Mat. 26:47-56, Vengeance in a Kiss
preparedness for enemy attacks. They do God’s will, and stop attempts to exploit, steal, oppress, plunder, torture and murder our siblings in the family of humankind. God thoroughly condemns all such crimes, even against animals, but much more against other human beings. Consequently, this means that His people will fight God-ordained wars against His enemies. Then again, we must also remember that God-ordained wars are conducted by those who know His will and wisdom. So this means that our warfare seeks repentance into basic truths and a restoration of justice, equity and peace, where those able to love can love without hindrance. All true churches know all this. Thus, almost all churches of the past and present, all the deluded, fascist, racist, greedy, materialistic, bullying, threatening, violent humanistic churches that have murdered the innocent to serve human gods, are objectively, categorically false churches, and demonic enemies of Jesus and His people.
Then Jesus asked Peter what might happen if He did not allow Himself to be seized and brutally murdered. How could the infallible prophecies in God’s Word be nullified, such as Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53, or other prophecies of the Messiah’s New Covenant salvation? “But then how might the Scriptures have been fulfilled, that it is necessary for it to occur in this way?” John wrote that Jesus made this same declaration like this: “The cup which the Father gave Me, even with all these effects now occurring, it is impossible that I might not drink it” (John 18:11, ALT). Here Jesus used a perfect tense form of δίδωμι to indicate that the Father “gave” Him this cup of destiny in the past, through the current effects of this mob coming to seize Him. Then He used a double negative with an aorist subjunctive (οὐ μὴ πίω) to indicate that it was impossible for Him not drink this cup, every ounce of pain and death in it. This is how John remembered what Jesus said to Peter, after Jesus told him to put his sword back in its sheath. And Jesus may have said what both Matthew and John had remembered Him saying to Peter that night. But both basically mean the same. God predestined that His own sinless body of human flesh would suffer and die for the sins of His elect. So there could be no possible way to alter the course of history which God wrote at the very beginning of all existence.
After healing the ear of Malchus and pacifying both the mob and His eleven disciples, Jesus then put the minds of them all back into the reality of the situation. For the mob had deluded themselves into thinking they had come to fight for a great and noble cause, since their teachers and authorities told them this was an urgent mission to save their “godly church.” But their “godly church” was just one more cheap and dirty little institution belonging to Satan’s world order, just another common, evil, cowardly, greedy, unjust, exploitative, financially motivated business seeking to esteem and enrich an elite group of ruthless psychopaths—albeit professional psychopaths who smiled, kissed babies and made their dupes feel “saved” by them. There was nothing noble, great or godly about any of them. And that church waited until the darkness of a late night to seize Jesus, when most of their dupes were asleep and unable to see the crimes they committed on this Passover Sabbath. For they knew they could not seize Him during the day, when crowds could witness their devious evil deeds.
Jesus calmly and boldly stood in front of that armed mob, so He could address and counsel His own disciples, as well as the deceived elect who had been tricked into standing with that mob. Then He gave that mob this rebuke: “You men came out as upon a bandit, with swords and clubs, to catch Me.
I was sitting in the temple during the day, continuously teaching, and you did not seize Me. So this whole thing happened, with all its effects, so that the writings of the prophets might have been fulfilled” (Mat. 26:55-56, from: Ὡς ἐπὶ λῃστὴν ἐξήλθατε μετὰ μαχαιρῶν καὶ ξύλων συλλαβεῖν με; καθʼ ἡμέραν ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ ἐκαθεζόμην διδάσκων καὶ οὐκ ἐκρατήσατέ με. τοῦτο δὲ ὅλον γέγονεν ἵνα
πληρωθῶσιν αἱ γραφαὶ τῶν προφητῶν, SBLGNT). At the time, God’s Holy Spirit in Jesus reached into the hearts of His disciples and into the elect standing in the mob, to nullify the lying propaganda of the fake religious authorities. He wanted to make the reality of this whole situation clear to them.
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Jesus exposed those esteemed religious guides in the rogue church council as men who hid their deeds because those men knew their works were criminal acts that neither God nor His people would condone. Jesus wanted His elect to realize this, because their elect spirits needed this seed of truth.
This truth would work its way throughout their souls, into their minds of flesh, until they finally woke up, understood how those deceivers were exploiting them, and flee back into God’s salvation.
With those words, Jesus would have effectively dichotomized that mob. Yes, the blind non-elect would still seize and bind Jesus, right then there. But the deceived and deluded elect among them would now refrain from taking any further action against Jesus or His disciples. The deluded elect would still be in the mob, but no longer be a part of that mob. For all their hearts and minds would now see this whole situation in the light of Scriptures, and what actually existed in reality. Their religious authorities were saying that the name of God was being blasphemed by this Jesus, and that this Jesus threatened the very existence of the utterly holy priesthood of Israel. Yet, even when the most esteemed sinner said something remotely blasphemous on the temple grounds, those authorities would instantly strike that sinner’s face, then have him or her dragged out of the holy place, to be cast down upon the dung-filled streets. They sometimes would even stone that slanderer of God to death, publicly, and without a trial. So, if Jesus had been publicly teaching blasphemies, why did they not cast out Jesus, while He reclined on the temple grounds for hours at a time throughout many days, continuously teaching the people? Clearly, that rogue council had no genuine proof that Jesus had ever spoken a blasphemous word, not on the temple grounds, nor anywhere else. So why had this secretive portion of their religious authorities suddenly ruled that Jesus was an evil blasphemer?
Now that they thought about it, the rhetoric of those golden-tongued religious leaders never actually provided any real evidence that Jesus was the evil blasphemer they said He was. And God’s Word always required accusations to be backed up by hard evidence from at least two sources, and three for more serious crimes like blasphemy. The elect in that mob also realized that those “great” and
“holy” men had often been caught lying, on many occasions, about souls they knew to be good, and even about God’s Word, always for their own political or financial gain. So why trust them now?
After Jesus said this, even the non-elect in that mob were smart enough to know that their ranks had been effectively divided. So they could no longer trust the men next to them. If they began to beat and kill Jesus and His eleven faithful disciples, without a biblically demanded fair trial, some of the temple policemen in their mob might intercede, and may even fight on the side of Jesus. So, since even the most vengeful non-elect defenders of the fake church could not trust that everyone among them was still deluded enough to participate in their unjust cause, and they were forced to simply perform the bare minimum of what their religious authorities commanded. More than anything else, the high priest, chief priests and evangelical pastors wanted them to seize the Teacher and bring Him back to them—although these temple policemen also knew that those jealous authorities would have been far more pleased if they returned and said they had to kill Jesus and all His disciples in a fight.
So the mob took Jesus alive, and did not touch His disciples. And now those religious leaders would be forced to get their own hands dirty with the blood of Jesus, by conducting some kind of fake trial, in order to condemn and destroy Jesus for their own financial and political gain. Yet, since the mob did not murder Jesus, and also had to let His disciples freely depart, those leaders would be furious.
Therefore, a few of the non-elect temple policemen cautiously approached Jesus, watching their backs, lest anyone in their own mob might object. Then they firmly bound His hands and led Him down the road, back to the chief priests and evangelical pastors. And the elect in that mob could do nothing about that, since it was their orders, and they were told that it would be unlawful and even sinful to disobey the orders of their elite human gods. Thus, even the elect meekly walked with the Page 1760
Mat. 26:47-56, Vengeance in a Kiss
mob, to fulfill their supposed obligations to their church leaders. Yet doubts against their religious leaders were growing in their minds, piling up into an overwhelming mountain of truths. Now the elect in the mob likely intended to make polite excuses and go home, as soon as they returned from this evil mission, and honestly rethink their obviously corrupted opinions about this Jesus and His teachings. Meanwhile, the eleven faithful disciples ran away when they saw Jesus taken from them.
So all the sheep of God’s pasture, all the elect there that day, would soon be scattered by the wolves.
Mark even recorded a testimony from one of the disciples about how a man in the mob grabbed the outer garment of a “young” disciple, a disciple who must have been standing very near Jesus and the men who were binding Jesus’ hands. That young man had been so afraid that he pulled himself out of his linen cloak and fled, wearing only his tunic (Mark 14:50-51, and note: the adjective γυμνός
indicated “not entirely dressed,” and did not mean completely “naked”). That “young man” was likely the teenage disciple John, who would have been too terrified to realize that these men were not going to seize any of the disciples with Jesus. So none in the mob gave chase. However, all this did fulfill the prophecy of Jesus and Zechariah. All forsook the Messiah that very night (Mat. 26:31-32).
Mat. 26:57-68,
The Fake Trial
“Those who had taken Jesus led Him away to Caiaphas the high priest, where the scribes and the elders were gathered together. But Peter followed Him from a distance, to the court of the high priest, and entered in and sat with the officers, to see the end. Now the chief priests, the elders, and the whole council sought false testimony against Jesus, that they might put Him to death; and they found none. Even though many false witnesses came forward, they found none. But at last two false witnesses came forward, and said, ‘This man said, “I am able to destroy the temple of God, and to build it in three days.”’
“The high priest stood up, and said to Him, ‘Have you no answer? What is this that these testify against You?’ But Jesus held His peace. The high priest answered Him, ‘I adjure you by the living God, that you tell us whether you are the Christ, the Son of God.’ Jesus said to him, ‘You have said it. Nevertheless, I tell you, after this you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming on the clouds of the sky.’ Then the high priest tore his clothing, saying, ‘He has spoken blasphemy! Why do we need any more witnesses? Behold, now you have heard His blasphemy. What do you think?’ They answered, ‘He is worthy of death!’ Then they spit in His face and beat Him with their fists, and some slapped Him, saying, ‘Prophesy to us, you Christ! Who hit you?’
“Now Peter was sitting outside in the court, and a maid came to him, saying, ‘You were also with Jesus, the Galilean!’ But he denied it before them all, saying, ‘I don’t know what you are talking about.’ When he had gone out onto the porch, someone else saw him, and said to those who were there, ‘This man also was with Jesus of Nazareth.’ Again he denied it with an oath, ‘I don’t know the man.’ After a little while those who stood by came and said to Peter,
‘Surely you are also one of them, for your speech makes you known.’ Then he began to curse and to swear, ‘I don’t know the man!’ Immediately the rooster crowed. Peter remembered the word which Jesus had said to him, ‘Before the rooster crows, you will deny Me three times.’
He went out and wept bitterly” (Mat. 26:57-75, WEB).
Now the council, which granted Judas the right to lead the mob of temple policemen and religious zealots against Jesus, had assembled in the house of the high priest. That council was the Sanhedrin, Page 1761
the ruling authority over all the devout Jews in the world. But this particular council meeting in that house would have only consisted of about 23 professional Bible scholars, rabbis and priests. Of course, the official Sanhedrin actually consisted of 70 members, plus the high priest. But not all of the Sanhedrin would have been willing to murder an innocent, miracle-working, honest, beloved Rabbi, merely to preserve their own political, financial, Roman-like and Roman-influenced kind of institution of their false church. Many members of the Sanhedrin were honest, loving men. So only the the most selfishly ambitious ones would have been called to this secret meeting this night. The high priest and his friends would have discretely informed only the members who hated Jesus and His biblical truths. None but the sycophants of the high priest assembled in this rogue council at his house that night, after the Passover meal, while all the other members were sleeping in their beds on this peaceful Sabbath night. Yet this rogue council did hold authority, since all they needed for an official Sanhedrin decision was the “whole council” or quorum of these 23 carefully chosen killers.
In this council, there was a mixture of prominent and very political Levitical priests, Sadducees and Evangelicals (Pharisees). All were well-educated and had been teaching elders and scholars who judged religious and secular matters as authorities over the people. But they always ensured there was some element, in all their teachings and judgments, which served their selfish ambitions for more money and more power. And most would use their trusted power of influence to stir up crisis after crises, so they could rally and unite their dupes to fight under their banners and in their human names for one fake critical cause after another. Yet none of these causes actually addressed any real problems faced by the people. None opposed the lies, oppression, poverty and injustice which the people had to face daily. Rather, all their urgent fake causes were humanly designed, or demonically designed, to induce a great artificial fear in the minds of their people, to turn them against fictitious threats that supposedly threatened their loved ones and, supposedly, also “God’s holy” fake church.
Thus, their people totally ignored all their own worst and most devastating problems. After all, the very worst problems of the majority were created and perpetuated by these same men, and used by these same men to exploit those dupes, to bleed more money and power from the blood of the people and their dying children. None of these church authorities ever wanted to war against evil, nor taught any honest truths from God’s Word, nor even any of God’s natural realities and just principles. And now Jesus came with every kind of truth and wisdom, undoing the nicely exploitable problems which their people suffered from. So these religious exploiters, and the demons they worshipped, saw their source of income and status eroding. They had a real crisis on their dirty hands, and had to do the only thing they knew how to do. They were forced to invent the lie that this sinless God in a body of human flesh had slandered the false god of their fake church, since He threatened their illicit income and power. They applied their best desperately passionate rhetoric to rally their dupes, with artificial fears, to unite them all in their own “good cause,” to march out and murder the real God.
But make no mistake. Those church authorities were not suffering, nor doing all this plotting and murdering as an odious duty. Not one would rather be at home in bed. From past experience, I have seen how these kinds of men relish in this kind of “emergency.” All love the artificial necessity of having to conduct meetings throughout the entire night. It excites and motivates them. It pumps the adrenaline through their veins. This is what their aggressive, bullying, psychopathic souls live for.
Occasions like this make their inner minds, located between their legs, virtually throb with a joyful, anticipatory thrill, as their daydreams wallow in the mud of their own false greatness and esteemed importance. So, during that night, all these rogue members would be at their very best, at their peak performance, in their worst and most evil states of mind. The gears of their little minds would be feverishly devising their most cunning evil delusions, each striving to outdo the competition sitting Page 1762
beside him. For there is nothing that these kinds of psychopaths enjoy more than being secretly called to serve an important cause as “chosen ones,” as a secret society, separated from all lesser Sanhedrin members, apart from all whom they consider to be too “stupid” to know that this murder simply must be committed. Only these men knew the ecstatic confidence which Satan awarded to his most powerfully enslaved human gods, who were all personally chosen by that devil’s high priest.
These few, who were actually a minority of the Sanhedrin, liked to believe that they alone possessed the real power and essence of the mighty council ruling over all Israel. Consequently, being called away from their families on this holy family holiday, to partake in this murder plot against their sinless God, was the most enjoyable thing they had ever done in their lives, and their hellish father filled them with great pride. So never think these men were like you, and would not enjoy all this.
