Why Did the Pharisees Feel Threatened by Jesus?

Tom:

We’re continuing with the gospel of John in chapter 11 and we are going to pick up with verse 47.“Then gathered the chief priests and the Pharisees a council, and said, What do we? For this man doeth many miracles.If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him:and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation.”Oh, we can see where their heads and hearts are in this.

Dave:

Right.They are really interested in truth, aren’t they?This, of course—

Tom:

Dave, doesn’t this relate to the segment that we dealt with on the Book of Mormon?These are religious men.

Dave:

Right.

Tom:

This is one of the problems with religion.

Dave:

Verse 46 says somebody came and told them what happened.That’s why they called this meeting.They have been told by an eyewitness that Lazarus was dead four days in the grave.By then he stinks. They didn’t even want to move the stone and Jesus says, Remove the stone and calls him out, bound hand and foot with grave clothes.This guy was there, several of them, apparently, and they are coming and they are telling the Pharisees what happened and look what the Pharisees say.This man doeth many miracles.They don’t deny that these are miracles.Well, he’s got to be the Messiah.At least, Nicodemus was willing to say, “We know you are”, in fact, I think he was speaking for the rest of them, he was one of the Pharisees, one of the Rabbis.“We know you are a teacher come from God for no man can do the miracles that you do unless God is with him.”I would have to conclude they know this.They know he is doing miracles, they know it must be from God and what do they say?If we let him alone everybody is going to believe on him and then look what’s going to happen.The Romans will come and they will say well you guys aren’t in charge anymore. We don’t need you to cooperate with us because you’ve lost the leadership of these people.They all believe in the Messiah.The Messiah has come and we’re going to deal with him. That’s all they are thinking of, their position, their power.Tom, it just breaks your heart to think of that.And what do they do?They’re like Esau. They sold their inheritance for a morsel, for a bit of stew or something and Christ said look, if you gain the whole world and lose you soul, you made a bad deal.

Tom:

Dave, it’s amazing!It keeps coming back to truth, to truth, to truth.You know, we’re thinking about, as we mentioned before, I grew up Roman Catholic and often I think about the problems that the Catholic church is going through and the issue really is not the priests and pedophilia, and so on.The major issue is what the church is doing to cover these things. Because unrighteousness can’t be exposed or the church will lose its credibility.

Dave:

Well, they’ve been covering it up for years, many years.

Tom:

Go way back, not just this issue but go back through church history.

Dave:

It’s only because of the pressure from people.We live in an age now when they sue you.There are a lot of lawyers out there that want to help you do that and only because of that otherwise, this would still be covered up.And, I’m thinking of a half dozen French women who went to the Vatican, they wanted an audience with the Pope.This was four or five years ago—pleaded with him— we have children from priests, we represent thousands of women who have children from priests.We can’t even tell our children who their fathers are.Would you please get rid of this celibacy because nobody is keeping this.They are either homosexuals or they are pedophilias or they’ve got girlfriends.

Tom:

Even heterosexuals, Dave.What about the nuns in Africa who are complaining to the Vatican that the priests are literally raping the nuns because they select them because they may not have AIDS, whereas the population of women there, it’s rampant.

Dave:

And the nuns, supposedly, aren’t going to complain, or can’t complain and some of the nuns are willing to do this as well.It’s all because of this rule of celibacy, which is not biblical, which has been imposed and you know Tom, as a Catholic, or anybody would get my book, A Woman Rides the Beast, or the video.There were Popes who were the sons of celibate Popes.There were Popes who married their children in St. Peters.Everybody knew it and you go to Italy today, you know what goes on.At least they tell me that when a new priest arrives in the village the first thing they do is get a woman for him so he won’t go after their wives.Now this is a common practice.The church knows it, everybody knows it, Catholics know it.Why do we continue with this lie?Well, because of the lusts in the human heart and because of the desire to carry it on without admitting that we are wrong so we won’t lose our power and that’s all that these Rabbis have in mind.Not truth, not the salvation of the people, not recognizing who the Messiah really is, but maintaining their hold over these people, and this is what the Catholic church is doing.And not only the Catholic church, we’ve got many Protestant pastors, that’s what they are interested in is maintaining their hold over people.Well Tom, we could give examples and I started to do it but I won’t.

Tom:

Well, we will go on here.Verse 49, “And one of them, named Caiaphas, being the high priest that same year, said unto them, ‘Ye know nothing at all, Nor consider that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.’”This is a lie!Even from this individual who just said, you know he was interested in his position, not in the people.

Dave:

Well Tom, let’s give him credit now.He thinks that the nation is held together by the Rabbis and without the Rabbis everything is gone, guys.We’ve got to maintain ourselves, otherwise what will they have to do?I mean, how will they be Jews anymore if they don’t follow us and our rules and the religious writings that we’ve given them, the Talmud and so forth.The nation is going to perish if—see, he’s rationalizing now; he’s justifying what he’s going to do.So he comes up with a solution—I think we’ve got to kill this guy.Wouldn’t it be better that one man die than the whole nation perish?Tom, verse 51 and 52 is difficult for me to understand:“And this spake he not of himself:but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for that nation; And not for that nation only, but that also he should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad.”I don’t understand that.Is it saying that because he was high priest, somehow God allowed him to speak a prophetic word?It’s his lust, it’s his selfishness that is doing this and yet, somehow, God is allowing him, like he allowed Balaam, that this man is speaking a real prophecy, he doesn’t know what he is saying, then the whole nation perish.Then what did Jesus do?He gave his life to save the nation of Israel, indeed he did, and to save the whole world because he paid the penalty for our sins.So it’s all like when it says Pilate brought Jesus forth, he says, behold the man, he doesn’t know what he is saying.This is man as God intended him to be, this is the perfect man, this is the second man, the last Adam, he does not know what he is saying.This man doesn’t know what he is saying but he’s the chief priest and somehow, I guess God allows him to speak forth a truth although it comes from his own selfish heart, his own self centered interests.

Tom:

Dave there’s another aspect of this.I remember reading not to long ago reading a Catholic archbishop said that we should go through the Scriptures and expunge those verses that seem to be anit-Semetic.Here we have the high priest talking about “this man must die.”One of the reasons the archbishop said these things is because he understands the history of the Catholic church that they had over hundreds of years pointed to the Jews as Christ killers and therefore we had to repent of that view and so on.But you don’t mess with God’s word.

Dave:

Well you can’t change the truth and if you’re going to expunge everything that’s called anti-Semetic—what you mean by anti-Semetic?First of all you have to define that and then you’re going to have to go back and—look at what the prophets said, and this is God speaking through His prophets—telling these people what sinners they were, the judgment he was going to bring upon them—is that anti-Semetic?No, it’s the truth.But the Bible doesn’t play favorites—we’re all sinners.

Tom:

Sure.

Dave:

The Bible points out the evil in all of our hearts.When Jeremiah said that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it…He’s not talking about Jewish hearts…in fact the Scripture says one man’s heart reflects another man’s heart.So its not anti-Semetic; its not anti-Gentile to point out that we are all sinners, we are all wicked, we are all rebels.

Tom:

That tells you why this book was not written by man.

Dave:

Absolutely!

Tom:

Man wouldn’t take that perspective on himself.

Dave:

Right.So verse 53 says: From that day forth they took counsel together to put him to death.And they are going to fulfill the Scriptures in killing Him, but they didn’t know it.