Letters from Adina - #31

Letter XXXI. Jesus stands before Caiaphas.

“Woman, I swear by the altar and the ark of God, and by the sacred Tables, I know not the man!”

Dearest Father,

I have but now ended my last letter, and I am already beginning another; for only in writing to you do I find relief from the deep affliction which has bowed me to the earth.

I have learned the further account which I shall give, in part from John and in part from Rabbi Amos; who were both there a portion of the night; Peter, and other disciples, as well as Aemilius, have also given me additional facts.

So soon as the mob of Jews who had laid hands on Jesus and whom  I saw pass the house, came to the abode of Rabbi Annas, he asked them whom they had as prisoner; and when they answered that it was the Nazarene Prophet, he said, with great joy -

‘‘Lead him to the Palace! Caiaphas, my son-in-law, would fain see the man who can destroy the Temple, and rebuild it in three days.’’

Caiaphas was already upon his throne, although it was long past the hour of midnight,- an unwonted time for him to sit in the council-chamber; but his desire to have Jesus brought before him, with whose arrest in Olivet he had been an hour before made acquainted by one of his emissaries, led him to hold an extraordinary court.

As Jesus entered, led by the sorrowful Aemilius, Caiaphas bent forward his tall, gaunt form, thrust out his neck and huge head, and with keen eyes, and sharp, inquiring glances, surveyed Him whom he jealously looked upon as his foe.

Caiaphas now waved his hand to command silence, and addressed Jesus:

“So, then,’’ he spoke, with haughty mockery, “thou art Jesus, the far-famed Galilean Prophet. Men say thou canst raise the dead. We would fain behold a miracle. Thinkest thou if we put thee to death presently, thou canst raise thyself up?”’

“Jesus, said Rabbi Amos who then entered and standing near Him and saw all, Jesus remained unmoved. His bearing was marked by a certain divine dignity, and a look of holy resignation sat upon his features.

He seemed like Peace incarnate in the form of man. A soft influence seemed to flow from His presence, and produce a universal, but momentary, feeling of sympathy.”

Caiaphas perceived it, and cried in his harsh, stern voice - “You have brought this man before me, men of Jerusalem, of what do you accuse him? Let those who have accusations come forward and make them. He is a Jew, and shall have justice by our laws.”

Hereupon several of the chief-priests and Scribes, who had been going to and fro among the crowd, brought forward certain men, whose appearance showed them to be of the baser sort.

 One of these men testified that he had heard Jesus say, that he would destroy the Temple, and could again in three days rebuild it more magnificently than it was in the days of Solomon the Mighty.

A second witness was now produced by Abijah, who testified that Jesus had taught in Samaria that men would soon no longer worship in the Temple, but that the whole earth would be the temple for Jews and Gentiles.

A third witness, a man who had been notorious for his crimes, now came forward. He carried on his wrist a cock, with steel gaffs upon the spurs, as if he had just been brought up from the cock-pit to bear testimony; for such were the sort of men suborned by the priests.

He testified that Jesus said that the day would soon come when not one stone of the Temple should be left upon another; that He had called it ‘a den of thieves,’ the priests ‘blind guides’ and ‘deceivers’; the Scribes ‘foxes,’ and the Pharisees ‘hypocrites.’

But the fourth and fifth witnesses contradicted each other; neither did the testimony of two others agree; for the one asserted that he heard Him call Himself ‘the Son of God,’ but was contradicted by other, who asserted that he was present, and that Jesus had said ‘the Son of Man;’ and in another case one said he heard Him say that He and God were One, while the other testified that He said that God was greater than He.

Neither did other witnesses agree together.  

Such opposite testimony perplexed and angered Caiaphas, and confounded the chief priests and Scribes. The High-Priest now began to perceive that Jesus would have to be released for want of testimony against him.

All the while the prisoner had remained standing before him, bound, with His hands tied across His body, His countenance mild, but steadfast, exhibiting as Aemilius described it – ‘the firmness and composure of innocence.’

“What! Galilean and blasphemer of God and His holy Temple! answereth thou nothing?” cried the High-Priest; “hearest thou not what these witnesses against thee?”

But Jesus spoke nothing.

Then Caiaphas was about to break the silence by some fierce words, when a voice was overheard on the other side of the columns, on the left of the throne, where was a fire-place, in which burned a large fire, about where stood many persons. 

“Thou art one of the Nazarene’s followers!” cried the voice of a maid who brought wood to feed the fire. “Thou needst not to deny it. I am of Galilee, and knew thee when thou wert a fisherman.”

