Zechariah

• Jesus quoted

146:2.32. That prayer which is in­con­sis­tent with the known and es­tab­lished laws of God is an abom­i­na­tion to the Par­a­dise De­i­ties. If man will not lis­ten to the Gods as they speak to their cre­ation in the laws of spirit, mind, and mat­ter, the very act of such de­lib­er­ate and con­scious dis­dain by the crea­ture turns the ears of spirit per­son­al­i­ties away from hear­ing the per­sonal pe­ti­tions of such law­less and dis­obe­di­ent mor­tals. Je­sus quoted to his apos­tles from the Prophet Zechariah: “But they re­fused to hear­ken and pulled away the shoul­der and stopped their ears that they should not hear. Yes, they made their hearts adamant like a stone, lest they should hear my law and the words which I sent by my spirit through the proph­ets; there­fore did the re­sults of their evil think­ing come as a great wrath upon their guilty heads. And so it came to pass that they cried for mercy, but there was no ear open to hear.” And then Je­sus quoted the proverb of the wise man who said: “He who turns away his ear from hear­ing the di­vine law, even his prayer shall be an abom­i­na­tion.”

• episode of king riding upon ass

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

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.