Sanhedrin

• character › kept Jews in terrible bondage to ritual, traditions

121:7.3The scribes, the Phar­isees, and the priest­hood held the Jews in a ter­ri­ble bond­age of rit­u­al­ism and le­gal­ism, a bond­age far more real than that of the Ro­man po­lit­i­cal rule. The Jews of Je­sus’ time were not only held in sub­ju­ga­tion to the law but were equally bound by the slav­ish de­mands of the tra­di­tions, which in­volved and in­vaded ev­ery do­main of per­sonal and so­cial life. These minute reg­u­la­tions of con­duct pur­sued and dom­i­nated ev­ery loyal Jew, and it is not strange that they promptly re­jected one of their num­ber who pre­sumed to ig­nore their sa­cred tra­di­tions, and who dared to flout their long-hon­ored reg­u­la­tions of so­cial con­duct. They could hardly re­gard with fa­vor the teach­ings of one who did not hes­i­tate to clash with dog­mas which they re­garded as hav­ing been or­dained by Fa­ther Abra­ham him­self. Moses had given them their law and they would not com­pro­mise.

• Jesus’ attitude toward the Sanhedrin › held hypocritical leaders in great contempt

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

• Jesus’ attitude toward the Sanhedrin › held hypocritical leaders in great contempt

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

• asked John the Baptist if he were Elijah

135:6.6In May of this year, while he still lin­gered at Beth­any ford, the priests and Levites sent a del­e­ga­tion out to in­quire of John whether he claimed to be the Mes­siah, and by whose au­thor­ity he preached. John an­swered these ques­tion­ers by say­ing: “Go tell your mas­ters that you have heard ‘the voice of one cry­ing in the wilder­ness,’ as spo­ken by the prophet, say­ing, ‘make ready the way of the Lord, make straight a high­way for our God. Ev­ery val­ley shall be filled, and ev­ery moun­tain and hill shall be brought low; the un­even ground shall be­come a plain, while the rough places shall be­come a smooth val­ley; and all flesh shall see the sal­va­tion of God.’”

• asked John the Baptist if he were Elijah

135:9.4About three weeks af­ter Je­sus had left them, there ar­rived on the scene at Pella a new dep­u­ta­tion from the priests and Phar­isees at Je­ru­sa­lem. They asked John di­rectly if he was Eli­jah or the prophet that Moses prom­ised; and when John said, “I am not,” they made bold to ask, “Are you the Mes­siah?” and John an­swered, “I am not.” Then said these men from Je­ru­sa­lem: “If you are not Eli­jah, nor the prophet, nor the Mes­siah, then why do you bap­tize the peo­ple and cre­ate all this stir?” And John replied: “It should be for those who have heard me and re­ceived my bap­tism to say who I am, but I de­clare to you that, while I bap­tize with wa­ter, there has been among us one who will re­turn to bap­tize you with the Holy Spirit.”

• individual members › Annas

142:0.2The first day in Je­ru­sa­lem Je­sus called upon his friend of for­mer years, An­nas, the one­time high priest and rel­a­tive of Sa­lome, Zeb­e­dee’s wife. An­nas had been hear­ing about Je­sus and his teach­ings, and when Je­sus called at the high priest’s home, he was re­ceived with much re­serve. When Je­sus per­ceived An­nas’s cold­ness, he took im­me­di­ate leave, say­ing as he de­parted: “Fear is man’s chief en­slaver and pride his great weak­ness; will you be­tray your­self into bond­age to both of these de­stroy­ers of joy and lib­erty?” But An­nas made no re­ply. The Mas­ter did not again see An­nas un­til the time when he sat with his son-in-law in judg­ment on the Son of Man.

• attitude toward Jesus › early opposition to Jesus

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

• attitude toward Jesus › early opposition to Jesus
• individual members › Nicodemus

142:6.1One evening at the home of Flav­ius there came to see Je­sus one Nicode­mus, a wealthy and el­derly mem­ber of the Jew­ish San­hedrin. He had heard much about the teach­ings of this Galilean, and so he went one af­ter­noon to hear him as he taught in the tem­ple courts. He would have gone of­ten to hear Je­sus teach, but he feared to be seen by the peo­ple in at­ten­dance upon his teach­ing, for al­ready were the rulers of the Jews so at vari­ance with Je­sus that no mem­ber of the San­hedrin would want to be iden­ti­fied in any open man­ner with him. Ac­cord­ingly, Nicode­mus had ar­ranged with An­drew to see Je­sus pri­vately and af­ter night­fall on this par­tic­u­lar evening. Pe­ter, James, and John were in Flav­ius’s gar­den when the in­ter­view be­gan, but later they all went into the house where the dis­course con­tin­ued.

• attitude toward Jesus › early opposition to Jesus

142:8.1By the end of April the op­po­si­tion to Je­sus among the Phar­isees and Sad­ducees had be­come so pro­nounced that the Mas­ter and his apos­tles de­cided to leave Je­ru­sa­lem for a while, go­ing south to work in Beth­le­hem and He­bron. The en­tire month of May was spent in do­ing per­sonal work in these cities and among the peo­ple of the sur­round­ing vil­lages. No pub­lic preach­ing was done on this trip, only house-to-house vis­i­ta­tion. A part of this time, while the apos­tles taught the gospel and min­is­tered to the sick, Je­sus and Ab­ner spent at En­gedi, vis­it­ing the Nazarite colony. John the Bap­tist had gone forth from this place, and Ab­ner had been head of this group. Many of the Nazarite broth­er­hood be­came be­liev­ers in Je­sus, but the ma­jor­ity of these as­cetic and ec­cen­tric men re­fused to ac­cept him as a teacher sent from heaven be­cause he did not teach fast­ing and other forms of self-de­nial.

• individual members › Simon

142:8.5When the rulers of the Jews learned that Je­sus had re­turned to Je­ru­sa­lem, they pre­pared to ar­rest him; but when they ob­served that he did no pub­lic preach­ing, they con­cluded that he had be­come fright­ened by their pre­vi­ous ag­i­ta­tion and de­cided to al­low him to carry on his teach­ing in this pri­vate man­ner with­out fur­ther mo­lesta­tion. And thus af­fairs moved along qui­etly un­til the last days of June, when one Si­mon, a mem­ber of the San­hedrin, pub­licly es­poused the teach­ings of Je­sus, af­ter so declar­ing him­self be­fore the rulers of the Jews. Im­me­di­ately a new ag­i­ta­tion for Je­sus’ ap­pre­hen­sion sprang up and grew so strong that the Mas­ter de­cided to re­tire into the cities of Samaria and the De­capo­lis.

• attitude toward Jesus › early opposition to Jesus

143:0.1At the end of June, A.D. 27, be­cause of the in­creas­ing op­po­si­tion of the Jew­ish re­li­gious rulers, Je­sus and the twelve de­parted from Je­ru­sa­lem, af­ter send­ing their tents and mea­ger per­sonal ef­fects to be stored at the home of Laz­a­rus at Beth­any. Go­ing north into Samaria, they tar­ried over the Sab­bath at Bethel. Here they preached for sev­eral days to the peo­ple who came from Gophna and Ephraim. A group of cit­i­zens from Ari­mathea and Thamna came over to in­vite Je­sus to visit their vil­lages. The Mas­ter and his apos­tles spent more than two weeks teach­ing the Jews and Samar­i­tans of this re­gion, many of whom came from as far as An­tipa­tris to hear the good news of the king­dom.

• attitude toward Jesus › early opposition to Jesus

144:0.2There were a num­ber of rea­sons why Je­sus and his apos­tles were in re­tire­ment at this time on the bor­ders of Samaria and the De­capo­lis. The Je­ru­sa­lem re­li­gious rulers were very an­tag­o­nis­tic; Herod An­tipas still held John in prison, fear­ing ei­ther to re­lease or ex­e­cute him, while he con­tin­ued to en­ter­tain sus­pi­cions that John and Je­sus were in some way as­so­ci­ated. These con­di­tions made it un­wise to plan for ag­gres­sive work in ei­ther Judea or Gal­i­lee. There was a third rea­son: the slowly aug­ment­ing ten­sion be­tween the lead­ers of John’s dis­ci­ples and the apos­tles of Je­sus, which grew worse with the in­creas­ing num­ber of be­liev­ers.

• attitude toward Jesus › accused Jesus › of Sabbath breaking

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.

• attitude toward Jesus › hostile; condemned Jesus to death; called upon all Jewry to deliver Jesus
• authority of Sanhedrin › asserted authority over all synagogues

146:4.1At Iron, as in many of even the smaller cities of Gal­i­lee and Judea, there was a syn­a­gogue, and dur­ing the ear­lier times of Je­sus’ min­istry it was his cus­tom to speak in these syn­a­gogues on the Sab­bath day. Some­times he would speak at the morn­ing ser­vice, and Pe­ter or one of the other apos­tles would preach at the af­ter­noon hour. Je­sus and the apos­tles would also of­ten teach and preach at the week­day evening as­sem­blies at the syn­a­gogue. Al­though the re­li­gious lead­ers at Je­ru­sa­lem be­came in­creas­ingly an­tag­o­nis­tic to­ward Je­sus, they ex­er­cised no di­rect con­trol over the syn­a­gogues out­side of that city. It was not un­til later in Je­sus’ pub­lic min­istry that they were able to cre­ate such a wide­spread sen­ti­ment against him as to bring about the al­most uni­ver­sal clos­ing of the syn­a­gogues to his teach­ing. At this time all the syn­a­gogues of Gal­i­lee and Judea were open to him.

• attitude toward Jesus › secret meetings to decide what to do with Jesus
• Sanhedrin spies › 6 appointed to follow Jesus; 3 confessed faith in Jesus

147:6.2The chief priests and the re­li­gious lead­ers of the Jews held many se­cret meet­ings for the pur­pose of de­cid­ing what to do with Je­sus. They were all agreed that some­thing should be done to put a stop to his teach­ing, but they could not agree on the method. They had hoped that the civil au­thor­i­ties would dis­pose of him as Herod had put an end to John, but they dis­cov­ered that Je­sus was so con­duct­ing his work that the Ro­man of­fi­cials were not much alarmed by his preach­ing. Ac­cord­ingly, at a meet­ing which was held the day be­fore Je­sus’ de­par­ture for Ca­per­naum, it was de­cided that he would have to be ap­pre­hended on a re­li­gious charge and be tried by the San­hedrin. There­fore a com­mis­sion of six se­cret spies was ap­pointed to fol­low Je­sus, to ob­serve his words and acts, and when they had amassed suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence of law­break­ing and blas­phemy, to re­turn to Je­ru­sa­lem with their re­port. These six Jews caught up with the apos­tolic party, num­ber­ing about thirty, at Jeri­cho and, un­der the pre­tense of de­sir­ing to be­come dis­ci­ples, at­tached them­selves to Je­sus’ fam­ily of fol­low­ers, re­main­ing with the group up to the time of the be­gin­ning of the sec­ond preach­ing tour in Gal­i­lee; where­upon three of them re­turned to Je­ru­sa­lem to sub­mit their re­port to the chief priests and the San­hedrin.

• attitude toward Jesus › accused Jesus › of Sabbath breaking
• Sanhedrin spies › experience with Jesus regarding Sabbath

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.”

• Sanhedrin spies › 6 appointed to follow Jesus; 3 confessed faith in Jesus

147:7.2On Tues­day evening Je­sus was con­duct­ing one of his cus­tom­ary classes of ques­tions and an­swers when the leader of the six spies said to him: “I was to­day talk­ing with one of John’s dis­ci­ples who is here at­tend­ing upon your teach­ing, and we were at a loss to un­der­stand why you never com­mand your dis­ci­ples to fast and pray as we Phar­isees fast and as John bade his fol­low­ers.” And Je­sus, re­fer­ring to a state­ment by John, an­swered this ques­tioner: “Do the sons of the bridecham­ber fast while the bride­groom is with them? As long as the bride­groom re­mains with them, they can hardly fast. But the time is com­ing when the bride­groom shall be taken away, and dur­ing those times the chil­dren of the bridecham­ber un­doubt­edly will fast and pray. To pray is nat­u­ral for the chil­dren of light, but fast­ing is not a part of the gospel of the king­dom of heaven. Be re­minded that a wise tai­lor does not sew a piece of new and un­shrunk cloth upon an old gar­ment, lest, when it is wet, it shrink and pro­duce a worse rent. Nei­ther do men put new wine into old wine skins, lest the new wine burst the skins so that both the wine and the skins per­ish. The wise man puts the new wine into fresh wine skins. There­fore do my dis­ci­ples show wis­dom in that they do not bring too much of the old or­der over into the new teach­ing of the gospel of the king­dom. You who have lost your teacher may be jus­ti­fied in fast­ing for a time. Fast­ing may be an ap­pro­pri­ate part of the law of Moses, but in the com­ing king­dom the sons of God shall ex­pe­ri­ence free­dom from fear and joy in the di­vine spirit.” And when they heard these words, the dis­ci­ples of John were com­forted while the Phar­isees them­selves were the more con­founded.

• Sanhedrin spies › 6 appointed to follow Jesus; 3 confessed faith in Jesus

148:7.1The sec­ond Sab­bath be­fore the de­par­ture of the apos­tles and the new corps of evan­ge­lists on the sec­ond preach­ing tour of Gal­i­lee, Je­sus spoke in the Ca­per­naum syn­a­gogue on the “Joys of Righ­teous Liv­ing.” When Je­sus had fin­ished speak­ing, a large group of those who were maimed, halt, sick, and af­flicted crowded up around him, seek­ing heal­ing. Also in this group were the apos­tles, many of the new evan­ge­lists, and the Phar­i­saic spies from Je­ru­sa­lem. Ev­ery­where that Je­sus went (ex­cept when in the hills about the Fa­ther’s busi­ness) the six Je­ru­sa­lem spies were sure to fol­low.

• Sanhedrin spies › 6 appointed to follow Jesus; 3 confessed faith in Jesus

148:8.1The last week of the so­journ at Beth­saida the Je­ru­sa­lem spies be­came much di­vided in their at­ti­tude to­ward Je­sus and his teach­ings. Three of these Phar­isees were tremen­dously im­pressed by what they had seen and heard. Mean­while, at Je­ru­sa­lem, Abra­ham, a young and in­flu­en­tial mem­ber of the San­hedrin, pub­licly es­poused the teach­ings of Je­sus and was bap­tized in the pool of Siloam by Ab­ner. All Je­ru­sa­lem was agog over this event, and mes­sen­gers were im­me­di­ately dis­patched to Beth­saida re­call­ing the six spy­ing Phar­isees.

• Sanhedrin spies › at healing of paralytic

148:9.1On Fri­day af­ter­noon, Oc­to­ber 1, when Je­sus was hold­ing his last meet­ing with the apos­tles, evan­ge­lists, and other lead­ers of the dis­band­ing en­camp­ment, and with the six Phar­isees from Je­ru­sa­lem seated in the front row of this as­sem­bly in the spa­cious and en­larged front room of the Zeb­e­dee home, there oc­curred one of the strangest and most unique episodes of all Je­sus’ earth life. The Mas­ter was, at this time, speak­ing as he stood in this large room, which had been built to ac­com­mo­date these gath­er­ings dur­ing the rainy sea­son. The house was en­tirely sur­rounded by a vast con­course of peo­ple who were strain­ing their ears to catch some part of Je­sus’ dis­course.

• Sanhedrin spies › 6 appointed to follow Jesus; 3 confessed faith in Jesus

148:9.4And it was about this time that the mes­sen­gers of the San­hedrin ar­rived to bid the six spies re­turn to Je­ru­sa­lem. When they heard this mes­sage, they fell to earnest de­bate among them­selves; and af­ter they had fin­ished their dis­cus­sions, the leader and two of his as­so­ciates re­turned with the mes­sen­gers to Je­ru­sa­lem, while three of the spy­ing Phar­isees con­fessed faith in Je­sus and, go­ing im­me­di­ately to the lake, were bap­tized by Pe­ter and fel­low­shipped by the apos­tles as chil­dren of the king­dom.

149:3.1Not­with­stand­ing the fa­vor­able re­cep­tion of Je­sus and his teach­ings by the com­mon peo­ple, the re­li­gious lead­ers at Je­ru­sa­lem be­came in­creas­ingly alarmed and an­tag­o­nis­tic. The Phar­isees had for­mu­lated a sys­tem­atic and dog­matic the­ol­ogy. Je­sus was a teacher who taught as the oc­ca­sion served; he was not a sys­tem­atic teacher. Je­sus taught not so much from the law as from life, by para­bles. (And when he em­ployed a para­ble for il­lus­trat­ing his mes­sage, he de­signed to uti­lize just one fea­ture of the story for that pur­pose. Many wrong ideas con­cern­ing the teach­ings of Je­sus may be se­cured by at­tempt­ing to make al­le­gories out of his para­bles.)

