi­cient for our needs; and since when did it be­come sin­ful to eat grain on the Sab­bath day?” But the Phar­isees an­swered: “You do no wrong in eat­ing, but you do break the law in pluck­ing and rub­bing out the grain be­tween your hands; surely your Mas­ter would not ap­prove of such acts.” Then said An­drew: “But if it is not wrong to eat the grain, surely the rub­bing out be­tween our hands is hardly more work than the chew­ing of the grain, which you al­low; where­fore do you quib­ble over such tri­fles?” When An­drew in­ti­mated that they were quib­blers, they were in­dig­nant, and rush­ing back to where Je­sus walked along, talk­ing to Mat­thew, they protested, say­ing: “Be­hold, Teacher, your apos­tles do that which is un­law­ful on the Sab­bath day; they pluck, rub, and eat the grain. We are sure you will com­mand them to cease.” And then said Je­sus to the ac­cusers: “You are in­deed zeal­ous for the law, and you do well to re­mem­ber the Sab­bath day to keep it holy; but did you never read in the Scrip­ture that, one day when David was hun­gry, he and they who were with him en­tered the house of God and ate the show­bread, which it was not law­ful for any­one to eat save the priests? and David also gave this bread to those who were with him. And have you not read in our law that it is law­ful to do many need­ful things on the Sab­bath day? And shall I not, be­fore the day is fin­ished, see you eat that which you have brought along for the needs of this day? My good men, you do well to be zeal­ous for the Sab­bath, but you would do bet­ter to guard the health and well-be­ing of your fel­lows. I de­clare that the Sab­bath was made for man and not man for the Sab­bath. And if you are here pres­ent with us to watch my words, then will I openly pro­claim that the Son of Man is lord even of the Sab­bath.”

142:3.15“5. Six days you may work, but on the sev­enth day you shall rest.

142:3.21“And then, amidst the thun­ders and light­nings of Sinai, Moses gave them the new ten com­mand­ments, which you will all al­low are more wor­thy ut­ter­ances to ac­com­pany the en­larg­ing Yah­weh con­cepts of De­ity. And did you never take no­tice of these com­mand­ments as twice re­corded in the Scrip­tures, that in the first case de­liv­er­ance from Egypt is as­signed as the rea­son for Sab­bath keep­ing, while in a later rec­ord the ad­vanc­ing re­li­gious be­liefs of our fore­fa­thers de­manded that this be changed to the rec­og­ni­tion of the fact of cre­ation as the rea­son for Sab­bath ob­ser­vance?

150:8.1This Sab­bath was a beau­ti­ful day, and all Naz­a­reth, friends and foes, turned out to hear this for­mer cit­i­zen of their town dis­course in the syn­a­gogue. Many of the apos­tolic ret­inue had to re­main with­out the syn­a­gogue; there was not room for all who had come to hear him. As a young man Je­sus had of­ten spo­ken in this place of wor­ship, and this morn­ing, when the ruler of the syn­a­gogue handed him the roll of sa­cred writ­ings from which to read the Scrip­ture les­son, none pres­ent seemed to re­call that this was the very man­u­script which he had pre­sented to this syn­a­gogue.

150:8.2The ser­vices on this day were con­ducted just as when Je­sus had at­tended them as a boy. He as­cended the speak­ing plat­form with the ruler of the syn­a­gogue, and the ser­vice was be­gun by the recital of two prayers: “Blessed is the Lord, King of the world, who forms the light and cre­ates the dark­ness, who makes peace and cre­ates ev­ery­thing; who, in mercy, gives light to the earth and to those who dwell upon it and in good­ness, day by day and ev­ery day, re­news the works of cre­ation. Blessed is the Lord our God for the glory of his hand­i­works and for the light-giv­ing lights which he has made for his praise. Se­lah. Blessed is the Lord our God, who has formed the lights.”

150:8.3Af­ter a mo­ment’s pause they again prayed: “With great love has the Lord our God loved us, and with much over­flow­ing pity has he pitied us, our Fa­ther and our King, for the sake of our fa­thers who trusted in him. You taught them the statutes of life; have mercy upon us and teach us. En­lighten our eyes in the law; cause our hearts to cleave to your com­mand­ments; unite our hearts to love and fear your name, and we shall not be put to shame, world with­out end. For you are a God who pre­pares sal­va­tion, and us have you cho­sen from among all na­tions and tongues, and in truth have you brought us near your great name—se­lah—that we may lov­ingly praise your unity. Blessed is the Lord, who in love chose his peo­ple Is­rael.”