Also, there were actually two high priests back then, in AD 28. Annas was recognized by religious Jews as the high priest for life, because God’s Law made no provisions for any replacement of a high priest, but indicated that each would serve Him and the rest of the Levitical priesthood until his death (see Num. 35:25,28). And Annas did not die until AD 36. However, in AD 15, Rome deposed Annas and appointed his son-in-law, Caiaphas, as the new high priest. Thus, Caiaphas had to dwell with Annas in the high priest’s house, to preside over the Sanhedrin and oversee official interactions between the Jews and Rome. If such things were not done, the Sanhedrin and all Israel would need to face the deadly wrath of Rome. Yet both Annas and Caiaphas accepted this, and both enjoyed the luxury and power they were granted through Roman rule. Neither wanted to lose any of their money and power due to the words of mere truth that Jesus preached, things like, “The greatest among you will be the servant of all.” Both were happy to let bowing servants, who called them “lord,” serve their every whim. Neither wanted anything to do with actually helping the church develop a loving and just understanding of God’s Word. Therefore, both Annas and Caiaphas needed to get rid of this Jesus, and silence all His biblical teachings that had exposed them as mere selfish little hypocrites.
These high priests, together with with their falsely esteemed biblical scholars in the Sanhedrin, knew that, if Jesus and His teachings gained respect and were fully understood among the loving, just, wise, committed, reliable and steadfast elect among their people, those elect would soon become a massive rock that would crush their illicit hopes to gain money and power. For these arrogant little
“lords” had no one capable of defending their criminal lives from the just who nullified their works.
For these human gods merely commanded an army of ruthless, self-serving, unjust, foolish, unstable sycophants. The only faithful “soldiers” they could find were all more stupid, divided and unreliable than they were themselves, since they dared not employ immoral dupes who were more intelligent than themselves. The only ones these selfishly ambitious psychopaths could get to do their dirty works, to keep them in riches and power by suppressing and terrorizing the people, were the worst, most easily manipulated, shallow, materialistic, selfish fools in their fake churches. Thus, this kind of army was always easily divided, self-defeating, weak and totally ineffective. So the strength of the inner truths taught by Jesus had to be stopped before they became a powerful and formidable threat to them. And this Jesus could not be bribed, nor coerced through the usual threats. Rather, Jesus always bravely and honestly voiced truths, without even the slightest concession to any threats from any opposition. Thus, the only way to stop this Jesus was to murder Him. But, since the rest of the Sanhedrin wanted nothing to do with murdering an innocent man, these murderers in this rogue council had to “wisely” and “bravely” make the “noble sacrifice” of murdering Him though stealth.
It was because both high priests thought that the murder of Jesus was necessary that the Roman-appointed high priest, Caiaphas, told the Sanhedrin, “[The council] is delivering together one Person to death for the sake of the people” (John 18:14, from: συμφέρει ἕνα ἄνθρωπον ἀποθανεῖν ὑπὲρ τοῦ
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λαοῦ., SBLGNT). This fake, Roman-appointed high priest announced that the council had done this criminal and unjust deed of condemning Jesus “together,” to make their sham trial outwardly appear legitimate, though it was done secretly, in the middle of a Sabbath night, without any other council members knowing about it. And he likely said this that very night, since he would have only uttered such words to that secret council of unjust members selected for this purpose, to murder Jesus. And, naturally, when Caiaphas said this, he obviously was thinking that the murder of Jesus had to be done “for the sake of the people” within the sphere of his false church, in order to preserve his own financial and political power under the banner of the “great” psychopathic Roman Empire. However, it was odd that he actually stated these words in this way. God must have caused him to say it in this way. For Jesus did actually need to die “for the sake of the people,” to pay the ransom for their sins.
This secret minority council did not disperse after sending their Levitical police with Judas. For the high priests and their co-conspirators were forced to eagerly await the news of what their mob had accomplished, so they could then “fix” any problems that might arise through their nefarious deeds.
But, naturally, this waiting would have ended in a celebration since, to them, it was an exciting and joyful time. The best news would have been if the mob found and killed Jesus on the spot, preferably along with all His other core disciples. All these corrupt officials would have been delighted if Jesus and His eleven disciples resisted their well-armed mob. Then their heavily armed police would have had a perfectly legitimate excuse for slaughtering all those civilians. And that would effectively stop that biblical movement, prevent any more preaching of that loving, healing Rabbi’s financially damaging truths, which He dared to glean so literally, accurately and wisely from the Word of God.
Still, the mob returned with Jesus, and the murder of this one Man might effectively silence the rest.
After Judas and the mob of Levitical police returned, the rogue council saw that Jesus was still alive and well among them. So now they would need to murder Him themselves. That was bad news, but not a big problem, since they were skilled murderers of the innocent souls. They had committed their criminal acts with impunity many times before. Then they may have learned that Jesus’ disciple had actually attacked their police, but the police did not use this as an excuse to slaughter Jesus and the eleven. So the council would have been furious about this, angrily reminding those policemen that there was a reason they were sent with weapons, and with the authority to kill. Then the council would have dismissed the mob, telling them that they would deal with them tomorrow. Since they now had to wait for another opportunity to murder Jesus’ eleven assistant teachers, they would be upset. But, for now, they had to attend to other chores. They had to figure out a way to murder Jesus in the most politically advantageous manner possible, and deceive the people into thinking they were their just and wise servants who murdered Him for their sakes, so their people would think they were saviours and praise them for their good works. They had to find and pay false witnesses, invent false reports to make their murder look like a selfless act of pious godliness, and so on. There were far too busy to deal with a little matter like disciplining policemen who refused to murder innocent civilians.
As mentioned, the mob took Jesus to the high priest’s house (Luke 22:54), which belonged to the church of Israel, since God’s Law never allowed the Levites, including the Aaronic high priests, to own any of their own property, nothing that their families could inherit. And the church had a very large budget. So this house would have been a huge and spacious building surrounding an expansive courtyard, with many halls and meeting rooms nestled along all four sides of the courtyard’s garden.
In our eyes, it might look like a combination of a sizable church and apartment complex, not just a mere mansion. Two wings of the house would used as residences for the two high priests, with many rooms for servants in those wings as well. But the other two wings would be wider, and hold the
“business” rooms and halls, used for political and financial functions that the high priests designated Page 1764
as religious necessities. A wide gated archway would lead to the main street, like a tunnel in one of the walls, possibly with doors to utility and guard rooms on either side. And this hall would lead all the way into the central courtyard. We can be fairly certain about all this because a high priest’s large residence has been discovered in Jerusalem, although this was a previous high priest’s residence and was likely much smaller than the one Jesus was taken to on that day in AD 28. At any rate, plenty of space would be available in that house for all the council and many Levitical policemen to assemble.
When the mob arrived at the high priest’s residence, with Jesus as their prisoner, the Jewish council first consulted the man whom most of them considered to be the real high priest, that is, Annas (see John 18:13), the high priest deposed by the Romans. Meanwhile, Caiaphas would have gathered with the rest of that rogue council, as their head, to discuss their options. For they were now pressed for time. The morning approached and they had to complete their murderous plot before the masses filled the streets. It was about five o’clock by then, not long before the sun would rise at about six o’clock. And, not long before Jesus and Annas were talking, Peter and John sheepishly entered the courtyard, likely with vexing hesitation. For both of them had been following the mob at a distance.
After arriving, John was soon allowed into the inner complex, into the room where Jesus spoke with Annas, since his family knew one of the high priests, who was likely Annas. But Peter was left standing outside, still trying to look inconspicuous somewhere in the courtyard. And, at this early hour, when very few visitors would be coming, and with all the excitement in the residence, the guards were likely standing at the inner end of hallway, a few feet within the courtyard. By doing this, they did not abandon their post at the gate, yet could also see what was going on inside. As the guards stood there, they seem to have asked a woman to watch the outside gate, next to the street, at the other end of the hallway, within calling distance, so they could continue to watch their lords celebrate the capture of Jesus from the edge of the courtyard. For they knew that they had to stay near the gate, to let in friendly visitors and deal with troublemakers outside the gate. So the young and harmless looking disciple John would have spoken to the woman whom the guards left there, when he and Peter tried to enter the residence. And, since the high priest’s people knew John, it would have been easy for him to convince her to let him and Peter inside (John 18:15-16). Now, just before dawn is usually the coldest time of the day. So Peter causally strolled to the fire, where the servants and police warmed themselves, and he sat down. But Peter feared this crowd and pretended to be one of them, to blend in with them, so none would know that he was a disciple of that Jesus.
In the meantime, Annas ordered his temple policemen to bring Jesus up to his chamber. For, since Annas considered himself to an important man, all lowly criminals, like this Messiah who fulfilled all the prophecies of God’s Word, must come to him, to seek his wise counsel. In the mind of Annas, only fools like Jesus would stoop so low as to go to where the sinners were, to teach and guide them.
It was beneath a great high priest’s dignity to walk down the stairs to minister to the lost. So Annas forced Jesus to climb the stairs and see him in the comfort of his own room. Still, Annas thought he was being truly generous by letting Jesus see him, since great Roman humanists like him seldom did such merciful deeds for the falsely accused! Standing in all the glorious arrogance he could muster, Annas tried to gratify his own curiosity, and asked Jesus about His doctrines. What kind of rebellious teachings did He utter against the financial exploitations of their “holy” false church? Why did He cast out the profitable sellers of sacrificial animals, and the exchangers of Satan’s coins? Did this God in the flesh not know how much their fake church had depended on that clearly illicit income?
Annas knew God’s Law and he thought that, if Jesus was committing such financially devastating deeds, just to keep the temple pure, even to ensure that the Gentiles had a suitable place to pray, He might also be teaching other kinds of financially ruinous doctrines to His disciples. And all that had Page 1765
to be stopped, or his own luxurious lifestyle might be threatened! Could it be that Jesus was also telling them to give money to the starving poor instead of to their church officials? Annas had to get to the bottom of all this “evil,” and find out what left-wing nonsense from the Bible this radical rabbi had been proclaiming. For Jews should give all their money to feed the self-indulgence of priests, and Jews must always think of themselves as an exclusive and superior race, never as siblings of the devout Gentiles. Did this Jesus actually think the priesthood of Israel should be serving lost souls everywhere on God’s earth, like God commanded Abraham and them to do? Surely this Jesus was smart enough to see that worshipfully serving and bowing before their own Jewish human gods and owners was far better? This Jesus was turning their humanistic hierarchy upside down. This Jesus was a fool who somehow believed the loving justice taught in God’s Word was better for the people.
But Jesus saw through the lies and delusions of that corrupt little man, and knew this petty paranoid fool was just fishing for something to condemn Him. This cunning Annas eagerly anticipated turning Jesus’ words against Him, making them mean what they did not mean, to show off his skills as true deceiver for God, so he could righteously proclaim that Jesus was evil. Annas would project his all of his own evil motives and intentions upon Jesus, to thoroughly slander Jesus before all the world, because Jesus came to destroy that fake church that Annas owned for his own glory. But Jesus just stood there, listening to that self-important parasite babbling. Finally, when Annas grew angry, Jesus simply pointed out how Annas had already condemned Him, without any trial or evidence, and how Annas was in the practise of maligning every truth taught publicly by the Messiah to the world. So Annas had no need to interrogate Him, to try and acquire new words that he could misrepresent to slander Him. Jesus implied all of this by making this declaration: “I [was] concealing nothing. I effectively uttered words to the world. I Myself always taught in a synagogue or in the temple, where all the Jews assemble, and I uttered nothing in secret. What are you asking Me? Ask the ones having heard and who now remember what I uttered to them. Look, those know and remember the things I Myself said” (John 18:20-21, from: Ἐγὼ παρρησίᾳ λελάληκα τῷ κόσμῳ· ἐγὼ πάντοτε ἐδίδαξα ἐν
συναγωγῇ καὶ ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ, ὅπου πάντες οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι συνέρχονται, καὶ ἐν κρυπτῷ ἐλάλησα οὐδέν· τί
με ἐρωτᾷς; ἐρώτησον τοὺς ἀκηκοότας τί ἐλάλησα αὐτοῖς· ἴδε οὗτοι οἴδασιν ἃ εἶπον ἐγώ, SBLGNT).
Annas longed to find some new false evidence against Jesus, something all his other “lesser” dupes failed to discover, so he could prove himself to be superior. But Jesus was too wise for him. Then, when one of policemen their saw their lord’s embarrassment, he reacted to defend that esteemed god of his. For dupes who worship human gods, like that high priest, are always very eager to earn their favour, and possibly a pay raise or an esteeming title, by defending them. And the minds between the legs of both the manipulated mindless goons and their manipulators get stirred up, with competitive urges, whenever realities expose their impotence. So those slaves of demons act impulsively, and their first instinct is usually to bully and attack someone. Thus, when the temple policemen, who enforced the high priest’s illicit demands regarding all inferiors, heard Jesus treat his god as though he were a common servant of the people, grew violently indignant. As a worshipper of Annas, the guard thought Jesus, God in a body of human flesh, should cower, bow and beg for mercy from his
“great” and “holy” human god. Yet Jesus brushed off the vain and ignorant interrogation conducted by his god, as though Jesus was telling Annas, “You are not a god, just a lying little old man.” And, if Jesus implied that his worshipped human god was a mere little, arrogant human being, then Jesus was also implying that he, the bowing goon worshipping that profane liar was even more lowly. So this infuriated the self-important policeman, who was granted authority over life and death. After all, he was a somebody, a god himself, with power and authority received from this even greater human god, with a right to bully whomever he pleased, and to demand that men cower before his greatness.
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So this criminal policeman slapped our God Jesus across the face and shouted: “Are You answering the high priest like this?” (John 18:22, ALT). But our God Jesus knew God’s Law. Jesus knew that this high priest was supposed to judge and teach rightly, in humble service to God and God’s people.
Then this “policeman” was supposed to do the same. And, if this policeman did not know what was right, he was supposed to seek the counsel of those who did know. Likewise, his high priest god was to do the same. Thus, Jesus told that zealous, human worshipping policeman, whose sole duty was to serve and protect: “If I uttered something morally wrong, testify about the moral wrongness. But, if
[I spoke] something usefully good, why are you striking Me?” (John 18:23, ALT). For God does not allow anyone to make accusations against anyone, much less judge, condemn and punish anyone by striking them, until the the authorities present cross-examined testimonies and hard evidence in a just court and decisions based on both the evidence and the motives of the accused are weighed. Even then, authorities must only limit, suppress and punish in ways necessary to protect the innocent in the land, nothing more. For God commanded His people to love and take responsibility for even the enemies of their people, if possible, within limitations against further harm done to innocent victims.
