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Transcript of John Welch’s Classes on Book of Mormon (Seventh Series.). Jan 2018 to Apr 2018

Easter 2018 New Insights – Book of John - 180329

Who Was at the Trial and Death of Jesus?

(J. Welch) I want to begin by asking you why we have the gospel of John? That is a difficult question, but when we talk about the trial and the death of Jesus, in most historical accounts of this monumentally important event in the history of the world, Matthew, Mark, and Luke dominate what people talk about. It is important, as you study the four Gospels and what we know about Thursday night, Friday, the crucifixion, and the resurrection, to think about what is in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and what is in John?

It seems as though John knew what is in Matthew, Mark, and Luke and so he did not repeat that, but he was filling in gaps and correcting things. Of all of these four gospel writers, who was there the most? John was. Was Matthew at the cross? No. John was, with Mary the mother of Jesus. Was Mark at the cross? No. As close as we think Mark might have come is he might have been the young man, who, when the Romans started coming up to arrest Jesus and everybody was afraid, he ran away and he ran so fast that his tunic fell off and he ran away naked. Mark tells us about this incident and people think, maybe that may be autobiographical. Maybe. Who else would tell that story?

00:02:16 But Mark does not—even if he was there. He was just a very young man—he had never been in the Sanhedrin; he does not know Pontius Pilate. How about Matthew? Matthew was a tax collector; he knew some official things, and he seems to be a more detailed reporter of a lot of this.

Keeping a Record of the Events

By the way, I did not tell you what this is. [Shows an ancient ink well] This is an inkwell and it has a little lid on it. People like Matthew who were scribes—why did you have to be a scribe if you were a tax collector? You would have to write receipts for people and you would do that in the market place. You did not have them come down to the Internal Revenue Service office to pay their taxes; you went out and collected them.

He would have had a little box, a writing tablet. He would have carried some papyrus, maybe some parchment but usually papyrus; he would have had some feathers and a little tool to sharpen his quill pen. This, and that little writing box is the equivalent of the ancient laptop. You would take it with you and write wherever you were. I think Matthew had one of these, and I think Matthew was taking notes all along.

At the beginning of the Restoration, Joseph Smith was told, “A record shall be kept;” we are a record-keeping people and those records are crucial for our knowledge of the revelations and the steps taken in the Restoration. I think the same thing was probably said by Jesus to his disciples; “Important things are going to happen; we need a record.” We do not have the original notes that were taken. But if you look at Matthew, Mark, and Luke, it is clear that they are drawing on a common body of information that is fairly stable. You have the same vocabulary, a lot of phrases that are similar, but they have been changed a little bit as the stories have been handed down. They certainly must have all started with certain records that account for the commonalities.

Matthew showed up right after Passover, and he is there with the Pharisees, or somebody is there with the Pharisees when they say, “Jesus and his buddies may try to roll this stone away and they may try to take his body away and then claim that he was resurrected.” What did the Pharisees

Easter 2018-New Insights from the Book of John 29 March 2018 File # 1803291


ask Pilate to do? Seal the tomb. In other words, they put closures on it with official Roman seal-stamping on it, and said, “This is closed.” They stationed guards to be sure that there is no hanky-panky here!

00:05:30 When the stone was rolled away on Easter morning, we do not have a record that the guards were actually there, but we assume they were. Once this has happened, we do not know where the guards went. They may have decided, “We are in trouble. We are going to be held accountable for whatever just happened.” Maybe they took off, I do not know. Maybe they ran back to the Antonio Fortress to tell Pilate that something big happened.

However, Pilate never came to interfere or challenge what was going on. He may have had some information but said, “I am not going to get involved; this is a Jewish matter. I am a Roman, and I am going to claim sovereign immunity here.”

This little inkwell reminds us of the validity of the records that we have.

The Record of John

Now why do people not give John more credit? Why do people think that John was just theological or theoretical, that he only cared about in the beginning was the Word and I am the resurrection and the life and such statements that do not seem to be about the facts but refer only to teachings and ideas.

Is that a fair characterization of John? No. John also is concerned about facts, like healing blind people and about Jesus telling people at the Pool of Bethesda to take up your bed and walk and lots of other things, but John’s facts almost always relate to what we call the signs.

There are seven signs in the Gospel of John with Jesus, beginning with the changing of the water into wine at the wedding of Canaan. The last sign is the raising of Lazarus which we will talk about in a minute. Because Matthew, Mark and Luke do not talk about those signs, historians say, “Well, it is three to one. So, we will go with the three,” because obviously, that is seventy-five percent majority. Oh, wait a minute! Matthew, Mark and Luke are all working with exactly the same source material. That is not “three witnesses;” it is one; basically, one story that has been modified slightly, so it is really one to one. And then it comes back to the question, “Who was there?”

Who Was There continued

00:08:24 Where was Luke? Was Luke there at the Last Supper?

(comment) No.

How do we know that? When did Luke join the church?

(Rita) In Acts when Paul…

In Acts, so in the fifties. Twenty years after all this has happened. Luke was Paul’s traveling companion, and Luke came with Paul when Paul came to Jerusalem and was arrested and taken to Caesarea. Paul was held there in the governor’s palace waiting for messengers to come from Rome confirming that Paul was, in fact, a Roman citizen, because the last thing that Felix or Festus wanted was to send somebody like Paul to appeal to Caesar in person if he were not really a Roman citizen. If he were not a Roman citizen, by the way, and he pretended that he was, what was the punishment? Death. So, Felix and Festus have an obligation to really look into this



claim. “How can you prove that you are a Roman Citizen Paul? You do not look like a Roman citizen. You look like a Jewish man. Oh, yes, you are a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee.” There were very few Roman citizens in the Eastern Mediterranean in those days.