150:8.4The con­gre­ga­tion then re­cited the Shema, the Jew­ish creed of faith. This rit­ual con­sisted in re­peat­ing nu­mer­ous pas­sages from the law and in­di­cated that the wor­shipers took upon them­selves the yoke of the king­dom of heaven, also the yoke of the com­mand­ments as ap­plied to the day and the night.

150:8.5And then fol­lowed the third prayer: “True it is that you are Yah­weh, our God and the God of our fa­thers; our King and the King of our fa­thers; our Sav­ior and the Sav­ior of our fa­thers; our Cre­ator and the rock of our sal­va­tion; our help and our de­liv­erer. Your name is from ev­er­last­ing, and there is no God be­side you. A new song did they that were de­liv­ered sing to your name by the seashore; to­gether did all praise and own you King and say, Yah­weh shall reign, world with­out end. Blessed is the Lord who saves Is­rael.”

150:8.6The ruler of the syn­a­gogue then took his place be­fore the ark, or chest, con­tain­ing the sa­cred writ­ings and be­gan the recita­tion of the nine­teen prayer eu­lo­gies, or bene­dic­tions. But on this oc­ca­sion it was de­sir­able to shorten the ser­vice in or­der that the dis­tin­guished guest might have more time for his dis­course; ac­cord­ingly, only the first and last of the bene­dic­tions were re­cited. The first was: “Blessed is the Lord our God, and the God of our fa­thers, the God of Abra­ham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Ja­cob; the great, the mighty, and the ter­ri­ble God, who shows mercy and kind­ness, who cre­ates all things, who re­mem­bers the gra­cious promises to the fa­thers and brings a sav­ior to their chil­dren’s chil­dren for his own name’s sake, in love. O King, helper, sav­ior, and shield! Blessed are you, O Yah­weh, the shield of Abra­ham.”

150:8.7Then fol­lowed the last bene­dic­tion: “O be­stow on your peo­ple Is­rael great peace for­ever, for you are King and the Lord of all peace. And it is good in your eyes to bless Is­rael at all times and at ev­ery hour with peace. Blessed are you, Yah­weh, who blesses his peo­ple Is­rael with peace.” The con­gre­ga­tion looked not at the ruler as he re­cited the bene­dic­tions. Fol­low­ing the bene­dic­tions he of­fered an in­for­mal prayer suit­able for the oc­ca­sion, and when this was con­cluded, all the con­gre­ga­tion joined in say­ing amen.

150:8.8Then the chazan went over to the ark and brought out a roll, which he pre­sented to Je­sus that he might read the Scrip­ture les­son. It was cus­tom­ary to call upon seven per­sons to read not less than three verses of the law, but this prac­tice was waived on this oc­ca­sion that the vis­i­tor might read the les­son of his own se­lec­tion. Je­sus, tak­ing the roll, stood up and be­gan to read from Deuteron­omy: “For this com­mand­ment which I give you this day is not hid­den from you, nei­ther is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, who shall go up for us to heaven and bring it down to us that we may hear and do it? Nei­ther is it be­yond the sea, that you should say, who will go over the sea for us to bring the com­mand­ment to us that we may hear and do it? No, the word of life is very near to you, even in your pres­ence and in your heart, that you may know and obey it.”

150:8.9And when he had ceased read­ing from the law, he turned to Isa­iah and be­gan to read: “The spirit of the Lord is upon me be­cause he has anointed me to preach good tid­ings to the poor. He has sent me to pro­claim re­lease to the cap­tives and the re­cov­er­ing of sight to the blind, to set at lib­erty those who are bruised and to pro­claim the ac­cept­able year of the Lord.”