• Sanhedrin spies › converted spies joined evangelists

149:3.2The re­li­gious lead­ers at Je­ru­sa­lem were be­com­ing well-nigh fran­tic as a re­sult of the re­cent con­ver­sion of young Abra­ham and by the de­ser­tion of the three spies who had been bap­tized by Pe­ter, and who were now out with the evan­ge­lists on this sec­ond preach­ing tour of Gal­i­lee. The Jew­ish lead­ers were in­creas­ingly blinded by fear and prej­u­dice, while their hearts were hard­ened by the con­tin­ued re­jec­tion of the ap­peal­ing truths of the gospel of the king­dom. When men shut off the ap­peal to the spirit that dwells within them, there is lit­tle that can be done to mod­ify their at­ti­tude.

149:3.3When Je­sus first met with the evan­ge­lists at the Beth­saida camp, in con­clud­ing his ad­dress, he said: “You should re­mem­ber that in body and mind—emo­tion­ally—men re­act in­di­vid­u­ally. The only uni­form thing about men is the in­dwelling spirit. Though di­vine spir­its may vary some­what in the na­ture and ex­tent of their ex­pe­ri­ence, they re­act uni­formly to all spir­i­tual ap­peals. Only through, and by ap­peal to, this spirit can man­kind ever at­tain unity and broth­er­hood.” But many of the lead­ers of the Jews had closed the doors of their hearts to the spir­i­tual ap­peal of the gospel. From this day on they ceased not to plan and plot for the Mas­ter’s de­struc­tion. They were con­vinced that Je­sus must be ap­pre­hended, con­victed, and ex­e­cuted as a re­li­gious of­fender, a vi­o­la­tor of the car­di­nal teach­ings of the Jew­ish sa­cred law.

• attitude toward Jesus › accused Jesus › of being in leagues with devils

151:3.14Je­sus also re­sorted to the use of para­bles as the best pos­si­ble refu­ta­tion of the stud­ied ef­fort of the re­li­gious lead­ers at Je­ru­sa­lem to teach that all of his work was done by the as­sis­tance of demons and the prince of dev­ils. The ap­peal to na­ture was in con­tra­ven­tion of such teach­ing since the peo­ple of that day looked upon all nat­u­ral phe­nom­ena as the prod­uct of the di­rect act of spir­i­tual be­ings and super­nat­u­ral forces. He also de­ter­mined upon this method of teach­ing be­cause it en­abled him to pro­claim vi­tal truths to those who de­sired to know the bet­ter way while at the same time af­ford­ing his en­e­mies less op­por­tu­nity to find cause for of­fense and for ac­cu­sa­tions against him.

• attitude toward Jesus › sent observers to find cause for Jesus’ apprehension

152:0.1The story of the cure of Amos, the Kheresa lu­natic, had al­ready reached Beth­saida and Ca­per­naum, so that a great crowd was wait­ing for Je­sus when his boat landed that Tues­day forenoon. Among this throng were the new ob­servers from the Je­ru­sa­lem San­hedrin who had come down to Ca­per­naum to find cause for the Mas­ter’s ap­pre­hen­sion and con­vic­tion. As Je­sus spoke with those who had as­sem­bled to greet him, Jairus, one of the rulers of the syn­a­gogue, made his way through the crowd and, falling down at his feet, took him by the hand and be­sought that he would has­ten away with him, say­ing: “Mas­ter, my lit­tle daugh­ter, an only child, lies in my home at the point of death. I pray that you will come and heal her.” When Je­sus heard the re­quest of this fa­ther, he said: “I will go with you.”

• attitude toward Jesus › sent orthodox vanguard to inaugurate open warfare

153:1.1A dis­tin­guished con­gre­ga­tion greeted Je­sus at three o’clock on this ex­qui­site Sab­bath af­ter­noon in the new Ca­per­naum syn­a­gogue. Jairus pre­sided and handed Je­sus the Scrip­tures to read. The day be­fore, fifty-three Phar­isees and Sad­ducees had ar­rived from Je­ru­sa­lem; more than thirty of the lead­ers and rulers of the neigh­bor­ing syn­a­gogues were also pres­ent. These Jew­ish re­li­gious lead­ers were act­ing di­rectly un­der or­ders from the San­hedrin at Je­ru­sa­lem, and they con­sti­tuted the or­tho­dox van­guard which had come to in­au­gu­rate open war­fare on Je­sus and his dis­ci­ples. Sit­ting by the side of these Jew­ish lead­ers, in the syn­a­gogue seats of honor, were the of­fi­cial ob­servers of Herod An­tipas, who had been di­rected to as­cer­tain the truth con­cern­ing the dis­turb­ing re­ports that an at­tempt had been made by the pop­u­lace to pro­claim Je­sus the king of the Jews, over in the do­mains of his brother Philip.

• attitude toward Jesus › sent orthodox vanguard to inaugurate open warfare

153:1.7On Fri­day evening, and again on Sab­bath morn­ing, the Je­ru­sa­lem lead­ers had la­bored long and earnestly with Jairus to pre­vent Je­sus’ speak­ing in the syn­a­gogue, but it was of no avail. Jairus’s only re­ply to all this plead­ing was: “I have granted this re­quest, and I will not vi­o­late my word.”

• Jesus’ attitude toward the Sanhedrin › denounced

153:2.3“The priests and teach­ers of that day sought to kill Jeremiah, but the judges would not con­sent, al­beit, for his words of warn­ing, they did let him down by cords in a filthy dun­geon un­til he sank in mire up to his armpits. That is what this peo­ple did to the Prophet Jeremiah when he obeyed the Lord’s com­mand to warn his breth­ren of their im­pend­ing po­lit­i­cal down­fall. To­day, I de­sire to ask you: What will the chief priests and re­li­gious lead­ers of this peo­ple do with the man who dares to warn them of the day of their spir­i­tual doom? Will you also seek to put to death the teacher who dares to pro­claim the word of the Lord, and who fears not to point out wherein you refuse to walk in the way of light which leads to the en­trance to the king­dom of heaven?

• Jesus’ attitude toward the Sanhedrin › left S. undisturbed in positions of influence and power

153:2.4“What is it you seek as ev­i­dence of my mis­sion on earth? We have left you undis­turbed in your po­si­tions of in­flu­ence and power while we preached glad tid­ings to the poor and the out­cast. We have made no hos­tile at­tack upon that which you hold in rev­er­ence but have rather pro­claimed new lib­erty for man’s fear-rid­den soul. I came into the world to re­veal my Fa­ther and to es­tab­lish on earth the spir­i­tual broth­er­hood of the sons of God, the king­dom of heaven. And not­with­stand­ing that I have so many times re­minded you that my king­dom is not of this world, still has my Fa­ther granted you many man­i­fes­ta­tions of ma­te­rial won­ders in ad­di­tion to more ev­i­den­tial spir­i­tual trans­for­ma­tions and re­gen­er­a­tions.

153:2.5“What new sign is it that you seek at my hands? I de­clare that you al­ready have suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to en­able you to make your de­ci­sion. Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to many who sit be­fore me this day, you are con­fronted with the ne­ces­sity of choos­ing which way you will go; and I say to you, as Joshua said to your fore­fa­thers, ‘choose you this day whom you will serve.’ To­day, many of you stand at the part­ing of the ways.

• Jesus’ attitude toward the Sanhedrin › held hypocritical leaders in great contempt
• Sanhedrin spies › 6 appointed to follow Jesus; 3 confessed faith in Jesus

153:3.3Then one of the Je­ru­sa­lem spies who had been ob­serv­ing Je­sus and his apos­tles, said: “We no­tice that nei­ther you nor your apos­tles wash your hands prop­erly be­fore you eat bread. You must well know that such a prac­tice as eat­ing with de­filed and un­washed hands is a trans­gres­sion of the law of the el­ders. Nei­ther do you prop­erly wash your drink­ing cups and eat­ing ves­sels. Why is it that you show such dis­re­spect for the tra­di­tions of the fa­thers and the laws of our el­ders?” And when Je­sus heard him speak, he an­swered: “Why is it that you transgress the com­mand­ments of God by the laws of your tra­di­tion? The com­mand­ment says, ‘Honor your fa­ther and your mother,’ and di­rects that you share with them your sub­stance if nec­es­sary; but you en­act a law of tra­di­tion which per­mits un­du­ti­ful chil­dren to say that the money where­with the par­ents might have been as­sisted has been ‘given to God.’ The law of the el­ders thus re­lieves such crafty chil­dren of their re­spon­si­bil­ity, not­with­stand­ing that the chil­dren sub­se­quently use all such monies for their own com­fort. Why is it that you in this way make void the com­mand­ment by your own tra­di­tion? Well did Isa­iah proph­esy of you hyp­ocrites, say­ing: ‘This peo­ple hon­ors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. In vain do they wor­ship me, teach­ing as their doc­trines the pre­cepts of men.’

153:3.4“You can see how it is that you desert the com­mand­ment while you hold fast to the tra­di­tion of men. Al­to­gether will­ing are you to re­ject the word of God while you main­tain your own tra­di­tions. And in many other ways do you dare to set up your own teach­ings above the law and the proph­ets.”

153:3.5Je­sus then di­rected his re­marks to all pres­ent. He said: “But hear­ken to me, all of you. It is not that which en­ters into the mouth that spir­i­tu­ally de­files the man, but rather that which pro­ceeds out of the mouth and from the heart.” But even the apos­tles failed fully to grasp the mean­ing of his words, for Si­mon Pe­ter also asked him: “Lest some of your hear­ers be un­nec­es­sar­ily of­fended, would you ex­plain to us the mean­ing of these words?” And then said Je­sus to Pe­ter: “Are you also hard of un­der­stand­ing? Know you not that ev­ery plant which my heav­enly Fa­ther has not planted shall be rooted up? Turn now your at­ten­tion to those who would know the truth. You can­not com­pel men to love the truth. Many of these teach­ers are blind guides. And you know that, if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the pit. But hear­ken while I tell you the truth con­cern­ing those things which morally de­file and spir­i­tu­ally con­tam­i­nate men. I de­clare it is not that which en­ters the body by the mouth or gains ac­cess to the mind through the eyes and ears, that de­files the man. Man is only de­filed by that evil which may orig­i­nate within the heart, and which finds ex­pres­sion in the words and deeds of such un­holy per­sons. Do you not know it is from the heart that there come forth evil thoughts, wicked projects of mur­der, theft, and adul­ter­ies, to­gether with jeal­ousy, pride, anger, re­venge, rail­ings, and false wit­ness? And it is just such things that de­file men, and not that they eat bread with cer­e­mo­ni­ally un­clean hands.”

• attitude toward Jesus › accused Jesus › of blasphemy

153:3.6The Phar­i­saic com­mis­sion­ers of the Je­ru­sa­lem San­hedrin were now al­most con­vinced that Je­sus must be ap­pre­hended on a charge of blas­phemy or on one of flout­ing the sa­cred law of the Jews; where­fore their ef­forts to in­volve him in the dis­cus­sion of, and pos­si­ble at­tack upon, some of the tra­di­tions of the el­ders, or so-called oral laws of the na­tion. No mat­ter how scarce wa­ter might be, these tra­di­tion­ally en­slaved Jews would never fail to go through with the re­quired cer­e­mo­nial wash­ing of the hands be­fore ev­ery meal. It was their be­lief that “it is bet­ter to die than to transgress the com­mand­ments of the el­ders.” The spies asked this ques­tion be­cause it had been re­ported that Je­sus had said, “Sal­va­tion is a mat­ter of clean hearts rather than of clean hands.” But such be­liefs, when they once be­come a part of one’s re­li­gion, are hard to get away from. Even many years af­ter this day the Apos­tle Pe­ter was still held in the bond­age of fear to many of these tra­di­tions about things clean and un­clean, only be­ing fi­nally de­liv­ered by ex­pe­ri­enc­ing an ex­traor­di­nary and vivid dream. All of this can the bet­ter be un­der­stood when it is re­called that these Jews looked upon eat­ing with un­washed hands in the same light as com­merce with a har­lot, and both were equally pun­ish­able by ex­com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

153:3.7Thus did the Mas­ter elect to dis­cuss and ex­pose the folly of the whole rab­binic sys­tem of rules and reg­u­la­tions which was rep­re­sented by the oral law—the tra­di­tions of the el­ders, all of which were re­garded as more sa­cred and more bind­ing upon the Jews than even the teach­ings of the Scrip­tures. And Je­sus spoke out with less re­serve be­cause he knew the hour had come when he could do noth­ing more to pre­vent an open rup­ture of re­la­tions with these re­li­gious lead­ers.

• attitude toward Jesus › accused Jesus › of being in leagues with devils

153:4.2When the peo­ple mar­veled, one of the Phar­isees stood up and charged that Je­sus could do these things be­cause he was in league with dev­ils; that he ad­mit­ted in the lan­guage which he em­ployed in cast­ing out this devil that they were known to each other; and he went on to state that the re­li­gious teach­ers and lead­ers at Je­ru­sa­lem had de­cided that Je­sus did all his so-called mir­a­cles by the power of Beelze­bub, the prince of dev­ils. Said the Phar­isee: “Have noth­ing to do with this man; he is in part­ner­ship with Sa­tan.”

153:4.3Then said Je­sus: “How can Sa­tan cast out Sa­tan? A king­dom di­vided against it­self can­not stand; if a house be di­vided against it­self, it is soon brought to des­o­la­tion. Can a city with­stand a siege if it is not united? If Sa­tan casts out Sa­tan, he is di­vided against him­self; how then shall his king­dom stand? But you should know that no one can en­ter into the house of a strong man and de­spoil his goods ex­cept he first over­power and bind that strong man. And so, if I by the power of Beelze­bub cast out dev­ils, by whom do your sons cast them out? There­fore shall they be your judges. But if I, by the spirit of God, cast out dev­ils, then has the king­dom of God truly come upon you. If you were not blinded by prej­u­dice and mis­led by fear and pride, you would eas­ily per­ceive that one who is greater than dev­ils stands in your midst. You com­pel me to de­clare that he who is not with me is against me, while he who gath­ers not with me scat­ters abroad. Let me ut­ter a solemn warn­ing to you who would pre­sume, with your eyes open and with pre­med­i­tated mal­ice, know­ingly to as­cribe the works of God to the do­ings of dev­ils! Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you, all your sins shall be for­given, even all of your blas­phemies, but whoso­ever shall blas­pheme against God with de­lib­er­a­tion and wicked in­ten­tion shall never ob­tain for­give­ness. Since such per­sis­tent work­ers of in­iq­uity will never seek nor re­ceive for­give­ness, they are guilty of the sin of eter­nally re­ject­ing di­vine for­give­ness.

• met › with Herod in Tiberias

154:0.1On the event­ful Sat­ur­day night of April 30, as Je­sus was speak­ing words of com­fort and cour­age to his down­cast and be­wil­dered dis­ci­ples, at Tiberias a coun­cil was be­ing held be­tween Herod An­tipas and a group of spe­cial com­mis­sion­ers rep­re­sent­ing the Je­ru­sa­lem San­hedrin. These scribes and Phar­isees urged Herod to ar­rest Je­sus; they did their best to con­vince him that Je­sus was stir­ring up the pop­u­lace to dis­sen­sion and even to re­bel­lion. But Herod re­fused to take ac­tion against him as a po­lit­i­cal of­fender. Herod’s ad­vis­ers had cor­rectly re­ported the episode across the lake when the peo­ple sought to pro­claim Je­sus king and how he re­jected the pro­posal.

• attitude toward Jesus › closed synagogues to Jesus

154:1.2On Fri­day of this week of­fi­cial ac­tion was taken by the rulers of the Ca­per­naum syn­a­gogue clos­ing the house of God to Je­sus and all his fol­low­ers. This ac­tion was taken at the in­sti­ga­tion of the Je­ru­sa­lem Phar­isees. Jairus re­signed as chief ruler and openly aligned him­self with Je­sus.