If this temple policeman struck any person, even a real criminal, through anger caused by a false judgment, he broke God’s Law and proved himself to be unworthy of his office. Then, if the high priest allowed him to do such a crime, that high priest also proved himself unworthy of his office. So both Annas and that policeman effectively became mere criminals themselves, and both effectively forfeited their positions of authority through their sins. Both joined the ranks of the lawless, whose only right was to turn themselves over to the true and legitimate authorities chosen by God, so they could be tried in a just court for their crimes, possibly repent, then bear the fruits of true repentance.
Neither held any real God-given authority to judge anyone after this. Both proved to be enemies of God, of God’s Law, of God’s true church, of God’s appointed judges, of God’s chosen governing bodies, of God’s people in their land, and of all God’s creations. Neither held any real right to say or do anything to anyone, after that. Yet neither cared or repented. Both enjoyed their illicit authority.
Then Annas, growing frustrated, sent Jesus, still bound, to Caiaphas in the courtyard below. And we can assume that Annas was in an upper room since Mark said Peter was in the courtyard “below”
(κάτω, Mark 14:66). Also, this questioning by Caiaphas and the council would have occurred after Annas interrogated Jesus, not in the order implied by Mark’s text (14:56-65). Now, as previously mentioned, John’s family seemed to be friends or relations with the high priest, and that high priest would be Annas not Caiaphas. As a fairly wealthy and influential Jewish family, John’s parents had likely fled to Galilee when Annas was deposed by Rome, fearing some kind of reprisal against those who remained faithful to the old high priest. There, they taught the Scriptures to their sons, James and John, and trained them to practise a good trade, fishing, since every devout Jew was to work with their hands and learn a useful occupation, something that contributed to the welfare of their people. But those parents later heard Jesus preach, then sent James and John to follow Him as His disciples, with their blessings. So this is likely why John primarily wrote about what Annas said and did. John had likely gone up to the chamber to see Annas, after the Levitical policemen and servants took Jesus to Annas. John would have been an eye-witness of all that Jesus and Annas said that day.
Now that Jesus was led back to the courtyard, and while Caiaphas was busy discussing options with the quorum of the Sanhedrin, the policemen decided to have a little “fun” with their prisoner. They liked to do this because they were bullies, chosen by the high priest for their ability to do all his dirty works. These were the chosen “loyal” ones, the most ruthless little psychopaths in the force, the kind who loved to prove how big and god-like they were by terrorizing others. So they beat this safely bound Prisoner who could not fight back. After all, they had time to enjoy themselves at another Page 1767
person’s expense, and they figured that they had a right to cause criminals pain, to “teach them a lesson,” although God’s Law forbade them to assume guilt until a just trial proved it, and God did not allow anyone to harm anyone else in ways not prescribed by His Law. Yet these policemen cared nothing for God or His justice, although their Levitical priesthood was to be a holy “tithe” of Israel, to serve as loving priests wholly dedicated to the service of God, His people and all of His creations.
While all this was going on, Peter’s flesh was being exposed to trials which would prove that his elect spirit still remained infantile and weak. As he sat by the fire, a servant girl, completely lacking any authority or physical strength, stared at him and finally said, “This one was also associated with Him!” Immediately Peter’s mind of flesh defensively bristled against her, and lied to protect itself.
Without pausing to think for even a moment, Peter blurted out, “I did not and still do not know Him, woman!” But her question started the surrounding crowd to become suspicious. So a man in the group approached Peter and said, “You also are from them!” So Peter once more impulsively lied, saying, “Man, I am not!” Then the people in the courtyard left him alone, for awhile. But, as dawn neared and the sky grew a little lighter, a man must have heard Peter say something and picked up on his Galilean accent. So that man confidently declared, “In reality, this one was also with Him. For he is also a Galilean.” Peter, growing even more frightened, blurted out, “Man, I do not know what you are saying!” At that moment, a nearby rooster crowed. And, since Jesus was back in the courtyard by this time, Peter looked up at Jesus, and Jesus looked back at him. Then Peter remembered how he told Jesus that he would never betray Him, even if he had to die with Him. But, at that time, Jesus then told Peter: “Before the rooster sounds this same day, you will deny Me three times.” So Peter, after finding his own cowardly hypocrisy of his flesh exposed in the eyes of Jesus, immediately got up, left the courtyard, found a quiet place, and “bitterly sobbed” tears of cleansing repentance (Luke 22:56-62, ALT). For it would more than another month before the Holy Spirit of Jesus entered his heart, to teach and train his spirit into courage, maturity, wisdom and a right ministry for His God.
After Peter left the courtyard, just before about six o’clock in the morning, Caiaphas came out with the members of the Sanhedrin. Then they, with a number of temple policemen, led Jesus to their official meeting place in God’s temple, since they only served the people there during the daylight hours. We know they did this because Luke wrote: “And, as the day began, the judging elders of the people, gathering both the chief priests and scribes, also led Him away into their Sanhedrin” (Luke 22:66, ALT). After some deliberation, they obviously decided that they needed to pretend to conduct an official-looking trial, complete with witnesses, so they could outwardly appear to be just when they falsely condemned and murdered their financial and political enemy. And this kind of sham trial would need to be done in their official Chamber of Hewn Stones, the official Jewish court built into the north wall of the temple. Otherwise, the people might suspect their nefarious intentions, if they condemned Jesus while hiding in the house of the high priest on the Passover Sabbath. Of course, they actually were committing a nefarious deed, an action that the rest of the Sanhedrin members would utterly condemn, if they were there to see it. Still, the appearance of an official emergency meeting, consisting of merely a hastily gathered quorum of members that they were “accidentally”
able to gather, would help them trick the people into thinking they were doing all this legitimately.
Now, conducting an emergency mock trial like this at the public temple, without any real evidence and without any cross-examining defence counsel present, might seem to be a little risky, especially since other more just and fair-minded members of the Sanhedrin may soon arrive, see them there, then oppose their actions. However, this was the Passover Sabbath day, which began at the previous sunset. So the vast majority of Sanhedrin members would remain at home, since the Sanhedrin never met there on a Sabbath day. Thus, during the biblically appointed Passover Sabbath, this carefully Page 1768
selected rogue council would be left to do whatever they pleased, just as Matthew described in his Gospel. They were just like the Trump loyalists in the American house and senate, if left without any opposition. Also, by the time this rogue council had roused a group of reliable lying witnesses from their beds, we should realize that Peter had most likely already returned to the other disciples. Then the whole group of disciples, including Matthew, almost certainly would have gone to the temple, to hear that sham trial, since they would have known the temple police must eventually take Jesus to the Sanhedrin’s chambers. John likely went there too, although probably a little later, possibly after being subjected to a discussion with the high priest’s household, and a stern lecture from Annas for associating himself with Jesus. So all eleven core disciples would have witnessed this trial of Jesus.
Although all four Gospels compressed the accounts of this trial and other related events, since they did not want to waste expensive paper and ink by explaining the precise order of events and the lesser details, we can easily harmonize them, especially the Gospels of the eye-witnesses, Matthew and John. So we can trust all four Gospels, all four carefully written accounts of that trial, and their impressions of the men conducting that trial. And all four apostles judged the information they saw or received according to the principles taught by Jesus and His Holy Spirit, in a way that truly fleshed out and fulfilled God’s intended meaning of His Law. Then Matthew’s Gospel candidly states: “So the chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin [i.e., the “whole Sanhedrin” refers to a quorum, enough members to make a binding decision or judgment, but would have only included selected like-minded members in a rogue council consisting of about 23, or possibly few more, but not all 71 members of the Sanhedrin] were seeking false witnesses against Jesus, so that they might kill Him. Yet they did not find [any] from the many false witnesses having come forward [to testify]. But later, after having come forward, two said:
‘This one asserted, “I am able to tear down the temple of God and build [it] up within three days”’”
(Mat. 26:59-61, from: οἱ δὲ ἀρχιερεῖς καὶ τὸ συνέδριον ὅλον ἐζήτουν ψευδομαρτυρίαν κατὰ τοῦ
Ἰησοῦ ὅπως αὐτὸν θανατώσωσιν, καὶ οὐχ εὗρον πολλῶν προσελθόντων ψευδομαρτύρων. ὕστερον
δὲ προσελθόντες δύο εἶπαν· Οὗτος ἔφη· Δύναμαι καταλῦσαι τὸν ναὸν τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ διὰ τριῶν
ἡμερῶν οἰκοδομῆσαι, SBLGNT). Of course, Jesus did actually previously tell them: “[I command]
you people to destroy this temple. And I will raise it again in three days” (John 2:19, from: Λύσατε
τὸν ναὸν τοῦτον καὶ ἐν τρισὶν ἡμέραις ἐγερῶ αὐτόν, SBLGNT). But Jesus used a common figure of speech here, recognized by every Jew, indicating that His Spirit dwelt in “this temple,” meaning in His flesh. For the physical temple in Jerusalem represented the Messiah, Yahweh dwelling in flesh.
Naturally, Caiaphas would have had spies closely watch Jesus, since the first time Jesus turned over the tables of the money changers and sacrifice sellers in the temple grounds, even from the days of His first year of ministering to Israel. So Caiaphas had likely heard many of his spies tell him what Jesus said or did during the past three years. And, since it was a crime to damage the temple, much less completely destroy it, even a crime punishable by death, it is certain that one of his spies had already reported what Jesus said, about being able to raise His destroyed “temple” in three days. And the spy likely hoped Caiaphas could twist those words of Jesus, to make them sound like a threat against the physical temple, then arrest and kill Jesus. After all, since Jesus committed violent acts in the temple, they could use that to make Him appear to be threatening to actually destroy the temple.
But, after Caiaphas further questioned that spy, he obviously concluded that it was impossible to use the exact words of Jesus against Him, since thousands of others also heard those words, in context, and knew that Jesus was speaking figuratively about His own death as the Messiah. But Jesus was commanding His enemies to destroy the temple of His body, and would eventually command the devil’s fourth kingdom of Rome to destroy the physical temple, so it could not be used by the false humanistic Jewish churches ever again. Nevertheless, Jesus had never threatened to destroy the stone Page 1769
temple with His own hands, nor with the hands of His own true disciples. Thus, Caiaphas watched and waited, expecting Jesus to make the obvious rebuttal that would burn away the false accusation.
Yet Jesus merely stood there, and seemed to know that Caiaphas was merely fishing for some kind of response to use against Him, since absolutely no one could believe the accusations of that spy. Jesus refused to correct that clearly false testimony. Jesus just looked in their eyes, silently accepting the lies those eager opponents of God dared to utter, as if to say: “You all know God’s Law. You all know that everything happening here is fake and unlawful. All is clearly criminal. But no truth, from God or man, could ever convince you to repent from your lies. So you will all continue with this blatant charade to deceive the people, in the hope that you can preserve your ill-gotten wealth and power.” And the entire rogue council knew Jesus was implying this through His silence. So did many of the honest people who came to pray on this Sabbath day. Thus, His silence infuriated the council.
The silence of our Creator God is often His greatest accusation against human spirits, as He waits for introspection leading to a full, honest repentance. And, if souls do not heed His silence, His painful discipline of their flesh will follow. Death comes next, if souls stubbornly refuse to acknowledge His quiet disapproval. But His voiceless condemnation of the non-elect, whose spirits never want to hear Him even when He is not silent, always means that their destruction and death will soon fall upon them. So destruction and death did fall upon those fake judges and false witnesses soon after Christ’s silence. From that day, even until AD 135, one Roman sword and hammer after another would slash and pound the comfortable lives of those hypocrites, until they forfeited their homes, political power, wealth, temple and lands. That day, when Jesus refused to respond, meant the worst of all imaginable punishments from God would soon be released against those esteemed leaders of the fake humanistic religion and their false witnesses. The silence of our God Jesus actually meant that their souls had become so hopelessly corrupt that God would no longer even attempt to limit their wickedness or try to expose their lies. Now God’s wrath would hand all of them over to Satan’s pleasure, and allow that devil to slaughter many, then exile the rest, even in an exile from all God’s truths and realities.
In his heart, the high priest must have felt God’s condemnation from Christ’s silence. So he stood up and asked: “You are not responding at all? What is this one testifying against You?” But Jesus stood silent, as if to proclaim that God Himself refused to recognize any legitimacy in that high priest’s office, nor in the policemen under his command, since the Creator’s condemnation found them all unrepentant their guilt, and without excuse. Then the high priest—whose many crimes on that night alone had repeatedly announced his eternal abdication from any right to membership in any capacity within God’s true church of Israel, much less as its high priest—desperately dared to invoke God’s name. For he required something to falsely justify his rogue council’s murder of this Righteousness standing before Him. So Caiaphas said: “I am placing You under an oath, down upon the living God, that You might speak for us, [telling us] whether You are the Messiah, the Son of God!” (Mat. 26:63, from: Ἐξορκίζω σε κατὰ τοῦ θεοῦ τοῦ ζῶντος ἵνα ἡμῖν εἴπῃς εἰ σὺ εἶ ὁ χριστὸς ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ, SBLGNT). But God allows none to place another soul under an oath in any way, much less in a way that would somehow command God to send His wrath down upon one, if one did not fulfill that oath. Who did that man think he was, to command God to strike down the innocent? In fact, no one must ever make such an oath through one’s own will. Thus, it definitely cannot be imposed upon one by a man who thinks he is greater than God! Not even a legitimate high priest is able to do that! The most any legitimate high priest could do is ask someone if they are willing to swear an oath. But this greedy, selfishly ambitious, dirty little fake high priest certainly held no authority nor power to ever obligate anyone to any kind of oath that could incur God’s wrath. And how dare this criminal try to use the power of God to force others to do his own evil will in his own personal war against God!
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So Jesus decided to complete His ordained works of salvation on this predestined day. It was now time to give these liars something to lie about, so they would murder Him today, for the sins of His true elect, but also heap up condemnation upon themselves at the same time. He told that fake high priest: “You [of all people] said [this]! Nevertheless, I am reasoning with you people, from now on you will clearly discern the Son of mankind sitting by the right hand of Power, then coming upon the clouds of the sky” (Mat. 26:64, Σὺ εἶπας· πλὴν λέγω ὑμῖν, ἀπʼ ἄρτι ὄψεσθε τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου
καθήμενον ἐκ δεξιῶν τῆς δυνάμεως καὶ ἐρχόμενον ἐπὶ τῶν νεφελῶν τοῦ οὐρανοῦ, SBLGNT). And note the redundant emphatic use of the singular second-person pronoun in His first clause (Σὺ εἶπας).