150:8.10Je­sus closed the book and, af­ter hand­ing it back to the ruler of the syn­a­gogue, sat down and be­gan to dis­course to the peo­ple. He be­gan by say­ing: “To­day are these Scrip­tures ful­filled.” And then Je­sus spoke for al­most fif­teen min­utes on “The Sons and Daugh­ters of God.” Many of the peo­ple were pleased with the dis­course, and they mar­veled at his gra­cious­ness and wis­dom.

150:8.11It was cus­tom­ary in the syn­a­gogue, af­ter the con­clu­sion of the for­mal ser­vice, for the speaker to re­main so that those who might be in­ter­ested could ask him ques­tions. Ac­cord­ingly, on this Sab­bath morn­ing Je­sus stepped down into the crowd which pressed for­ward to ask ques­tions. In this group were many tur­bu­lent in­di­vid­u­als whose minds were bent on mis­chief, while about the fringe of this crowd there cir­cu­lated those de­based men who had been hired to make trou­ble for Je­sus. Many of the dis­ci­ples and evan­ge­lists who had re­mained with­out now pressed into the syn­a­gogue and were not slow to rec­og­nize that trou­ble was brew­ing. They sought to lead the Mas­ter away, but he would not go with them.

43:6.3Cen­trally lo­cated in this mag­nif­i­cent gar­den is the wor­ship shrine of the Most Highs. The Psalmist must have known some­thing about these things, for he wrote: “Who shall as­cend the hill of the Most Highs? Who shall stand in this holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not lifted up his soul to van­ity nor sworn de­ceit­fully.” At this shrine the Most Highs, on ev­ery tenth day of re­lax­ation, lead all Eden­tia in the wor­ship­ful con­tem­pla­tion of God the Su­preme.

148:7.2The leader of the spy­ing Phar­isees, as Je­sus stood talk­ing to the peo­ple, in­duced a man with a with­ered hand to ap­proach him and ask if it would be law­ful to be healed on the Sab­bath day or should he seek help on an­other day. When Je­sus saw the man, heard his words, and per­ceived that he had been sent by the Phar­isees, he said: “Come for­ward while I ask you a ques­tion. If you had a sheep and it should fall into a pit on the Sab­bath day, would you reach down, lay hold on it, and lift it out? Is it law­ful to do such things on the Sab­bath day?” And the man an­swered: “Yes, Mas­ter, it would be law­ful thus to do well on the Sab­bath day.” Then said Je­sus, speak­ing to all of them: “I know where­fore you have sent this man into my pres­ence. You would find cause for of­fense in me if you could tempt me to show mercy on the Sab­bath day. In si­lence you all agreed that it was law­ful to lift the un­for­tu­nate sheep out of the pit, even on the Sab­bath, and I call you to wit­ness that it is law­ful to ex­hibit lov­ing-kind­ness on the Sab­bath day not only to an­i­mals but also to men. How much more valu­able is a man than a sheep! I pro­claim that it is law­ful to do good to men on the Sab­bath day.” And as they all stood be­fore him in si­lence, Je­sus, ad­dress­ing the man with the with­ered hand, said: “Stand up here by my side that all may see you. And now that you may know that it is my Fa­ther’s will that you do good on the Sab­bath day, if you have the faith to be healed, I bid you stretch out your hand.”

167:1.4Near the end of the meal there came in from the street a man long af­flicted with a chronic dis­ease and now in a drop­si­cal con­di­tion. This man was a be­liever, hav­ing re­cently been bap­tized by Ab­ner’s as­so­ciates. He made no re­quest of Je­sus for heal­ing, but the Mas­ter knew full well that this af­flicted man came to this break­fast hop­ing thereby to es­cape the crowds which thronged him and thus be more likely to en­gage his at­ten­tion. This man knew that few mir­a­cles were then be­ing per­formed; how­ever, he had rea­soned in his heart that his sorry plight might pos­si­bly ap­peal to the Mas­ter’s com­pas­sion. And he was not mis­taken, for, when he en­tered the room, both Je­sus and the self-righ­teous Phar­isee from Je­ru­sa­lem took no­tice of him. The Phar­isee was not slow to voice his re­sent­ment that such a one should be per­mit­ted to en­ter the room. But Je­sus looked upon the sick man and smiled so be­nignly that he drew near and sat down upon the floor. As the meal was end­ing, the Mas­ter looked over his fel­low guests and then, af­ter glanc­ing sig­nif­i­cantly at the man with dropsy, said: “My friends, teach­ers in Is­rael and learned lawyers, I would like to ask you a ques­tion: Is it law­ful to heal the sick and af­flicted on the Sab­bath day, or not?” But those who were there pres­ent knew Je­sus too well; they held their peace; they an­swered not his ques­tion.