So what happened? It took a while to go to Rome, figure out where the records were; “We have to find Paul’s father somewhere in the ancestral records in Rome” where they all were kept. They must have found it, because Paul was given a Roman escort all the way from Caesarea to Rome. We do not know what happened when he got to Rome because the Book of Acts stops short, but Paul has a long and active continuation of his career after, according to this history. Apparently, whatever happened, the case was either dropped—I think that the Jews who had accused Paul do not bother to make the trip to Rome. Why? We are in the sixties now and the Jewish war was about to break out. Paul was the least of their problems; they did not like him, but they had bigger problems to deal with. The case just died.

00:11:03 But in any event, Luke was there with Paul, and while Paul could not go out—this is speculation on my part—I think Luke was going around as a historian. What do historians do? They interview everybody in sight. They try to get all these records, and I think that is how Luke was getting his information. He was relying on Mark a lot, but he was also adding other things that he had heard.

John is a Reputable First-Hand Witness

All of that is to say that John was a first-hand, eye-witness to all of this, and as a lawyer I think his witness is very important. Paul was not even one of the disciples who knew Jesus. He was there holding the coat when they were stoning Stephen, but Paul did not know Jesus personally as far as we can tell. He never claimed to. But John was one of his first disciples, one of the Peter, James and John group. We would like to call him the second counselor in the first presidency. Of course, they did not call him that, but he had that kind of stature, and so for me, John is the one I listen to the most.

The Accuracy of John’s Gospel

Another reason I listen to John the most is because archaeology has borne out that the Gospel of John is actually full of accurate details. Even though John wrote his gospel probably quite late, maybe in the eighties and nineties, anyone who had not been in Jerusalem in the thirties would not have known the names or the descriptions of the pools that are there, like the Pool of Siloam. They have now found that; they have excavated it, and in the Gospel of John is says it had five porches and, in the excavations, it has five porches. That pool was destroyed in seventy, so nobody writing in the eighties and nineties, if they had not been there before, would have known that detail. There are many nice little accuracies that make John credible. His credibility has gone up in the last twenty years in biblical scholarship. If you are reading anything older than that, well, really anything older than ten years ago, you need to recalibrate some of what you have been told about the trial of Jesus. Jonathan?

(Jonathan) Well, and another thing that shows the historical accuracy of the Gospel of John is that in the Book of Mormon, there are a lot of similarities between Nephi and the Gospel of John in what Jesus says, which shows that a lot of what Jesus says has to be historical because the Book of Mormon is a completely independent witness of his words.



00:14:34 Yes. And things that happened such as in 3 Nephi 19, in which Jesus prayed that his disciples may be one as he and the Father are one. That is the same prayer that Jesus offered on Thursday night at the end of the Last Supper; the last thing he prays for before they go to Gethsemane. In 3 Nephi, this is really shortly after that—forty days or so—the first thing after that first day in Bountiful, as they open the second day of ministry, he prayed for exactly the same thing. The the continuity there is not accidental.

How the Gospel of John Presents the Trial of Jesus: The Cleansing of the Temple

Let us take a look at how the Gospel of John presents the trial of Jesus. Last Sunday [25 March 2018] was what we call Palm Sunday, the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem. Was this the first time that Jesus had come to Jerusalem? When did he come to Jerusalem before?

(comment) At the age of twelve.

At the age of twelve. Luke tells us that; Matthew and Mark do not. After he is twelve years old, he was there for his Bar Mitzvah, so to speak. Did he go back ever again after he began his ministry?

(comment) Yes, he went back and cleansed the temple.

Yes, he cleansed the temple! That is at the end of John chapter 1. When do Matthew, Mark, and Luke say that that the cleansing of the temple happened? The day after the Triumphal Entry.

(comment) Well actually he cleansed the temple more than once.

Yes, maybe twice. And the first cleansing is actually a little different from the second one, but even if he had done it at the beginning of his ministry, before the wedding at Cana, it did not work. When he got there after the Triumphal Entry, he went in and perhaps said, “You guys are back? Let us do it again.” But who tells us about the first cleansing? Only John. And he would probably have been there with Jesus, because Peter and Andrew, John and James had been already called as disciples. They were down being baptized by John the Baptist, and it would make sense if after they had been baptized in the River Jordan, down by Jericho, having come all the way down from Galilee, they went on to Jerusalem right after the baptism. Any good Jew would have gone straight to make a visit to the temple to pay devotions, to make sacrifices, to participate in the hymns and all of the things we have been talking about as we have studied the Old Testament.

How the Gospel of John Presents the Trial of Jesus: The Healing at Bethesda

00:17:54 When else did they go to Jerusalem? How about the healing at the Pool of Bethesda? We have talked a little about that. Who tells us about that? John. How about Matthew, Mark or Luke? No. Only John. There is the well-known Karl Bloch painting of where, in John chapter 5, a man was at the Pool; he had been trying to get into the water and had not been able to. He had been losing the race to get into the rippling water. He kept getting a bronze medal but he never got the gold medal, and he was not getting healed, so what did Jesus say to him? “Take up your bed and walk.” So, what did the guy do? “Oh, wow!” and then he went into the temple, and people said, “Wait a minute; were you not just down there? What happened to you?” He said, “Wow, there was this guy, he told me to take up my bed.” The Pharisees responded: “What? On Sunday? On the Sabbath? He told you to carry your bed? That is work.” They got mad at Jesus and they accused him of breaking the Sabbath. Now did the man pick up the bed and walk?



Where was the violation here? Well, he told him to do it. This is Jesus’ first encounter with the legal thinking of people in Jerusalem, but they realized that they did not have a good case based on the breaking of the Sabbath, but then Jesus went on to say that God was his Father. This is in John chapter 5, “God is my Father.” Somehow that, they said, showed Jesus as considering himself equal to God.