• attitude toward Jesus › closed synagogues to Jesus
• authority of Sanhedrin › asserted authority over all synagogues
• burned synagogue at Hebron

154:2.1Sun­day, May 8, A.D. 29, at Je­ru­sa­lem, the San­hedrin passed a de­cree clos­ing all the syn­a­gogues of Pales­tine to Je­sus and his fol­low­ers. This was a new and un­prece­dented usurpa­tion of au­thor­ity by the Je­ru­sa­lem San­hedrin. Thereto­fore each syn­a­gogue had ex­isted and func­tioned as an in­de­pen­dent con­gre­ga­tion of wor­shipers and was un­der the rule and di­rec­tion of its own board of gov­er­nors. Only the syn­a­gogues of Je­ru­sa­lem had been sub­ject to the au­thor­ity of the San­hedrin. This sum­mary ac­tion of the San­hedrin was fol­lowed by the res­ig­na­tion of five of its mem­bers. One hun­dred mes­sen­gers were im­me­di­ately dis­patched to con­vey and en­force this de­cree. Within the short space of two weeks ev­ery syn­a­gogue in Pales­tine had bowed to this man­i­festo of the San­hedrin ex­cept the syn­a­gogue at He­bron. The rulers of the He­bron syn­a­gogue re­fused to ac­knowl­edge the right of the San­hedrin to ex­er­cise such ju­ris­dic­tion over their as­sem­bly. This re­fusal to ac­cede to the Je­ru­sa­lem de­cree was based on their con­tention of con­gre­ga­tional au­ton­omy rather than on sym­pa­thy with Je­sus’ cause. Shortly there­after the He­bron syn­a­gogue was de­stroyed by fire.

154:3.1On May 16 the sec­ond con­fer­ence at Tiberias be­tween the au­thor­i­ties at Je­ru­sa­lem and Herod An­tipas was con­vened. Both the re­li­gious and the po­lit­i­cal lead­ers from Je­ru­sa­lem were in at­ten­dance. The Jew­ish lead­ers were able to re­port to Herod that prac­ti­cally all the syn­a­gogues in both Gal­i­lee and Judea were closed to Je­sus’ teach­ings. A new ef­fort was made to have Herod place Je­sus un­der ar­rest, but he re­fused to do their bid­ding. On May 18, how­ever, Herod did agree to the plan of per­mit­ting the San­hedrin au­thor­i­ties to seize Je­sus and carry him to Je­ru­sa­lem to be tried on re­li­gious charges, pro­vided the Ro­man ruler of Judea con­curred in such an ar­range­ment. Mean­while, Je­sus’ en­e­mies were in­dus­tri­ously spread­ing the ru­mor through­out Gal­i­lee that Herod had be­come hos­tile to Je­sus, and that he meant to ex­ter­mi­nate all who be­lieved in his teach­ings.

154:3.2On Sat­ur­day night, May 21, word reached Tiberias that the civil au­thor­i­ties at Je­ru­sa­lem had no ob­jec­tion to the agree­ment be­tween Herod and the Phar­isees that Je­sus be seized and car­ried to Je­ru­sa­lem for trial be­fore the San­hedrin on charges of flout­ing the sa­cred laws of the Jew­ish na­tion. Ac­cord­ingly, just be­fore mid­night of this day, Herod signed the de­cree which au­tho­rized the of­fi­cers of the San­hedrin to seize Je­sus within Herod’s do­mains and forcibly to carry him to Je­ru­sa­lem for trial. Strong pres­sure from many sides was brought to bear upon Herod be­fore he con­sented to grant this per­mis­sion, and he well knew that Je­sus could not ex­pect a fair trial be­fore his bit­ter en­e­mies at Je­ru­sa­lem.

• attitude toward Jesus › accused Jesus › of being in leagues with devils

154:4.43. That he was in league with dev­ils, that he might even be a prince of dev­ils.

• met › with Mary mother of Jesus

154:6.1It was about eight o’clock on this Sun­day morn­ing when five mem­bers of Je­sus’ earth fam­ily ar­rived on the scene in re­sponse to the ur­gent sum­mons of Jude’s sis­ter-in-law. Of all his fam­ily in the flesh, only one, Ruth, be­lieved whole­heart­edly and con­tin­u­ously in the di­vin­ity of his mis­sion on earth. Jude and James, and even Joseph, still re­tained much of their faith in Je­sus, but they had per­mit­ted pride to in­ter­fere with their bet­ter judg­ment and real spir­i­tual in­cli­na­tions. Mary was like­wise torn be­tween love and fear, be­tween mother love and fam­ily pride. Though she was ha­rassed by doubts, she could never quite for­get the visit of Ga­briel ere Je­sus was born. The Phar­isees had been la­bor­ing to per­suade Mary that Je­sus was be­side him­self, de­mented. They urged her to go with her sons and seek to dis­suade him from fur­ther ef­forts at pub­lic teach­ing. They as­sured Mary that soon Je­sus’ health would break, and that only dis­honor and dis­grace could come upon the en­tire fam­ily as a re­sult of al­low­ing him to go on. And so, when the word came from Jude’s sis­ter-in-law, all five of them started at once for Zeb­e­dee’s house, hav­ing been to­gether at Mary’s home, where they had met with the Phar­isees the evening be­fore. They had talked with the Je­ru­sa­lem lead­ers long into the night, and all were more or less con­vinced that Je­sus was act­ing strangely, that he had acted strangely for some time. While Ruth could not ex­plain all of his con­duct, she in­sisted that he had al­ways treated his fam­ily fairly and re­fused to agree to the pro­gram of try­ing to dis­suade him from fur­ther work.

• attitude toward Jesus › accused Jesus › of blasphemy

154:7.1And so it was on this Sun­day morn­ing, the twenty-sec­ond of May, in the year A.D. 29, that Je­sus, with his twelve apos­tles and the twelve evan­ge­lists, en­gaged in this hasty flight from the San­hedrin of­fi­cers who were on their way to Beth­saida with au­thor­ity from Herod An­tipas to ar­rest him and take him to Je­ru­sa­lem for trial on charges of blas­phemy and other vi­o­la­tions of the sa­cred laws of the Jews. It was al­most half past eight this beau­ti­ful morn­ing when this com­pany of twenty-five manned the oars and pulled for the east­ern shore of the Sea of Gal­i­lee.

• attitude toward Jesus › sought to kill Jesus › thinking they did God’s service

155:1.4“In all that you do, be­come not one-sided and over­spe­cial­ized. The Phar­isees who seek our de­struc­tion ver­ily think they are do­ing God’s ser­vice. They have be­come so nar­rowed by tra­di­tion that they are blinded by prej­u­dice and hard­ened by fear. Con­sider the Greeks, who have a sci­ence with­out re­li­gion, while the Jews have a re­li­gion with­out sci­ence. And when men be­come thus mis­led into ac­cept­ing a nar­row and con­fused dis­in­te­gra­tion of truth, their only hope of sal­va­tion is to be­come truth-co-or­di­nated—con­verted.

• attitude toward Jesus › closed synagogues to Jesus
• general resentment against

156:6.7The man­date to close the syn­a­gogues of all Jewry to the teach­ings of Je­sus and all his fol­low­ers had worked ad­versely upon the scribes and Phar­isees. Im­me­di­ately upon Je­sus’ re­mov­ing him­self as an ob­ject of con­tro­versy, there oc­curred a re­ac­tion among the en­tire Jew­ish peo­ple; there was gen­eral re­sent­ment against the Phar­isees and the San­hedrin lead­ers at Je­ru­sa­lem. Many of the rulers of the syn­a­gogues be­gan sur­rep­ti­tiously to open their syn­a­gogues to Ab­ner and his as­so­ciates, claim­ing that these teach­ers were fol­low­ers of John and not dis­ci­ples of Je­sus.

• met › with Mary mother of Jesus

157:0.1Be­fore Je­sus took the twelve for a short so­journ in the vicin­ity of Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi, he ar­ranged through the mes­sen­gers of David to go over to Ca­per­naum on Sun­day, Au­gust 7, for the pur­pose of meet­ing his fam­ily. By pre­ar­range­ment this visit was to oc­cur at the Zeb­e­dee boat­shop. David Zeb­e­dee had ar­ranged with Jude, Je­sus’ brother, for the pres­ence of the en­tire Naz­a­reth fam­ily—Mary and all of Je­sus’ broth­ers and sis­ters—and Je­sus went with An­drew and Pe­ter to keep this ap­point­ment. It was cer­tainly the in­ten­tion of Mary and the chil­dren to keep this en­gage­ment, but it so hap­pened that a group of the Phar­isees, know­ing that Je­sus was on the op­po­site side of the lake in Philip’s do­mains, de­cided to call upon Mary to learn what they could of his where­abouts. The ar­rival of these Je­ru­sa­lem emis­saries greatly per­turbed Mary, and not­ing the ten­sion and ner­vous­ness of the en­tire fam­ily, they con­cluded that Je­sus must have been ex­pected to pay them a visit. Ac­cord­ingly they in­stalled them­selves in Mary’s home and, af­ter sum­mon­ing re­in­force­ments, waited pa­tiently for Je­sus’ ar­rival. And this, of course, ef­fec­tively pre­vented any of the fam­ily from at­tempt­ing to keep their ap­point­ment with Je­sus. Sev­eral times dur­ing the day both Jude and Ruth en­deav­ored to elude the vig­i­lance of the Phar­isees in their ef­forts to send word to Je­sus, but it was of no avail.

• character › moral cowards; intellectually dishonest

159:4.10“But the sad­dest fea­ture of all is the fact that some of the teach­ers of the sanc­tity of this tra­di­tion­al­ism know this very truth. They more or less fully un­der­stand these lim­i­ta­tions of Scrip­ture, but they are moral cow­ards, in­tel­lec­tu­ally dis­hon­est. They know the truth re­gard­ing the sa­cred writ­ings, but they pre­fer to with­hold such dis­turb­ing facts from the peo­ple. And thus do they per­vert and dis­tort the Scrip­tures, mak­ing them the guide to slav­ish de­tails of the daily life and an au­thor­ity in things non­spir­i­tual in­stead of ap­peal­ing to the sa­cred writ­ings as the re­pos­i­tory of the moral wis­dom, re­li­gious in­spi­ra­tion, and the spir­i­tual teach­ing of the God-know­ing men of other gen­er­a­tions.”

• attitude toward Jesus › 14 followers of Jesus were on

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

• attitude toward Jesus › hostile; condemned Jesus to death; called upon all Jewry to deliver Jesus

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

• attitude toward Jesus › hostile; condemned Jesus to death; called upon all Jewry to deliver Jesus

162:2.1The first af­ter­noon that Je­sus taught in the tem­ple, a con­sid­er­able com­pany sat lis­ten­ing to his words de­pict­ing the lib­erty of the new gospel and the joy of those who be­lieve the good news, when a cu­ri­ous lis­tener in­ter­rupted him to ask: “Teacher, how is it you can quote the Scrip­tures and teach the peo­ple so flu­ently when I am told that you are un­taught in the learn­ing of the rab­bis?” Je­sus replied: “No man has taught me the truths which I de­clare to you. And this teach­ing is not mine but His who sent me. If any man re­ally de­sires to do my Fa­ther’s will, he shall cer­tainly know about my teach­ing, whether it be God’s or whether I speak for my­self. He who speaks for him­self seeks his own glory, but when I de­clare the words of the Fa­ther, I thereby seek the glory of him who sent me. But be­fore you try to en­ter into the new light, should you not rather fol­low the light you al­ready have? Moses gave you the law, yet how many of you hon­estly seek to ful­fill its de­mands? Moses in this law en­joins you, say­ing, ‘You shall not kill’; not­with­stand­ing this com­mand some of you seek to kill the Son of Man.”

• attitude toward Jesus › accused Jesus › of Sabbath breaking
• attitude toward Jesus › sought to kill Jesus › to prevent overthrow of authority

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.”

• authority of Sanhedrin › highest governing body and supreme court of Jewish nation

162:2.5When the Phar­isees and their agents heard the peo­ple talk­ing this way, they took coun­sel with their lead­ers and de­cided that some­thing should be done forth­with to put a stop to these pub­lic ap­pear­ances of Je­sus in the tem­ple courts. The lead­ers of the Jews, in gen­eral, were dis­posed to avoid a clash with Je­sus, be­liev­ing that the Ro­man au­thor­i­ties had prom­ised him im­mu­nity. They could not oth­er­wise ac­count for his bold­ness in com­ing at this time to Je­ru­sa­lem; but the of­fi­cers of the San­hedrin did not wholly be­lieve this ru­mor. They rea­soned that the Ro­man rulers would not do such a thing se­cretly and with­out the knowl­edge of the high­est gov­ern­ing body of the Jew­ish na­tion.

• attitude toward Jesus › sought to kill Jesus › thinking they did God’s service

162:2.6Ac­cord­ingly, Eber, the proper of­fi­cer of the San­hedrin, with two as­sis­tants was dis­patched to ar­rest Je­sus. As Eber made his way to­ward Je­sus, the Mas­ter said: “Fear not to ap­proach me. Draw near while you lis­ten to my teach­ing. I know you have been sent to ap­pre­hend me, but you should un­der­stand that noth­ing will be­fall the Son of Man un­til his hour comes. You are not ar­rayed against me; you come only to do the bid­ding of your mas­ters, and even these rulers of the Jews ver­ily think they are do­ing God’s ser­vice when they se­cretly seek my de­struc­tion.

• believed untaught people accursed

162:2.9Eber and his as­sis­tants re­fused to ar­rest Je­sus; they re­turned to their meet­ing place with­out him. When, there­fore, the chief priests and the Phar­isees up­braided Eber and his as­sis­tants be­cause they had not brought Je­sus with them, Eber only replied: “We feared to ar­rest him in the midst of the mul­ti­tude be­cause many be­lieve in him. Be­sides, we never heard a man speak like this man. There is some­thing out of the or­di­nary about this teacher. You would all do well to go over to hear him.” And when the chief rulers heard these words, they were as­ton­ished and spoke taunt­ingly to Eber: “Are you also led astray? Are you about to be­lieve in this de­ceiver? Have you heard that any of our learned men or any of the rulers have be­lieved in him? Have any of the scribes or the Phar­isees been de­ceived by his clever teach­ings? How does it come that you are in­flu­enced by the be­hav­ior of this ig­no­rant mul­ti­tude who know not the law or the proph­ets? Do you not know that such un­taught peo­ple are ac­cursed?” And then an­swered Eber: “Even so, my mas­ters, but this man speaks to the mul­ti­tude words of mercy and hope. He cheers the down­hearted, and his words were com­fort­ing even to our souls. What can there be wrong in these teach­ings even though he may not be the Mes­siah of the Scrip­tures? And even then does not our law re­quire fair­ness? Do we con­demn a man be­fore we hear him?” And the chief of the San­hedrin was wroth with Eber and, turn­ing upon him, said: “Have you gone mad? Are you by any chance also from Gal­i­lee? Search the Scrip­tures, and you will dis­cover that out of Gal­i­lee arises no prophet, much less the Mes­siah.”

• character › spiritually blind but thoroughly moral

162:3.1It was dur­ing this visit to Je­ru­sa­lem that Je­sus dealt with a cer­tain woman of evil re­pute who was brought into his pres­ence by her ac­cusers and his en­e­mies. The dis­torted rec­ord you have of this episode would sug­gest that this woman had been brought be­fore Je­sus by the scribes and Phar­isees, and that Je­sus so dealt with them as to in­di­cate that these re­li­gious lead­ers of the Jews might them­selves have been guilty of im­moral­ity. Je­sus well knew that, while these scribes and Phar­isees were spir­i­tu­ally blind and in­tel­lec­tu­ally prej­u­diced by their loy­alty to tra­di­tion, they were to be num­bered among the most thor­oughly moral men of that day and gen­er­a­tion.

• attitude toward Jesus › hostile; condemned Jesus to death; called upon all Jewry to deliver Jesus

162:7.3“I know that you are Abra­ham’s seed, yet your lead­ers seek to kill me be­cause my word has not been al­lowed to have its trans­form­ing in­flu­ence in their hearts. Their souls are sealed by prej­u­dice and blinded by the pride of re­venge. I de­clare to you the truth which the eter­nal Fa­ther shows me, while these de­luded teach­ers seek to do the things which they have learned only from their tem­po­ral fa­thers. And when you re­ply that Abra­ham is your fa­ther, then do I tell you that, if you were the chil­dren of Abra­ham, you would do the works of Abra­ham. Some of you be­lieve my teach­ing, but oth­ers seek to de­stroy me be­cause I have told you the truth which I re­ceived from God. But Abra­ham did not so treat the truth of God. I per­ceive that some among you are de­ter­mined to do the works of the evil one. If God were your Fa­ther, you would know me and love the truth which I re­veal. Will you not see that I come forth from the Fa­ther, that I am sent by God, that I am not do­ing this work of my­self? Why do you not un­der­stand my words? Is it be­cause you have cho­sen to be­come the chil­dren of evil? If you are the chil­dren of dark­ness, you will hardly walk in the light of the truth which I re­veal. The chil­dren of evil fol­low only in the ways of their fa­ther, who was a de­ceiver and stood not for the truth be­cause there came to be no truth in him. But now comes the Son of Man speak­ing and liv­ing the truth, and many of you refuse to be­lieve.