Here Jesus emphatically addressed the high priest, and him alone. Jesus was telling this fake high priest that he, of all people—a servant God chose to teach all truths, expose all lies, and humbly serve the true church of God for its good—was trying to force an illegal kind of binding oath upon a person, then command Yahweh to curse that person if they did not fulfill that coerced oath? What kind of man would think he was actually a high priest and yet do such a thing? How stupid could a man be? Clearly, this man was a deliberate murderer, who lacked even a shred of godly sorrow to lead him into true repentance, yet thought so highly of his self-deluded self, that he tried to use his illicit authority to place another soul under a binding obligation, then tried to tell God what to do.
So, after mocking the audacity of that vain criminal, Jesus refused to talk directly to him any longer.
Instead, Jesus turned away from him and addressed everyone else in that rogue council, as well as all their puppet false witnesses and all their supporters in the crowd. That is, all the verbs in the rest of Jesus’ statement indicated a plural subject. So, after dismissing the fake high priest, Jesus told all the other enemies of God, all who were participating in this sham trial, all who lied and all who wanted liars to win this war against God: “From now on, you people will clearly discern the Son of mankind sitting by the right hand of Power, then coming upon the clouds of the sky.” After they killed God’s body to free God’s elect from their lifetimes of sins, they would neither see God’s body nor His Holy Spirit on earth again. But their spirits, after their flesh died and after receiving new spiritual bodies, would see Jesus “sitting by the right hand of Power,” at the gates of heaven, waiting to judge them, waiting to cast the non-elect into hell. All these haters of God, who loathed His truths in His Word and even the truths found in His earthly creations, would soon “clearly discern” how God’s power in Jesus will soon war against them. From then on, they would also stare at the sky in fear, dreading His second advent too. For these liars heard the prophecies of God’s Word, how the Messiah would be “coming upon the clouds of the sky,” descending upon the earth to destroy all the wicked souls upon it. That would come later, after their souls fell asleep in heaven’s skies waiting for judgment.
But, for now, while facing physical deaths and eternal deaths, pure terror would overwhelm them.
Of course, Jesus knew the bodies of earthly flesh belonging to all these wretched souls would die long before His second coming. Then they would see the gates of heaven from a distance, as a bright light, with Jesus seated on His throne. However, most of their eternal spirits would soon fall into in an unconscious state until the final day, even into the same kind of sleep in lifeless emptiness that their spirits experienced during their empty, small, narrow, wicked lives on earth. Almost none of their loveless, self-serving, slavish spirits would remain awake after leaving their bodies behind on this earth—except possibly a few deceived elect among their lower ranks, whose spirits repented and awoke during their lives on earth. Nevertheless, all would to exist after death. And, after a sleep in spiritual time, which will seem to be no time at all, the groggy eyes of all their dull spirits will crack open after hearing the great trumpets sound in all three heavens. So the blind eyes of their spirits will then witness Jesus descending to the earth, transfiguring from His spiritual body into a physical body once more. But at that time, Jesus will come in His glory to judge, condemn and remove all those in Page 1771
humankind with spirits born of Satan. All the non-elect on earth will see His great light, majesty and power for a moment, through horrified stares, realizing that all their loveless hearts pursued on earth was in vain. Then all will sleep with their non-elect forefathers, and those non-elect frauds of the end times will join the frauds in that rogue council, drifting in the skies of the spiritual realm, with their continuous nightmares about their impotent lusts. And none shall wake until the final judgment day.
The time when those first-century church fakes will most acutely experience and “clearly discern the Son of mankind sitting by the right hand of Power” will be on that last day, when the angels come to fully wake them. After God’s faithful and majestically powerful elect angels gather all the sleeping spirits from the living skies of God’s more solid and eternal spiritual realm, Jesus will also reveal realities to the deceived elect who were trapped among them, and lead them all into repentance. But this will only happen after our God Jesus takes a brief moment to cast all the non-elect down to their father’s home. And almost all the high priests, judging elders, religious scholars and false witnesses who gathered against Jesus that day, will be with those being cast into hell. For none of those wilful sinners had any legitimate excuse for what they did against the truth, against God’s just and loving Law, and against God Himself in a body of flesh. What their spirits allowed their flesh to do proved their citizenship in the kingdom of hell. For all their spirits heard and hated the words which Jesus’
body publicly proclaimed to them for three full years before they chose to murder that sinless body.
After our God Jesus uttered His final words to that rogue council and to their lying witnesses, after warning them about their certain doom, the high priest responded. To verify that his lying spirit was indeed a child of Satan, fully complicit with all the the devil desired, Caiaphas triumphantly stood up to belch out a wondrous work of murderous slander. Having learned his trade from his spirit’s father, who was a liar and murderer from the beginning, Caiaphas maligned those words from the physical mouth of our God Jesus, twisted them into a fake accusation, so he could falsely justify the murder of the Messiah’s sinless flesh. With every ounce of dramatic flare he could skilfully muster, in order to rouse his dupes into a deluded frenzy, “The high priest then tore his garments, reasoning, ‘He blasphemed! What more need have we for witnesses? Look, now you all heard the blasphemy! What are you all thinking?” (Mat. 26:65-66a, from: τότε ὁ ἀρχιερεὺς διέρρηξεν τὰ ἱμάτια αὐτοῦ λέγων·
Ἐβλασφήμησεν· τί ἔτι χρείαν ἔχομεν μαρτύρων; ἴδε νῦν ἠκούσατε τὴν βλασφημίαν· τί ὑμῖν δοκεῖ;, SBLGNT). Well, actually, with their own ears, all heard Jesus condemn the unjust, lying, plotting, murderous human gods standing there that day. But, clearly, Jesus definitely did not blaspheme God.
Yes, Jesus directly implied that those human gods standing there were merely fake gods. Jesus said that all, even the high priest himself, were worthless sons of the devil in human bodies, trespassing on God’s earthly property. And He implied this when He told them that He, and even all the true elect of God, would sit by the right hand of power and descend upon clouds of the sky, just as the prophets said. However, here Jesus had also explicitly implied that He is the Messiah, the “Son of mankind,” the real Creator God dwelling in a body of flesh, the Messiah whom the prophets spoke about, the God who would descend from the clouds to destroy all the wicked wanna-be gods who deliberately lied and sinned. And Jesus spoke the absolute truth. He did not blaspheme, not in the slightest way. Jesus did not even directly state that He was the Messiah, the “Son of mankind.” Jesus did not actually answer the question of the high priest, nor did He ever acknowledge that He would bind Himself to the oath which Caiaphas had no authority to impose on Him. Therefore, Caiaphas lied and redirected the people’s attention away from what Jesus literally said. For time was running out. They had to get this murdering work done before the truly devout Sanhedrin members woke, lest they interfere with their dirty little plot to rescue their status and income from the truths of Jesus.
So, if Caiaphas could not find real evidence to condemn Jesus, he had to create some fake evidence.
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Luke also wrote down the testimony of another eye witness, which proves that Jesus did not actually tell them that He was the Messiah, and that Caiaphas lied. For, after Caiaphas asked Jesus if He was the Messiah, Jesus answered: “If I might tell you people, you people definitely would not believe
[it]. But if I might question [you people], you people most certainly would not respond. So, from now on, the Son of mankind will be sitting at the right side of God’s power” (Luke 22:67-69, from: Ἐὰν ὑμῖν εἴπω οὐ μὴ πιστεύσητε· ἐὰν δὲ ἐρωτήσω, οὐ μὴ ἀποκριθῆτε. ἀπὸ τοῦ νῦν δὲ ἔσται ὁ υἱὸς
τοῦ ἀνθρώπου καθήμενος ἐκ δεξιῶν τῆς δυνάμεως τοῦ θεοῦ, SBLGNT). Jesus obviously did not answer their question here, as to whether or not He claimed to be the Messiah, God incarnate, God in a body of human flesh, as most Jews of that day believed the prophesied Messiah would be. So they repeated their question, and once more asked Jesus, “Are You the Son of God?” (Luke 22:70a, from: Σὺ οὖν εἶ ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ;, SBLGNT). Now the ecclesiastical definition of the phrase “Son of God,”
when referring to the Messiah, meant, “God manifesting Himself in a body of human flesh,” which, as mentioned, most of these men believed the Messiah would be. But Jesus still refused to answer.
Jesus did not answer this simple “yes” or “no” question for the same reason He previously cited, because He knew they would not believe Him, nor allow Him to question or cross-examine them either. For these esteemed biblical teachers and church leaders did not want anything to do with the kind of trial God commanded them to give the accused, in the Law they loved to cite. Jesus did not answer because they were conducting a totally fake trial, refusing to do anything that God’s Law commanded them to do in all just trials. So, instead of answering their question, Jesus told them,
“You people yourselves are reasoning that I AM” (Luke 22:70b, from: Ὑμεῖς λέγετε ὅτι ἐγώ εἰμι, SBLGNT). Here Jesus used a redundant pronoun to point out that it was those people themselves who carefully crafted their words and were reasoning to themselves that He was the Messiah, but only so they could falsely accuse Him of blasphemy and put Him to death. Yet note that Jesus also could have avoided using the pronoun (ἐγώ) with the linking verb (εἰμι) here, in the way most Jews did. For remember, this redundant pronoun in the phrase, ἐγώ εἰμι, was in the Greek translation of God’s name, which is why Jews avoided using this phrase frivolously. So, when Jesus deliberately used this phrase, ἐγώ εἰμι, He was provoking them and mocking their sham trial, both at the same time. And after Jesus did this, Caiaphas and his rogue council pounced on His words, lying about what Jesus actually said. Then they pretended Jesus that had claimed to be the Messiah and God, although they did not give Jesus a chance to prove that He actually was the Messiah, in a just trial.
So Caiaphas, with his frothing mouth desperately spewing out all his conspiracy theories, delusions and lies, all he could extemporaneously craft at the moment, because he had to save his precious status and income, succeeded in convincing his co-conspirators that they finally found the means to justify their murdering of this loving, sinless, miracle-working Preacher of God’s truth. So the rogue council summarily voted to condemn Jesus to death (Mark 14:64). Likewise, the psychopathic, hand-picked Levitical policemen were overjoyed too, and expressed their feelings of god-like virility by laughing in a supercharged adrenaline rush, as they slapped, pushed, beat, bullied and spat on Jesus, illegally. For this is the way dirty cops express themselves when they are either happy, sad, calm, angry or experiencing just about any other emotions of the flesh. Since these religious, “righteous”
servers and protectors of the people all wanted to believe the lie that Caiaphas uttered, they did. And now they were free to celebrate by torturing Jesus, because that convicted Man had tried to save the people from the injustice that their church god, the high priest, had allowed them to commit for fun and profit. These police even blindfolded Jesus (Mark 14:65), then struck Him, one after another, while mocking Him, saying, “Prophesy to us, Messiah. Who is the one having struck You?” (Mat.
26:68, from: Προφήτευσον ἡμῖν, χριστέ, τίς ἐστιν ὁ παίσας σε;, SBLGNT). This was great fun for Page 1773
these psychopaths. They were ecstatic at the time. Still, Jesus did not respond, although He knew the thoughts in all their minds of flesh, and in the minds of all their spirits, the continuous evil in the soul of each. But Jesus would not utter their humanly nor hellishly assigned names, not then, nor even as they were herded with the nameless masses of their kind into hell on the final judgment day.
So the rogue council sat to watch for a moment, enjoying their victory over God, smirking with pleasure as their policemen broke God’s Law by beating an innocent man which their illicit authority falsely accused and condemned in a mock trial. At last, everything would go back to its own normal, unjust, exploitative, oppressive state, back to the way things were in their glorious past, with their god-like self-indulgent wealth and power in tact. Now they had finally made their fake church “great again,” able to make a substantial illicit profit for themselves again. Now God’s truths could no longer interfere with their sins and crimes. But they did not revel in this pleasure for too long, since the time was passing quickly, and they had to complete their work. Yet their own invented Sabbath traditions did not allow them to execute a man on a Sabbath, and this was a Passover Sabbath. They still needed to find a way to murder their God before any of the just members of the council could interfere. And some of those just council members might come to the temple to pray at any time. So now they had to pack everything up, take Jesus with them, and urgently convince the pagan Romans to murder Jesus for them. Their hard labours of ridding themselves of this God, who nullified their Satanic works of greed, selfish ambition and bullying dehumanization, were not over yet. They still had many more lies to tell, many uncooperative psychopaths to dupe, and only a few hours to do it.
Mat. 27:1-9,
God’s Destruction
“Now when morning had come, all the chief priests and the elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put Him to death: and they bound Him, and led Him away, and delivered Him up to Pontius Pilate, the governor.
“Then Judas, who betrayed Him, when he saw that Jesus was condemned, felt remorse, and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, ‘I have sinned in that I betrayed innocent blood.’ But they said, ‘What is that to us? You see to it.’ He threw down the pieces of silver in the sanctuary, and departed. He went away and hanged himself.
“The chief priests took the pieces of silver, and said, ‘It’s not lawful to put them into the treasury, since it is the price of blood.’ They took counsel, and bought the potter’s field with them, to bury strangers in. Therefore that field was called ‘The Field of Blood’ to this day.
“Then that which was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled, saying, ‘They took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of Him upon whom a price had been set, whom some of the children of Israel priced, and they gave them for the potter’s field, as the Lord commanded me’” (Mat. 27:1-9, WEB).
When I read these Scriptures about Judas Iscariot, they ring true, although they did not occur in the order Matthew presented them. Matthew wrote about Judas here to remind his readers that, as Jesus went to His death, the prophecy about the church of Israel valuing their Messiah as worth a mere thirty pieces of silver, had been fulfilled. But Matthew definitely described a real event in real history here. This cannot possibly be fiction. No one could or would invent what the Gospels tell us about Judas and these church officials, nor what is recorded about Jesus and His faithful disciples.
For, if an author living in those times invented a story about a Messiah who is God, and His betrayer, Page 1774
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they would surely portray a far more dramatic, fantastical and appealing narrative, to get others to believe their fiction. They would likely invent all kinds of heroic characters, making Jesus and the apostles look like mighty warriors, and portraying Judas to be a powerful enemy whom they had defeated in great combat. They would have copied the tales of the Greek and Roman gods, or other mythical heroes, with villains temporarily defeating the mighty Messiah, until Jesus rose from the dead to personally exact revenge, to gain a physical victory. Instead, Matthew reported the rather pathetic psychopathy of that exposed greedy little man named Judas, and simply told us that he felt regret about being a nobody in the eyes of the priests and temple police. So he cowardly committed suicide, because he could not face the reality that he was now indeed a nobody. God did not have an overt glorious victory over Judas. Rather, humbling circumstances caused by God destroyed Judas.
