stonings

97:4.4Amos pro­claimed Yah­weh the “God of all na­tions” and warned the Is­raelites that rit­ual must not take the place of righ­teous­ness. And be­fore this coura­geous teacher was stoned to death, he had spread enough leaven of truth to save the doc­trine of the su­preme Yah­weh; he had in­sured the fur­ther evo­lu­tion of the Mel­chiz­e­dek rev­e­la­tion.

162:3.3It was the plan of Je­sus’ en­e­mies, if he up­held the law of Moses re­quir­ing that the self-con­fessed trans­gres­sor be stoned, to in­volve him in dif­fi­culty with the Ro­man rulers, who had de­nied the Jews the right to in­flict the death penalty with­out the ap­proval of a Ro­man tri­bu­nal. If he for­bade ston­ing the woman, they would ac­cuse him be­fore the San­hedrin of set­ting him­self up above Moses and the Jew­ish law. If he re­mained silent, they would ac­cuse him of cow­ardice. But the Mas­ter so man­aged the sit­u­a­tion that the whole plot fell to pieces of its own sor­did weight.

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

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

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!

194:4.11And so all went well in Je­ru­sa­lem un­til the time of the com­ing of the Greeks in large num­bers from Alexan­dria. Two of the pupils of Ro­dan ar­rived in Je­ru­sa­lem and made many con­verts from among the Hel­lenists. Among their early con­verts were Stephen and Bar­na­bas. These able Greeks did not so much have the Jew­ish view­point, and they did not so well con­form to the Jew­ish mode of wor­ship and other cer­e­mo­nial prac­tices. And it was the do­ings of these Greek be­liev­ers that ter­mi­nated the peace­ful re­la­tions be­tween the Je­sus broth­er­hood and the Phar­isees and Sad­ducees. Stephen and his Greek as­so­ciate be­gan to preach more as Je­sus taught, and this brought them into im­me­di­ate con­flict with the Jew­ish rulers. In one of Stephen’s pub­lic ser­mons, when he reached the ob­jec­tion­able part of the dis­course, they dis­pensed with all for­mal­i­ties of trial and pro­ceeded to stone him to death on the spot.

194:4.12Stephen, the leader of the Greek colony of Je­sus’ be­liev­ers in Je­ru­sa­lem, thus be­came the first mar­tyr to the new faith and the spe­cific cause for the for­mal or­ga­ni­za­tion of the early Chris­tian church. This new cri­sis was met by the rec­og­ni­tion that be­liev­ers could not longer go on as a sect within the Jew­ish faith. They all agreed that they must sep­a­rate them­selves from un­be­liev­ers; and within one month from the death of Stephen the church at Je­ru­sa­lem had been or­ga­nized un­der the lead­er­ship of Pe­ter, and James the brother of Je­sus had been in­stalled as its tit­u­lar head.

139:5.11Philip’s wife, who was an ef­fi­cient mem­ber of the women’s corps, be­came ac­tively as­so­ci­ated with her hus­band in his evan­ge­lis­tic work af­ter their flight from the Je­ru­sa­lem per­se­cu­tions. His wife was a fear­less woman. She stood at the foot of Philip’s cross en­cour­ag­ing him to pro­claim the glad tid­ings even to his mur­der­ers, and when his strength failed, she be­gan the recital of the story of sal­va­tion by faith in Je­sus and was si­lenced only when the irate Jews rushed upon her and stoned her to death. Their el­dest daugh­ter, Leah, con­tin­ued their work, later on be­com­ing the renowned prophet­ess of Hi­er­apo­lis.