• attitude toward Jesus › accused Jesus › of being in leagues with devils

162:7.4“Which of you con­victs me of sin? If I, then, pro­claim and live the truth shown me by the Fa­ther, why do you not be­lieve? He who is of God hears gladly the words of God; for this cause many of you hear not my words, be­cause you are not of God. Your teach­ers have even pre­sumed to say that I do my works by the power of the prince of dev­ils. One near by has just said that I have a devil, that I am a child of the devil. But all of you who deal hon­estly with your own souls know full well that I am not a devil. You know that I honor the Fa­ther even while you would dis­honor me. I seek not my own glory, only the glory of my Par­a­dise Fa­ther. And I do not judge you, for there is one who judges for me.

• attitude toward Jesus › accused Jesus › of being in leagues with devils
• attitude toward Jesus › hostile; condemned Jesus to death; called upon all Jewry to deliver Jesus

162:7.6When the un­be­liev­ing Jews and the agents of the San­hedrin who had gath­ered about by this time heard these words, they raised a tu­mult, shout­ing: “You are not fifty years of age, and yet you talk about see­ing Abra­ham; you are a child of the devil!” Je­sus was un­able to con­tinue the dis­course. He only said as he de­parted, “Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you, be­fore Abra­ham was, I am.” Many of the un­be­liev­ers rushed forth for stones to cast at him, and the agents of the San­hedrin sought to place him un­der ar­rest, but the Mas­ter quickly made his way through the tem­ple cor­ri­dors and es­caped to a se­cret meet­ing place near Beth­any where Martha, Mary, and Laz­a­rus awaited him.

• individual members › Matadormus

163:2.4Then An­drew brought to Je­sus a cer­tain rich young man who was a de­vout be­liever, and who de­sired to re­ceive or­di­na­tion. This young man, Mata­dor­mus, was a mem­ber of the Je­ru­sa­lem San­hedrin; he had heard Je­sus teach and had been sub­se­quently in­structed in the gospel of the king­dom by Pe­ter and the other apos­tles. Je­sus talked with Mata­dor­mus con­cern­ing the re­quire­ments of or­di­na­tion and re­quested that he de­fer de­ci­sion un­til af­ter he had thought more fully about the mat­ter. Early the next morn­ing, as Je­sus was go­ing for a walk, this young man ac­costed him and said: “Mas­ter, I would know from you the as­sur­ances of eter­nal life. See­ing that I have ob­served all the com­mand­ments from my youth, I would like to know what more I must do to gain eter­nal life?” In an­swer to this ques­tion Je­sus said: “If you keep all the com­mand­ments—do not com­mit adul­tery, do not kill, do not steal, do not bear false wit­ness, do not de­fraud, honor your par­ents—you do well, but sal­va­tion is the re­ward of faith, not merely of works. Do you be­lieve this gospel of the king­dom?” And Mata­dor­mus an­swered: “Yes, Mas­ter, I do be­lieve ev­ery­thing you and your apos­tles have taught me.” And Je­sus said, “Then are you in­deed my dis­ci­ple and a child of the king­dom.”

• attitude toward Jesus › 14 followers of Jesus were on

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

• convened on Sabbath despite rule
• trial of Jesus wholly contrary to Jewish laws

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.

• attitude toward Jesus › excommunicated › followers of Jesus

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.”

• convened on Sabbath despite rule

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.”

• attitude toward Jesus › excommunicated › followers of Jesus

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.

• attitude toward Jesus › excommunicated › followers of Jesus

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

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

• Sanhedrin spies › 6 appointed to follow Jesus; 3 confessed faith in Jesus

165:2.12On the mor­row about half of these Jew­ish teach­ers pro­fessed be­lief in Je­sus, and the other half in dis­may re­turned to Je­ru­sa­lem and their homes.

• Jesus’ attitude toward the Sanhedrin › denounced

166:1.4When the Mas­ter had thus spo­ken, they cast their eyes upon the ta­ble and re­mained silent. And since no one spoke, Je­sus con­tin­ued: “Many of you Phar­isees are here with me as friends, some are even my dis­ci­ples, but the ma­jor­ity of the Phar­isees are per­sis­tent in their re­fusal to see the light and ac­knowl­edge the truth, even when the work of the gospel is brought be­fore them in great power. How care­fully you cleanse the out­side of the cups and the plat­ters while the spir­i­tual-food ves­sels are filthy and pol­luted! You make sure to pre­sent a pi­ous and holy ap­pear­ance to the peo­ple, but your in­ner souls are filled with self-righ­teous­ness, cov­etous­ness, ex­tor­tion, and all man­ner of spir­i­tual wicked­ness. Your lead­ers even dare to plot and plan the mur­der of the Son of Man. Do not you fool­ish men un­der­stand that the God of heaven looks at the in­ner mo­tives of the soul as well as on your outer pre­tenses and your pi­ous pro­fes­sions? Think not that the giv­ing of alms and the pay­ing of tithes will cleanse you from un­righ­teous­ness and en­able you to stand clean in the pres­ence of the Judge of all men. Woe upon you Phar­isees who have per­sisted in re­ject­ing the light of life! You are metic­u­lous in tithing and os­ten­ta­tious in alms­giv­ing, but you know­ingly spurn the vis­i­ta­tion of God and re­ject the rev­e­la­tion of his love. Though it is all right for you to give at­ten­tion to these mi­nor du­ties, you should not have left these weight­ier re­quire­ments un­done. Woe upon all who shun jus­tice, spurn mercy, and re­ject truth! Woe upon all those who de­spise the rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther while they seek the chief seats in the syn­a­gogue and crave flat­ter­ing salu­ta­tions in the mar­ket places!”

166:1.5When Je­sus would have risen to de­part, one of the lawyers who was at the ta­ble, ad­dress­ing him, said: “But, Mas­ter, in some of your state­ments you re­proach us also. Is there noth­ing good in the scribes, the Phar­isees, or the lawyers?” And Je­sus, stand­ing, replied to the lawyer: “You, like the Phar­isees, de­light in the first places at the feasts and in wear­ing long robes while you put heavy bur­dens, griev­ous to be borne, on men’s shoul­ders. And when the souls of men stag­ger un­der these heavy bur­dens, you will not so much as lift with one of your fin­gers. Woe upon you who take your great­est de­light in build­ing tombs for the proph­ets your fa­thers killed! And that you con­sent to what your fa­thers did is made man­i­fest when you now plan to kill those who come in this day do­ing what the proph­ets did in their day—pro­claim­ing the righ­teous­ness of God and re­veal­ing the mercy of the heav­enly Fa­ther. But of all the gen­er­a­tions that are past, the blood of the proph­ets and the apos­tles shall be re­quired of this per­verse and self-righ­teous gen­er­a­tion. Woe upon all of you lawyers who have taken away the key of knowl­edge from the com­mon peo­ple! You your­selves refuse to en­ter into the way of truth, and at the same time you would hin­der all oth­ers who seek to en­ter therein. But you can­not thus shut up the doors of the king­dom of heaven; these we have opened to all who have the faith to en­ter, and these por­tals of mercy shall not be closed by the prej­u­dice and ar­ro­gance of false teach­ers and un­true shep­herds who are like whited sepul­chres which, while out­wardly they ap­pear beau­ti­ful, are in­wardly full of dead men’s bones and all man­ner of spir­i­tual un­clean­ness.”

168:3.1Even though the tes­ti­mony of this man raised from the dead did much to con­sol­i­date the faith of the mass of be­liev­ers in the gospel of the king­dom, it had lit­tle or no in­flu­ence on the at­ti­tude of the re­li­gious lead­ers and rulers at Je­ru­sa­lem ex­cept to has­ten their de­ci­sion to de­stroy Je­sus and stop his work.

168:3.2At one o’clock the next day, Fri­day, the San­hedrin met to de­lib­er­ate fur­ther on the ques­tion, “What shall we do with Je­sus of Naz­a­reth?” Af­ter more than two hours of dis­cus­sion and ac­ri­mo­nious de­bate, a cer­tain Phar­isee pre­sented a res­o­lu­tion call­ing for Je­sus’ im­me­di­ate death, pro­claim­ing that he was a men­ace to all Is­rael and for­mally com­mit­ting the San­hedrin to the de­ci­sion of death, with­out trial and in de­fi­ance of all prece­dent.

• attitude toward Jesus › 14 members resigned on motion to destroy Jesus; others ejected

168:3.3Time and again had this au­gust body of Jew­ish lead­ers de­creed that Je­sus be ap­pre­hended and brought to trial on charges of blas­phemy and nu­mer­ous other ac­cu­sa­tions of flout­ing the Jew­ish sa­cred law. They had once be­fore even gone so far as to de­clare he should die, but this was the first time the San­hedrin had gone on rec­ord as de­sir­ing to de­cree his death in ad­vance of a trial. But this res­o­lu­tion did not come to a vote since four­teen mem­bers of the San­hedrin re­signed in a body when such an un­heard-of ac­tion was pro­posed. While these res­ig­na­tions were not for­mally acted upon for al­most two weeks, this group of four­teen with­drew from the San­hedrin on that day, never again to sit in the coun­cil. When these res­ig­na­tions were sub­se­quently acted upon, five other mem­bers were thrown out be­cause their as­so­ciates be­lieved they en­ter­tained friendly feel­ings to­ward Je­sus. With the ejec­tion of these nine­teen men the San­hedrin was in a po­si­tion to try and to con­demn Je­sus with a sol­i­dar­ity bor­der­ing on una­nim­ity.

• met › with Lazarus

168:3.4The fol­low­ing week Laz­a­rus and his sis­ters were sum­moned to ap­pear be­fore the San­hedrin. When their tes­ti­mony had been heard, no doubt could be en­ter­tained that Laz­a­rus had been raised from the dead. Though the trans­ac­tions of the San­hedrin vir­tu­ally ad­mit­ted the res­ur­rec­tion of Laz­a­rus, the rec­ord car­ried a res­o­lu­tion at­tribut­ing this and all other won­ders worked by Je­sus to the power of the prince of dev­ils, with whom Je­sus was de­clared to be in league.

168:3.5No mat­ter what the source of his won­der-work­ing power, these Jew­ish lead­ers were per­suaded that, if he were not im­me­di­ately stopped, very soon all the com­mon peo­ple would be­lieve in him; and fur­ther, that se­ri­ous com­pli­ca­tions with the Ro­man au­thor­i­ties would arise since so many of his be­liev­ers re­garded him as the Mes­siah, Is­rael’s de­liv­erer.

168:3.6It was at this same meet­ing of the San­hedrin that Cai­a­phas the high priest first gave ex­pres­sion to that old Jew­ish adage, which he so many times re­peated: “It is bet­ter that one man die, than that the com­mu­nity per­ish.”

168:3.7Al­though Je­sus had re­ceived warn­ing of the do­ings of the San­hedrin on this dark Fri­day af­ter­noon, he was not in the least per­turbed and con­tin­ued rest­ing over the Sab­bath with friends in Beth­page, a ham­let near Beth­any. Early Sun­day morn­ing Je­sus and the apos­tles as­sem­bled, by pre­ar­range­ment, at the home of Laz­a­rus, and tak­ing leave of the Beth­any fam­ily, they started on their jour­ney back to the Pella en­camp­ment.

• attitude toward Jesus › accused Jesus › of blasphemy

169:0.52. He is a blas­phe­mer; he talks about God as be­ing his Fa­ther and thinks he is equal with God.

• attitude toward Jesus › accused Jesus › of Sabbath breaking

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

• attitude toward Jesus › accused Jesus › of being in leagues with devils

169:0.74. He is in league with dev­ils. He works won­ders and does seem­ing mir­a­cles by the power of Beelze­bub, the prince of dev­ils.

• attitude toward Jesus › hostile; condemned Jesus to death; called upon all Jewry to deliver Jesus

171:3.4The apos­tles un­der­stood that Je­sus was go­ing to Je­ru­sa­lem for the Pass­over. They knew that the San­hedrin had broad­cast a mes­sage to all Is­rael that he had been con­demned to die and di­rect­ing that any­one know­ing his where­abouts should in­form the San­hedrin; and yet, de­spite all this, they were not so alarmed as they had been when he had an­nounced to them in Phil­a­del­phia that he was go­ing to Beth­any to see Laz­a­rus. This change of at­ti­tude from that of in­tense fear to a state of hushed ex­pectancy was mostly be­cause of Laz­a­rus’s res­ur­rec­tion. They had reached the con­clu­sion that Je­sus might, in an emer­gency, as­sert his di­vine power and put to shame his en­e­mies. This hope, cou­pled with their more pro­found and ma­ture faith in the spir­i­tual su­prem­acy of their Mas­ter, ac­counted for the out­ward cour­age dis­played by his im­me­di­ate fol­low­ers, who now made ready to fol­low him into Je­ru­sa­lem in the very face of the open dec­la­ra­tion of the San­hedrin that he must die.

• attitude toward Jesus › hostile; condemned Jesus to death; called upon all Jewry to deliver Jesus

172:0.3The chief priests were in­formed that Je­sus lodged at Beth­any, but they thought best not to at­tempt to seize him among his friends; they de­cided to await his com­ing on into Je­ru­sa­lem. Je­sus knew about all this, but he was ma­jes­ti­cally calm; his friends had never seen him more com­posed and con­ge­nial; even the apos­tles were as­tounded that he should be so un­con­cerned when the San­hedrin had called upon all Jewry to de­liver him into their hands. While the Mas­ter slept that night, the apos­tles watched over him by twos, and many of them were girded with swords. Early the next morn­ing they were awak­ened by hun­dreds of pil­grims who came out from Je­ru­sa­lem, even on the Sab­bath day, to see Je­sus and Laz­a­rus, whom he had raised from the dead.

• attitude toward Jesus › unanimously voted death penalty on Jesus and Lazarus

172:1.9When the chief priests heard of this din­ner in Beth­any for Je­sus and Laz­a­rus, they be­gan to take coun­sel among them­selves as to what should be done with Laz­a­rus. And pres­ently they de­cided that Laz­a­rus must also die. They rightly con­cluded that it would be use­less to put Je­sus to death if they per­mit­ted Laz­a­rus, whom he had raised from the dead, to live.

• attitude toward Jesus › hostile; condemned Jesus to death; called upon all Jewry to deliver Jesus

172:3.2All morn­ing Je­sus had thought about his en­try into Je­ru­sa­lem. Here­to­fore he had al­ways en­deav­ored to sup­press all pub­lic ac­claim of him as the Mes­siah, but it was dif­fer­ent now; he was near­ing the end of his ca­reer in the flesh, his death had been de­creed by the San­hedrin, and no harm could come from al­low­ing his dis­ci­ples to give free ex­pres­sion to their feel­ings, just as might oc­cur if he elected to make a for­mal and pub­lic en­try into the city.

• character › feared the multitudes

172:3.12Along with the mul­ti­tude which poured out to wel­come the Mas­ter, there came also many of the Phar­isees and his other en­e­mies. They were so much per­turbed by this sud­den and un­ex­pected out­burst of pop­u­lar ac­claim that they feared to ar­rest him lest such ac­tion pre­cip­i­tate an open re­volt of the pop­u­lace. They greatly feared the at­ti­tude of the large num­bers of vis­i­tors, who had heard much of Je­sus, and who, many of them, be­lieved in him.

172:3.13As they neared Je­ru­sa­lem, the crowd be­came more demon­stra­tive, so much so that some of the Phar­isees made their way up along­side Je­sus and said: “Teacher, you should re­buke your dis­ci­ples and ex­hort them to be­have more seemly.” Je­sus an­swered: “It is only fit­ting that these chil­dren should wel­come the Son of Peace, whom the chief priests have re­jected. It would be use­less to stop them lest in their stead these stones by the road­side cry out.”

172:3.14The Phar­isees has­tened on ahead of the pro­ces­sion to re­join the San­hedrin, which was then in ses­sion at the tem­ple, and they re­ported to their as­so­ciates: “Be­hold, all that we do is of no avail; we are con­founded by this Galilean. The peo­ple have gone mad over him; if we do not stop these ig­no­rant ones, all the world will go af­ter him.”

• character › feared the multitudes

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

• profits from sale of sacrificial animals

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

• met › in chamber of hewn stone

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

• character › feared the multitudes

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

• character › feared the multitudes

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

• attitude toward Jesus › hostile; condemned Jesus to death; called upon all Jewry to deliver Jesus

173:2.2At the noon ses­sion of the San­hedrin it was unan­i­mously agreed that Je­sus must be speed­ily de­stroyed, inas­much as no friend of the Mas­ter at­tended this meet­ing. But they could not agree as to when and how he should be taken into cus­tody. Fi­nally they agreed upon ap­point­ing five groups to go out among the peo­ple and seek to en­tan­gle him in his teach­ing or oth­er­wise to dis­credit him in the sight of those who lis­tened to his in­struc­tion. Ac­cord­ingly, about two o’clock, when Je­sus had just be­gun his dis­course on “The Lib­erty of Son­ship,” a group of these el­ders of Is­rael made their way up near Je­sus and, in­ter­rupt­ing him in the cus­tom­ary man­ner, asked this ques­tion: “By what au­thor­ity do you do these things? Who gave you this au­thor­ity?”

