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The Great Controversy 1888
hurried through the streets of Jerusalem; the Son of God exultingly
displayed before Annas, arraigned in the high priest’s palace, in the
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judgment hall of Pilate, before the cowardly and cruel Herod, mocked,
insulted, tortured, and condemned to die,—all are vividly portrayed.
And now before the swaying multitude are revealed the final
scenes,—the patient Sufferer treading the path to Calvary; the Prince
of Heaven hanging upon the cross; the haughty priests and the jeering
rabble deriding his expiring agony; the supernatural darkness; the
heaving earth, the rent rocks, the open graves, marking the moment
when the world’s Redeemer yielded up his life.
The awful spectacle appears just as it was. Satan, his angels, and
his subjects have no power to turn from the picture of their own work.
Each actor recalls the part which he performed. Herod, who slew
the innocent children of Bethlehem that he might destroy the King of
Israel; the base Herodias, upon whose guilty soul rests the blood of
John the Baptist; the weak, time-serving Pilate; the mocking soldiers;
the priests and rulers and the maddened throng who cried, “His blood
be on us, and our children!”—all behold the enormity of their guilt.
They vainly seek to hide from the divine majesty of His countenance,
outshining the glory of the sun, while the redeemed cast their crowns
at the Saviour’s feet, exclaiming, “He died for me!”
Amid the ransomed throng are the apostles of Christ, the heroic
Paul, the ardent Peter, the loved and loving John, and their true-hearted
brethren, and with them the vast host of martyrs; while outside the
walls, with every vile and abominable thing, are those by whom they
were persecuted, imprisoned, and slain. There is Nero, that monster
of cruelty and vice, beholding the joy and exaltation of those whom
he once tortured, and in whose extremest anguish he found Satanic
delight. His mother is there to witness the result of her own work; to
see how the evil stamp of character transmitted to her son, the passions
encouraged and developed by her influence and example, have borne
fruit in crimes that caused the world to shudder.
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There are papist priests and prelates, who claimed to be Christ’s
ambassadors, yet employed the rack, the dungeon, and the stake to
control the consciences of his people. There are the proud pontiffs who
exalted themselves above God, and presumed to change the law of the
Most High. Those pretended fathers of the church have an account to
render to God from which they would fain be excused. Too late they