167:1.5Then went Je­sus over to where the sick man sat and, tak­ing him by the hand, said: “Arise and go your way. You have not asked to be healed, but I know the de­sire of your heart and the faith of your soul.” Be­fore the man left the room, Je­sus re­turned to his seat and, ad­dress­ing those at the ta­ble, said: “Such works my Fa­ther does, not to tempt you into the king­dom, but to re­veal him­self to those who are al­ready in the king­dom. You can per­ceive that it would be like the Fa­ther to do just such things be­cause which one of you, hav­ing a fa­vorite an­i­mal that fell in the well on the Sab­bath day, would not go right out and draw him up?” And since no one would an­swer him, and inas­much as his host ev­i­dently ap­proved of what was go­ing on, Je­sus stood up and spoke to all pres­ent: “My breth­ren, when you are bid­den to a mar­riage feast, sit not down in the chief seat, lest, per­chance, a more hon­ored man than you has been in­vited, and the host will have to come to you and re­quest that you give your place to this other and hon­ored guest. In this event, with shame you will be re­quired to take a lower place at the ta­ble. When you are bid­den to a feast, it would be the part of wis­dom, on ar­riv­ing at the fes­tive ta­ble, to seek for the low­est place and take your seat therein, so that, when the host looks over the guests, he may say to you: ‘My friend, why sit in the seat of the least? come up higher’; and thus will such a one have glory in the pres­ence of his fel­low guests. For­get not, ev­ery one who ex­alts him­self shall be hum­bled, while he who truly hum­bles him­self shall be ex­alted. There­fore, when you en­ter­tain at din­ner or give a sup­per, in­vite not al­ways your friends, your breth­ren, your kins­men, or your rich neigh­bors that they in re­turn may bid you to their feasts, and thus will you be rec­om­pensed. When you give a ban­quet, some­times bid the poor, the maimed, and the blind. In this way you shall be blessed in your heart, for you well know that the lame and the halt can­not re­pay you for your lov­ing min­istry.”

145:3.1By the time Je­sus and his apos­tles had made ready to par­take of their evening meal near the end of this event­ful Sab­bath day, all Ca­per­naum and its en­vi­rons were agog over these re­puted mir­a­cles of heal­ing; and all who were sick or af­flicted be­gan prepa­ra­tions to go to Je­sus or to have them­selves car­ried there by their friends just as soon as the sun went down. Ac­cord­ing to Jew­ish teach­ing it was not per­mis­si­ble even to go in quest of health dur­ing the sa­cred hours of the Sab­bath.

162:2.2When the crowd heard these words, they fell to wran­gling among them­selves. Some said he was mad; some that he had a devil. Oth­ers said this was in­deed the prophet of Gal­i­lee whom the scribes and Phar­isees had long sought to kill. Some said the re­li­gious au­thor­i­ties were afraid to mo­lest him; oth­ers thought that they laid not hands upon him be­cause they had be­come be­liev­ers in him. Af­ter con­sid­er­able de­bate one of the crowd stepped for­ward and asked Je­sus, “Why do the rulers seek to kill you?” And he replied: “The rulers seek to kill me be­cause they re­sent my teach­ing about the good news of the king­dom, a gospel that sets men free from the bur­den­some tra­di­tions of a for­mal re­li­gion of cer­e­monies which these teach­ers are de­ter­mined to up­hold at any cost. They cir­cum­cise in ac­cor­dance with the law on the Sab­bath day, but they would kill me be­cause I once on the Sab­bath day set free a man held in the bond­age of af­flic­tion. They fol­low af­ter me on the Sab­bath to spy on me but would kill me be­cause on an­other oc­ca­sion I chose to make a griev­ously stricken man com­pletely whole on the Sab­bath day. They seek to kill me be­cause they well know that, if you hon­estly be­lieve and dare to ac­cept my teach­ing, their sys­tem of tra­di­tional re­li­gion will be over­thrown, for­ever de­stroyed. Thus will they be de­prived of au­thor­ity over that to which they have de­voted their lives since they stead­fastly refuse to ac­cept this new and more glo­ri­ous gospel of the king­dom of God. And now do I ap­peal to ev­ery one of you: Judge not ac­cord­ing to out­ward ap­pear­ances but rather judge by the true spirit of these teach­ings; judge righ­teously.”