“Woman, I swear by the altar and the ark of God, and by the sacred Tables, I know not the man!”

“Thy speech betrayeth thee, now thou hast spoken,” cried the woman; “thou art a Galilean, and thy name is Simon Bar Jona. I know thee well, and how, three years ago, ye left your nets, thou and thy brother Andrew, to follow this Nazarene.”

“May the thunders of Herob and the curse of Jehovah follow me, if what thou sayest be true, O woman! Thou mistakest me for some other man. I swear to you by the head of my father, men and brethren, that I never saw his face before. I know not the man!”

‘‘As he spoke,’’ said John, “he cast his angry looks towards the place where Jesus stood. He caught his Master’s eyes bent upon him with a tender and reproving gaze, so full of sorrowing compassion, mingled with forgiveness, that I saw Peter start as if smitten with lightning.

He then pressed his two hands to his face, and uttering a cry of anguish and despair that made the High-Priest look round, and which went to every heart, he rushed out of the open door into the darkness and disappeared.

As he went, the cock, which was held tied upon the wrist of the third witness, crowed twice in a loud tone.

I then remembered the words of Jesus to Peter, spoken but a few hours before: ‘this night, even before the cock crow twice, thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest me!’

“Upon this,” added John, ‘‘my confidence in my Master came back, full and strong, and I felt that He would not, could not, be harmed; for, that He foreknew all things that could happen to Him, and would yet escape death.”

At length, after great uproar and dissension among the elders, chief priests and Scribes, at their demand, brought Jesus before the great council. Their hall adjoined his own. Here they, as well as Caiaphas, questioned Him closely, and said -

“Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed? I adjure thee, by the living God, tell us plainly!”

Jesus then raised His princely form, and bending His eyes upon the face of the High-Priest, with a look so bright that Caiaphas was fain to drop his eyelids, answered,

“If I tell ye, O priests, ye will not believe! If I prove it to you from the prophets and by my works, ye will not listen. If I say that I am Christ, ye will not then acknowledge me, nor let me go free.

I have spoken openly to you all, in the Temple, and in the synagogue. I have concealed nothing.

Nevertheless, I say unto you what I have before taught, that I am the Christ, the Son of the Blessed; and hereafter ye shall behold me sitting on the right hand of the power of God, and coming in the clouds of heaven.”

“Art thou the Son of God?’ cried several of the priests at once, while Caiaphas held up his hands in horror.

“Ye have said that which I AM,” answered the Prophet, His countenance not changing, except to a sublimer look.  “His face”, says John, ‘‘seemed to shine, as he had seen it in the Mount, when He was transfigured before him.”

“Men of Israel and Judah, ye hear his words” cried the High Priest, rending down the blue lace from his ephod. “Hear ye his blasphemy; and, by our law, he ought to die, because he hath made himself the Son of God.

But Caesar hath taken the sentence of life and death out of our hands. We Jews can put no man to death; the Romans alone have that power.”

“That he has spoken against Caesar, and is a seditious fellow, can be proved.

Let us take him before Pilate with this accusation; and if he be found worthy of death, as he will be (unless the Procurator wink at a usurper’s rising up in his government, which he will not dare to do) we shall have the Nazarene hanged on a Roman cross ere the sun reaches the mark of noon on the dial of the Temple.”

This speech pleased the people, and having again bound Jesus, more strictly than before they all cried in one voice, “to Pilate! To the Praetorium!’’

The multitude then poured out of the gates of the palace like a foaming and chafing river which hath overflowed its banks, and with terrible cries which we heard, startling the dawn, even in our house, took the direction towards the Praetorium.

It was with difficulty that Aemilius could bring the Prophet in safety up the hill, and to the entrance of the Praetorium, which he entered with his prisoner just as the sun gilded the loftiest pinnacles of the Temple, and the trumpets of the Levites sounded to prayers.

In another letter, dear father, I will continue the account of His trial, the remembrance of which, while I now write of it, almost rekindles again all my love, faith, devotion and trust in Him; for who but a man God-sustained could have borne so meekly all this pain, insult, ignominy, and shame?

Adina.

Next Letter

LADY DONNA PROGRAM

The new Lady Donna Immersion in Spirituality, Academics and Citizenship @ the "I AM" School will study abridged excerpts of the Letters from Adina taken from Reverend Ingraham's original edited version of 'The Prince of the House of David', published by Cassell & Co. Ltd (1903), that reveal remarkable insights into the Living Etheric Record left by Beloved Jesus's Ministry in the Holy Land.