Jesus, in the Lord’s Prayer said “Our Father who art in heaven.” He was always calling God Father. To a Jew, that was offensive because that implied a closer, personal relationship with God, and for Jesus it was not just that we are all sons and daughters of God. “He is my Father, and if you have seen me work, you have seen the Father work.” Can you see how that would happen; the Sabbath day healing, they get over quickly, but on being the Son of God, it says that they sought all the more to kill him because of that.

How the Gospel of John Presents the Trial of Jesus: All that are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of Man

Interestingly, in the temple the other night we were talking about John chapter 5, verse 28. As Jesus was about to leave, he made a few more comments to these people who had not been very friendly to him or receptive to the miracles that he was willing to extend to people. He saw somebody in need, this poor crippled man, and he voluntarily offered merciful help to him. Then he pushed back a little when people say, “You should not be calling yourself the Son of God or saying that he is your Father.” In Matthew 5:28, what did he say? “The time is not far away” when what? “All that are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of Man.” Have you ever focused on that verse? What was he saying? He was already starting to talk about the fact that he knew that he would die, and he kept walking into the jaws of the lion as he went back into Jerusalem over and over again, and every time, he was hoping that he would get a better reception.

He did not drive out devils at the temple; he did that up in Galilee, but now he was healing in Jerusalem; healing people who were blind because they were spiritually blind there. He wanted them to get the point; “Do not feel sorry about this kid who was born blind, but feel sorry for yourselves,” and every time he healed someone like that crippled man, what does he say? Look at this in John chapter 5:14. Jesus saw the healed man in the temple and, of course, wondered why he was in the temple? He was probably making thanks offerings. “I can walk! I am going to give thanks to God! I am going to donate whatever I can.” When Jesus saw him, he said, “Hi, how are you doing?” He replied “Great!” Then what did Jesus say to him? “Sin no more lest a worse thing come unto thee.”

00:23:40 What had the man done? We do not know. I do not imagine that he was lame because he had committed a sin but remember when Jesus was tested in that odd case with the woman taken in adultery, we are not sure what was actually going on, but when it was all over, he said to the woman the same thing. I think he said this to everyone he healed, “Whatever you do, please do not sin. Sin is worse than these physical ailments. We all know we have these physical problems but be sure you do not sin, or something worse will happen.”

But he has already begun to talk about his atoning powers and he was prophesying and predicting that he would die, and in that connection, he did not say to these accusers in John chapter 5, “You are going to kill me and you will be sorry.” He said, “You want to kill me? Well



all that is going to do is allow me to preach the gospel to the spirits who are in the grave.” Think about that.

When we talk about doing work for the dead, what scripture do we usually go to? 1 Peter chapter 3, where it talks about when Jesus’ body was in the tomb, his spirit went to those in the underworld and preached to those who were in prison, in hell. We know that that is happening, but Jesus was already telling people according to John. “Kill me, and all I will do is proclaim my gospel to the people in prison” is not in Matthew, Mark or Luke. It is a part of the eternal plan. But we also talk about baptisms for the dead and we get that from 1 Corinthians chapter 15, but Brother Daynes, have you ever heard someone use John 5 to talk about work for the dead?

(Brother Daynes) No.

Neither have I. Maybe I have missed it, but I do not think Talmage does. Talmage, by the way, does not spend a lot of time with John; it is mostly Matthew, Mark and Luke. Anyway, it is an interesting to think that John saw the Savior’s mission as, first of all, “In the beginning was the word.” It goes back to the very beginning, but he also recognized that his death was not the end, but that it would simply allow him to enter into his reign of glory. Brother Powers?

(Brother Powers) We have John mentioning that here; we have Peter 3 and 4 talking about it; and then the 138th section Joseph F. Smith becomes a third witness, basically.

00:26:55 Correct! I think if you ask, “What is the first, real doctrine that Jesus taught?” Well in John chapter 4, “I am the living water, if you want truth and want to know who I am, come and partake of my water and I will give you eternal life.” That is his first teaching in John. There is also Nicodemus, you know, a few things, but this is really early in Jesus’ proclamation of the gospel, so all these witnesses add up.

Driving Out Devils in Galilee

Jesus went back to Galilee after John chapter 5, and what happened there? Already he knew that people in Jerusalem were not impressed with the miracle. They may have wondered if he was just lucky, or if the guy was not that sick after all. Maybe he was crippled for a while, or perhaps he had been there long enough that his body had healed. They did not know what was going on. However, Jesus went to Galilee, and what happened? Up there, he was driving out devils, and one day, there was a man that was so possessed with evil spirits that when Jesus drove those spirits out of him, the spirits said as they were leaving, “Our name is Legion;” thousands of spirits that had come into that body. Why? This poor man was so poor, the only place he could live was in a cave that was also used for burying or laying out the dead. In their view, all those dead spirits had come and possessed his body. He had become crazy and Jesus had sympathy, compassion, and mercy. He drove those guys out, saying, “Get away from this man!” And where did those spirits go? The spirits decided that they liked this body stuff and seeing the pigs nearby, they possessed the pigs and the pigs went wild, careened down a hill into the Sea of Galilee, and died. Pigs do not swim very well.