• authority of Sanhedrin › money changers licensed by
• authority of Sanhedrin › ordained all rabbis

173:2.3It was al­to­gether proper that the tem­ple rulers and the of­fi­cers of the Jew­ish San­hedrin should ask this ques­tion of any­one who pre­sumed to teach and per­form in the ex­traor­di­nary man­ner which had been char­ac­ter­is­tic of Je­sus, es­pe­cially as con­cerned his re­cent con­duct in clear­ing the tem­ple of all com­merce. These traders and money-chang­ers all op­er­ated by di­rect li­cense from the high­est rulers, and a per­cent­age of their gains was sup­posed to go di­rectly into the tem­ple trea­sury. Do not for­get that au­thor­ity was the watch­word of all Jewry. The proph­ets were al­ways stir­ring up trou­ble be­cause they so boldly pre­sumed to teach with­out au­thor­ity, with­out hav­ing been duly in­structed in the rab­binic academies and sub­se­quently reg­u­larly or­dained by the San­hedrin. Lack of this au­thor­ity in pre­ten­tious pub­lic teach­ing was looked upon as in­di­cat­ing ei­ther ig­no­rant pre­sump­tion or open re­bel­lion. At this time only the San­hedrin could or­dain an el­der or teacher, and such a cer­e­mony had to take place in the pres­ence of at least three per­sons who had pre­vi­ously been so or­dained. Such an or­di­na­tion con­ferred the ti­tle of “rabbi” upon the teacher and also qual­i­fied him to act as a judge, “bind­ing and loos­ing such mat­ters as might be brought to him for ad­ju­di­ca­tion.”

• attitude toward Jesus › asked Jesus whether John was from heaven

173:2.4The rulers of the tem­ple came be­fore Je­sus at this af­ter­noon hour chal­leng­ing not only his teach­ing but his acts. Je­sus well knew that these very men had long pub­licly taught that his au­thor­ity for teach­ing was Sa­tanic, and that all his mighty works had been wrought by the power of the prince of dev­ils. There­fore did the Mas­ter be­gin his an­swer to their ques­tion by ask­ing them a counter-ques­tion. Said Je­sus: “I would also like to ask you one ques­tion which, if you will an­swer me, I like­wise will tell you by what au­thor­ity I do these works. The bap­tism of John, whence was it? Did John get his au­thor­ity from heaven or from men?”

173:2.5And when his ques­tion­ers heard this, they with­drew to one side to take coun­sel among them­selves as to what an­swer they might give. They had thought to em­bar­rass Je­sus be­fore the mul­ti­tude, but now they found them­selves much con­fused be­fore all who were as­sem­bled at that time in the tem­ple court. And their dis­com­fi­ture was all the more ap­par­ent when they re­turned to Je­sus, say­ing: “Con­cern­ing the bap­tism of John, we can­not an­swer; we do not know.” And they so an­swered the Mas­ter be­cause they had rea­soned among them­selves: If we shall say from heaven, then will he say, Why did you not be­lieve him, and per­chance will add that he re­ceived his au­thor­ity from John; and if we shall say from men, then might the mul­ti­tude turn upon us, for most of them hold that John was a prophet; and so they were com­pelled to come be­fore Je­sus and the peo­ple con­fess­ing that they, the re­li­gious teach­ers and lead­ers of Is­rael, could not (or would not) ex­press an opin­ion about John’s mis­sion. And when they had spo­ken, Je­sus, look­ing down upon them, said, “Nei­ther will I tell you by what au­thor­ity I do these things.”

173:2.6Je­sus never in­tended to ap­peal to John for his au­thor­ity; John had never been or­dained by the San­hedrin. Je­sus’ au­thor­ity was in him­self and in his Fa­ther’s eter­nal su­prem­acy.

173:2.7In em­ploy­ing this method of deal­ing with his ad­ver­saries, Je­sus did not mean to dodge the ques­tion. At first it may seem that he was guilty of a mas­terly eva­sion, but it was not so. Je­sus was never dis­posed to take un­fair ad­van­tage of even his en­e­mies. In this ap­par­ent eva­sion he re­ally sup­plied all his hear­ers with the an­swer to the Phar­isees’ ques­tion as to the au­thor­ity be­hind his mis­sion. They had as­serted that he per­formed by au­thor­ity of the prince of dev­ils. Je­sus had re­peat­edly as­serted that all his teach­ing and works were by the power and au­thor­ity of his Fa­ther in heaven. This the Jew­ish lead­ers re­fused to ac­cept and were seek­ing to cor­ner him into ad­mit­ting that he was an ir­reg­u­lar teacher since he had never been sanc­tioned by the San­hedrin. In an­swer­ing them as he did, while not claim­ing au­thor­ity from John, he so sat­is­fied the peo­ple with the in­fer­ence that the ef­fort of his en­e­mies to en­snare him was ef­fec­tively turned upon them­selves and was much to their dis­credit in the eyes of all pres­ent.

173:2.8And it was this ge­nius of the Mas­ter for deal­ing with his ad­ver­saries that made them so afraid of him. They at­tempted no more ques­tions that day; they re­tired to take fur­ther coun­sel among them­selves. But the peo­ple were not slow to dis­cern the dis­hon­esty and in­sin­cer­ity in these ques­tions asked by the Jew­ish rulers. Even the com­mon folk could not fail to dis­tin­guish be­tween the moral majesty of the Mas­ter and the de­sign­ing hypocrisy of his en­e­mies. But the cleans­ing of the tem­ple had brought the Sad­ducees over to the side of the Phar­isees in per­fect­ing the plan to de­stroy Je­sus. And the Sad­ducees now rep­re­sented a ma­jor­ity of the San­hedrin.

• character › feared the multitudes

173:4.5When the Phar­isees heard these words, they un­der­stood that Je­sus re­ferred to them­selves and the other Jew­ish lead­ers. They greatly de­sired to lay hold on him then and there, but they feared the mul­ti­tude. How­ever, they were so an­gered by the Mas­ter’s words that they with­drew and held fur­ther coun­sel among them­selves as to how they might bring about his death. And that night both the Sad­ducees and the Phar­isees joined hands in the plan to en­trap him the next day.

• character › feared the multitudes

174:2.1On Mon­day evening there had been held a coun­cil be­tween the San­hedrin and some fifty ad­di­tional lead­ers se­lected from among the scribes, Phar­isees, and the Sad­ducees. It was the con­sen­sus of this meet­ing that it would be dan­ger­ous to ar­rest Je­sus in pub­lic be­cause of his hold upon the af­fec­tions of the com­mon peo­ple. It was also the opin­ion of the ma­jor­ity that a de­ter­mined ef­fort should be made to dis­credit him in the eyes of the mul­ti­tude be­fore he should be ar­rested and brought to trial. Ac­cord­ingly, sev­eral groups of learned men were des­ig­nated to be on hand the next morn­ing in the tem­ple to un­der­take to en­trap him with dif­fi­cult ques­tions and oth­er­wise to seek to em­bar­rass him be­fore the peo­ple. At last, the Phar­isees, Sad­ducees, and even the Hero­di­ans were all united in this ef­fort to dis­credit Je­sus in the eyes of the Pass­over mul­ti­tudes.

174:2.2Tues­day morn­ing, when Je­sus ar­rived in the tem­ple court and be­gan to teach, he had ut­tered but few words when a group of the younger stu­dents from the academies, who had been re­hearsed for this pur­pose, came for­ward and by their spokesman ad­dressed Je­sus: “Mas­ter, we know you are a righ­teous teacher, and we know that you pro­claim the ways of truth, and that you serve only God, for you fear no man, and that you are no re­specter of per­sons. We are only stu­dents, and we would know the truth about a mat­ter which trou­bles us; our dif­fi­culty is this: Is it law­ful for us to give trib­ute to Cae­sar? Shall we give or shall we not give?” Je­sus, per­ceiv­ing their hypocrisy and crafti­ness, said to them: “Why do you thus come to tempt me? Show me the trib­ute money, and I will an­swer you.” And when they handed him a denar­ius, he looked at it and said, “Whose im­age and super­scrip­tion does this coin bear?” And when they an­swered him, “Cae­sar’s,” Je­sus said, “Ren­der to Cae­sar the things that are Cae­sar’s and ren­der to God the things that are God’s.”

174:2.3When he had thus an­swered these young scribes and their Hero­dian ac­com­plices, they with­drew from his pres­ence, and the peo­ple, even the Sad­ducees, en­joyed their dis­com­fi­ture. Even the youths who had en­deav­ored to en­trap him mar­veled greatly at the un­ex­pected sagac­ity of the Mas­ter’s an­swer.

174:2.4The pre­vi­ous day the rulers had sought to trip him be­fore the mul­ti­tude on mat­ters of ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal au­thor­ity, and hav­ing failed, they now sought to in­volve him in a dam­ag­ing dis­cus­sion of civil au­thor­ity. Both Pi­late and Herod were in Je­ru­sa­lem at this time, and Je­sus’ en­e­mies con­jec­tured that, if he would dare to ad­vise against the pay­ment of trib­ute to Cae­sar, they could go at once be­fore the Ro­man au­thor­i­ties and charge him with sedi­tion. On the other hand, if he should ad­vise the pay­ment of trib­ute in so many words, they rightly cal­cu­lated that such a pro­nounce­ment would greatly wound the na­tional pride of his Jew­ish hear­ers, thereby alien­at­ing the good will and af­fec­tion of the mul­ti­tude.

174:2.5In all this the en­e­mies of Je­sus were de­feated since it was a well-known rul­ing of the San­hedrin, made for the guid­ance of the Jews dis­persed among the gen­tile na­tions, that the “right of coinage car­ried with it the right to levy taxes.” In this man­ner Je­sus avoided their trap. To have an­swered “No” to their ques­tion would have been equiv­a­lent to in­cit­ing re­bel­lion; to have an­swered “Yes” would have shocked the deep-rooted na­tion­al­ist sen­ti­ments of that day. The Mas­ter did not evade the ques­tion; he merely em­ployed the wis­dom of mak­ing a dou­ble re­ply. Je­sus was never eva­sive, but he was al­ways wise in his deal­ings with those who sought to ha­rass and de­stroy him.

174:3.1Be­fore Je­sus could get started with his teach­ing, an­other group came for­ward to ques­tion him, this time a com­pany of the learned and crafty Sad­ducees. Their spokesman, draw­ing near to him, said: “Mas­ter, Moses said that if a mar­ried man should die, leav­ing no chil­dren, his brother should take the wife and raise up seed for the de­ceased brother. Now there oc­curred a case where a cer­tain man who had six broth­ers died child­less; his next brother took his wife but also soon died, leav­ing no chil­dren. Like­wise did the sec­ond brother take the wife, but he also died leav­ing no off­spring. And so on un­til all six of the broth­ers had had her, and all six of them passed on with­out leav­ing chil­dren. And then, af­ter them all, the woman her­self died. Now, what we would like to ask you is this: In the res­ur­rec­tion whose wife will she be since all seven of these broth­ers had her?”

174:3.2Je­sus knew, and so did the peo­ple, that these Sad­ducees were not sin­cere in ask­ing this ques­tion be­cause it was not likely that such a case would re­ally oc­cur; and be­sides, this prac­tice of the broth­ers of a dead man seek­ing to beget chil­dren for him was prac­ti­cally a dead let­ter at this time among the Jews. Nev­er­the­less, Je­sus con­de­scended to re­ply to their mis­chievous ques­tion. He said: “You all do err in ask­ing such ques­tions be­cause you know nei­ther the Scrip­tures nor the liv­ing power of God. You know that the sons of this world can marry and are given in mar­riage, but you do not seem to un­der­stand that they who are ac­counted wor­thy to at­tain the worlds to come, through the res­ur­rec­tion of the righ­teous, nei­ther marry nor are given in mar­riage. Those who ex­pe­ri­ence the res­ur­rec­tion from the dead are more like the an­gels of heaven, and they never die. These res­ur­rected ones are eter­nally the sons of God; they are the chil­dren of light res­ur­rected into the prog­ress of eter­nal life. And even your Fa­ther Moses un­der­stood this, for, in con­nec­tion with his ex­pe­ri­ences at the burn­ing bush, he heard the Fa­ther say, ‘I am the God of Abra­ham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Ja­cob.’ And so, along with Moses, do I de­clare that my Fa­ther is not the God of the dead but of the liv­ing. In him you all do live, re­pro­duce, and pos­sess your mor­tal ex­is­tence.”

174:3.3When Je­sus had fin­ished an­swer­ing these ques­tions, the Sad­ducees with­drew, and some of the Phar­isees so far for­got them­selves as to ex­claim, “True, true, Mas­ter, you have well an­swered these un­be­liev­ing Sad­ducees.” The Sad­ducees dared not ask him any more ques­tions, and the com­mon peo­ple mar­veled at the wis­dom of his teach­ing.

174:3.4Je­sus ap­pealed only to Moses in his en­counter with the Sad­ducees be­cause this re­li­gio-po­lit­i­cal sect ac­knowl­edged the va­lid­ity of only the five so-called Books of Moses; they did not al­low that the teach­ings of the proph­ets were ad­mis­si­ble as a ba­sis of doc­tri­nal dog­mas. The Mas­ter in his an­swer, though pos­i­tively af­firm­ing the fact of the sur­vival of mor­tal crea­tures by the tech­nique of the res­ur­rec­tion, did not in any sense speak ap­prov­ingly of the Phar­i­saic be­liefs in the res­ur­rec­tion of the lit­eral hu­man body. The point Je­sus wished to em­pha­size was: That the Fa­ther had said, “I am the God of Abra­ham, Isaac, and Ja­cob,” not I was their God.

174:3.5The Sad­ducees had thought to sub­ject Je­sus to the with­er­ing in­flu­ence of ridicule, know­ing full well that per­se­cu­tion in pub­lic would most cer­tainly cre­ate fur­ther sym­pa­thy for him in the minds of the mul­ti­tude.

174:4.1An­other group of Sad­ducees had been in­structed to ask Je­sus en­tan­gling ques­tions about an­gels, but when they be­held the fate of their com­rades who had sought to en­trap him with ques­tions con­cern­ing the res­ur­rec­tion, they very wisely de­cided to hold their peace; they re­tired with­out ask­ing a ques­tion. It was the pre­ar­ranged plan of the con­fed­er­ated Phar­isees, scribes, Sad­ducees, and Hero­di­ans to fill up the en­tire day with these en­tan­gling ques­tions, hop­ing thereby to dis­credit Je­sus be­fore the peo­ple and at the same time ef­fec­tively to pre­vent his hav­ing any time for the procla­ma­tion of his dis­turb­ing teach­ings.

174:4.2Then came for­ward one of the groups of the Phar­isees to ask ha­rass­ing ques­tions, and the spokesman, sig­nal­ing to Je­sus, said: “Mas­ter, I am a lawyer, and I would like to ask you which, in your opin­ion, is the great­est com­mand­ment?” Je­sus an­swered: “There is but one com­mand­ment, and that one is the great­est of all, and that com­mand­ment is: ‘Hear O Is­rael, the Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.’ This is the first and great com­mand­ment. And the sec­ond com­mand­ment is like this first; in­deed, it springs di­rectly there­from, and it is: ‘You shall love your neigh­bor as your­self.’ There is no other com­mand­ment greater than these; on these two com­mand­ments hang all the law and the proph­ets.”

174:4.3When the lawyer per­ceived that Je­sus had an­swered not only in ac­cor­dance with the high­est con­cept of Jew­ish re­li­gion, but that he had also an­swered wisely in the sight of the as­sem­bled mul­ti­tude, he thought it the bet­ter part of valor openly to com­mend the Mas­ter’s re­ply. Ac­cord­ingly, he said: “Of a truth, Mas­ter, you have well said that God is one and there is none be­side him; and that to love him with all the heart, un­der­stand­ing, and strength, and also to love one’s neigh­bor as one’s self, is the first and great com­mand­ment; and we are agreed that this great com­mand­ment is much more to be re­garded than all the burnt of­fer­ings and sac­ri­fices.” When the lawyer an­swered thus dis­creetly, Je­sus looked down upon him and said, “My friend, I per­ceive that you are not far from the king­dom of God.”

174:4.4Je­sus spoke the truth when he re­ferred to this lawyer as be­ing “not far from the king­dom,” for that very night he went out to the Mas­ter’s camp near Geth­sem­ane, pro­fessed faith in the gospel of the king­dom, and was bap­tized by Josiah, one of the dis­ci­ples of Ab­ner.

