Ch. 54, The Last Talk in the Temple
“Son of Man: Urantia,” 2nd edition
The Last Talk in the Temple
Jesus arrived at the temple just after two o’clock that Tuesday afternoon accompanied by thirty Greeks, eleven apostles, various disciples, and Joseph of Arimathea. This was his last appeal to the common people and his final indictment of the false leaders and bigoted Jewish rulers—the scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, and other Jewish elders—who eventually used the Romans to kill him. Earlier the various groups had questioned Jesus but this afternoon everyone remained silent. The temple was orderly: the merchants and money changers had not dared to reenter since Jesus had driven everyone out the previous day. Before speaking on the mercy to humanity Jesus looked down lovingly on his people.
The Talk
“I have been with you going across the land announcing the Father’s love for humanity, and many have seen the light and by faith they have entered into the kingdom of heaven. In connection with this mission the Father has done many wonderful works, even resurrected the dead. Many sick and injured have been made whole because they believed, but all of this healing disease and stating of the truth has not opened the eyes of those who refuse to see the light: those who are determined to reject this gospel of the kingdom.’
“In every way consistent with doing my Father’s will my apostles and I have done our utmost to live in peace with others, and to follow the reasonable requirements of the laws of Moses and the traditions of Israel. We have persistently sought peace, but Israel’s leaders 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 life and death, truth and error, and light and darkness.’
“Many of you have dared to believe my teachings and have already entered into the joy and liberty of conscious sonship with God. And you will bear witness for me that I have offered this same sonship with God to all the Jewish nation, even to those people who now seek my death. Even now my Father would receive these blind 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.’
“My Father has long had mercy for this people. Generation after generation we have sent our prophets to warn and teach them, and generation after generation have they killed these heaven-sent teachers. Now your willful high priests and stubborn rulers go right on doing this same thing. Like Herod brought about the death of John, you likewise now make ready to destroy the Son of Man.’
“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 merciful hands outstretched to you, but once you have filled up your cup of stubbornness and once you have finally rejected my Father’s mercy this nation will be left to its own fate and it will quickly come to an inglorious end. This people was called to become the light of the world: to show the spiritual glory of a God-knowing race. But you have departed so far from fulfilling your privilege that your leaders are about to commit the supreme folly of all time. They are on the verge of finally rejecting the gift of God to all people and for all ages: the revelation of the love of the Father in heaven for all his creatures on Earth.’
“Once you reject this revelation of God to humanity the kingdom of heaven will be given to other people—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 custodians of the divine law and the standard-bearers of eternal truth. I am right now offering you your last chance to come forward and repent, to show your intention to seek God with all your hearts and to enter like little children and by sincere faith the security and salvation of the kingdom of heaven.’
“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—even the gentiles—have believed the gospel of the kingdom, but those who should have been the first to come forward and accept the light of heaven have constantly refused to believe the revelation of the truth of God: God revealed in humanity and humanity uplifted to God.’
“This afternoon my apostles stand here before you in silence, but you will soon hear their voices ringing out with the call to salvation urging you to unite with the heavenly kingdom as the sons of the living God. Now I call my disciples and believers in the gospel of the kingdom—as well as the unseen messengers by their sides—to witness that I have once more offered Israel and her rulers salvation and deliverance. But you all see how the Father’s mercy is slighted and how the messengers of truth are rejected. Regardless, I caution you that these scribes and Pharisees still sit in Moses’ seat, so until the Most Highs who rule in the kingdoms of mortals finally do overthrow this nation and destroy the place of these rulers I urge you to co-operate with the elders in Israel. You are not required to join in their plans to destroy the Son of Man, but in everything related to the peace of Israel you are subject to them. In all these matters do whatever they tell you to do and observe the essentials of the law, but do not mimic their evil works. Remember, this is the sin of these rulers—they say what is good but they do not do it. You well know how these leaders put heavy burdens on your shoulders, burdens awful to bear, and that they will not lift as much as one finger to help you carry these heavy loads: they have oppressed you with ceremonies and enslaved you with traditions.’
“Furthermore, these self-centered rulers delight in doing their good works so that they will be seen by people. They spout many laws and make themselves look good in their official robes. They expect the best places at the feasts and demand the best seats in the synagogues. They crave praise in the market places and they want everyone to call them rabbi. Even as they are seeking all of this honor from people, they secretly steal widows’ houses and profit from the sacred temple’s services. As a charade these hypocrites pray long in public and give charity to attract everyone’s attention.’
“While you should honor your rulers and respect your teachers, you should call no one Father in the spiritual sense for there is one who is your Father, even God. Neither should you seek to lord it over the others in the kingdom. Remember, I have taught you that those who would be greatest among you should become the server of all. If you dare to brag about yourselves before God you will certainly be humbled, but the person who truly humbles himself will surely be praised. 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.’
“Do not mistake my words. I bear no hatred for these rulers and priests who even now seek to destroy me; 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 state your loyalty to the kingdom when my hour comes. But how will your rabbis justify themselves since they claim to talk with God and then dare to reject and destroy him who comes to reveal the Father to the worlds?’
