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.

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.

164:4.11Then 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.

164:5.4Je­sus 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.

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.

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.

190:5.1At Em­maus, about seven miles west of Je­ru­sa­lem, there lived two broth­ers, shep­herds, who had spent the Pass­over week in Je­ru­sa­lem at­tend­ing upon the sac­ri­fices, cer­e­mo­ni­als, and feasts. Cleopas, the el­der, was a par­tial be­liever in Je­sus; at least he had been cast out of the syn­a­gogue. His brother, Ja­cob, was not a be­liever, al­though he was much in­trigued by what he had heard about the Mas­ter’s teach­ings and works.

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.

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.

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!”

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.

165:3.7“And when our en­e­mies bring you be­fore the rulers of the syn­a­gogues and be­fore other high au­thor­i­ties, be not con­cerned about what you should say and be not anx­ious as to how you should an­swer their ques­tions, for the spirit that dwells within you shall cer­tainly teach you in that very hour what you should say in honor of the gospel of the king­dom.