164:4.1By midafter­noon the heal­ing of Josiah had raised such a dis­cus­sion around the tem­ple that the lead­ers of the San­hedrin de­cided to con­vene the coun­cil in its usual tem­ple meet­ing place. And they did this in vi­o­la­tion of a stand­ing rule which for­bade the meet­ing of the San­hedrin on the Sab­bath day. Je­sus knew that Sab­bath break­ing would be one of the chief charges to be brought against him when the fi­nal test came, and he de­sired to be brought be­fore the San­hedrin for ad­ju­di­ca­tion of the charge of hav­ing healed a blind man on the Sab­bath day, when the very ses­sion of the high Jew­ish court sit­ting in judg­ment on him for this act of mercy would be de­lib­er­at­ing on these mat­ters on the Sab­bath day and in di­rect vi­o­la­tion of their own self-im­posed laws.

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

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

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

164:4.5The lead­ers were greatly trou­bled and, know­ing not what else to do, de­cided to send for Josiah’s par­ents to learn whether he had ac­tu­ally been born blind. They were loath to be­lieve that the beg­gar had been healed.

164:4.6It was well known about Je­ru­sa­lem, not only that Je­sus was de­nied en­trance into all syn­a­gogues, but that all who be­lieved in his teach­ing were like­wise cast out of the syn­a­gogue, ex­com­mu­ni­cated from the con­gre­ga­tion of Is­rael; and this meant de­nial of all rights and priv­i­leges of ev­ery sort through­out all Jewry ex­cept the right to buy the nec­es­saries of life.

164:4.7When, there­fore, Josiah’s par­ents, poor and fear-bur­dened souls, ap­peared be­fore the au­gust San­hedrin, they were afraid to speak freely. Said the spokesman of the court: “Is this your son? and do we un­der­stand aright that he was born blind? If this is true, how is it that he can now see?” And then Josiah’s fa­ther, sec­onded by his mother, an­swered: “We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind, but how it is that he has come to see, or who it was that opened his eyes, we know not. Ask him; he is of age; let him speak for him­self.”

164:4.8They now called Josiah up be­fore them a sec­ond time. They were not get­ting along well with their scheme of hold­ing a for­mal trial, and some were be­gin­ning to feel strange about do­ing this on the Sab­bath; ac­cord­ingly, when they re­called Josiah, they at­tempted to en­snare him by a dif­fer­ent mode of at­tack. The of­fi­cer of the court spoke to the for­mer blind man, say­ing: “Why do you not give God the glory for this? why do you not tell us the whole truth about what hap­pened? We all know that this man is a sin­ner. Why do you refuse to dis­cern the truth? You know that both you and this man stand con­victed of Sab­bath break­ing. Will you not atone for your sin by ac­knowl­edg­ing God as your healer, if you still claim that your eyes have this day been opened?”

164:4.9But Josiah was nei­ther dumb nor lack­ing in hu­mor; so he replied to the of­fi­cer of the court: “Whether this man is a sin­ner, I know not; but one thing I do know—that, whereas I was blind, now I see.” And since they could not en­trap Josiah, they sought fur­ther to ques­tion him, ask­ing: “Just how did he open your eyes? what did he ac­tu­ally do to you? what did he say to you? did he ask you to be­lieve in him?”

164:4.10Josiah replied, some­what im­pa­tiently: “I have told you ex­actly how it all hap­pened, and if you did not be­lieve my tes­ti­mony, why would you hear it again? Would you by any chance also be­come his dis­ci­ples?” When Josiah had thus spo­ken, the San­hedrin broke up in con­fu­sion, al­most vi­o­lence, for the lead­ers rushed upon Josiah, an­grily ex­claim­ing: “You may talk about be­ing this man’s dis­ci­ple, but we are dis­ci­ples of Moses, and we are the teach­ers of the laws of God. We know that God spoke through Moses, but as for this man Je­sus, we know not whence he is.”