Then look at how our God Jesus passively allowed the villains to torture and murder Him, then let them go on their merry way with impunity. Furthermore, all Jesus’ faithful disciples denied Him and fled from God’s enemies. Why would Matthew write all of this wretched and humiliating stuff, if all this did not actually occur? Not only do Matthew’s words portray consistent realities confirmed by archaeology, historical documents and even by psychology, but they also confirm the truly humble personality of the biblical God. For God always works in natural, hidden and complex ways within His earthly kingdom, forever teaching and training the spirits of His elect children to love in just ways, without glorifying their flesh, without seeking the arrogant rewards of Satan’s world order.
But surely Matthew knew that telling us about what Judas did might invoke sympathy for him. And it did, among many people. It still does to this day. For a majority of souls would think this proves that Judas repented from his sins, or at least tried to repent. But most think in this way because most have never truly understood the minds of genuine psychopaths. Most elect spirits never grow alert and awake enough to actually discover how those psychopathic souls actually think and function.
All psychopaths feel regret when their delusional worlds collapse or become irreparably damaged, through an exposure to realities. All experience hopelessness and despair whenever their selfish ambitions are irredeemably lost, when their goals of an entirely physically defined success becomes unachievable. There is a huge difference between the way an elect soul and a non-elect psychopathic soul will respond to irreversible loss and life-altering disasters. At first, the elect will have almost the same responses as the non-elect, since the minds of flesh in both are the same. For all minds of flesh are always completely amoral and materialistic. But, after initial reactions from a mind of flesh, the spirit takes over thoughts in the soul. Both the non-elect and elect experience the spirit’s takeover of all thinking within the soul. But non-elect spirits, especially the awakened non-elect spirits of true psychopaths, then react in the worst possible way, while elect spirits react in the best possible way.
The spiritual reactions in the soul, after a great loss, reveal the most profound differences between elect and non-elect spirits. For an elect spirit wakes up and begins to properly manage the thoughts of the soul, whenever devastation strikes the physical life. Then the elect spirit fears God more, seeks His will more, realizes that life is not about material gain, humbly admits physical mortality, turns the focus of one’s life toward inner gain, then commands the flesh to cease from self-indulgence, to do good works through love, after repentance from lies and sins, into the truth. The elect spirit will readjust all its priorities in life, and begin to hear the calling of God’s Holy Spirit. That elect spirit, in its wakened but fearful state, grows through a genuine kind of godly sorrow, which causes that spirit to seek rebirth, a new, more just and loving kind of life. At some point, an elect spirit might even begin to recognize the real Jesus, and let Him personally teach in one’s heart for one’s own salvation.
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But non-elect spirits, after a great physical loss, often feel that everything they deemed to be worth living for has been stolen from them, unjustly. For the non-elect value only physical life, and want to own it. In a non-elect soul, the mind of the spirit and mind of flesh may, for a time, strive to find some way to overcome the bad circumstances. The soul may desperately seek some way to restore its delusions of being a god who owns people and things. But, if a non-elect soul has been awakened by Satan to become a psychopath, that one’s soul will also seek revenge against all who either justly or unjustly caused one’s losses. Yet all non-elect souls, both those with sleeping spirits and those with awakened psychopathic spirits, always focus solely upon empty, worthless, worldly solutions to overcome failures and losses. And they all seek the same materialistic way of life they had always pursued since birth. None will ever truly repent into the spiritual way, light and truth that God has revealed in nature and in His Word. All the non-elect, the common and the worst psychopaths, will become more fearful and bitter after a setback, more diligent in their greed and in a lust for power.
Yet the awakened non-elect spirits in psychopaths suffer much more than the sleeping spirits of the other non-elect. If a psychopath’s efforts to restore a god-like status fail, that psychopath feels a level of spiritual “shame” or “disgrace” that the sleeping elect cannot. For a psychopath’s spirit realizes that one’s father has cast one aside, that Satan has shifted his fickle desires to another unloved child.
So the psychopath’s spirit knows it will no longer be rewarded by that devil, will not see any more stolen status and material gain in the world order. So the forsaken psychopath will often choose to commit suicide. For all psychopaths are extremely superficial and cannot live for spiritual reasons, can never carry on through love or for truths upon which love is built. At times, a psychopath may remain alive through spiritual hatred and a lust for revenge. Yet a psychopath can never face a life which is no better than the “inferiors” one always dehumanized in the past. No psychopath can ever accept realities. None can live without the delusion of being a god. None can be just another one of the “sheep” whom he or she perceives to be his prey or, at most, as inanimate things existing solely to be exploited by elite human gods like oneself. Since every psychopath thinks he or she is a god, a life which does not allow one to “own” inferiors and other material things, a life without the grand delusion of superiority to all, is worse than death. Thus, for a psychopath, the “crime” that one’s own flesh committed, by somehow losing one’s own god-like status, deserves the same punishment that a psychopath deems “just” for all crimes against oneself. One’s own body deserves the death penalty.
For instance, look at how ruthlessly exploiting business tycoons sometimes commit suicide after they lose their status and wealth. In some cases, they kill themselves even when they still have more than most of the common people could ever hope to gain in their lifetimes. Yet they think this is not enough, and feel that their shallow, empty lives are not worth living if they cannot be the gods they previously perceived themselves to be. Psychopaths cannot live without the power to dehumanize and crush the lives of those they deem to be inferior, of their employees and of the other “suckers”
they exploit. Psychopaths always feel that they need more, and can never accept any life with less.
Still, psychopaths also expend a great deal of time, energy and resources to create a false public image of “goodness,” as “loving” gods, since the masses, as a unit, have power, and must be tricked into giving their blind loyalty through their “love” for those psychopaths. Then psychopaths are also nice to their equals, and especially to their superiors. The majority of high-functioning psychopaths work very hard to build a good public image, to look like generous, godly pillars of the community.
Yet all are capable of betraying even their closest “friends” or family members in an instant. They are all like Judas. For Judas followed the Messiah and acted like a “good” man in order to “earn” a place next to Jesus, hoping Jesus would become the King of the world and appoint him to a position of power, make him a wealthy lord, and even grant him countless Gentile slaves. And Judas wanted Page 1776
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this power only for one reason, so he could then be a god who owned human souls, who made laws that ruled over other lives, while allowing himself to commit crimes with total impunity. That is the goal of all psychopaths. Yes, even the elect want freedom from the demon Mammon’s oppression, to escape financial slavery. But Judas want that kind of freedom. Rather, Judas wanted money and power to enslave others. And now he had lost it all, since the Messiah did not intend to become a ruthless conquerer in the way he had hoped, and the existing authorities completely rejected him too.
Whenever a psychopath loses everything, and cannot find a way to climb back to the top—whenever their entire delusional world, all that they lived for, fails and cannot be redeemed—he or she loses the will to live. Likewise, the human properties of psychopaths, through their blind loyalty and their unquestioning acceptance of their owner’s delusions, also loose the will to live. Even the elect who belong to a psychopath will feel suicidal if their owner looses everything. Thus, whole cults owned by psychopaths have committed suicide when their owner did. For all whom a psychopath owns are drawn into his delusions, and none can see the physical and spiritual realities God created in this world around them. Yes, a psychopath may indeed feel sorrow and regret over a personal loss. Yet no psychopath will ever regret the way he or she had been harming other innocent human souls and God’s creations, not unless those unjust deeds failed to be materially useful, in order to achieve one’s own selfish ambitions. A psychopath may, at times, regret hurting or killing someone innocent, and even cry after doing so, but cries only for oneself, because one might now need to face the just consequences of one’s own crimes. A psychopath weeps in pity for oneself, thinking about all the ways the cruel world will persecute him or her, just because one ruthlessly, but innocently, did what needed to be done to achieve one’s own selfish goals. After all, what is good for a psychopath must be good for all the people and things he or she owns too, and justifies all his or her crimes. Thus, a psychopath reasons that anything which opposes his or her own ruthless crimes is unjust and evil, and is an unfair persecution of that poor little psychopath’s own glorious, good and god-like justice and righteousness. So a psychopath will feel regret, but grieves only for himself, never for victims.
And a psychopath only regrets one’s crimes if those crimes cause some form of personal loss for oneself. For getting caught in a crime may permanently stain one’s costly fake public image, and any exposed crimes might damage one’s own highly valued self-delusions of being above the laws that only the inferiors have to obey, for the profit and pleasures of gods like oneself. Although no real psychopath ever considers what his or her “inferiors” think or feel, a psychopath always cares very deeply about what the masses, as a whole, think or feel, since most of their money and power comes from duping those masses. A psychopath treats the masses in the same way as useful “equals” and beneficial “superiors,” as valuable assets. For the nameless “masses” are powerful too, as a group.
And psychopaths always respect powers that can potentially be exploited or used to maintain their power and god-like status. Yet this also means that, if a psychopath loses those helpful powers—if the masses or one’s equals or one’s superiors no longer consider him or her to be worthy of receiving their loyalty and rewards—that psychopath has lost everything. And, without one’s power and god-like status, a psychopath may have no other delusions to live for, except possibly revenge. This is why psychopaths often commit suicide if they lose their reputation and Satan’s invention of money, and cannot “own” God’s people and creations any longer. In their minds, if they cannot achieve their delusional selfish ambitions and be esteemed as human “gods,” there is no reason to remain alive.
In Matthew’s Gospel, we are told how Judas lost his reputation and power. And Matthew implied that this loss is why Judas killed himself. So Matthew never said Judas had any godly sorrow, not an ounce of the kind which leads to a spirit’s repentance into a loving and abundant life. For Matthew told us that Judas killed himself, that the kind of regret in Judas was the opposite of the kind which Page 1777
leads to repentance and abundant life. Now most preachers seem to point out that Matthew began this account of how Judas committed suicide by first telling us: “So, after morning came, all the chief priests and the elders of the people took counsel against Jesus, so as to kill Him. Then they bound Him, led [Him] away and handed [Him] over to Pilate, the governor” (Mat. 27:1-2, from: Πρωΐας δὲ γενομένης συμβούλιον ἔλαβον πάντες οἱ ἀρχιερεῖς καὶ οἱ πρεσβύτεροι τοῦ λαοῦ κατὰ τοῦ
Ἰησοῦ ὥστε θανατῶσαι αὐτόν· καὶ δήσαντες αὐτὸν ἀπήγαγον καὶ παρέδωκαν Πιλάτῳ τῷ ἡγεμόνι, SBLGNT). Then many imply that this provides the context, the explanation of why Judas committed suicide. They think that Judas saw Jesus led away to death and, through his love for Jesus, came to his senses, realized what he had done, felt guilt for his actions, then killed himself in godly sorrow.
However, the two verses above (Mat. 27:1-2) are merely completing the narrative above it, and have absolutely nothing to do with Judas’ motives for committing suicide. Of course, historical records clearly indicate that Pilate was a thoroughly psychopathic Roman official. So the rogue council would have been quite certain that they could convince Pilate to murder Jesus for them. And Judas was probably standing somewhere in the temple grounds when those priests and rabbis sent Jesus to Pilate. Thus, before Judas killed himself, he surely would have realized that Pilate would most likely torture and kill Jesus, that Jesus’ body was as good as dead. So, after learning this, Judas did realize that his opportunity to become an official in court of the Messianic King, who was prophesied to rule over the entire earth, had been permanently lost. But Judas had given up that hope days before, and that was why he betrayed Jesus and went to the false church, hoping to acquire some kind of a lucrative position with them. Therefore, considering the behaviours of Judas throughout this time, as described throughout the Gospels, we definitely know Judas would not have had much sorrow about the death of Jesus, if any at all. So the thing this betrayer regretted above all else was how the church authorities did not appreciate his help, did not welcome him into their circle. Instead, the church had merely cast him aside, without recognizing his greatness as a cunning psychopath like themselves.
There would be two principal reasons that a psychopath like Judas would believe his life was over at that time, two main reasons for committing suicide. They definitely would be money and power.
Also, Judas surely would have wanted to first get revenge against Jesus, before killing himself. For, in his mind, Jesus committed the ultimate unforgivable “crime” against him, in a very personal way, when Jesus refused to become a Roman-like despot ruling over the world. Judas had seen how Jesus exerted a strong influence over the masses, and even held authority over demons and the weather.
Judas saw Jesus’ power to heal, even raise the dead, which would be useful in a war against Rome.
So surely Jesus could have ruled the world, if He wanted to. And, if Jesus could do this, He also could have appointed Judas as an obscenely wealthy and powerful court official. So, when Judas realized that Jesus chose to die instead, to save the spirits of His people from lies and sins, rather than become a powerful despot who could make him rich and powerful, Judas began to intensely hate Jesus. Jesus was supposed to live and lead the Jewish army to victory against Rome and the rest of the world. According to all the non-biblical doctrines Judas heard and chose to believe, the only real purpose of the Messiah was to provide financial and political opportunities for Jews like him, so men like him could become the elite in God’s earthly kingdom, in a kingdom which God would very carefully model after Satan’s fourth kingdom of Rome. In the mind of Judas, God should make Jews so powerful that they could commit the same ruthless sins that Rome did, yet with absolute impunity.
When Judas realized that Jesus had never even intended to become a Roman-like despot, and that Jesus never wanted to be a psychopath like him, Judas naturally thought Jesus had personally and deliberately misled and betrayed him. After all, in his mind, everything in his imaginary universe revolved solely around himself and his own selfish ambitions. So, when Judas saw all his selfish Page 1778
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ambitions dissolve, and knew all his delusions would never become realities, his first and foremost thought was about how he could destroy Jesus. Vengeance became the one and only replacement for all his vain, and now lost, hopes and dreams. For psychopathic “love” is just a form of exploitation which can be instantly transformed into hate. Then, as Judas saw the beaten and abused figure of Jesus being led away to further torture and His death, his lust for vengeance was gratified. Yet his desire for revenge was his main reason for remained alive at that time, now that the Jewish council had stopped paying attention to him, now that he had no hope of them hiring him as a captain of the guards, or some other position with power and authority. Because no one saw his great potential, and no one wanted to hire him as a god ruling over inferiors, seeking revenge was his only remaining purpose in life. So now that he gratified his lust, he had no reason to live. His life was meaningless.
We need to realize that Judas was obviously a high-functioning psychopath, and this is how they think, in black and white terms regarding their status as gods and their ability to gain wealth and power. The only other thing that had previously kept Judas alive was his hope of being made an officer in the high priest’s army of mercenaries. For, when he was betraying Jesus, Judas asked the high priest if he could personally lead the temple police to the place where Jesus would be camping for the night, and wanted to be the “leader” who identified Jesus, even with a cynically mocking good-bye kiss, in his attempt to emulate the same derisive attitude he saw the fake priests display toward Jesus. And the priests gratefully granted his requests, then placed the entire detachment under his command. So he had thought this position of authority, as the head of the police force, would be a permanent position. But he was wrong. For, when they returned, the authorities and policemen ignored him, shoved him aside and did not allow him to even stand with them during the mock trial.