“Woe on you scribes and Pharisees, you are hypocrites! You would shut the doors of the kingdom of heaven to sincere people because they happen to be unlearned in your way of teaching. You refuse to enter the kingdom and at the same time do everything in your power to prevent anyone else from entering. You stand with your backs to the doors of salvation and fight with all who would enter.’
“Grief on you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites that you are! For you do indeed travel across sea and land to convert people to your beliefs, and then when you have succeeded you are not content until you have made them twice as worse off as they were when they were heathens.’
“Agony on you rulers and chief priests who steal the poor’s property and demand heavy dues from those who would serve God as they think Moses ordained! You who refuse to show mercy, how can you hope for mercy in the worlds to come?’
“Misery on you blind guides and false teachers! What can be expected of a nation when the blind lead the blind? Both will stumble into the pit and be destroyed.’
“Sorrow on you who disguise your purpose when you take an oath! You are tricksters since you teach that a person can swear by the temple and break his oath, but that anyone who swears by the gold in the temple must remain bound. You are all fools and blind. You are not even consistent in your dishonesty because what is of more importance, the gold or the temple that has supposedly blessed the gold? You also teach that if a person swears by the altar it is nothing. But if one swears by the gift that is on the altar then the person will be held as a debtor. Again, are you blind to the truth because what is the greater, the gift or the altar that blesses the gift? How can you justify such hypocrisy and dishonesty in the sight of God in heaven?’
“Torment on you scribes and Pharisees and all other hypocrites who make sure that they tax mint, anise, and cumin while at the same time disregarding the weightier matters of the law—faith, mercy, and judgment! Within reason the one you should have done, but you should not have left the other undone. You are truly blind guides and dumb teachers; you strain out the gnat and swallow the camel.’
“Anguish on you scribes, Pharisees, and hypocrites! You can be relied on to clean the outside of the cup and plate, but inside there remains the filth of excess, extortion, and deception. You are spiritually blind. Do you not see how much better it would be to first clean the inside of the cup so that whatever spills over would itself clean the outside? You wicked degenerates! You make the outward show of your religion to conform with your interpretation of Moses’ law while your souls are soaked in vice and filled with murder.’
“Distress on all of you who reject truth and spurn mercy! Many of you are like freshly painted white grave chambers that appear beautiful on the outside, but inside are filled with dead people’s bones and all sorts of uncleanness. In the same way you who knowingly reject God’s advice look holy and righteous on the outside, but inside your hearts are filled with sin and hypocrisy.’
“Suffering on you false guides of a nation! Over yonder you have 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 if you had lived in the days of your fathers you would not have killed the prophets. Then in the face of such self-righteous thinking you get ready to kill him of whom the prophets spoke, the Son of Man. To the extent that you do these things, you prove to yourselves that you are the wicked sons of them who killed the prophets. Go on then, and fill up your cup of judgement!’
“Wretchedness on you children of evil! John was right when he called you the offspring of vipers; now I ask, how can you escape the judgment that John decreed on you?’
“But even now I offer you in my Father’s name mercy and forgiveness; even now I offer the loving hand of eternal fellowship. My Father has sent you the wise men and the prophets; some you have killed and others you have persecuted. Then came John announcing the coming of the Son of Man, and him you destroyed after many had believed his teaching. Now you are getting ready to shed more innocent blood. Do you not understand that a terrible day of reckoning will come when the judge of all the Earth will require this people to account for the way that they have rejected, destroyed, persecuted these messengers from heaven? Do you not understand that you must account for all of this righteous blood, from the first prophet you killed down to the times of Zechariah who was slain between the altar and the sanctuary? If you continue in your evil ways this accounting may be required of this generation.’
“O Jerusalem and the children of Abraham, you who have stoned the prophets and killed the teachers that were sent to you even now I would gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you will not!’
“Now I leave you. You have heard my message and you have made your decision. Those who have believed my gospel are even now safe in the kingdom of God. To you who have chosen to reject the gift of God I say that you will not see me teaching in the temple anymore. My work for you is done. Watch, I now go forth with my children and your house is left to you desolate: forsaken!”
Status of Individual Jews
The fact that the Jewish spiritual leaders at onetime rejected Jesus’ teachings and conspired to bring about his cruel death does not in any way affect the status of any individual Jew in that person’s standing before God. The Jew’s past actions should not cause those who claim to be Jesus’ followers to be prejudiced against an individual Jew as a fellow human being. The Jews as a nation and as a sociopolitical group paid in full the terrible price of rejecting the Prince of Peace: long since they ceased to be the spiritual torchbearers of divine truth to humanity. But this is no reason why the individual descendants of these long-ago Jews should be made to suffer the persecutions done to them by bigoted, unworthy, and intolerant people professing to follow Jesus of Nazareth, who himself was born a Jew.