00:29:39 Then what was the reaction? Again, what was the reaction of people when Jesus performed these miracles? What did they do? They called for the lawyers. They sent to Jerusalem and they brought the scribes. Scribes! Well a Scribe was like a notary, but a scribe was also a lawyer. They knew the law, they wrote contracts, so they had to know the legal provisions and the language, and guess what? In order to be a member of the Sanhedrin, you had to pass the



bar exam in four subjects. The Talmud tells us this. One of the subjects was that you had to know the difference between what we would call white magic and black magic. Some miracles are good miracles and some are bad. Some miracles are done by people like Aaron. Remember, he had a showdown with Pharaoh’s priests and they had a contest where they threw down their rods and they turned into snakes. Obviously, there are good miracles and there are bad powers, and in the ancient world, people felt very close to these spirits of all kinds, so in Roman law, if you were trafficking, selling services to place curses on people—we find these all over the place. They would use little lead plates, and they would write curses, but you would go to a spell-binder to get the right curse words, and you had to know how to write. Then they would write these down on a tablet like lead, and where do we find most of these? We find them in wells. Why? Because if you wanted to curse your neighbor, you would go and throw this curse into the water in their well, and then that would make the water carry the curse into the mouth of anyone who drank the water from that well. Sometimes it worked. They did not realize it was lead poisoning, but they thought it was the curses that were doing it. Jane?

(Jane) One of our sons went on a mission to people who believed in shamans, and…

These are the Mons?

(Jane) And so he worked a lot with the shamans, and he said they performed many miracles. And the Elders followed after, but they did perform miracles.

There is no question that there are these powers. The question that was asked when the lawyers were brought up to Galilee to look into this matter, because they were worried, was, “Is Jesus doing this by the power of God, of Jehovah? Or Beelzebub” Baal—Baal-ze-bub means the boy of Baal. So it was like back in the old Elijah story of the priests of Baal against Jehovah; you were on one side or the other. They worried about Jesus—all these miracles. They looked good but if they were leading people into apostasy, there would be trouble. “This will be bad. We have to figure out whether he is a good wonder-worker or a bad one.”

00:33:39 What did they do there? They punted. Now that is told in Mark, but John never talks about driving out these evil spirits.

Jesus went back to Jerusalem, in John chapter 7, to the Feast of Tabernacles; he went back in John chapter 8; he finally went back again for Hanukkah in John chapter 10. He was going to the temple. He was going because he was devoted to God. He was a righteous person; he was not practicing black magic. Maybe that is part of what John was trying to tell us. More than that, every time Jesus went back to the temple, back to Jerusalem, he ran into trouble and people chased him out. They tried to kill him; they accused of breaking the Sabbath, in the case of healing in John chapter 9, in which the boy who was born blind was healed on the Sabbath day. I wonder why Jesus picked the Sabbath day to do these things. He could have done them the next day. But the occasion was there, and he was not going to say, “I am not going to do good on the Sabbath day.” I imagine he healed on many other days too, but it became controversial on the Sabbath day. Remember the healing in which he made a little clay and put it on the eyes of the boy who subsequently could see. His vision was healed. People came and started asking what he had done and how. Why were they asking that? They wanted to know whether he was calling upon some demon. They said, “He has a devil.” What does that mean? That means they thought that he had his personal devil, and that when he was performing these miracles, he was calling upon this evil force. That was their theory. It did not work out, but as people were asking, they



wanted to know how this had happened. Then they also said that since this was on the Sabbath day, they should consider killing him for that. That was when they asked the parents, “Well what did he do?” And what do the parents answer?

(comment) “He is of age.”

What does of age mean? Probably he has been through his Bar Mitzvah, so he is old enough to answer for himself. The parents were saying, “We are not getting into this. We do not know how he did it.” The Parents queried why they did not ask the boy.? Well, think about this. If you are a lawyer, did the boy actually see what Jesus did? He was blind. So how could he testify, “Oh, he took this and he…” However, if the scribes were trying to prove that he was working on the Sabbath day, they had to have somebody say what he actually did. So again, that is foiled. They could not bring the law suit and off they go. That does not mean that Jesus was winning a lot of friends.

00:37:26 The more these accusations piled up, every time he went to Jerusalem he was walking into hostile territory. They tested him, especially with the woman taken in adultery. They were trying to trick him. Does this help you see anything about why Matthew, Mark, and Luke, did not want to get into all of this. They only wanted to record that Jesus came to Jerusalem on that final time. Whatever else happened, for the three synoptics, maybe it was not important. I do not know why they did not report it, but they do not.

(comment) I would like to suggest that Jesus had three years to say and do things to get people of authority to hate him enough that they would go ahead and crucify him. He says, “This is why I came,” and he had to make sure that would happen. Twice in the four Gospels, I do not remember which ones, we find that it says they were so full of wrath toward him that he had to use his power to pass through their midst unseen.

That is right.

(comment) So in three years’ time, he did a good enough job that they were willing to nail him to the cross, and that is what had to happen.

Excellent. And that brings us right to the final sign in John. I asked you to read John chapters 11 and 12 to get ready for tonight because the thing that really pushed everybody––now the leaders in Jerusalem were getting more and more nervous about what Jesus was doing. They could not explain it. Nor could they counter it. They kept trying to get him to––“Don’t come back, you are not welcome here.” They picked up stones and said, “We are going to stone you.” However, he would not be deterred. One after another, he wanted to bring mercy to these people and he wanted to keep trying with them, even with the people who are the most obnoxious. He kept coming back. They finally got really mad.

Raising Lazarus from the Dead: A Capital Offense

What made them the maddest? It was the biggest miracle of all. Raising Lazarus from the dead! Let us think about that story for a minute–– maybe for a few minutes. I think it is the most important story in all of Jesus’ ministry, for a lot of reasons. Help me with the facts.

00:40:23 Jesus was over in Jordan somewhere. And Mary, Martha, and Lazarus had been really good friends to Jesus, in fact, they had a very large home, and when Jesus and his group traveled from Galilee to Jerusalem, the road from Jericho up to Bethany and then over to Jerusalem,



probably went right past Mary and Martha’s home, and it was big enough that they could stop there. The anointing in Bethany happened there. Mary and Martha were devoted disciples of Jesus. They must have had a lot of money because they had a private tomb, and they were right on the main highway. Lazarus was really, really sick, but what did Mary say? “Jesus if you were only here, you could have taken care of this. Where were you when we needed you?” And what happened next? He made them wait. Why do you think he made them wait?