164:4.11Then Josiah, stand­ing upon a stool, shouted abroad to all who could hear, say­ing: “Hear­ken, you who claim to be the teach­ers of all Is­rael, while I de­clare to you that herein is a great mar­vel since you con­fess that you know not whence this man is, and yet you know of a cer­tainty, from the tes­ti­mony which you have heard, that he opened my eyes. We all know that God does not per­form such works for the un­godly; that God would do such a thing only at the re­quest of a true wor­shiper—for one who is holy and right­eous. You know that not since the be­gin­ning of the world have you ever heard of the open­ing of the eyes of one who was born blind. Look, then, all of you, upon me and re­al­ize what has been done this day in Je­ru­sa­lem! I tell you, if this man were not from God, he could not do this.” And as the San­hedrists de­parted in anger and con­fu­sion, they shouted to him: “You were al­to­gether born in sin, and do you now pre­sume to teach us? Maybe you were not re­ally born blind, and even if your eyes were opened on the Sab­bath day, this was done by the power of the prince of dev­ils.” And they went at once to the syn­a­gogue to cast out Josiah.

164:4.12Josiah en­tered this trial with mea­ger ideas about Je­sus and the na­ture of his heal­ing. Most of the dar­ing tes­ti­mony which he so clev­erly and coura­geously bore be­fore this su­preme tri­bu­nal of all Is­rael de­vel­oped in his mind as the trial pro­ceeded along such un­fair and un­just lines.

167:3.2Not­with­stand­ing that this woman’s af­flic­tion was wholly men­tal, her bowed-over form be­ing the re­sult of her de­pressed mind, the peo­ple thought that Je­sus had healed a real phys­i­cal dis­or­der. Al­though the con­gre­ga­tion of the syn­a­gogue at Phil­a­del­phia was friendly to­ward the teach­ings of Je­sus, the chief ruler of the syn­a­gogue was an un­friendly Phar­isee. And as he shared the opin­ion of the con­gre­ga­tion that Je­sus had healed a phys­i­cal dis­or­der, and be­ing in­dig­nant be­cause Je­sus had pre­sumed to do such a thing on the Sab­bath, he stood up be­fore the con­gre­ga­tion and said: “Are there not six days in which men should do all their work? In these work­ing days come, there­fore, and be healed, but not on the Sab­bath day.”

169:0.63. He is a law­breaker. He heals dis­ease on the Sab­bath and in many other ways flouts the sa­cred law of Is­rael.

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.

184:3.1It was about half past three o’clock this Fri­day morn­ing when the chief priest, Cai­a­phas, called the San­hedrist court of in­quiry to or­der and asked that Je­sus be brought be­fore them for his for­mal trial. On three pre­vi­ous oc­ca­sions the San­hedrin, by a large ma­jor­ity vote, had de­creed the death of Je­sus, had de­cided that he was wor­thy of death on in­for­mal charges of law­break­ing, blas­phemy, and flout­ing the tra­di­tions of the fa­thers of Is­rael.

184:3.15When the high priest heard Je­sus ut­ter these words, he was ex­ceed­ingly an­gry, and rend­ing his outer gar­ments, he ex­claimed: “What fur­ther need have we of wit­nesses? Be­hold, now have you all heard this man’s blas­phemy. What do you now think should be done with this law­breaker and blas­phe­mer?” And they all an­swered in uni­son, “He is wor­thy of death; let him be cru­ci­fied.”

147:3.5One man who had been many years down­cast and griev­ously af­flicted by the in­fir­mi­ties of his trou­bled mind, re­joiced at Je­sus’ words and, pick­ing up his bed, went forth to his home, even though it was the Sab­bath day. This af­flicted man had waited all these years for some­body to help him; he was such a vic­tim of the feel­ing of his own help­less­ness that he had never once en­ter­tained the idea of help­ing him­self which proved to be the one thing he had to do in or­der to ef­fect re­cov­ery—take up his bed and walk.

