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From Heaven With Love
life to His service. Parents said to their children, He has saved your
life; lift up your voice and praise Him. Hope and gladness filled
the hearts of children and youth, fathers and mothers, friends and
spectators. They were restored soul and body, and they returned
home proclaiming the love of Jesus.
At the crucifixion of Christ, those who had been healed did not
join in crying, “Crucify Him, crucify Him.” Their sympathies were
with Jesus, for they had felt His wonderful power. They knew Him
to be their Saviour. They listened to the apostles, and they became
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agents of God’s mercy and instruments of His salvation.
The crowd that had fled from the temple court slowly drifted
back after a time, but their faces expressed irresolution and timidity.
They were convinced that in Jesus the prophecies concerning the
Messiah were fulfilled. The sin of desecrating the temple rested, in a
great degree, on the priests. By their arrangement the court had been
turned into a market place. The people were comparatively innocent.
But the priests and rulers regarded Christ’s mission as an innovation
and questioned His right to interfere with what was permitted by the
authorities of the temple. They were offended because the traffic
had been interrupted, and they stifled the convictions of the Holy
Spirit.
The Beginning of the Final Rejection of Christ
The priests and rulers should have seen in Jesus the Anointed of
the Lord, for, in their hands were the sacred scrolls that described
His mission. They knew that the cleansing of the temple was a
manifestation of more than human power. Much as they hated Jesus,
they could not free themselves from the thought that He might be
a prophet sent by God to restore the sanctity of the temple. With a
deference born of this fear, they went to Him with the inquiry, “What
sign showest Thou unto us, seeing that Thou dost these things?”
Jesus had shown them a sign. In doing the work which the Mes-
siah was to do, He had given convincing evidence of His character.
Now He answered them by a parable, showing that He read their
malice and saw to what lengths it would lead. “Destroy this temple,
and in three days I will raise it up.”