(comment) Because Jesus wanted them to know that he really raised Lazarus from the dead.

Well it actually says, “His time had not yet come.”

If he had come earlier—well, he knew he needed to be killed around Passover for all of the Passover symbols to work. I am not sure how much he was thinking through all of these details, and I am sure he was agonizing, hoping they would understand, but he did not come quickly. One of the reasons he may not have come quickly was because he knew that by doing such a miracle, he was signing his own death warrant, and maybe he needed a little more time. He knew he could raise Lazarus whether he was sick or dead, but he was not going to come until he was ready.

In any event, he took plenty of time, and Lazarus died and then what happened?

(comment) He waited. He wanted Lazarus to be thoroughly dead. It was one of the traditions of the Jews, that you were not dead unless you had been dead for three days.

That is right.

(comment) And so he waited until those three days were up then he came. I believe he thanked his Father for the opportunity, and now he was going to demonstrate that he had that power.

And everybody was happy with that, right? Who had come to Mary and Martha’s house to mourn the death of Lazarus? By the way, he was already smelling a bit, but who came? How many people were there? All the important people in Jerusalem! Mary and Martha, are wealthy people; they have big friends and many people came.

Maybe some of them were hostile toward Jesus, kind of mocking them, in a way. They may have been saying things like. “Well where was your Jesus when you needed him?” But others, I think, were there just because they liked Mary and Martha, and just as we go to funerals, they wanted to be there. This was a big social event; it was a place to be seen.

What happened? There was a division among the people. Half of them were thinking, “Wow! This is the greatest miracle we have ever heard of,” and the others were saying, “He is tricking the people; he is fooling the people. There’s something fishy here.” Those people who thought there was a problem ran to Jerusalem and who did they talk to? The Pharisees that were concerned about purity laws and things like that. The Pharisees went to Caiaphas, the high priest, and what did he do? In John chapter 11, it says that Caiaphas held—according to the King James English—a council. However, the Greek word there is Synhedrion. He called the Sanhedrin together. Why? Because of this miracle. Where is Bethany? It is just over the Mount of Olives from Jerusalem. It is a stone’s throw from the Garden of Gethsemane. Much too close to Jerusalem for their liking. “Let him do what he wants up in Galilee, where he actually had raised some children and healed people who were either dead or near dead, but never right there in the neighborhood of the temple, the holy place.”



(Rita) In verse 48, Caiaphas said, “If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation.” He was truly scared.

That was what they were afraid of. Before then, they argued about it, and they wondered what to do. Then it says that Caiaphas offered then his reasoned opinion. Caiaphas was pronouncing, I think, the verdict of a Sanhedrin hearing in which they had determined that Jesus was worthy of death. There were certain kinds of causes that could be tried, as we would say, ex parte, without the accused person there. Ex parte trials could happen particularly in the case of an emergency. If they knew somebody was a robber, a magician, or a dangerous person, the last thing they wanted to do is try to capture them and have a peaceful trial, so they tried them in absentia. They would reach a verdict based on all that they knew. The Sanhedrin now had evidence before them about the raising of Lazarus. And the rationale that Caiaphas gave besides “We don’t want to lose our place” is, “It is better that one should die than the whole nation should perish.” Where did Caiaphas get that from? From Nephi (😊). Sort of.

00:48:34 Where did Nephi get it from? Not Isaiah. No, this principle, the “one for many” principle goes back at least into the ninth century BC in ancient Israelite law. This was a standard principle of extreme—it was only applied in very difficult cases, but if it was clear that the entire nation or an entire city was at risk, judges could then determine that it was better to turn one person over and let that person be killed. In fact, in Nephi’s day, the Babylonians were really angry at the son of Zachariah who would be the next king, and they demanded that the Jews turn him over. The Jews in Jerusalem were sure he would be put to death and they decided that it was better that he die. They invoked this very principle.

I mention that because when Caiaphas said this, he was not saying some proverbial adage, he was invoking a kind of constitutional law. It would be like us invoking habeas corpus or something like that. It is legal language and it has legal power. I think a legal verdict for Jesus’ death was issued because of the raising of Lazarus.

What happened after the trial at the end of chapter 11? They issued an arrest warrant. I do not know if they put posters up, “Wanted Dead or Alive,” but what does it say? “If anyone knew where he were, he should shew it, that they might take him.” And “if you don’t tell us,” what does that mean? Go to Leviticus chapter 5, verse 1, and it says, “And if a soul sin, and hear the voice of swearing, and is a witness, whether he hath seen or known of it; if he do not utter it, then he shall bear his iniquity.” He would have been punished the way that the miscreant would have been punished. The Jewish leaders needed to capture Jesus, so they were acting upon their deliberation, which they could not have done unless it had been an official determination of the Sanhedrin. By the way, the Sanhedrin was composed of Sadducees and Pharisees, so now the Sadducees and Pharisees were finally agreeing on something. Usually they never agreed with anything, but they agreed here. There is nothing like a common enemy to make good friends.

(comment) Just one comment on that. How ironic to say that he should die for a nation…

Oh, I know, and John tells us that. Caiaphas did not realize that by invoking law, he was actually fulfilling righteous principles and some prophecies.

(comment) But they tried to get rid of Lazarus too.

00:52:08 Look at chapter 12 verse 8. “For the poor always ye have with you; but me ye have not always.”



