DEATH OF A NATION: Rise and Fall of Israel
Abraham’s Covenant with
the Most High.
The covenant between Abraham and the Most High
was made during the 94-year bestowal of Melchizedek, the Sage of Salem, who
began his bestowal in 1973 B.C. It was he who acted as intermediary between
Abraham and the Most High. This covenant represents the great Urantia [Earth]
agreement between divinity and humanity whereby God agrees to do everything;
man only agrees to believe God’s promises and follow his instructions.
[93:6:3,4]
The
successive teachers of Israel, in spite of the horrendous treatment accorded
them, accomplished the greatest feat in the evolution of religion ever to be
effected on Urantia [Earth]: the gradual but continuous transformation of the
barbaric concept of the savage and jealous demon Yahweh to the later exalted
and supernal concept of the supreme Yahweh, creator of all things and the
loving and merciful Father of all mankind. It was this loving and merciful
Father that Jesus came to reveal.
[93:2:1,2] = [Paper 93, Sec.2, par.1 & 2] [93:6:3,4] [97:10:6]
Causes Leading to Destruction
of Israel.
Jesus knew no civilization can long survive the
loss of the best in its religion. The Jews had become spiritually stagnant and
dying because they had crystallized truth into a creed. The religious leaders
held the Jews in a terrible bondage of ritualism and legalism, a bondage far
more real than that of the Roman political rule. The Pharisees had 613 rules of
living which invaded every facet of daily living. By the times of Jesus the
Jews had arrived at a settled concept of their origin, history, and destiny.
They had built up a rigid wall of separation between themselves and the gentile
world; the Jews looked upon all gentile ways with utter contempt. They indulged
a form of self-righteousness based upon the false pride of descent.
Their
attitude toward the outside world made it impossible for them to accept the
Master’s teachings about the spiritual brotherhood of man. They could not
accept the teachings of one who unhesitatingly clashed with dogmas they
regarded as having been ordained by Father Abraham himself. Moses had given
them their law and they would not compromise. Those who sought the destruction
of Jesus had become so narrowed by tradition they were blinded by prejudice and
hardened by fear. To the Hebrews of those days Jewish theology was irrevocably
settled, forever fixed. The teachings and practices of Jesus regarding
tolerance and kindness ran counter to the long-standing attitude of the Jews
toward other peoples whom they considered heathen. Jesus ignored numerous of
their sacred traditions; he dared to flout their long-honored regulations of
social conduct. Said Jesus: The rulers seek to kill me because they resent my
teaching about the good news of the kingdom, a gospel that sets men free from
the burdensome traditions of a formal religion of ceremonies which these
teachers are determined to uphold at any cost.
[121:7:1-3] [155:1:4] [155:3:3] [162:2:2] [163:4:8]
The Hebrews had long been nurtured on traditions of miracles and legends of wonders. They envisaged a deliverer who would come in miraculous power to cast down Israel’s enemies and establish the Jews as world rulers, free from want and oppression. The Messiah would deliver the Jewish people from Roman domination by even greater miracles of power and marvels of racial triumphs than were ascribed to Moses. He would sit on David’s throne and from this place of miraculous power promulgate the laws of all the world. They had long been taught the Messiah would work those wonders which would make life pleasant and easy for all the chosen people. Jesus knew these hopes would never be realized. He also foresaw that when finally the multitudes were convinced he would not fulfill their expectations of the long-awaited Messiah, they would promptly reject him. [136:6:6,7] [136:9:2] [141:2:1] [153:2:6]
When the young Jesus entered the temple in Jerusalem to attend his first Passover, he was shocked by the spiritual ugliness on the faces of so many of the unthinking worshipers; the court of the gentiles with its noisy jargon, loud talking and cursing; the frivolous courtesans with their painted faces parading about; the babble of noises of the moneychangers and other commercial activities; the killing of droves of animals by the slaughter priests. Jesus truly pitied the spiritually blind and morally ignorant multitudes. [124:6:1,15] [125:1:1-4]