Judas did not understand that the high priest wanted loyal thugs, but Judas already proved that he was a traitor. Now, when Judas had followed Jesus, he had hoped to eventually be appointed as the ruler of vast territories and huge armies. So being granted authority over a detachment of policemen was surely a much lower substitution for his previous selfish ambitions, insignificant by comparison.
Yet it was a start. And, to a psychopath like Judas, a chance to be a god of any kind, even an owner of only few human properties, was better than being a nobody who owned nobody. However, even this modest authority was stolen from him. For, as soon as that rogue council saw Jesus walking through their gate, they dismissed him. We know this because Judas was not in the courtyard while Peter and John were there. So the guards must not have let Judas pass through the gate. And, clearly, the authorities simply told Judas to return at some other time. None offered Judas a permanent job as the head of a detachment, to help them root out and destroy “frauds” who dared to honestly teach real truths of God. And Judas was clearly hoping those priests and rabbis would give him a position like that. But, although those fake religious authorities loved to hire ruthless bullies like Judas, to do their dirty deeds, they also hated betrayers. And, since Judas betrayed Jesus, not one of those evil authorities were willing to trust Judas with any knowledge of their secret crimes, lest he betray them.
Furthermore, when Judas mocked Jesus with a kiss—to tell Jesus how criminally evil it was for Him to neglect His responsibility of making him wealthy and powerful—Jesus did not cower before him.
Instead, Jesus called Judas His “companion.” And that greatly deflated his huge ego. For the hating, paranoid, self-centred mind of Judas perceived Jesus to be a cunning adversary, an enemy who was personally plotting with all His might to deceive him, non-stop for three entire years. And now he, the great Judas, cunningly caught and trapped that lesser man, his duped Jesus, and had even caused the horrible death of Jesus. So Judas was the winner and Jesus was the loser. Since there are only two kinds of people in a psychopath’s mind, only winners and losers, knowing that he was the winner was a huge ego booster. But Jesus’ calm reaction to Judas shattered the paranoid delusions of Page 1779
Judas winning a great victory over a cunning adversary, leaving his victory and his ego without any boasting rights. For that all-knowing response of Jesus proved that Judas had not actually deceived and defeated Jesus through his own greater greatness. Jesus’ words made Judas realize that Jesus realized he was a fake all along, but calmly revealed that He had actually chosen Judas so Judas could betray Him and send Him to His death. This is what Jesus wanted all along, to die for the sins of His people. Jesus had played Judas to the bitter end. In reality, Judas had not outsmarted Jesus.
Rather, Jesus outsmarted Judas, had used Judas for His own purposes. For Jesus clearly was not afraid of Judas. Thus, Jesus stole all the sweetness of revenge from Judas, and crushed his precious delusions of grandeur. Judas no longer felt like a powerful god who judged and sentenced a helpless guilty Jesus dupe to death. Now Judas saw reality, saw he was just a stupid little manipulated dupe.
Judas also lost his powerful “gang” of “friends,” Jesus and the disciples who had empowered him.
Judas lost his access to the thousands of admiring dupes he had been with Jesus, whom he was able to exploit by stealing their donations. Now all who loved and followed Jesus considered Judas to be a dangerous traitor and enemy. Yet those loyal to the human gods of the fake church also considered him to be an untrustworthy pariah too. After all, Judas was a trusted member of Jesus’ inner circle of disciples for three years, yet betrayed Jesus in the blink of an eye. So Judas had no dupes and no property, nothing but the 30 pieces of silver that the corrupt priests gave him as an illicit bribe, to betray Jesus. For a normal person, that amount was enough to make a fresh start, to fund a small business somewhere. But it would not even begin to satisfy Judas, since becoming a small business owner would make him common, just one of the millions of other inferior dupes who lacked status, money and power in Satan’s world order. An honest life, full of love and inner joy, was repulsive to a psychopath like Judas. Gaining peace with God through a just and spiritually abundant life seemed like a nightmare to Judas. His only alternative plan was to acquire at some power and money by convincing the fake religious authorities to believe he would be a useful and good little psychopath in their army of thugs. If he mirrored their hatred of Jesus, and bowed low enough to them, they might be impressed enough to consider him for a good position among their henchmen. For he was indeed willing to enforce their wicked wills upon their victims, just like the Roman soldiers did for their cruel lords. Yes, he could imagine it now, how he might have received a healthy income from extortion and force inferiors to cower before him. But those authorities insulted him, cast him aside like odious garbage, disgusted by his petty betrayal. Now it was not possible to be any kind of god.
“Then Judas, the one betraying Him, after changing his purpose because he was condemned, returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, reasoning, ‘I sinned, having betrayed innocent blood.’ Yet they said, ‘What [is that] to us? You yourself see to [it]” (Mat. 27:3-4, from: Τότε ἰδὼν Ἰούδας ὁ παραδιδοὺς αὐτὸν ὅτι κατεκρίθη μεταμεληθεὶς ἔστρεψεν τὰ τριάκοντα
ἀργύρια τοῖς ἀρχιερεῦσιν καὶ πρεσβυτέροις λέγων· Ἥμαρτον παραδοὺς αἷμα ἀθῷον. οἱ δὲ εἶπαν· Τί
πρὸς ἡμᾶς; σὺ ὄψῃ, SBLGNT). Dramatically returning the money to the authorities, and putting on a big show of great sorrow over betraying Jesus, was likely an attempt by Judas to convince them that he was not a mere heartless, selfishly ambitious betrayer, who might someday also betray them for a small bribe. But his acting abilities, although pretty good, were not good enough to fool those men.
Now remember, one of the duties of priests and elders was to hear confessions, then ask questions to determine whether or not those confessions were made honestly and were based upon truths, that is, whether or not the confessor’s spirit was truly repenting to God, in a way that would be acceptable to God, in a way that would then bear good fruits of repentance. All priests and elders had to counsel confessors and lead their spirits into a realistic evaluation of themselves, so they would reject all lies and sins, then turn to the real truths about themselves and about life, then live according to the just Page 1780
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and loving ways of God. They judged confessors, ensuring that they did lie to themselves nor to others, and were not merely trying to ease their own feelings of guilt, just to gain a false peace of mind, nor trying to fake repentance, so other souls might accept them back into their fellowship. A priest or elder had to be able to discern the motives of the heart, to ensure that sinners would not confess for any kind of selfish reason. And even a corrupt priest or elder had to perform this duty, had to cross-examine a confessor before allowing him or her to make a sacrifice for sins and go to the mikveh of repentance, to ask God for forgiveness. Thus, when Judas went as a confessor, to try and gain their trust, so they might hire him, Judas stood before men with many years of experience in reading the signs of true and false confessions. So notice how these men responded to his drama.
When these astute priests and elders told Judas, “What is that to us? You yourself see to it,” they were saying that they judged his confession to be utterly fake, obviously designed to achieve some kind of selfish motive. Thus, it was not worth hearing. They knew his repentance was a sham, that Judas was fishing for their approval, seeking to be accepted by them. And they also knew he craved the position of authority he had previously received from them. For, when Judas asked them if he could be the one who identified Jesus for the squad of policemen, although all those policemen could easily identify Jesus themselves, without his help, those authorities recognized the selfish ambition in Judas. They had Judas pegged, and knew exactly what he was. Judas may have been able to fool the masses when he was with Jesus, but he could not deceive these deeply experienced readers of human motives and intentions. So, when they said, “What is that to us?” they implied that, although Judas pretended that he came to confess, his motives were obviously so false that they, whose duty was to hear all confessions, would not even take the time to send a rabbi to listen to any words Judas might utter about his guilt. For, if they thought Judas was even remotely sincere, and that he spoke from a contrite spirit, they would have told him to go to real priest or elder, because they were too busy with their own works. But all instantly realized that Judas was a conniving, plotting, high-functioning psychopath seeking to win their favour, so he could gain status and authority from them.
We should realize that these priests and elders had all witnessed the way in which Judas, when he betrayed Jesus, refused to tell them where Jesus would be staying that night. Instead, Judas insisted on going with the temple police, and demanded that he must be the leader who identified Jesus. Then Judas also told them that he also must be able to give Jesus a “goodbye kiss” of death at that time, before the others could seize Him. Then these priests and elders saw how pleased Judas looked when they let him lead their detachment, how his power-hungry eyes lit up with glee. Furthermore, they also knew that, if Judas now truly wanted to repent, he would have gone to a real rabbi, not to them, especially after he had seen how that rogue council had conducted a covert and unlawful trial against Jesus, whom Judas knew to be innocent. Why would Judas go to these priests and elders, to the same priests and elders whom Judas had previously joined in an illicit plot to murder an innocent man, if he actually was sincere about confessing his sin and his heart wanted to repent? If Judas was truly repentant, why did he not even begin to bear the most obvious fruits of repentance, like begging for the forgiveness of Jesus and the other disciples? Since most of these priests and elders were high-functioning psychopaths themselves, it definitely was not too difficult for them to determine exactly why Judas was now confessing to them, of all people. And they were not about to fall for his little scheme. Thus, when these priests and rabbis told him, “You yourself see to it,” it meant: “Get out of here! We want nothing to do with you. We see through your selfish ambitions and twisted schemes.”
Now, in the first clause here (verse 3), most versions translate the aorist passive participle form of the verb μεταμέλομαι as “when he ... felt remorse,” “he ... repented himself,” or something similar.
So most versions imply that Judas felt compassion for Jesus, when he saw Jesus being led to His Page 1781
death. Therefore, they translate this whole phrase (ὅτι κατεκρίθη μεταμεληθεὶς) in a way which suggests that Judas “felt remorse” or “repented,” even for heartfelt reasons, because “he saw that Jesus was condemned.” However, in the actual words spoken by Judas, one cannot find even one slight indication that Judas actually felt any kind of compassion for Jesus, for his other eleven close companions, for the masses who followed Jesus so lovingly, nor for anyone else. There is nothing in the actual Greek text, Ἥμαρτον παραδοὺς αἷμα ἀθῷον, except a focus on self, and the supposed admission of “having betrayed innocent blood.” Nor is any real confession even implied in context.
As mentioned, some may point out how Matthew began this chapter by mentioning how the priests and elders took Jesus to Pilate (27:1-2), thinking Matthew wrote about all that Judas did immediately after this as his motivation. But the chapters and verses of the Bible were delineated by a monk who often did not seem to know what he was doing. So the first two verses (1-2) clearly were not meant to be the context explaining why Judas felt bad and killed himself. Those two verses belong with the previous narrative in the previous chapter. Obviously, Matthew digressed from the narrative about Jesus’ trial and execution, in order to report what had happened to the betrayer, Judas. And, what had happened to Judas obviously occurred at least one day later, not immediately after Jesus was taken to Pilate. So seeing Jesus taken to Pilate was not the context explaining Judas’ motives for his suicide.
This event, with Judas and these rogue council members, must have happened on another day. For, on the Passover day, when they took Jesus to Pilate, we know that those priests and elders were very busy all night. And, in order to prove to Pilate that their request was official, that entire quorum of priests and elders must have led Jesus to that Roman governor first thing in the morning, as show of force, with as many Sanhedrin members as possible. Then they surely would have gone to witness the crucifixion of Jesus too. So, after all this (and since it was a Sabbath, and their council usually did not meet in the temple on a Sabbath), all those priests and elders would have gone straight home after they had completed their “business” of murdering Jesus. None would have returned to their chambers at the temple. Consequently, Judas did not go to them there on that day. Judas could not have thrown down the 30 pieces of silver “into the temple” (εἰς τὸν ναὸν, Mat. 27:5) on that same day. Since the temple council chambers are the only place where Judas could have possibly done this, Judas clearly went to them on another day, not on the day Jesus was crucified. On that Passover day, all those priests and elders would have gone home, exhausted, to get a good sleep that night. So the first two verses of this chapter would have no contextual bearing on Matthew’s account of Judas.
In reality, the aorist passive participle at the end of the phrase, ὅτι κατεκρίθη μεταμεληθεὶς, clearly indicates that Judas changed his mind or purposes. And the verb μεταμέλομαι never actually refers to repentance, definitely not in any biblical way. It means: “to have regrets about something, in the sense that one wishes it could be undone ... to change one’s mind about something, without focus on regret” (BDAG3). Or Bullinger’s Critical Lexicon and Concordance (Zondervan) defines it in this way: “To have dissatisfaction with one’s self for what one has done, to change or alter one’s purpose, have anxiety consequent on a past transaction; to have pain of mind, rather than change of mind; and change of purpose, rather than change of heart.” Yes, all sorrows feel similar. But psychopathic regret is not godly sorrow leading to true repentance of the spirit. Rather, they regret being losers.
Matthew also told us the reason for a change of purpose in Judas, because “he had been condemned”
(27:3b). Now may translations explicitly indicate that Judas felt regret “when he saw that Jesus was condemned” ( ὅτι κατεκρίθη, Mat. 27:3b, WEB). But Matthew actually did not indicate exactly who was the one being condemned, nor who was doing the condemning. In the Greek, all Matthew said was “he was being condemned.” And Judas was the subject of the aorist passive form of the verb κατακρίνω here. So, grammatically, Matthew seemed to be indicating that it was Judas who “had Page 1782
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been condemned,” not Jesus. Judas felt sorry for himself. For the rogue council rejected him, and even condemned him for proving to be the worst kind of traitor. That council did not believe Judas was trustworthy and loyal enough to hire him for any job. Judas could never be of any use to them.
Then the other disciples of Jesus also wanted nothing to do with Judas now, after seeing how he had so deliberately, over a period of several days, plotted to betray Jesus, without even the least sign of true repentance. On top of all this, all the masses in Israel would avoid a fickle and dangerous man like him, although Judas would likely totally ignore any condemnation from the poor and powerless.
What Matthew was actually saying here was: “Then, Judas, the one having betrayed Him, seeing that
[his] purpose had been changed because [he] had been condemned, returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders.” The purpose, the reasons for all Judas did, had been changed by the rejection of the council on the night he betrayed Jesus. They kicked him out of the courtyard and took away his temporary leadership of the temple guard. So he had no job now. His “purpose”
was a plan to betray Jesus to the rogue members of the Sanhedrin council, to switch sides, to join those who hated Jesus. And he somehow thought the enemy would then welcome him into their tight little group of corrupt, self-serving, right-wing bigots with open arms. And, at first, they seemed to do just that. Seeing his selfish ambitions, they put him in charge of an entire detachment of their corrupt police squad. But, as soon as that rogue council had Jesus in custody, they cast Judas off like he was a diseased pariah, and refused to even let him through the gates into the high priest’s house.