The Triumphal Entry

This brings us to the Triumphal Entry so back up and note that when Jesus went to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, he was a wanted man. The order had already gone out, “If anyone sees him, you must turn him in.” Have you ever put those two things together? The only way to do that is by reading John closely. Matthew, Mark, and Luke made it sound as though he just waltzed into Jerusalem. He was walking in again, but it was not a trap because he knew what was happening. Later, he told the chief priest a parable about a certain man who first sent his servants, and the managers beat them and drove them away. Then he sent his son, and they killed him. All three Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, relate that parable, and Matthew even says that the Jewish leaders understood it. They knew he was talking about them; Matthew 21:45, “And when the chief priests and Pharisees had heard his parables, they perceived that he spake of them.”

Even if he were not aware of the arrest order, he knew that something like it must happen. He knew what was going on. His time was close. He mercifully and bravely went even one more time to accomplish what he could to show people, with the greatest degree of love and power that he could bring to bear, that he was the resurrection and the life, that he had these powers, and they were good powers. “Please, listen to me.” Of course, people had already made up their minds, and it did work. However, as he went into Jerusalem, he probably did not know what kind of reception he was going to get there.

The Necessity of the Arrest and Death Happening in Public

The people come in hoards, why? Look at John 12 verse 9, “Much people of the Jews therefore knew that he was there.” This was not being done just in a quiet, little corner with only a few people knowing. The comment was made about how Jesus wanted to do these things in the open so that people would know his power, but notice also, he knew he had to die; he needed to die. It had been prophesied that he would die, and it needed to be in the open. If Jesus had been just killed somewhere, if they took him out in the desert and stabbed him and threw him to the beasts, would people have known that he was dead? If they stoned him—when a person was stoned, there was no coroner to feel the pulse. Nobody could touch a dead body, or even a bloody body. They would leave the stoned person there and suppose that they would die. Stoning was a painful way to be just left there, but it was not a very efficient way to kill someone.

00:56:03 But what about crucifixion? It was a really clear death, and the world’s experts in administering the death penalty by crucifixion were available. The Romans knew how to do this. It may be that they were just helping the Jews. Jews are there as well as Romans; the Romans were trying to make sure that things did not get out of hand, but Pilate had told the Jews to go and do what they wanted with him. I think the Romans wanted to blame the Jews and the Jews wanted to blame the Romans because nobody really wanted to take responsibility for this. They all had a cover.

One thing was clear, it was going to happen on Golgotha, right on the main road outside the Damascus Gate. This gate was the main way in and out of Jerusalem, and people would have been going back and forth, and they probably said, “Whoa, what’s going on up there?”

It was the night before Passover. People would have seen, and Jesus’ death would have been certain. We can appreciate that need, especially because he had been accused over and over again of trying to trick the people, and if this were a trick, and that was what the Pharisees were



concerned about when they wanted that stone protected in front of the tomb. They say, “Because the last trick maybe worse than the first one.”

Lazarus was a Center of Attention

Now, return to chapter 12 verse 9, “Much people of the Jews therefore knew that he was there: and they came not for Jesus’ sake only, but that they might see Lazarus also, whom he had raised from the dead.” Why do they want to see Lazarus? Jane?

(Jane) I do not know the answer to that, but I wanted to ask you one thing. There is no more tender story anywhere than Jesus weeping, and how comfortable Mary and Martha were with Jesus, and how he loved Lazarus so much. The whole story is so tender. Do you think maybe he knew them as a child, and do you think that he grew up with them or knew them. His love for them was so great.

That is an interesting idea. We do not know that they are family; but they could be. But I love what you say about how much Jesus loved Lazarus, and how much did he love Lazarus? Why does he come back to Jerusalem for the Triumphal Entry? See verse 10. People had come to see Lazarus; this was a sensation. You can almost hear them saying, “A guy who a few days ago had been raised from the dead,” and “I want to see this. I want to see somebody who has been… What does he look like? He was dead and now he is alive.” This news has spread like wildfire, and what do the chief priests think about all of this? Verse 10, “But the chief priests consulted that they might put Lazarus to death.” Have you ever noticed that before? Why did they want to kill Lazarus, or what possible complaint could they have had against him?

(comment) He was alive, and the idea that he was now alive… there was no doubt that he had died, and he was now alive.

But why did they not say “let us rejoice!” What could they have accused him of? Being an accomplice. Their theory was that Jesus was some kind of a bogus magician, that he was tricking the people and that Lazarus must have been complicit in this. Maybe they smeared some kind of smelly stuff, or they found some dead animal and smeared that all over him and then wrapped him up. The Jewish leaders wanted the story to go away. Perhaps they did not know exactly what would do, but they certainly wanted to ask Lazarus some questions. What happened? How do you know? And if they were trying to kill Lazarus, more than anything else, he knew that Lazarus was in trouble. What did Jesus say in John 15 verse 13, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

01:01:21 Jesus knew they did not want Peter, they did not want John, they did not want Judas, and they did not really even want Lazarus. “They want me, and as long as they would not even respond to these amazing miracles that are obviously good for people, then they are going to start picking off my disciples.” Jesus thought, “Okay, my time has come! I will now realize that it cannot be put off any longer.” He called everyone together on Thursday night for the Passover dinner, and then you know the story as we pick it up from there.

Jesus was Courageous; The Sanhedrin were Afraid

What I wanted to do tonight was give you the back story to let you approach Easter, realizing that Jesus did this courageously. He did this with determination, with love, with mercy toward all of them, even his accusers. Of course, the whole world was, in a way, set against what was going to happen here.



(comment) I believe that Nicodemus was the only member of the Sanhedrin that had enough humility to recognize Jesus as the Christ, but I do not believe that the rest of them were thinking that he was a huckster. I think that in a way, they knew who he was and it would cost them their own positions, and that was why they were so eager to get rid of him.