174:4.5Two or three other groups of the scribes and Phar­isees were pres­ent and had in­tended to ask ques­tions, but they were ei­ther dis­armed by Je­sus’ an­swer to the lawyer, or they were de­terred by the dis­com­fi­ture of all who had un­der­taken to en­snare him. Af­ter this no man dared to ask him an­other ques­tion in pub­lic.

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.

174:4.7A short time back the Phar­isees had en­joyed the man­ner in which the Sad­ducees had been si­lenced by the Mas­ter; now the Sad­ducees were de­lighted by the fail­ure of the Phar­isees; but such ri­valry was only mo­men­tary; they speed­ily for­got their time-hon­ored dif­fer­ences in the united ef­fort to stop Je­sus’ teach­ings and do­ings. But through­out all of these ex­pe­ri­ences the com­mon peo­ple heard him gladly.

• attitude toward Jesus › 14 followers of Jesus were on

174:5.3“My Fa­ther sent me to this world to re­veal his lov­ing-kind­ness to the chil­dren of men, but those to whom I first came have re­fused to re­ceive me. True, in­deed, many of you have be­lieved my gospel for your­selves, but the chil­dren of Abra­ham and their lead­ers are about to re­ject me, and in so do­ing they will re­ject Him who sent me. I have freely pro­claimed the gospel of sal­va­tion to this peo­ple; I have told them of son­ship with joy, lib­erty, and life more abun­dant in the spirit. My Fa­ther has done many won­der­ful works among these fear-rid­den sons of men. But truly did the Prophet Isa­iah re­fer to this peo­ple when he wrote: ‘Lord, who has be­lieved our teach­ings? And to whom has the Lord been re­vealed?’ Truly have the lead­ers of my peo­ple de­lib­er­ately blinded their eyes that they see not, and hard­ened their hearts lest they be­lieve and be saved. All these years have I sought to heal them of their un­be­lief that they might be re­cip­i­ents of the Fa­ther’s eter­nal sal­va­tion. I know that not all have failed me; some of you have in­deed be­lieved my mes­sage. In this room now are a full score of men who were once mem­bers of the San­hedrin, or who were high in the coun­cils of the na­tion, al­beit even some of you still shrink from open con­fes­sion of the truth lest they cast you out of the syn­a­gogue. Some of you are tempted to love the glory of men more than the glory of God. But I am con­strained to show for­bear­ance since I fear for the safety and loy­alty of even some of those who have been so long near me, and who have lived so close by my side.

175:1.1“This long time have I been with you, go­ing up and down in the land pro­claim­ing the Fa­ther’s love for the chil­dren of men, and many have seen the light and, by faith, have en­tered into the king­dom of heaven. In con­nec­tion with this teach­ing and preach­ing the Fa­ther has done many won­der­ful works, even to the res­ur­rec­tion of the dead. Many sick and af­flicted have been made whole be­cause they be­lieved; but all of this procla­ma­tion of truth and heal­ing of dis­ease has not opened the eyes of those who refuse to see light, those who are de­ter­mined to re­ject this gospel of the king­dom.

175:1.2“In ev­ery man­ner con­sis­tent with do­ing my Fa­ther’s will, I and my apos­tles have done our ut­most to live in peace with our breth­ren, to con­form with the rea­son­able re­quire­ments of the laws of Moses and the tra­di­tions of Is­rael. We have per­sis­tently sought peace, but the lead­ers of Is­rael will not have it. By re­ject­ing the truth of God and the light of heaven, they are align­ing them­selves on the side of er­ror and dark­ness. There can­not be peace be­tween light and dark­ness, be­tween life and death, be­tween truth and er­ror.

175:1.3“Many of you have dared to be­lieve my teach­ings and have al­ready en­tered into the joy and lib­erty of the con­scious­ness of son­ship with God. And you will bear me wit­ness that I have of­fered this same son­ship with God to all the Jew­ish na­tion, even to these very men who now seek my de­struc­tion. And even now would my Fa­ther re­ceive these blinded teach­ers and these hyp­o­crit­i­cal lead­ers if they would only turn to him and ac­cept his mercy. Even now it is not too late for this peo­ple to re­ceive the word of heaven and to wel­come the Son of Man.

175:1.4“My Fa­ther has long dealt in mercy with this peo­ple. Gen­er­a­tion af­ter gen­er­a­tion have we sent our proph­ets to teach and warn them, and gen­er­a­tion af­ter gen­er­a­tion have they killed these heaven-sent teach­ers. And now do your will­ful high priests and stub­born rulers go right on do­ing this same thing. As Herod brought about the death of John, you like­wise now make ready to de­stroy the Son of Man.

175:1.5“As long as there is a chance that the Jews will turn to my Fa­ther and seek sal­va­tion, the God of Abra­ham, Isaac, and Ja­cob will keep his hands of mercy out­stretched to­ward you; but when you have once filled up your cup of im­pen­i­tence, and when once you have fi­nally re­jected my Fa­ther’s mercy, this na­tion will be left to its own coun­sels, and it shall speed­ily come to an in­glo­ri­ous end. This peo­ple was called to be­come the light of the world, to show forth the spir­i­tual glory of a God-know­ing race, but you have so far de­parted from the ful­fill­ment of your di­vine priv­i­leges that your lead­ers are about to com­mit the su­preme folly of all the ages in that they are on the verge of fi­nally re­ject­ing the gift of God to all men and for all ages—the rev­e­la­tion of the love of the Fa­ther in heaven for all his crea­tures on earth.

175:1.6“And when you do once re­ject this rev­e­la­tion of God to man, the king­dom of heaven shall be given to other peo­ples, to those who will re­ceive it with joy and glad­ness. In the name of the Fa­ther who sent me, I solemnly warn you that you are about to lose your po­si­tion in the world as the stan­dard-bear­ers of eter­nal truth and the cus­to­di­ans of the di­vine law. I am just now of­fer­ing you your last chance to come for­ward and re­pent, to sig­nify your in­ten­tion to seek God with all your hearts and to en­ter, like lit­tle chil­dren and by sin­cere faith, into the se­cu­rity and sal­va­tion of the king­dom of heaven.

175:1.7“My Fa­ther has long worked for your sal­va­tion, and I came down to live among you and per­son­ally show you the way. Many of both the Jews and the Samar­i­tans, and even the gen­tiles, have be­lieved the gospel of the king­dom, but those who should be first to come for­ward and ac­cept the light of heaven have stead­fastly re­fused to be­lieve the rev­e­la­tion of the truth of God—God re­vealed in man and man up­lifted to God.

175:1.8“This af­ter­noon my apos­tles stand here be­fore you in si­lence, but you shall soon hear their voices ring­ing out with the call to sal­va­tion and with the urge to unite with the heav­enly king­dom as the sons of the liv­ing God. And now I call to wit­ness these, my dis­ci­ples and be­liev­ers in the gospel of the king­dom, as well as the un­seen mes­sen­gers by their sides, that I have once more of­fered Is­rael and her rulers de­liv­er­ance and sal­va­tion. But you all be­hold how the Fa­ther’s mercy is slighted and how the mes­sen­gers of truth are re­jected. Nev­er­the­less, I ad­mon­ish you that these scribes and Phar­isees still sit in Moses’ seat, and there­fore, un­til the Most Highs who rule in the king­doms of men shall fi­nally over­throw this na­tion and de­stroy the place of these rulers, I bid you co-op­er­ate with these el­ders in Is­rael. You are not re­quired to unite with them in their plans to de­stroy the Son of Man, but in ev­ery­thing re­lated to the peace of Is­rael you are to be sub­ject to them. In all these mat­ters do what­so­ever they bid you and ob­serve the es­sen­tials of the law but do not pat­tern af­ter their evil works. Re­mem­ber, this is the sin of these rulers: They say that which is good, but they do it not. You well know how these lead­ers bind heavy bur­dens on your shoul­ders, bur­dens griev­ous to bear, and that they will not lift as much as one fin­ger to help you bear these weighty bur­dens. They have op­pressed you with cer­e­monies and en­slaved you by tra­di­tions.

175:1.9“Fur­ther­more, these self-cen­tered rulers de­light in do­ing their good works so that they will be seen by men. They make broad their phy­lac­ter­ies and en­large the bor­ders of their of­fi­cial robes. They crave the chief places at the feasts and de­mand the chief seats in the syn­a­gogues. They covet lauda­tory salu­ta­tions in the mar­ket places and de­sire to be called rabbi by all men. And even while they seek all this honor from men, they se­cretly lay hold of wid­ows’ houses and take profit from the ser­vices of the sa­cred tem­ple. For a pre­tense these hyp­ocrites make long prayers in pub­lic and give alms to at­tract the no­tice of their fel­lows.

175:1.10“While you should honor your rulers and rev­er­ence your teach­ers, you should call no man Fa­ther in the spir­i­tual sense, for there is one who is your Fa­ther, even God. Nei­ther should you seek to lord it over your breth­ren in the king­dom. Re­mem­ber, I have taught you that he who would be great­est among you should be­come the server of all. If you pre­sume to ex­alt your­selves be­fore God, you will cer­tainly be hum­bled; but whoso truly hum­bles him­self will surely be ex­alted. Seek in your daily lives, not self-glo­ri­fi­ca­tion, but the glory of God. In­tel­li­gently sub­or­di­nate your own wills to the will of the Fa­ther in heaven.

175:1.11“Mis­take not my words. I bear no mal­ice to­ward these chief priests and rulers who even now seek my de­struc­tion; I have no ill will for these scribes and Phar­isees who re­ject my teach­ings. I know that many of you be­lieve in se­cret, and I know you will openly pro­fess your al­le­giance to the king­dom when my hour comes. But how will your rab­bis jus­tify them­selves since they pro­fess to talk with God and then pre­sume to re­ject and de­stroy him who comes to re­veal the Fa­ther to the worlds?

175:1.12“Woe upon you, scribes and Phar­isees, hyp­ocrites! You would shut the doors of the king­dom of heaven against sin­cere men be­cause they hap­pen to be un­learned in the ways of your teach­ing. You refuse to en­ter the king­dom and at the same time do ev­ery­thing within your power to pre­vent all oth­ers from en­ter­ing. You stand with your backs to the doors of sal­va­tion and fight with all who would en­ter therein.

175:1.13“Woe upon you, scribes and Phar­isees, hyp­ocrites that you are! for you do in­deed en­com­pass land and sea to make one pros­e­lyte, and when you have suc­ceeded, you are not con­tent un­til you have made him two­fold worse than he was as a child of the hea­then.

175:1.14“Woe upon you, chief priests and rulers who lay hold of the prop­erty of the poor and de­mand heavy dues of those who would serve God as they think Moses or­dained! You who refuse to show mercy, can you hope for mercy in the worlds to come?

175:1.15“Woe upon you, false teach­ers, blind guides! What can be ex­pected of a na­tion when the blind lead the blind? They both shall stum­ble into the pit of de­struc­tion.

175:1.16“Woe upon you who dis­sim­u­late when you take an oath! You are trick­sters since you teach that a man may swear by the tem­ple and break his oath, but that whoso swears by the gold in the tem­ple must re­main bound. You are all fools and blind. You are not even con­sis­tent in your dis­hon­esty, for which is the greater, the gold or the tem­ple which has sup­pos­edly sanc­ti­fied the gold? You also teach that, if a man swears by the al­tar, it is noth­ing; but that, if one swears by the gift that is upon the al­tar, then shall he be held as a debtor. Again are you blind to the truth, for which is the greater, the gift or the al­tar which sanc­ti­fies the gift? How can you jus­tify such hypocrisy and dis­hon­esty in the sight of the God of heaven?

175:1.17“Woe upon you, scribes and Phar­isees and all other hyp­ocrites who make sure that they tithe mint, anise, and cumin and at the same time dis­re­gard the weight­ier mat­ters of the law—faith, mercy, and judg­ment! Within rea­son, the one you ought to have done but not to have left the other un­done. You are truly blind guides and dumb teach­ers; you strain out the gnat and swal­low the camel.

175:1.18“Woe upon you, scribes, Phar­isees, and hyp­ocrites! for you are scrupu­lous to cleanse the out­side of the cup and the plat­ter, but within there re­mains the filth of ex­tor­tion, ex­cesses, and de­cep­tion. You are spir­i­tu­ally blind. Do you not rec­og­nize how much bet­ter it would be first to cleanse the in­side of the cup, and then that which spills over would of it­self cleanse the out­side? You wicked repro­bates! you make the out­ward per­for­mances of your re­li­gion to con­form with the let­ter of your in­ter­pre­ta­tion of Moses’ law while your souls are steeped in in­iq­uity and filled with mur­der.

175:1.19“Woe upon all of you who re­ject truth and spurn mercy! Many of you are like whited sepul­chres, which out­wardly ap­pear beau­ti­ful but within are full of dead men’s bones and all sorts of un­clean­ness. Even so do you who know­ingly re­ject the coun­sel of God ap­pear out­wardly to men as holy and righ­teous, but in­wardly your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and in­iq­uity.

175:1.20“Woe upon you, false guides of a na­tion! Over yon­der have you built a mon­u­ment to the mar­tyred proph­ets of old, while you plot to de­stroy Him of whom they spoke. You gar­nish the tombs of the righ­teous and flat­ter your­selves that, had you lived in the days of your fa­thers, you would not have killed the proph­ets; and then in the face of such self-righ­teous think­ing you make ready to slay him of whom the proph­ets spoke, the Son of Man. Inas­much as you do these things, are you wit­ness to your­selves that you are the wicked sons of them who slew the proph­ets. Go on, then, and fill up the cup of your con­dem­na­tion to the full!

175:1.21“Woe upon you, chil­dren of evil! John did truly call you the off­spring of vipers, and I ask how can you es­cape the judg­ment that John pro­nounced upon you?

175:1.22“But even now I of­fer you in my Fa­ther’s name mercy and for­give­ness; even now I prof­fer the lov­ing hand of eter­nal fel­low­ship. My Fa­ther has sent you the wise men and the proph­ets; some you have per­se­cuted and oth­ers you have killed. Then ap­peared John pro­claim­ing the com­ing of the Son of Man, and him you de­stroyed af­ter many had be­lieved his teach­ing. And now you make ready to shed more in­no­cent blood. Do you not com­pre­hend that a ter­ri­ble day of reck­on­ing will come when the Judge of all the earth shall re­quire of this peo­ple an ac­count­ing for the way they have re­jected, per­se­cuted, and de­stroyed these mes­sen­gers of heaven? Do you not un­der­stand that you must ac­count for all of this righ­teous blood, from the first prophet killed down to the times of Zechariah, who was slain be­tween the sanc­tu­ary and the al­tar? And if you go on in your evil ways, this ac­count­ing may be re­quired of this very gen­er­a­tion.

175:1.23“O Je­ru­sa­lem and the chil­dren of Abra­ham, you who have stoned the proph­ets and killed the teach­ers that were sent to you, even now would I gather your chil­dren to­gether as a hen gath­ers her chick­ens un­der her wings, but you will not!

175:1.24“And now I take leave of you. You have heard my mes­sage and have made your de­ci­sion. Those who have be­lieved my gospel are even now safe within the king­dom of God. To you who have cho­sen to re­ject the gift of God, I say that you will no more see me teach­ing in the tem­ple. My work for you is done. Be­hold, I now go forth with my chil­dren, and your house is left to you des­o­late!”

175:1.25And then the Mas­ter beck­oned his fol­low­ers to de­part from the tem­ple.

• attitude toward Jesus › unanimously voted death penalty on Jesus and Lazarus
• authority of Sanhedrin › highest governing body and supreme court of Jewish nation

175:3.1At eight o’clock on this Tues­day evening the fate­ful meet­ing of the San­hedrin was called to or­der. On many pre­vi­ous oc­ca­sions had this su­preme court of the Jew­ish na­tion in­for­mally de­creed the death of Je­sus. Many times had this au­gust rul­ing body de­ter­mined to put a stop to his work, but never be­fore had they re­solved to place him un­der ar­rest and to bring about his death at any and all costs. It was just be­fore mid­night on this Tues­day, April 4, A.D. 30, that the San­hedrin, as then con­sti­tuted, of­fi­cially and unan­i­mously voted to im­pose the death sen­tence upon both Je­sus and Laz­a­rus. This was the an­swer to the Mas­ter’s last ap­peal to the rulers of the Jews which he had made in the tem­ple only a few hours be­fore, and it rep­re­sented their re­ac­tion of bit­ter re­sent­ment to­ward Je­sus’ last and vig­or­ous in­dict­ment of these same chief priests and im­pen­i­tent Sad­ducees and Phar­isees. The pass­ing of death sen­tence (even be­fore his trial) upon the Son of God was the San­hedrin’s re­ply to the last of­fer of heav­enly mercy ever to be ex­tended to the Jew­ish na­tion, as such.