It is very likely that the temple policemen had shoved him aside and shouted, “Get lost you filthy little traitor!” So Judas probably hid somewhere for a day or two, licking his wounds, and thought about all that had happened to him. In the end, he realized that the reason the priests and elders did not trust him was because he was an untrustworthy traitor. So he decided that his only option was to try to trick those priests and elders into trusting him again. Judas had to somehow convince them that he actually was a loyal and trustworthy kind of guy. So, after some careful planning and rehearsing, Judas went to give a tearful, dramatic, falsely spontaneous and heartfelt show of contrition to those worldly wise priests and elders from the rogue council. Of course, Judas did not truly want to repent, since he would have gone back to Jesus’ disciples if he did, just as Peter did when Peter truly did repent. No, Judas had to go to the priests and elders who could give him a lucrative position in the temple guard. He had to impress them and no one else. So Judas planned to begin by staggering onto the stage with a contorted face, sobbing as he expressed his deep love for Jesus and his undying loyalty to Him. Then, after a short conversation, he would point out how it was his extremely strong sense of dutiful loyalty to the “holy church,” to the institution led by these very adept and “godly men” seated before him, that had compelled him to turn against the deluded and errant Jesus, who was harming his beloved Israel. Nevertheless, he did not hate this Jesus. For Jesus was simply a common little deceived man. So now, due to his steadfast loyalty to both Jesus and the church of those council members, he endured spiritual agony, since he had surely “betrayed innocent blood.”
But, although Judas put on best show, with his most dramatic mask of deep regret and sorrow, and planned to strongly emphasize his inherent traits of unwavering loyalty multiple times, those priests and elders interrupted him, cutting him off after his first sentence. For they knew exactly what was coming next. All recognized a scam as soon as they saw one. Like thousands of other lying criminals they had dealt with all their lives, they knew Judas would tell them how he realized the error of his ways, and discovered that his esteemed lords had been right all along. He had an epiphany, when he realized Jesus was wrong and they were right. And this was the only reason he betrayed Jesus, even though he was, by nature, a very loyal kind of guy. The one and only reason he betrayed Jesus was for the sakes of his beloved people in his holy church. Only his inward loyalty to the council and its Page 1783
thrice holy church made him do all he did. And he came to beg his esteemed lords in great sorrow, humbly confessing his sin of betraying his previous Lord. All he really wanted from them was to be purged of his guilt, but he definitely did not think Jesus was right about anything. All he wanted was to join their holy flock, so he might faithfully and “loyally” serve these noble, gracious men, perhaps in a good position with a comfortable income, if possible. But the council members would not buy it.
All these priests and elders knew a con when they saw one. And the reason those priests and elders recognized his scam was not because they knew enough of God’s truth to see through his cunning manipulations. Rather, this rogue council knew exactly what Judas was doing because they too had been conning people all their lives, in exactly the same ways. They were all professional deceivers.
And all saw how Judas had failed to work out all the subtle details of his clothing and body language for his act, how Judas presented himself too dramatically to be believed. It took them mere seconds to assess the real reason Judas had come to them with his over-the-top drama. And they dismissed his scam before he had uttered a single word. Surely this amateur did not think he could fool them!
Judas miscalculated, because he was indeed a rank amateur. Yes, he fooled the other disciples of Jesus for three years, but only because they were all working men who trusted Jesus’ decision to choose him. And Judas also deceived most of the unsuspecting masses when he went out to teach in Jesus’ name, but only because Judas mirrored the words, facial expressions and actions of the other disciples. Yet Judas definitely never reached the same class as these corrupt religious officials, who learned to effectively dupe even the highest ranking gangsters in the world, even Caesar himself. The rogue council members were politicized to their very core, trained from birth in the art of crafting manipulative rhetoric and pretense. And this also meant they could easily spot manipulations from amateur con men like Judas. But also, just like Judas, none were able to see how they were actually conning themselves, how they manipulated themselves into their own delusions and eternal demise.
Of course, all who truly know the real God, who are taught His spiritual and physical realities, are the best at discerning motives and intentions of men. For God is never fooled, not by anyone. And God dwells in His awakened elect. So Jesus always knew that Judas was a fraud, from the beginning, when He let Judas teach and heal in His name. To Jesus, it was as Paul said, some will “insincerely preach Christ from selfish ambition ... What does it matter? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, [the Messiah] is proclaimed” (Phil. 1:16a,18, WEB). Jesus knew Judas would parrot His exact words to the people, so He did not worry about him. Then Jesus also allowed Judas to think he had fooled Him. Thus, Judas became artificially confident in his ability to deceive others.
Since Judas was never forced to hone and perfect his scamming skills, but believed he was actually deceiving Jesus, as well as the other disciples and the masses, Judas grossly overestimated his own abilities. After so easily conning so many for so long, Judas actually thought he could dupe those extremely experienced professional con men who were pretending to be priests and elders of Israel.
But Judas was very wrong, and completely failed. Thus, now that Judas had done all he knew how to do, but lost every possible means of gaining status and wealth, now that all came to nothing, he lost his hope and had nowhere else to go. The principal god of Judas was himself, and now he lost faith in his saving god. Now he was a marked man, with a foul reputation among Jews of all persuasions.
In fact, he became a legendary betrayer, whom even the corrupt Jews did not trust. The rogue council was his last chance, but proved far too difficult for him to con. So now Judas saw that he was a mere nobody whom none would trust again. And, for a psychopath like him, all this was a devastating end.
All Judas had accomplished was a total rejection by everyone. Roman Gentiles hated him, because he was now just another impoverished and powerless Jew. The Jewish religious and political powers Page 1784
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hated him, because he was untrustworthy, and because he had demonstrated his utter lack of skill and value to them. The people who loved and followed the Messiah would never trust him again either, not after he intentionally plotted to do what he did, not in the malicious way he did it. So Judas now had no hope of ever finding any position of status with a good income, never again. For there was nowhere else for him to go. Judas had even gambled away that bag with 30 pieces of silver, on the long-shot bet that he could regain the trust of the criminal priests and elders. But he didn’t care much about that chump change, since it was barely enough to please a common working man. And being common could never gratify his kind of arrogance. Life as just another nameless man among the masses could never gratify a superior god like himself. So, after the authorities cast him out like a worthless dog, his life was over. Nothing was worth living for, and he could never recover from this.
Thus, after Judas tossed the money bag on floor of council’s court, he despondently walked out (Mat. 27:5), leaving behind his last hope for a future. In his mind, there was no possible way left for him to fulfill his selfish ambitions. Judas had been using Jesus to gain wealth and status. And, as he did so, Judas also was also exploiting the people of Israel, all who sought their saving Messiah, and had been stealing their painfully sacrificed donations for his own selfish purposes. So that was a very good gig. Yet, when he found out that Jesus intended to sacrifice His body of flesh in death, just to work some kind of a spiritual salvation, and had no intention of gaining a financially rewarding victory over Rome, that crushed the hopes and selfish ambitions of poor little Judas. So Judas felt that he was perfectly justified in his betrayal. A psychopath like him had no choice but to betray Jesus and His disciples. He was forced to switch sides, to find a new career with a new employer. To him, that was obvious. But now the only other employer he had the skills to work for had not only rejected him, but had also permanently branded him as untrustworthy and worthless. The false church was his last hope. Yet even the authorities from Satan’s kingdom forever abandoned him.
In his mind, Judas saw only two alternatives. He could die a slow and ignoble death or a quick and ignoble death. But he would never even consider trying to live among the commoners. After all, like most psychopaths, his delusions made him believe that he was far too brilliant and valuable to live a among his inferiors, as one of them. Peter and the others may have wanted to go back to their lives as lowly fishermen. But he knew inwardly that he was a truly great man, a god who surely deserved a far higher status and better income, infinitely better things than those common, dirty little sheep.
And a quick death would be easier to cope with than a slow death. So Judas chose to kill himself in the most brief and certain way possible. Still, to get revenge, he would make his death messy and gruesome, to punish the church, because they had rejected him. He would cut his stomach open and leap off a high limb of a tree. Then the weight of his body would snap his neck, then rip out his heart and organs to instantly kill him. By spilling his guts out, scattering them everywhere on the ground, he would force the church to fulfill their legal obligation to pick up every tiny piece and bury it all.
That rogue council purchased more trouble than they expected, when they bought the services of Judas for thirty pieces of silver. They thought they had acquired a valuable propaganda tool. They simply wanted to stand in front of the crowd, as big strong men with tears running down their eyes, then point to Judas and tell this heartfelt lie: “See, even this close assistant of Jesus realized that Jesus was a fake. So he came running to us for spiritual guidance, to save him from Jesus’ lies. He came to us, to the genuine and honest leaders of the one true church. So you should trust us also, far more than that Jesus. After all, what has Jesus ever done for you, except heal you and quote the Bible. Meanwhile we have done all the hard work. We were real, and took your real money, to buy ourselves slaves and well-earned luxuries, in order to have the strength to work for your own good!”
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The priests and elders thought they were investing in an extremely convincing and politically savvy advertising for their self-indulgent cause. But Judas proved to be a totally worthless and unreliable witness before the masses. What they wanted was a timid little weak-minded dupe who sheepishly admitted that their “holy” fake church, and all its esteemed leaders, had been right all along, and Jesus was wrong all along. Yet this Judas turned out to be a selfish little psychopath full of selfish ambitions like themselves. And how could they expect to use such a man to manipulate the public?
So they certainly did not receive what they wanted. These deluded priests and elders dreamed that, by getting a manipulated man from Jesus’ inner circle, they could not only murder of the body of the Creator of all existence, but slander His truths into ground forever. Then they could maintain or even increase their wealth and power, with a little help from Satan’s fourth kingdom of Rome. And their souls were so laser-focused on preserving their earthly wealth, status and self-serving little religious kingdom, which enabled them to exploit their siblings, that they could not see the big picture. In reality, they had set themselves, and their entire false religion, on course for a certain destruction, while they inadvertently caused the ratification of the true church that would forever replace them.
All those humanistic pragmatists pretended to believe in God and the Scriptures, then carefully put on a show of obedience to God’s Law, while they lied, stole from the poor, oppressed women and children, and even murdered the innocent. And now they thought they had done away the Messiah, had “cut Him off” from Israel forever. Yes, their plans for Judas had failed, but they were confident that could eventually erase every trace of the truths He taught. Nevertheless, not even a tiny inkling of their souls believed that, after they “brought [the Messiah] into the dust of death,” this Saviour and King would rise from the dead and stand in the midst of His assembly, so He could declare God’s name to His brothers, then keep on preaching until “all the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to Yahweh” (Ps. 22:15,22,27). How could those utterly spiritually blind men know that Jesus was the almighty God, able to raise His dead body of flesh into life again, then could even send His almighty Holy Spirit of God to personally save individual elect souls everywhere on earth, in an infinitely more powerful way than He could through His body of flesh? And, to this day, that same Jesus is still declaring the name of Yahweh, with all His attributes and ways, to the world. Now those truths, declared by the risen Messiah’s Holy Spirit, continuously teaches and trains the elect, while condemning the lies and sins of the humanistic churches who emulate that past fake church.
And those cunning priests and judging elders received two deaths for the price of one, because their purchased star witness killed himself after they murdered Jesus. Then all their hard work throughout that sleepless Sabbath night also earned the eventual death of the earthly religious kingdom they had ruled, in partnership with Satan’s fourth kingdom of Rome. For their crucifixion of their only saving Messiah allowed their infighting to continue, in the context of their cooperation with Rome’s brutal exploitation of their own people, until it all culminated in factions warring with one another and with Rome itself, resulting in the total annihilation of Israel as a people possessing a land to stand upon.
But the elect of the world are still being saved by that Jesus they murdered, still being taught and trained to know and apply the just and loving laws and ways of God. The salvation and the κυριακόι
of Jesus have been growing in numbers and in scope throughout the earth. And Jesus’ power has now become a huge mountain seen in all the world, yet still growing higher and wider. For, on the third day, Jesus rose from the dead to become the personal Teacher of life and faith for each individual elect soul. Then, about seven weeks later, Jesus sent His Holy Spirit of God into the hearts of His faithful elect, into the midst of their assembly. Within a generation, or about 40 years, the symbolic temple was destroyed too, right down to its foundation, by the same Romans who helped the false humanistic church murder Jesus, by the fourth kingdom of the devil whom the priests and elders Page 1786
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sought to appease on the day they murdered Him. So those fakes soon lost their carefully designed man-made systems which used that temple illicitly, and their methods of stealing Satan’s invention of money from their own people had to be altered. Only within about a hundred years, their Roman co-conspirators slaughtered most of their people, expelled almost all the rest of them from Israel, then continued to unjustly persecute the Jews forever, to this day. So that thirty pieces of silver was not a bargain, in terms of what they got for it. God multiplied their cheaply purchased evil against Him, and granted them many thousands of curses for that low price of the one bag of Satan’s coins.
Meanwhile, Jesus has always been declaring His irrevocable truths to the world ever since, through His insurmountably powerful and wise Holy Spirit, and through the mouths of all who seek to build up His just and sacrificial kind of love in their spirits. Jesus is continuously teaching truths to elect human spirits. And, once those truths are released in this world, they cannot be stopped nor unheard, cannot be captured and killed. For His truths are a spiritual light shining into human spirits, and the darkness is unable to stop that light from penetrating into it and destroying it. And that light is His spiritual creation, which is eternal and cannot perish. That everlasting light is the property of the almighty God, who cannot be hindered nor thwarted by any of His creations, nor even by all of His creations put together. Therefore, to this day, His light has been causing many troubles for Satan’s fourth humanistic kingdom, for both the devil’s secular and theistic institutions of Rome. God’s truth has been eroding humanistic lies and delusions, more and more, faster and faster, over the centuries.
Jesus came at the beginning of Satan’s fourth kingdom, when Rome was in its infancy, just emerging from the wombs of its corrupt Greek, Persian and Babylonian parents. Yes, its system of human worship, perfectly designed to enable exploitation by the devil’s preferred children, soon became massively powerful, and conquered the entire earth. Also, in the first century, Christ’s truth remained very small in the public, and stayed small for a long time, barely a pea-sized pebble being tossed to and fro by Rome’s mountain of lies. Yet, after Rome’s darkness covered the earth, by the fifteenth century, God’s gleaming pebble had grown into a small hill, and now a mountain, in protest against the abuses of the fourth kingdom. And, today, God’s just and loving ways are being disseminated throughout the earth. Now the valuable salt wages of the earth, earned by the elect foundation of every nation on earth, are circulating everywhere, stimulating the economy of God’s earthly kingdom with solid gold love and justice. Roman lands are all being exposed to God’s eternal, just, wise and loving truths, and God’s light is nullifying ever more works done through Rome’s darkness.