Many times this hatred and persecution of modern Jews has resulted in the death and suffering of innocent people whose ancestors back in Jesus’ day heartily accepted his gospel, and unflinchingly died for the truth that they so wholeheartedly believed. What a shudder of horror passes over the onlooking celestial beings as they watch Jesus’ followers indulge themselves in harassing, persecuting, and even murdering the later-day descendants of Peter, Philip, Matthew, and other Palestinian Jews who so gloriously yielded up their lives as the first martyrs of the gospel of the heavenly kingdom!
How cruel and unreasoning to force innocent children to suffer for the sins of their ancestors—misdeeds they know nothing about and for which they could in no way be held responsible! And to do such wicked deeds in the name of Jesus who taught his disciples to love even their enemies! It was necessary in this recital of Jesus’ life to show the way that some of his fellow Jews rejected him and conspired to bring about his humiliating death, but we warn everyone who reads this story that this historical presentation in no way justifies the hatred or condones the unfair attitude that so many Christians have held toward individual Jews for many centuries. Kingdom believers, those who follow Jesus’ teachings, must cease to mistreat the individual Jew as one who is guilty of the rejection and killing of Jesus. The Father and his Creator Son have never ceased to love the Jews: God is no respecter of persons, and salvation is for the Jew as well as for the gentile.
The Fateful Sanhedrin Meeting
At eight o’clock on this Tuesday evening the Sanhedrin was called to order. Many times they had informally ordered Jesus’ death: they were determined to stop his work, but never before had they resolved to place him under arrest and kill him at all costs. It was just before midnight on Tuesday, April 4, A.D. 30 that the Sanhedrin officially and unanimously voted to kill both Jesus and Lazarus. This was their answer to Jesus’ last appeal to the Jewish rulers that he had made in the temple a few hours earlier, and it showed their bitter resentment toward Jesus’ last and vigorous condemnation of these same unrepentant Sadducees and Pharisees. The passing of the death sentence on the Son of God even before his trial was the Sanhedrin’s reply to the last offer of heavenly mercy ever to be extended to the Jewish nation as such.
From this time on the Jews were left to finish their brief and short lease of national life wholly in accordance with their purely human status among the nations of Earth. Israel rejected the Son of the God who had made an agreement with Abraham, and the plan to make the children of Abraham the light-bearers of truth to the world was shattered. The divine agreement had been annulled, and the end of the Hebrew nation drew on quickly.
The Sanhedrin’s agents were ordered to arrest Jesus early the next morning. They were to do so suddenly, in secret, and at night. Understanding that he may not return that day to teach in the temple, they told the agents to bring him before the high Jewish court sometime before midnight on Thursday.
The Situation in Jerusalem
Judas had returned to the temple right before Jesus began his terrible scolding of the Jewish rulers. But it was unfortunate that he did not hear the first mercy-offering half of his farewell speech. Judas did not hear Jesus’ last offer of mercy to the Jewish rulers because he was with a group of Sadducees and his relatives discussing the best way to separate himself from Jesus and his fellow apostles. It was while Judas was listening to Jesus’ final denunciation of the Jewish rulers that he finally made up his mind to abandon the gospel work and wash his hands of the whole business. Even so, he left the temple with the twelve and went with them to Mount Olivet, where with his fellow apostles he listened to that fateful talk on the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the Jewish nation.
The people who heard Jesus swing from his merciful appeal to the Jewish leaders into his sudden and scathing reprimand that bordered on ruthless condemnation were stunned and confused. That night while the Sanhedrin ordered Jesus’ death and while Jesus sat with his apostles out on the Mount of Olives predicting the death of the Jewish nation, the rest of Jerusalem was thinking about the one question no one would ask, “What will they do with Jesus?”
At Nicodemus’ house more than thirty leading Jews who secretly believed in the kingdom discussed what they should do if an open break with the Sanhedrin occurred. Everyone present agreed that they would make a public confession of their loyalty to Jesus as soon as they heard of his arrest, which they did.
The Sadducees who now controlled the Sanhedrin wanted Jesus killed for three reasons: they were afraid Jesus’ appeal to the people would endanger the existence of the Jewish nation by involving the Roman authorities; his passion to reform the temple had directly cost them money, and they felt they were responsible for preserving the social order: they feared the consequences if Jesus’ strange new doctrine of the brotherhood of humanity was spread further.
The Pharisees had different reasons for wanting to see Jesus dead. Jesus rejected the ultra-conservative Pharisees’ traditional hold on the people, and they bitterly resented attacks on their supposedly vested honor as religious teachers. They felt that Jesus was breaking the law, that he was a blasphemer because he seemed to say that God was his Father, and that he had shown complete disregard for the Sabbath and many other legal and ceremonial requirements. Now they were furious with him because he bitterly denounced them at the end of his farewell speech.
After the Sanhedrin formally ordered Jesus’ death, they agreed to meet at ten o’clock the next morning at Caiaphas’ house to draw up the charges for his trial. A small group of the Sadducees had actually suggested that they just go out and assassinate Jesus, but the Pharisees completely refused to agree to such a thing.
That was the situation in Jerusalem on this eventful day as a huge host of celestial beings hovered right above this momentous scene, every one of them anxious to do something to help Jesus but held back by their commanders.