• Jesus’ attitude toward the Sanhedrin › denounced

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

• attitude toward Jesus › sought to kill Jesus › fearing he endangered existence of nation

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

• attitude toward Jesus › sought to kill Jesus › to protect temple revenues

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

• attitude toward Jesus › sought to kill Jesus › fearing he endangered existence of nation

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

• attitude toward Jesus › sought to kill Jesus › to prevent overthrow of authority

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

• attitude toward Jesus › accused Jesus › of Sabbath breaking

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.

• attitude toward Jesus › accused Jesus › of blasphemy

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

• met › at home of Caiaphas

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

• met › with Judas

177:4.1Shortly af­ter Je­sus and John Mark left the camp, Ju­das Is­car­iot dis­ap­peared from among his breth­ren, not re­turn­ing un­til late in the af­ter­noon. This con­fused and dis­con­tented apos­tle, not­with­stand­ing his Mas­ter’s spe­cific re­quest to re­frain from en­ter­ing Je­ru­sa­lem, went in haste to keep his ap­point­ment with Je­sus’ en­e­mies at the home of Cai­a­phas the high priest. This was an in­for­mal meet­ing of the San­hedrin and had been ap­pointed for shortly af­ter ten o’clock that morn­ing. This meet­ing was called to dis­cuss the na­ture of the charges which should be lodged against Je­sus and to de­cide upon the pro­ce­dure to be em­ployed in bring­ing him be­fore the Ro­man au­thor­i­ties for the pur­pose of se­cur­ing the nec­es­sary civil con­fir­ma­tion of the death sen­tence which they had al­ready passed upon him.

• Jesus’ attitude toward the Sanhedrin › held hypocritical leaders in great contempt
• Jesus’ attitude toward the Sanhedrin › left S. undisturbed in positions of influence and power

178:1.16And for­get not: We have made no di­rect at­tack upon the per­sons or upon the au­thor­ity of those who sit in Moses’ seat; we only of­fered them the new light, which they have so vig­or­ously re­jected. We have as­sailed them only by the de­nun­ci­a­tion of their spir­i­tual dis­loy­alty to the very truths which they pro­fess to teach and safe­guard. We clashed with these es­tab­lished lead­ers and rec­og­nized rulers only when they threw them­selves di­rectly in the way of the preach­ing of the gospel of the king­dom to the sons of men. And even now, it is not we who as­sail them, but they who seek our de­struc­tion. Do not for­get that you are com­mis­sioned to go forth preach­ing only the good news. You are not to at­tack the old ways; you are skill­fully to put the leaven of new truth in the midst of the old be­liefs. Let the Spirit of Truth do his own work. Let con­tro­versy come only when they who de­spise the truth force it upon you. But when the will­ful un­be­liever at­tacks you, do not hes­i­tate to stand in vig­or­ous de­fense of the truth which has saved and sanc­ti­fied you.

• character › knew the truth and rejected it

180:3.2“Many of those who will as­sail you are ig­no­rant of the light of heaven, but this is not true of some who now per­se­cute us. If we had not taught them the truth, they might do many strange things with­out falling un­der con­dem­na­tion, but now, since they have known the light and pre­sumed to re­ject it, they have no ex­cuse for their at­ti­tude. He who hates me hates my Fa­ther. It can­not be oth­er­wise; the light which would save you if ac­cepted can only con­demn you if it is know­ingly re­jected. And what have I done to these men that they should hate me with such a ter­ri­ble ha­tred? Noth­ing, save to of­fer them fel­low­ship on earth and sal­va­tion in heaven. But have you not read in the Scrip­ture the say­ing: ‘And they hated me with­out a cause’?

• attitude toward Jesus › excommunicated › anyone mentioning resurrection

180:6.1Af­ter Pe­ter, James, John, and Mat­thew had asked the Mas­ter nu­mer­ous ques­tions, he con­tin­ued his farewell dis­course by say­ing: “And I am telling you about all this be­fore I leave you in or­der that you may be so pre­pared for what is com­ing upon you that you will not stum­ble into se­ri­ous er­ror. The au­thor­i­ties will not be con­tent with merely putting you out of the syn­a­gogues; I warn you the hour draws near when they who kill you will think they are do­ing a ser­vice to God. And all of these things they will do to you and to those whom you lead into the king­dom of heaven be­cause they do not know the Fa­ther. They have re­fused to know the Fa­ther by re­fus­ing to re­ceive me; and they refuse to re­ceive me when they re­ject you, pro­vided you have kept my new com­mand­ment that you love one an­other even as I have loved you. I am telling you in ad­vance about these things so that, when your hour comes, as mine now has, you may be strength­ened in the knowl­edge that all was known to me, and that my spirit shall be with you in all your suf­fer­ings for my sake and the gospel’s. It was for this pur­pose that I have been talk­ing so plainly to you from the very be­gin­ning. I have even warned you that a man’s foes may be those of his own house­hold. Al­though this gospel of the king­dom never fails to bring great peace to the soul of the in­di­vid­ual be­liever, it will not bring peace on earth un­til man is will­ing to be­lieve my teach­ing whole­heart­edly and to es­tab­lish the prac­tice of do­ing the Fa­ther’s will as the chief pur­pose in liv­ing the mor­tal life.

• convened on Sabbath despite rule

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.

• 23 members constituted trial court
• met › at home of Caiaphas

184:0.2An­nas knew that a court of San­hedrists was in wait­ing at the palace of his son-in-law, Cai­a­phas. Some thirty mem­bers of the San­hedrin had gath­ered at the home of the high priest by mid­night so that they would be ready to sit in judg­ment on Je­sus when he might be brought be­fore them. Only those mem­bers were as­sem­bled who were strongly and openly op­posed to Je­sus and his teach­ing since it re­quired only twenty-three to con­sti­tute a trial court.

• attitude toward Jesus › practically all members espousing Jesus were Pharisees

184:1.1An­nas, en­riched by the tem­ple rev­enues, his son-in-law the act­ing high priest, and with his re­la­tions to the Ro­man au­thor­i­ties, was in­deed the most pow­er­ful sin­gle in­di­vid­ual in all Jewry. He was a suave and politic plan­ner and plot­ter. He de­sired to di­rect the mat­ter of dis­pos­ing of Je­sus; he feared to trust such an im­por­tant un­der­tak­ing wholly to his brusque and ag­gres­sive son-in-law. An­nas wanted to make sure that the Mas­ter’s trial was kept in the hands of the Sad­ducees; he feared the pos­si­ble sym­pa­thy of some of the Phar­isees, see­ing that prac­ti­cally all of those mem­bers of the San­hedrin who had es­poused the cause of Je­sus were Phar­isees.

• attitude toward Jesus › accused Jesus › of blasphemy
• attitude toward Jesus › accused Jesus › of Sabbath breaking
• attitude toward Jesus › hostile; condemned Jesus to death; called upon all Jewry to deliver Jesus

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.

• met › in chamber of hewn stone

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

• trial of Jesus wholly contrary to Jewish laws

184:3.4Or­di­nar­ily, the Jews, when try­ing a man on a cap­i­tal charge, pro­ceeded with great cau­tion and pro­vided ev­ery safe­guard of fair­ness in the se­lec­tion of wit­nesses and the en­tire con­duct of the trial. But on this oc­ca­sion, Cai­a­phas was more of a pros­e­cu­tor than an un­bi­ased judge.

• attitude toward Jesus › practically all members espousing Jesus were Pharisees

184:3.5Je­sus ap­peared be­fore this court clothed in his usual gar­ments and with his hands bound to­gether be­hind his back. The en­tire court was star­tled and some­what con­fused by his ma­jes­tic ap­pear­ance. Never had they gazed upon such a pris­oner nor wit­nessed such com­po­sure in a man on trial for his life.

• Jesus’ attitude toward the Sanhedrin › made no reply to false charges of S.

184:3.6The Jew­ish law re­quired that at least two wit­nesses must agree upon any point be­fore a charge could be laid against the pris­oner. Ju­das could not be used as a wit­ness against Je­sus be­cause the Jew­ish law specif­i­cally for­bade the tes­ti­mony of a traitor. More than a score of false wit­nesses were on hand to tes­tify against Je­sus, but their tes­ti­mony was so con­tra­dic­tory and so ev­i­dently trumped up that the San­hedrists them­selves were very much ashamed of the per­for­mance. Je­sus stood there, look­ing down be­nignly upon these per­jur­ers, and his very coun­te­nance dis­con­certed the ly­ing wit­nesses. Through­out all this false tes­ti­mony the Mas­ter never said a word; he made no re­ply to their many false ac­cu­sa­tions.

• attitude toward Jesus › accused Jesus › of trying to destroy temple

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

• Jesus’ attitude toward the Sanhedrin › made no reply to false charges of S.

184:3.8Al­though the high priest shouted at Je­sus, “Do you not an­swer any of these charges?” Je­sus opened not his mouth. He stood there in si­lence while all of these false wit­nesses gave their tes­ti­mony. Ha­tred, fa­nati­cism, and un­scrupu­lous ex­ag­ger­a­tion so char­ac­ter­ized the words of these per­jur­ers that their tes­ti­mony fell in its own en­tan­gle­ments. The very best refu­ta­tion of their false ac­cu­sa­tions was the Mas­ter’s calm and ma­jes­tic si­lence.

• attitude toward Jesus › accused Jesus › of revolution; teaching refusal to pay tribute to Caesar

184:3.112. That he was a fa­nat­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion­ist in that he ad­vo­cated lay­ing vi­o­lent hands on the sa­cred tem­ple, else how could he de­stroy it?

• attitude toward Jesus › accused Jesus › of traducing the people; magic

184:3.123. That he taught magic inas­much as he prom­ised to build a new tem­ple, and that with­out hands.

• death sentence required 2 sessions of court, Pilate’s consent

184:3.13Al­ready had the full San­hedrin agreed that Je­sus was guilty of death-de­serv­ing trans­gres­sions of the Jew­ish laws, but they were now more con­cerned with de­vel­op­ing charges re­gard­ing his con­duct and teach­ings which would jus­tify Pi­late in pro­nounc­ing the death sen­tence upon their pris­oner. They knew that they must se­cure the con­sent of the Ro­man gov­er­nor be­fore Je­sus could legally be put to death. And An­nas was minded to pro­ceed along the line of mak­ing it ap­pear that Je­sus was a dan­ger­ous teacher to be abroad among the peo­ple.

• Jesus’ attitude toward the Sanhedrin › made no reply to false charges of S.

184:3.14But Cai­a­phas could not longer en­dure the sight of the Mas­ter stand­ing there in per­fect com­po­sure and un­bro­ken si­lence. He thought he knew at least one way in which the pris­oner might be in­duced to speak. Ac­cord­ingly, he rushed over to the side of Je­sus and, shak­ing his ac­cus­ing fin­ger in the Mas­ter’s face, said: “I ad­jure you, in the name of the liv­ing God, that you tell us whether you are the De­liv­erer, the Son of God.” Je­sus an­swered Cai­a­phas: “I am. Soon I go to the Fa­ther, and pres­ently shall the Son of Man be clothed with power and once more reign over the hosts of heaven.”

• attitude toward Jesus › accused Jesus › of blasphemy
• attitude toward Jesus › accused Jesus › of Sabbath breaking

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.”

• attitude toward Jesus › members slapped Jesus, spit in his face

184:3.18But An­nas did not suc­ceed in keep­ing con­trol of the court. Af­ter Je­sus had so un­ex­pect­edly an­swered Cai­a­phas, the high priest stepped for­ward and smote him in the face with his hand. An­nas was truly shocked as the other mem­bers of the court, in pass­ing out of the room, spit in Je­sus’ face, and many of them mock­ingly slapped him with the palms of their hands. And thus in dis­or­der and with such un­heard-of con­fu­sion this first ses­sion of the San­hedrist trial of Je­sus ended at half past four o’clock.

• death sentence required 2 sessions of court, Pilate’s consent

184:4.1The Jew­ish law re­quired that, in the mat­ter of pass­ing the death sen­tence, there should be two ses­sions of the court. This sec­ond ses­sion was to be held on the day fol­low­ing the first, and the in­ter­ven­ing time was to be spent in fast­ing and mourn­ing by the mem­bers of the court. But these men could not await the next day for the con­fir­ma­tion of their de­ci­sion that Je­sus must die. They waited only one hour. In the mean­time Je­sus was left in the au­di­ence cham­ber in the cus­tody of the tem­ple guards, who, with the ser­vants of the high priest, amused them­selves by heap­ing ev­ery sort of in­dig­nity upon the Son of Man. They mocked him, spit upon him, and cru­elly buf­feted him. They would strike him in the face with a rod and then say, “Proph­esy to us, you the De­liv­erer, who it was that struck you.” And thus they went on for one full hour, re­vil­ing and mis­treat­ing this un­re­sist­ing man of Gal­i­lee.

• attitude toward Jesus › accused Jesus › of blasphemy

184:5.1At five-thirty o’clock the court re­assem­bled, and Je­sus was led into the ad­join­ing room, where John was wait­ing. Here the Ro­man sol­dier and the tem­ple guards watched over Je­sus while the court be­gan the for­mu­la­tion of the charges which were to be pre­sented to Pi­late. An­nas made it clear to his as­so­ciates that the charge of blas­phemy would carry no weight with Pi­late. Ju­das was pres­ent dur­ing this sec­ond meet­ing of the court, but he gave no tes­ti­mony.

• attitude toward Jesus › accused Jesus › of revolution; teaching refusal to pay tribute to Caesar

184:5.2This ses­sion of the court lasted only a half hour, and when they ad­journed to go be­fore Pi­late, they had drawn up the in­dict­ment of Je­sus, as be­ing wor­thy of death, un­der three heads:

184:5.31. That he was a per­verter of the Jew­ish na­tion; he de­ceived the peo­ple and in­cited them to re­bel­lion.

184:5.42. That he taught the peo­ple to refuse to pay trib­ute to Cae­sar.

184:5.53. That, by claim­ing to be a king and the founder of a new sort of king­dom, he in­cited trea­son against the em­peror.

• attitude toward Jesus › accused Jesus › of trying to destroy temple
• trial of Jesus wholly contrary to Jewish laws

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

• attitude toward Jesus › accused Jesus › of blasphemy

184:5.7The only point the court could have con­sis­tently judged him on was that of blas­phemy, and that would have rested en­tirely on his own tes­ti­mony. Even con­cern­ing blas­phemy, they failed to cast a for­mal bal­lot for the death sen­tence.

184:5.8And now they pre­sumed to for­mu­late three charges, with which to go be­fore Pi­late, on which no wit­nesses had been heard, and which were agreed upon while the ac­cused pris­oner was ab­sent. When this was done, three of the Phar­isees took their leave; they wanted to see Je­sus de­stroyed, but they would not for­mu­late charges against him with­out wit­nesses and in his ab­sence.

• trial of Jesus wholly contrary to Jewish laws

184:5.11At six o’clock that morn­ing Je­sus was led forth from the home of Cai­a­phas to ap­pear be­fore Pi­late for con­fir­ma­tion of the sen­tence of death which this San­hedrist court had so un­justly and ir­reg­u­larly de­creed.

• character › scrupulous regarding ceremonies and traditions

185:0.3Though Pi­late con­ducted much of Je­sus’ ex­am­i­na­tion within the prae­to­rium halls, the pub­lic trial was held out­side on the steps lead­ing up to the main en­trance. This was a con­ces­sion to the Jews, who re­fused to en­ter any gen­tile build­ing where leaven might be used on this day of prepa­ra­tion for the Pass­over. Such con­duct would not only ren­der them cer­e­mo­ni­ally un­clean and thereby de­bar them from par­tak­ing of the af­ter­noon feast of thanks­giv­ing but would also ne­ces­si­tate their sub­jec­tion to pu­rifi­ca­tion cer­e­monies af­ter sun­down, be­fore they would be el­i­gi­ble to par­take of the Pass­over sup­per.

185:0.4Al­though these Jews were not at all both­ered in con­science as they in­trigued to ef­fect the ju­di­cial mur­der of Je­sus, they were nonethe­less scrupu­lous re­gard­ing all these mat­ters of cer­e­mo­nial clean­ness and tra­di­tional reg­u­lar­ity. And these Jews have not been the only ones to fail in the rec­og­ni­tion of high and holy obli­ga­tions of a di­vine na­ture while giv­ing metic­u­lous at­ten­tion to things of tri­fling im­por­tance to hu­man wel­fare in both time and eter­nity.