147:3.6Then said Je­sus to John: “Let us de­part ere the chief priests and the scribes come upon us and take of­fense that we spoke words of life to these af­flicted ones.” And they re­turned to the tem­ple to join their com­pan­ions, and pres­ently all of them de­parted to spend the night at Beth­any. But John never told the other apos­tles of this visit of him­self and Je­sus to the pool of Bethesda on this Sab­bath af­ter­noon.

127:4.9As time passed, Je­sus did much to lib­er­al­ize and mod­ify the fam­ily teach­ings and prac­tices re­lated to Sab­bath ob­ser­vance and many other phases of re­li­gion, and to all these changes Mary gave hearty as­sent. By this time Je­sus had be­come the un­ques­tioned head of the house.

95:1.2But the cus­tom of the early Adamite peo­ples in hon­or­ing the sev­enth day of the week never com­pletely dis­ap­peared in Mes­o­po­ta­mia. Only, dur­ing the Mel­chiz­e­dek era, the sev­enth day was re­garded as the worst of bad luck. It was taboo-rid­den; it was un­law­ful to go on a jour­ney, cook food, or make a fire on the evil sev­enth day. The Jews car­ried back to Pales­tine many of the Mes­o­po­ta­mian taboos which they had found rest­ing on the Baby­lo­nian ob­ser­vance of the sev­enth day, the Sha­bat­tum.

147:6.3Pe­ter preached to the as­sem­bled mul­ti­tude at the cross­ing of the Jor­dan, and the fol­low­ing morn­ing they moved up the river to­ward Am­athus. They wanted to pro­ceed straight on to Ca­per­naum, but such a crowd gath­ered here they re­mained three days, preach­ing, teach­ing, and bap­tiz­ing. They did not move to­ward home un­til early Sab­bath morn­ing, the first day of May. The Je­ru­sa­lem spies were sure they would now se­cure their first charge against Je­sus—that of Sab­bath break­ing—since he had pre­sumed to start his jour­ney on the Sab­bath day. But they were doomed to dis­ap­point­ment be­cause, just be­fore their de­par­ture, Je­sus called An­drew into his pres­ence and be­fore them all in­structed him to pro­ceed for a dis­tance of only one thou­sand yards, the le­gal Jew­ish Sab­bath day’s jour­ney.

148:7.4This is the first case of a mir­a­cle to be wrought by Je­sus in re­sponse to the chal­lenge of his en­e­mies. And the Mas­ter per­formed this so-called mir­a­cle, not as a dem­on­stra­tion of his heal­ing power, but as an ef­fec­tive protest against mak­ing the Sab­bath rest of re­li­gion a ver­i­ta­ble bond­age of mean­ing­less re­stric­tions upon all man­kind. This man re­turned to his work as a stone ma­son, prov­ing to be one of those whose heal­ing was fol­lowed by a life of thanks­giv­ing and righ­teous­ness.

167:3.3When the un­friendly ruler had thus spo­ken, Je­sus re­turned to the speaker’s plat­form and said: “Why play the part of hyp­ocrites? Does not ev­ery one of you, on the Sab­bath, loose his ox from the stall and lead him forth for wa­ter­ing? If such a ser­vice is per­mis­si­ble on the Sab­bath day, should not this woman, a daugh­ter of Abra­ham who has been bound down by evil these eigh­teen years, be loosed from this bond­age and led forth to par­take of the wa­ters of lib­erty and life, even on this Sab­bath day?” And as the woman con­tin­ued to glo­rify God, his critic was put to shame, and the con­gre­ga­tion re­joiced with her that she had been healed.

184:0.1Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of An­nas had se­cretly in­structed the cap­tain of the Ro­man sol­diers to bring Je­sus im­me­di­ately to the palace of An­nas af­ter he had been ar­rested. The for­mer high priest de­sired to main­tain his pres­tige as the chief ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal au­thor­ity of the Jews. He also had an­other pur­pose in de­tain­ing Je­sus at his house for sev­eral hours, and that was to al­low time for legally call­ing to­gether the court of the San­hedrin. It was not law­ful to con­vene the San­hedrin court be­fore the time of the of­fer­ing of the morn­ing sac­ri­fice in the tem­ple, and this sac­ri­fice was of­fered about three o’clock in the morn­ing.