I like your point, and some further evidence of that is that Joseph of Arimathea was also in the Sanhedrin, and he gave Jesus his tomb. Shortly after that, we will learn of people like Barnabas and other Levites who were joining the Christian movement. See John chapter 4. These are people who had heard Jesus preaching in the temple where the Levites officiated. You are right, there were lots of them who knew. They were conflicted, and I think more than anything else, they were afraid, and when people get afraid, they act irrationally.

We are here tonight trying to make sense of what happened. But you know, if they had been really scared, and I think they were, they were most afraid of the Romans. They were afraid of these miracles. They were afraid that if Jesus could still the storm, he could have probably caused an earthquake. He could have made the temple walls come tumbling down. This was a power that they could not tolerate, that they needed to be rid of, but they were scared to death. Literally, “We must move quickly,” and that was why it happened as fast as it did.

Let us have one more comment and then I want to finish up with just a few pictures.

(comment) Christ also said things about the temple that angered the Jews. It was not just in Jerusalem.

Now you are listening to Matthew, Mark and Luke. Only Matthew, Mark and Luke try to concoct some kind of theory for this case. They are the ones who thought that there were witnesses claiming he had said that he could destroy the temple. John never reported that he said it. The Jews brought witnesses who tried to argue and tried to ask, “Well what did he really say?” The witnesses did not agree with each other, so the theory did not work for them. But let me just finish because—

(comment) 24th chapter of Matthew.

Well that was when he wept over Jerusalem

(comment) In the inspired version.

Oh yes, but in the 24th chapter of Matthew when he was weeping, he said, “You know, you people will not listen to me, and within thirty-five years the Romans will come and they will dismantle that temple. There will not be two stones standing on top of each other left of the actual temple shrine.” Jesus is prophesying not what he will do, but what the people will bring upon themselves—the calamity that they will bring upon the temple themselves. But that leaves the last question, if they really could not convict him of the temple statements—and the temple accusations were only brought after he was arrested—folks, process what I am telling you. When was Jesus convicted? It was not after he was arrested. He was convicted a week or so earlier because of the raising of Lazarus, and that could only be on the charge of false miracle working. That is because it really boils down to the question that was asked in the Beelzebub controversy, By what authority are you doing these things? By what power are you doing these things? And that was what the chief priests asked Jesus the day after the Triumphal Entry, when he came into Jerusalem, in Matthew. The chief priests said, “By what authority are you doing these things?” What is his question? “It was either by God or it was by somebody else, and if it was by



somebody else, you are in trouble!” Jesus answered by telling them a story. We will not go into that tonight. It is one of his parables.

The Cause of Action according to John

01:07:37 But in any event, I think when you look at the only cause of action that really stands up to explain why Jesus was put to death, it was because of miracle working. Let us finish by letting you reflect a little bit on what you have heard tonight, and I hope it will help you to think more deeply and more personally, more spiritually. Jesus was not a political revolutionary who was put to death because he made some Romans mad. That was what people normally say when they read Luke. When you read John, Jesus was put to death because he claimed to be the Son of God and performed miracles that only made sense if he was. That is a big difference.

So if you want to turn this down, let us just summarize by saying that in John, we have a lot of law going on, but over and over again, Jesus responded to legal challenges with tender mercy after tender mercy after tender mercy. How many times did he have to come back to these people? Now ask yourself, how many times does he have to come to you for you to have that same reception of his goodness in your life?

I have mentioned fear. People want to find out who dunnit. Who is responsible? Who do we blame? If they were all afraid, and if you look at this list, in every one of the Gospels, at every turn, the Gospels tell us that everybody was scared. Pilate is scared. Caiaphas is scared. Even Peter is scared. The Apostles flee. Joseph of Arimathea feared. Fear, fear, fear. The one thing that is consistent between all four Gospels is that this was a theater of fear, and as I said, when people get scared, they do not act rationally, and you cannot really blame them. I think the greatest tender mercy of all of Easter is that Jesus set this all up in such a way that no one person has to go through eternity saying, “I was the one who killed Jesus.” They all did, in their own way, and not only did they all do it, but they were scared to a point that they acted suddenly, precipitously, and regrettably. So, blame really has no part of Easter for me. I do not think we should be anti-Semitic, I do not think we should be anti-Roman, I do not think we should be anti-Caiaphas. It happened because it was supposed to.

01:11:03 So what were they afraid of? Scared, more than anything, about the miracle working. It would be really terrifying; we never see witches really working. We never see—maybe the Shamans. If you encounter something like this—witch doctors, voodoo, or cultures where magic things are actually used—they are the most powerful, terrifying social weapons in their culture, because you cannot control them. Somebody could poke pins in a voodoo doll in their closet, and it has effects on you that you can only be afraid of. There is nothing else you can do about it.

Commentary on a Slide Show of Related Pictures

1. In early Christianity, on a glass plate in the Vatican Museum, the first images that we have of Jesus show him raising Lazarus from the dead. Lazarus is in his tomb, wrapped, and Jesus…he did not really use a wand, but they depict him artistically to say, he is now exercising power to raise Lazarus from the dead. If this is the first thing that early Christians were remembering and putting into artistic representations, this raising of Lazarus was more important to them in the 2nd and 3rd centuries than we realized. We need to reclaim the Lazarus story, and not just discount it on the grounds that only John tells us so it must not be important.



2. Here is another one. This one is harder to see, but this is Lazarus. See the wrapping of his shroud. This is Jesus, and this is his rod; he is touching it to Lazarus’ head, raising him from the dead.

3. This is harder to see, but this is on a sarcophagus—an early Christian sarcophagus. Here is Jesus, once again raising someone from the tomb. It may be a child here, but maybe Lazarus.