• character › lacked respect for Pilate’s dignity

185:1.2Pi­late did not love the Jews, and this deep-seated ha­tred early be­gan to man­i­fest it­self. Of all the Ro­man prov­inces, none was more dif­fi­cult to gov­ern than Judea. Pi­late never re­ally un­der­stood the prob­lems in­volved in the man­age­ment of the Jews and, there­fore, very early in his ex­pe­ri­ence as gov­er­nor, made a se­ries of al­most fa­tal and well-nigh sui­ci­dal blun­ders. And it was these blun­ders that gave the Jews such power over him. When they wanted to in­flu­ence his de­ci­sions, all they had to do was to threaten an up­ris­ing, and Pi­late would speed­ily ca­pit­u­late. And this ap­par­ent vac­il­la­tion, or lack of moral cour­age, of the procu­ra­tor was chiefly due to the mem­ory of a num­ber of con­tro­ver­sies he had had with the Jews and be­cause in each in­stance they had worsted him. The Jews knew that Pi­late was afraid of them, that he feared for his po­si­tion be­fore Tiberius, and they em­ployed this knowl­edge to the great dis­ad­van­tage of the gov­er­nor on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions.

• authority of Sanhedrin › authorized to release temple funds

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

• death sentence required 2 sessions of court, Pilate’s consent

185:2.3Then spoke the clerk of the San­hedrin court to Pi­late: “It is not law­ful for us to put any man to death, and this dis­turber of our na­tion is wor­thy to die for the things which he has said and done. There­fore have we come be­fore you for con­fir­ma­tion of this de­cree.”

• character › lacked respect for Pilate’s dignity

185:2.4To come be­fore the Ro­man gov­er­nor with this at­tempt at eva­sion dis­closes both the ill-will and the ill-hu­mor of the San­hedrists to­ward Je­sus as well as their lack of re­spect for the fair­ness, honor, and dig­nity of Pi­late. What ef­fron­tery for these sub­ject cit­i­zens to ap­pear be­fore their provin­cial gov­er­nor ask­ing for a de­cree of ex­e­cu­tion against a man be­fore af­ford­ing him a fair trial and with­out even pre­fer­ring def­i­nite crim­i­nal charges against him!

• death sentence required 2 sessions of court, Pilate’s consent

185:2.5Pi­late knew some­thing of Je­sus’ work among the Jews, and he sur­mised that the charges which might be brought against him had to do with in­fringe­ments of the Jew­ish ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal laws; there­fore he sought to re­fer the case back to their own tri­bu­nal. Again, Pi­late took de­light in mak­ing them pub­licly con­fess that they were pow­er­less to pro­nounce and ex­e­cute the death sen­tence upon even one of their own race whom they had come to de­spise with a bit­ter and en­vi­ous ha­tred.

• character › lacked respect for Pilate’s dignity

185:2.8Pi­late, be­ing keenly sen­si­tive to the dis­re­spect­ful man­ner of the ap­proach of these Jews, was not will­ing to com­ply with their de­mands that Je­sus be sen­tenced to death with­out a trial. When, there­fore, he had waited a few mo­ments for them to pre­sent their charges against the pris­oner, he turned to them and said: “I will not sen­tence this man to death with­out a trial; nei­ther will I con­sent to ex­am­ine him un­til you have pre­sented your charges against him in writ­ing.”

• attitude toward Jesus › accused Jesus

185:2.10“We find in the San­hedrist tri­bu­nal that this man is an evil­doer and a dis­turber of our na­tion in that he is guilty of:

185:2.11“1. Per­vert­ing our na­tion and stir­ring up our peo­ple to re­bel­lion.

• attitude toward Jesus › accused Jesus › of revolution; teaching refusal to pay tribute to Caesar

185:2.12“2. For­bid­ding the peo­ple to pay trib­ute to Cae­sar.

185:2.13“3. Call­ing him­self the king of the Jews and teach­ing the found­ing of a new king­dom.”

• trial of Jesus wholly contrary to Jewish laws

185:2.14Je­sus had not been reg­u­larly tried nor legally con­victed on any of these charges. He did not even hear these charges when first stated, but Pi­late had him brought from the prae­to­rium, where he was in the keep­ing of the guards, and he in­sisted that these charges be re­peated in Je­sus’ hear­ing.

• Jesus’ attitude toward the Sanhedrin › made no reply to false charges of S.

185:2.15When Je­sus heard these ac­cu­sa­tions, he well knew that he had not been heard on these mat­ters be­fore the Jew­ish court, and so did John Zeb­e­dee and his ac­cusers, but he made no re­ply to their false charges. Even when Pi­late bade him an­swer his ac­cusers, he opened not his mouth. Pi­late was so as­ton­ished at the un­fair­ness of the whole pro­ceed­ing and so im­pressed by Je­sus’ silent and mas­terly bear­ing that he de­cided to take the pris­oner in­side the hall and ex­am­ine him pri­vately.

• attitude toward Jesus › accused Jesus › of revolution; teaching refusal to pay tribute to Caesar

185:3.1Pi­late took Je­sus and John Zeb­e­dee into a pri­vate cham­ber, leav­ing the guards out­side in the hall, and re­quest­ing the pris­oner to sit down, he sat down by his side and asked sev­eral ques­tions. Pi­late be­gan his talk with Je­sus by as­sur­ing him that he did not be­lieve the first count against him: that he was a per­verter of the na­tion and an in­citer to re­bel­lion. Then he asked, “Did you ever teach that trib­ute should be re­fused Cae­sar?” Je­sus, point­ing to John, said, “Ask him or any other man who has heard my teach­ing.” Then Pi­late ques­tioned John about this mat­ter of trib­ute, and John tes­ti­fied con­cern­ing his Mas­ter’s teach­ing and ex­plained that Je­sus and his apos­tles paid taxes both to Cae­sar and to the tem­ple. When Pi­late had ques­tioned John, he said, “See that you tell no man that I talked with you.” And John never did re­veal this mat­ter.

• attitude toward Jesus › accused Jesus › of blasphemy

185:6.7Then the high priest him­self stepped for­ward and, go­ing up to Pi­late, an­grily de­clared: “We have a sa­cred law, and by that law this man ought to die be­cause he made him­self out to be the Son of God.” When Pi­late heard this, he was all the more afraid, not only of the Jews, but re­call­ing his wife’s note and the Greek mythol­ogy of the gods com­ing down on earth, he now trem­bled at the thought of Je­sus pos­si­bly be­ing a di­vine per­son­age. He waved to the crowd to hold its peace while he took Je­sus by the arm and again led him in­side the build­ing that he might fur­ther ex­am­ine him. Pi­late was now con­fused by fear, be­wil­dered by su­per­sti­tion, and ha­rassed by the stub­born at­ti­tude of the mob.

• met › in chamber of hewn stone

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

186:1.2All of these Jews loathed Ju­das; they looked upon the be­trayer with only feel­ings of ut­ter con­tempt. Through­out the trial of Je­sus be­fore Cai­a­phas and dur­ing his ap­pear­ance be­fore Pi­late, Ju­das was pricked in his con­science about his traitorous con­duct. And he was also be­gin­ning to be­come some­what dis­il­lu­sioned re­gard­ing the re­ward he was to re­ceive as pay­ment for his ser­vices as Je­sus’ be­trayer. He did not like the cool­ness and aloof­ness of the Jew­ish au­thor­i­ties; nev­er­the­less, he ex­pected to be lib­er­ally re­warded for his cow­ardly con­duct. He an­tic­i­pated be­ing called be­fore the full meet­ing of the San­hedrin and there hear­ing him­self eu­lo­gized while they con­ferred upon him suit­able hon­ors in to­ken of the great ser­vice which he flat­tered him­self he had ren­dered his na­tion. Imag­ine, there­fore, the great sur­prise of this ego­tis­tic traitor when a ser­vant of the high priest, tap­ping him on the shoul­der, called him just out­side the hall and said: “Ju­das, I have been ap­pointed to pay you for the be­trayal of Je­sus. Here is your re­ward.” And thus speak­ing, the ser­vant of Cai­a­phas handed Ju­das a bag con­tain­ing thirty pieces of sil­ver—the cur­rent price of a good, healthy slave.

186:1.3Ju­das was stunned, dum­founded. He rushed back to en­ter the hall but was de­barred by the door­keeper. He wanted to ap­peal to the San­hedrin, but they would not ad­mit him. Ju­das could not be­lieve that these rulers of the Jews would al­low him to be­tray his friends and his Mas­ter and then of­fer him as a re­ward thirty pieces of sil­ver. He was hu­mil­i­ated, dis­il­lu­sioned, and ut­terly crushed. He walked away from the tem­ple, as it were, in a trance. He au­to­mat­i­cally dropped the money bag in his deep pocket, that same pocket wherein he had so long car­ried the bag con­tain­ing the apos­tolic funds. And he wan­dered out through the city af­ter the crowds who were on their way to wit­ness the cru­ci­fix­ions.

186:1.4From a dis­tance Ju­das saw them raise the cross piece with Je­sus nailed thereon, and upon sight of this he rushed back to the tem­ple and, forc­ing his way past the door­keeper, found him­self stand­ing in the pres­ence of the San­hedrin, which was still in ses­sion. The be­trayer was well-nigh breath­less and highly dis­traught, but he man­aged to stam­mer out these words: “I have sinned in that I have be­trayed in­no­cent blood. You have in­sulted me. You have of­fered me as a re­ward for my ser­vice, money—the price of a slave. I re­pent that I have done this; here is your money. I want to es­cape the guilt of this deed.”

186:1.5When the rulers of the Jews heard Ju­das, they scoffed at him. One of them sit­ting near where Ju­das stood, mo­tioned that he should leave the hall and said: “Your Mas­ter has al­ready been put to death by the Ro­mans, and as for your guilt, what is that to us? See you to that—and be­gone!”

186:1.6As Ju­das left the San­hedrin cham­ber, he re­moved the thirty pieces of sil­ver from the bag and threw them broad­cast over the tem­ple floor. When the be­trayer left the tem­ple, he was al­most be­side him­self. Ju­das was now pass­ing through the ex­pe­ri­ence of the re­al­iza­tion of the true na­ture of sin. All the glamor, fas­ci­na­tion, and in­tox­i­ca­tion of wrong­do­ing had van­ished. Now the evil­doer stood alone and face to face with the judg­ment ver­dict of his dis­il­lu­sioned and dis­ap­pointed soul. Sin was be­witch­ing and ad­ven­tur­ous in the com­mit­ting, but now must the har­vest of the naked and un­ro­man­tic facts be faced.

186:1.7This one­time am­bas­sador of the king­dom of heaven on earth now walked through the streets of Je­ru­sa­lem, for­saken and alone. His de­spair was des­per­ate and well-nigh ab­so­lute. On he jour­neyed through the city and out­side the walls, on down into the ter­ri­ble soli­tude of the val­ley of Hin­nom, where he climbed up the steep rocks and, tak­ing the gir­dle of his cloak, fas­tened one end to a small tree, tied the other about his neck, and cast him­self over the precipice. Ere he was dead, the knot which his ner­vous hands had tied gave way, and the be­trayer’s body was dashed to pieces as it fell on the jagged rocks be­low.

• Jesus’ attitude toward the Sanhedrin › made no reply to false charges of S.

186:2.2Be­fore the San­hedrist court Je­sus de­clined to make replies to the tes­ti­mony of per­jured wit­nesses. There was but one ques­tion which would al­ways elicit an an­swer, whether asked by friend or foe, and that was the one con­cern­ing the na­ture and di­vin­ity of his mis­sion on earth. When asked if he were the Son of God, he un­fail­ingly made re­ply. He stead­fastly re­fused to speak when in the pres­ence of the cu­ri­ous and wicked Herod. Be­fore Pi­late he spoke only when he thought that Pi­late or some other sin­cere per­son might be helped to a bet­ter knowl­edge of the truth by what he said. Je­sus had taught his apos­tles the use­less­ness of cast­ing their pearls be­fore swine, and he now dared to prac­tice what he had taught. His con­duct at this time ex­em­pli­fied the pa­tient sub­mis­sion of the hu­man na­ture cou­pled with the ma­jes­tic si­lence and solemn dig­nity of the di­vine na­ture. He was al­to­gether will­ing to dis­cuss with Pi­late any ques­tion re­lated to the po­lit­i­cal charges brought against him—any ques­tion which he rec­og­nized as be­long­ing to the gov­er­nor’s ju­ris­dic­tion.

• attitude toward Jesus › accused Jesus › of blasphemy

186:2.7When be­fore Cai­a­phas, and when all the per­jured tes­ti­mony had bro­ken down, Je­sus did not hes­i­tate to an­swer the ques­tion of the chief priest, thereby pro­vid­ing in his own tes­ti­mony that which they de­sired as a ba­sis for con­vict­ing him of blas­phemy.

• attitude toward Jesus › desired Jesus’ body be thrown into Gehenna

188:0.2The rulers of the Jews had planned to have Je­sus’ body thrown in the open burial pits of Gehenna, south of the city; it was the cus­tom thus to dis­pose of the vic­tims of cru­ci­fix­ion. If this plan had been fol­lowed, the body of the Mas­ter would have been ex­posed to the wild beasts.

• individual members › Joseph of Arimathea
• individual members › Nicodemus

188:1.2A cru­ci­fied per­son could not be buried in a Jew­ish ceme­tery; there was a strict law against such a pro­ce­dure. Joseph and Nicode­mus knew this law, and on the way out to Gol­go­tha they had de­cided to bury Je­sus in Joseph’s new fam­ily tomb, hewn out of solid rock, lo­cated a short dis­tance north of Gol­go­tha and across the road lead­ing to Samaria. No one had ever lain in this tomb, and they thought it ap­pro­pri­ate that the Mas­ter should rest there. Joseph re­ally be­lieved that Je­sus would rise from the dead, but Nicode­mus was very doubt­ful. These for­mer mem­bers of the San­hedrin had kept their faith in Je­sus more or less of a se­cret, al­though their fel­low San­hedrists had long sus­pected them, even be­fore they with­drew from the coun­cil. From now on they were the most out­spo­ken dis­ci­ples of Je­sus in all Je­ru­sa­lem.

• attitude toward Jesus › disconcerted by rumors Jesus had risen

189:2.5The Jew­ish lead­ers be­gan the sor­did busi­ness of sup­pos­edly get­ting rid of Je­sus by of­fer­ing bribes to the traitorous Ju­das, and now, when con­fronted with this em­bar­rass­ing sit­u­a­tion, in­stead of think­ing of pun­ish­ing the guards who de­serted their post, they re­sorted to brib­ing these guards and the Ro­man sol­diers. They paid each of these twenty men a sum of money and in­structed them to say to all: “While we slept dur­ing the night­time, his dis­ci­ples came upon us and took away the body.” And the Jew­ish lead­ers made solemn promises to the sol­diers to de­fend them be­fore Pi­late in case it should ever come to the gov­er­nor’s knowl­edge that they had ac­cepted a bribe.

• attitude toward Jesus › disconcerted by rumors Jesus had risen
• attitude toward Jesus › excommunicated › anyone mentioning resurrection

190:3.3As a re­sult of send­ing out the mes­sen­gers dur­ing the mid­forenoon and from the un­con­scious leak­age of in­ti­ma­tions con­cern­ing this ap­pear­ance of Je­sus at Joseph’s house, word be­gan to come to the rulers of the Jews dur­ing the early evening that it was be­ing re­ported about the city that Je­sus had risen, and that many per­sons were claim­ing to have seen him. The San­hedrists were thor­oughly aroused by these ru­mors. Af­ter a hasty con­sul­ta­tion with An­nas, Cai­a­phas called a meet­ing of the San­hedrin to con­vene at eight o’clock that evening. It was at this meet­ing that ac­tion was taken to throw out of the syn­a­gogues any per­son who made men­tion of Je­sus’ res­ur­rec­tion. It was even sug­gested that any­one claim­ing to have seen him should be put to death; this pro­posal, how­ever, did not come to a vote since the meet­ing broke up in con­fu­sion bor­der­ing on ac­tual panic. They had dared to think they were through with Je­sus. They were about to dis­cover that their real trou­ble with the man of Naz­a­reth had just be­gun.

• attitude toward Jesus › disconcerted by rumors Jesus had risen

192:0.1By the time the apos­tles left Je­ru­sa­lem for Gal­i­lee, the Jew­ish lead­ers had qui­eted down con­sid­er­ably. Since Je­sus ap­peared only to his fam­ily of king­dom be­liev­ers, and since the apos­tles were in hid­ing and did no pub­lic preach­ing, the rulers of the Jews con­cluded that the gospel move­ment was, af­ter all, ef­fec­tu­ally crushed. They were, of course, dis­con­certed by the in­creas­ing spread of ru­mors that Je­sus had risen from the dead, but they de­pended upon the bribed guards ef­fec­tively to coun­ter­act all such re­ports by their re­it­er­a­tion of the story that a band of his fol­low­ers had re­moved the body.

• attitude toward Jesus › disconcerted by rumors Jesus had risen

194:1.3The lead­ers of the Jews were as­tounded at the bold­ness of the apos­tles, but they feared to mo­lest them be­cause of the large num­bers who be­lieved their story.