In his last temple discourse on Tuesday, April 4, 30 A.D. Jesus extended his final proffer of mercy to the Jews. He warned them that if they finally rejected the Father’s mercy they faced a terrible day of reckoning. Israel would be left to its own counsels and would speedily come to an inglorious end. The Most Highs who rule in the kingdoms of men would overthrow Israel and destroy the place of its rulers. For hundreds of years the Jews had stoned, killed, and persecuted the prophets, wise men, and teachers sent to them for the purpose of enlarging their concept of God. Now Jesus warned they must account for all that shedding of righteous blood. [175:1]
About midnight this same Tuesday the Sanhedrin officially and unanimously voted to impose the death sentence upon Jesus. This was their reaction of bitter resentment toward Jesus because of his last and vigorous indictment. Their passing of the death sentence upon Jesus [even before his trial] was their reply to the last offer of heavenly mercy ever to be extended to the Jewish nation, as such. [175:3]
From this time on the Jews were left to finish their brief and short lease of national life wholly in accordance with their purely human status among the nations of Urantia [Earth]. Israel had repudiated the Son of the God who made a covenant with Abraham; the plan to make the children of Abraham the light-bearers of truth to the world had been shattered. The divine covenant had been abrogated, and the end of the Hebrew nation drew on apace. [175:3]
Jesus knew the determination to cling persistently and blindly to the material mission of the expected deliverer would presently bring the Jews in direct conflict with the powerful Roman armies, and that such a contest could only result in the final and complete overthrow of the Jewish nation. [176:1:2]
In January A.D. 27 Jesus and the twelve apostles began their public ministry. Almost immediately the religious leaders at Jerusalem began to be alarmed and antagonistic toward Jesus and his teachings. They were increasingly blinded by fear and prejudice. Well before his trial they began to plan and plot for his destruction: he must be arrested, convicted, and executed as a religious offender, a violator of the cardinal teachings of the Jewish sacred law. [141:0:1] [142:1:2] [147:6:2] [149:3:1,2,3]
On May 8, A.D. 29 the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem, in an unprecedented usurpation of authority, passed a decree closing all the synagogues of Palestine to Jesus and his followers. The rulers of the Hebron synagogue refused to obey the decree. Shortly thereafter their synagogue was destroyed by fire. [154:1:2] [154:2:1]
The Destruction of Jerusalem; Death of Israel.
Said Jesus: You [Jerusalem] are about to reject the Son of Peace and turn your backs
upon the gospel of salvation. They shall utterly destroy you. And all this
shall befall you because you knew not the time of your divine visitation. You
are about to reject the gift of God, and all men will reject you. [172:3:10]
Said Jesus, speaking of the terrible times ahead to the sympathetic women who walked along beside him on the way to Golgotha: . . . the days are coming in which you shall say "Blessed are the barren and those whose breasts have never suckled their young. In those days will you pray the rocks of the hills to fall on you in order that you may be delivered from the terrors of your troubles." Jesus was crucified Friday morning, April 7, 30 A.D. [187:1:6] [187:3:1]
The massive temple would accommodate over two hundred thousand worshipers at one time. As Jesus predicted, in A.D. 70 the Roman armies utterly destroyed the temple; not one stone was left upon another. They leveled the walls of Jerusalem and cast a trench around about it, laying siege to it on every side. The city was totally destroyed. The Judean Jews were dispersed. The nation of Israel ceased to exist. [125:0:5] [172:3:10] [176:4:2]
During the siege of Jerusalem, just forty years after the crucifixion of Jesus, all of Golgotha was covered by thousands upon thousands of crosses upon which, from day to day, there perished the flower of the Jewish race. A terrible harvest, indeed, of the seed-sowing of the crucifixion of Jesus. [187:1:5]
The Jews, as a nation, as a sociopolitical group, paid in full the terrible price of rejecting the Prince of Peace. Long since they lost their position in the world as the "standard-bearers of eternal truth and the custodians of the divine law." [175:1:6] [175:2:1]
SOURCE: The Urantia Book, published by Uversa Press, a subsidiary of Urantia Book Fellowship. http:// www.urantiabook.org. fellowship@urantiabook.org Note: Many of the statements in this paper were quoted verbatim from The Urantia Book.
Revised January 28 2005