4. This is in the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris so this was well into the Middle Ages. Jesus raising someone—I do not know whether this is Lazarus or someone who was sick, but in any event, the power of Jesus to perform miracles like this were an important part of the way in which they remembered and depicted Jesus.

5. If you go, as some of us have, to this spot, this is what Lazarus’ tomb looks like. You go down these stairs and way down in, you can crawl down, you have to crawl around in there. We do not know for sure that this is the tomb, but it dates from that time period.

What I want you to take away from this is that these were real events. These really happened. There were really people there. They saw all of this. It had a big consequence. It was not just somebody making up some kind of a story.

6. Caiaphas, he was real. This is Caiaphas’ ossuary; he’s got his name on it. His bones were put in this box. He was an important guy. Well, if he wanted a big burial, he got one.

7. Jesus came in for the Triumphal entry right past walls that looked like this; impressive, imposing, power of the world, more boldly stated here than anywhere else.

8. Instead, he chose the Garden of Gethsemane, a place of peace, of olives – old olive trees where the olive oil could be pressed and used for anointing and blessing and there, he bore the sufferings and pains of the world. However, for all the sufferings, as important as those sufferings were, the sufferings did not cause the resurrection. The resurrection was caused by his willingness to submit to God’s will, who allowed him, Jesus, to raise himself from the dead.

01:16:07 What are all the sufferings? Why do we tell the sufferings story? Doctrine and Covenants 19 gives us one reason why, that you might repent. “If you realize the price that I paid,” he said, “you can repent, or such sufferings—and I know how bad they were—you will have them yourself.” As he said to the people he healed, “Do not sin and have something even worse happen.” He wants people to get the message, “All you have to do is repent,” and that is why the suffering stories are told.

9. Christ has paid the price with his blood, these are poppies but they are right there in the Garden of Gethsemane reminding us of the reality of them.

10. These are the steps up to Caiaphas’ house. Jesus would have walked up and then back down.

Notice that when he was taken to Caiaphas’ house, there was no trial there, according to John. The Sanhedrin was not called. They taunted him a little bit; they ask him a few questions. Jesus is a little bit rude back and he gets chastised for that. Why was there no trial at Caiaphas’ house after the arrest? The trial had already happened. All they were doing was stalling for time. They talked to him a little bit.



11. This is Caiaphas saying, “I am warning you, change your tune or we will take you to Pontius Pilate,” who was a real person.

12. This says Tiberias Pontius Pilate on it.

Jesus was then taken to Pilate who washed his hands and said, “do what you want.” Notice in John 18 it says, “Pilate asked, what cause of action do you have against this man? Why have you brought him to me?” They answered, “If he were not a kakopoios,” translated as a malefactor. However, the word kakopoios, in Greek means, a magician, an evil creator. Kakos is bad, poios is maker. It is different from a kako-urbos, which is an evil-doer. This was far worse, he was creating evil, and a magician.

“If he were not that, we would not have delivered him to you, but we know that Romans also have a law that says magicians or sorcerers or conjurers are enemies of the Roman Republic and can be put to death under Roman law as well as under Jewish law.”

Here is a quotation from the Talmud.

“On the eve of Passover, Yeshua, the Nazarine was hanged, crucified. Forty days for the execution took place a herald went forth and cried, (we do not know this but somebody claims that there was a public notice given) ‘he is going forth to be stoned because he has practiced sorcery and enticed Israel to apostasy. Anyone who can say anything in his favor let him come forward and plead on his behalf.’

Now I do not think that ever happened. But the interesting thing is that even the Jews remembered that what Jesus was crucified over was the miracles. They thought it was sorcery, enticing people to follow some other god besides the god they knew or used in the temple.

13. We can follow the steps up to Calvary as it looks like today,

14. Yes! they crucified people. Here is a bone attached to a piece of wood. You can see the nail. This was found about twenty-five years ago; evidence of actual crucifixion in Jerusalem.

Crucifixion was not just a Roman form of punishment, by the way. Everybody used it. And Acts 2:22 says “Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know:” and why? Verse 23 says, “Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel” in other words, the council determined before, “and by the foreknowledge of God.” This is talking about the Council in Heaven where, Peter says, Jesus was commissioned. He was talking to the Jews who had killed Jesus and why had they done that? Because of the miracles that they had seen.

01:21:34 And of course King Benjamin said that even after he had done all these mighty miracles, they will say he has a devil; they will scourge him and crucify him. Again, the cause was the allegation, was that he was doing this by the power of devils.

The Passion: an Agony

Okay, well, a final thought here. We often call this the Passion of Jesus. What does the word Passion relate to? Passivity – passion and passivity come from the same root. The passion—the word passion also means suffering. What we believe in this case is the last meaning—suffering.

We do not believe that Jesus just took it and suffered and that was all it took. Jesus was in a battle. He was fighting against the forces of death and evil. The Greek word that is translated



when it says he was in an agony, the Greek word is agon, and it means that he was in a contest, in a battle – an agon. Yes, you struggle when you are in a battle, and Jesus was fighting a war and winning that war.

I would call this not the passion week, but the victory week, because he was winning the battle. He did that, of course, by leaving the tomb empty and rising as the resurrected Lord, our Savior who died—not just died for us, but rose for us that he might preach the gospel to all those who are in the grave, all who ever will be or were his brothers and sisters on this earth. That is the message of Easter for me. I think it is the message of Easter from the Gospel of John.

I pray that you will have a wonderful Easter celebration, and that you will love the Lord as he has loved you. Another commandment I give unto you that you love one another as I have loved you.

And that we must love him with all our hearts, might, mind and strength is the greatest of all commandments, and the second is not much different, really. May you have a wonderful Easter in your families, in your wards, in your neighborhoods, in your lives personally and in your relationship with your Savior and his Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Transcriptionist Carol H. JonesEdited by Rita L. Spencer


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