Everywhere, God’s good and wholesome food for elect spirits is being hungrily eaten and digested.
And that meat of His Word has become an integral and inseparable part of the diet for elect souls.
The Holy Spirit of our risen God Jesus, the Originator of all truth, has been sending His truth out to conquer the earth. And soon Jesus will complete His victory. He will soon restore all and rule all.
Remember what Zechariah wrote. Through him, God described Israel and the pastors of the church in this way: “Their buyers slaughter them, and go unpunished. Those who sell them say, ‘Blessed be Yahweh, for I am rich;’ and their own shepherds don’t pity them” (Zech. 11:5, WEB). Back then, Israel was much like North America, Europe and most of the world in our day, and like most of the world has been throughout history. For Israel’s judges and governing officials let the wealthy buy human lives, let them exploit and slaughter the “sheep.” Then false churches shared the profits of this exploitation and suffering, since they partook in the labours of their unjust deeds, by herding their people into their slaughterhouses through their religious lies. Neither the churches nor the governing officials cared for anyone except themselves, but merely sold God and His people for their own personal gain. Then this same kind of exploitative system was thriving in Jesus’ day, as we saw through the actions of that rogue council and its fake church, who tried to perpetuate this kind of Page 1787
system by murdering Jesus. But, back in the 5th and 4th centuries BC, God sent the prophet Zechariah, a shepherd, to bring Israel back into God’s favour, to teach His people how to do God’s just and loving works, how to become a people of one mind in all matters of truth and justice. Yet Israel did not heed Zechariah then, nor did they repent in his truths by the time Jesus came to them.
When God spoke through Zechariah, He wanted His people to return to Him. Yet all they did was observe the required feasts and superficially obeyed His Law. Yet they ate the feasts for their own carnal gratification and tried to look like good, upstanding members of the church while oppressing and exploiting their siblings in the family of humankind. So God defined what returning to Him really meant: “Execute true judgment, and show kindness and compassion every man to his brother.
Don’t oppress the widow, nor the fatherless, the foreigner, nor the poor; and let none of you devise evil against his brother in your heart” (Zech. 7:9-10, WEB). Looking at this, we can clearly see that this is also the way Jesus defines a repentant return to Himself. But, as we have seen throughout all history, the pretending church absolutely refused to listen. Because they were happy with their lies and delusions, which caused only suffering and the deaths of countless innocents for financial gain, those churches “made their hearts as hard as flint, lest they might hear the law” (Zech. 7:12, WEB).
When Israel rejected Zechariah, and cast aside the man who was speaking as the mouth of God, they had actually rejected God Himself, and God’s protecting power. For they preferred the unjust ways of their own exploiters, insisting that they must remain the property of human owners. Therefore, God handed them over to those despots, according to their own wishes. God called Zechariah back from them, then broke His favour and unity with Israel, letting them destroy themselves. Yet God wanted their shepherd, Zechariah, to first speak to them. So, as he was leaving, he said: “If you think it best, give me my wages; and if not, keep them.” Then this prophet told us, “So they weighed for my wages thirty pieces of silver” (Zech. 11:12, WEB). And God has absolutely no use for Satan’s invention of money. Consequently, God commanded Zechariah, His shepherd: “Throw [the wage of 30 silver coins] to the potter, the handsome price that I was valued at by them!” (Zech. 11:13, WEB).
Now notice how God did not say that they had valued Zechariah’s works as being worth only a month’s wages, that is, as worth 30 small pieces of silver. Rather, since Zechariah was God’s true prophet, who spoke all his words and did all his works through God’s counsel and power, God stated here that His church of Israel had valued He Himself, their God and Saviour, as worth a mere 30
pieces of the devil’s currency. And they clearly did not know their unity with God and His favour could not be evaluated in terms of Satan’s invention of money. They did not realize that God is far beyond money in the same way that love is beyond hate or holiness is beyond evil. And God is love, as well as utterly holy. So the wage those wicked souls should have paid to God, and to His prophet, should have been faithful, just, God-like love, not money. But those who esteem and serve money cannot love at all, because no one can worship and seek salvation from Satan’s invention of money and from God at the same time. So Zechariah obeyed God’s command and cast that worthless money down, while standing beside a potter “in Yahweh’s house” (v. 13), that is, in the temple grounds. And that place would have made transactions, like the purchase of land, binding. Furthermore, Zechariah threw down the coins in the same place where the false priests and fake rabbis also paid 30 silver coins to Judas, and the same place where Judas later through down his 30 coins to those murderers.
Zechariah also cast that money down in the very same area which Jesus called His Father’s place of prayer, where Jesus cast out money changers who profaned God’s house, since money is a profanity.
But Matthew did not mention Zechariah’s name here. Instead, Matthew said Jeremiah spoke these things, though it was actually Zechariah who said them. But, if we look at the Scriptures, we find that God told Jeremiah to buy a field too, one belonging to his uncle. And Jeremiah bought it for Page 1788
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only 17 pieces of silver, not 30 pieces. So, did Matthew make a mistake? Surely a Bible scholar like Matthew knew that it was Zechariah who was paid the 30 pieces of silver, then bought a potter’s field with it. So why did Matthew only mention Jeremiah, and not Zechariah? Well, at the time God told Jeremiah to buy a field, Babylon had besieged Jerusalem, after invading the rest of Israel. And Jeremiah had also been prophesying about how God Himself had enabled Babylon to do this, since God was angry with Israel for assimilating Babylon’s pagan teachings with the Scriptures. For the worship of God in Israel had now become corrupt and unjust. Thus, because God’s faithful prophet spoke the truth against the king’s lies, that king imprisoned Jeremiah. The king and Israel had even accused Jeremiah of betraying them, of joining with their enemy, Babylon. Yet God accused the king and Israel, not Jeremiah, of siding with Babylon, since they were worshipping the gods of Babylon instead of Him, by heeding the words of those false gods more than the real God’s own words. And Jeremiah knew God’s accusations were true and just, while the accusations of those liars were not.
The only reason the real God raised up Babylon against Israel was because Israel betrayed Him by bowing before the demonic gods of Babylon, because Israel committed apostasy by becoming one in spirit with Babylon. So, if Israel preferred the unjust demonic ways of Babylon, God would hand Israel over to the demonic spirits who taught and commanded Babylon to act in those unjust ways.
Because Israel preferred Babylon’s ways, God let Babylon absorb Israel into their unholy midst, so Israel could experience the difference between the unjust ways of demons and God own just ways.
Yet God spoke to the spirit of Jeremiah, telling him to also buy a field. Then, awhile later, Jeremiah’s uncle came to him, offering to sell him his field, as his right of inheritance. Considering the utter hopelessness of the Babylonian invasion, his uncle likely wanted to get some cash or silver, which he could take with him and his family into exile, so he could then buy tools or land to start a new life in the place they would be sent to. Besides, Babylon would soon confiscate all the farmland in Israel.
Now, when Jeremiah’s spirit heard God tell him to buy his uncle’s land, Jeremiah wondered why. For he knew he could never use the land, since Babylon would soon confiscate it, leaving Jeremiah with nothing. Yet God insisted that Jeremiah must buy that land. Thus, when his uncle came, offering to sell him the land, just after God spoke to him about buying it, this confirmed that God did indeed want him to buy it. So Jeremiah bought his uncle’s land and finalized the purchase with the officials, before the face of his uncle’s son and many others. Then Jeremiah put the official legal deed for the land in a clay jar, to preserve it for an indefinite period of time. And Jeremiah likely told his assistant to bury the jar where the Babylonians could not find it. Then Jeremiah prophesied this promise of God: “Houses and fields and vineyards shall yet again be bought in this land” (Jer. 32:15, WEB).
God, through His prophet Jeremiah, told His people that the vastly more powerful military might of Babylon would indeed defeat them and take their land. God chose to afflict the entire land of Israel because all the people collectively participated in the injustice and sins of Israel, even by remaining silent and allowing the wicked to harm others without consequence. Since almost no one questioned the evil in Israel, nor stood up against it, almost everyone had aided and abetted those sins, although their elite lords were the most guilty among them. Thus, God would cause each one’s own personal disaster through the hands of individual Babylonians, to vex them all, so all might then repent and become more vigilant in defending truth and justice, so His people would seek His wisdom and protection. Then God also reminded His people that He can do anything, and mighty Babylon was nothing in His eyes. When His priesthood of Israel repented, God Himself would easily overcome Babylon and return His people to their own land. Thus, Jeremiah would not purchase that field in vain, since his descendants would surely inherit it, when God returned His repentant people to Israel.
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Now we begin to see why Matthew only mentioned Jeremiah’s name, when he wrote about how the priests used the 30 pieces of silver to purchase a potter’s field. For Jeremiah bought his field shortly before the utter destruction of Israel, just before Babylon seized the land and all else in Israel, before Jeremiah even had a chance to set a foot on his purchased land. For God told Jeremiah to buy that land for the hope of future generations. Someday his descendants would inherit that land and make it fruitful again. Thus, Jeremiah’s purchase of land was actually a prophecy about God’s wrath as well as God’s future salvation. In fact, at that time, Jeremiah also prophesied about the New Covenant salvation which Jesus purchased through His death on the cross. In Jeremiah’s chapter about his land purchase, God told him to declare: “Behold, I will gather [Israel] out of all the countries, where I have driven them in My anger, and in My wrath, and in great indignation; and I will bring them again to this place, and I will cause them to dwell safely: and they shall be My people, and I will be their God: and I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear Me forever, for their good, and of their children after them: and I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from following them, to do them good; and I will put My fear in their hearts, that they may not depart from Me. Yes, I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will plant them in this land assuredly with My whole heart and with My whole soul” (Jer. 32:37-41, WEB). So the main reason Matthew only mentioned how Jeremiah bought land was because Jesus’ death fulfilled his prophecy about the New Covenant salvation. The priests bought land with the 30 pieces of silver from Judas, before their destruction and the New Covenant’s ratification by the death of Jesus’ body.
And, in Jeremiah’s prophecy, God said He Himself would save Israel, not Israel through its own will to return to Him. Yahweh would save them, with His “heart” and “soul.” Yet a spirit has no “heart”
and “soul,” unless it also has a body. Thus, in Jeremiah’s prophecy, God’s “heart” and “soul” was in His body of the Messiah. So it is Jesus who will save Israel, who will cause Israel to truly worship God in spirit and in truth, and also return the Jews to their land through His everlasting covenant.
So Matthew’s Gospel first told us this about Judas: “And, after tossing the silver pieces into the temple, he withdrew and departed. He hanged himself” (Mat. 27:5, from: καὶ ῥίψας τὰ ἀργύρια εἰς
τὸν ναὸν ἀνεχώρησεν, καὶ ἀπελθὼν ἀπήγξατο, SBLGNT). Then Matthew reported: “So the chief priests took the silver pieces. They said, ‘It is not lawful to cast them into the temple fund, since it is the price of blood.’ Thus, after receiving counsel, they purchased the field of a potter with [the pieces of silver], for the burial of [Gentile] strangers. Consequently, that field was being called Field of Blood up to this day” (Mat. 27:6-8, from: οἱ δὲ ἀρχιερεῖς λαβόντες τὰ ἀργύρια εἶπαν· Οὐκ ἔξεστιν
βαλεῖν αὐτὰ εἰς τὸν κορβανᾶν, ἐπεὶ τιμὴ αἵματός ἐστιν· συμβούλιον δὲ λαβόντες ἠγόρασαν ἐξ αὐτῶν
τὸν Ἀγρὸν τοῦ Κεραμέως εἰς ταφὴν τοῖς ξένοις. διὸ ἐκλήθη ὁ ἀγρὸς ἐκεῖνος Ἀγρὸς Αἵματος ἕως τῆς
σήμερον, SBLGNT). And it was after reporting all these events that Matthew referred to Jeremiah.
Matthew, an expert teacher of the Bible, then wrote: “At that time, it fulfilled what had been laid down through Jeremiah the prophet, saying: ‘They also took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of the One having been evaluated [and determined to be worth no more than that], [the One] whom the sons of Israel evaluated, and they gave [the pieces of silver] for the field of the potter, just as the Lord arranged for me’” (Mat. 27:9-10, from: τότε ἐπληρώθη τὸ ῥηθὲν διὰ Ἰερεμίου τοῦ προφήτου
λέγοντος· Καὶ ἔλαβον τὰ τριάκοντα ἀργύρια, τὴν τιμὴν τοῦ τετιμημένου ὃν ἐτιμήσαντο ἀπὸ υἱῶν
Ἰσραήλ, καὶ ἔδωκαν αὐτὰ εἰς τὸν ἀγρὸν τοῦ κεραμέως, καθὰ συνέταξέν μοι κύριος, SBLGNT).
Here Matthew told us that the priests purchased the land in a way that “fulfilled what had been laid down through Jeremiah.” Yet the 30 pieces of silver, as the evaluated price of God, used specifically to purchase a “potter’s field,” are all details in Zechariah’s prophecy, not in Jeremiah’s prophecy. The only part from Jeremiah’s prophecy was the detail about how God “arranged” for Jeremiah to buy Page 1790
Mat. 27:1-9, God’s Destruction
land. Thus, Matthew did not quote Jeremiah here, nor even paraphrase him. Rather, here Matthew was simply claiming that the priests of the rogue council in Jesus’ day purchased a potter’s field with the 30 pieces of silver which Judas returned to them, but in a way that fulfilled the covenant promise of God in chapter 32 of Jeremiah’s book. When God had “arranged” for Jeremiah to purchase a field, God also promised that Israel would be destroyed, but also eventually brought back to their land as a faithful priesthood of God. And God wanted Jeremiah to buy that field in order to illustrate how His future New Covenant would both physically and spiritually save and restore His church of Israel.
Matthew did not make a mistake here. Matthew definitely knew what both prophets wrote. With all certainty, Matthew knew that God “arranged” for Jeremiah to buy a field, as a prophecy about the New Covenant. Then Matthew also realized it was actually Zechariah who prophesied about the
“sons of Israel” evaluating God to be worth thirty pieces of silver (and, in verse 9, Matthew also used a perfect form of τιμάω to indicate that they determined God to be worth no more than that).