149:2.14 (1672.3) On both friends and foes he exercised a strong and peculiarly fascinating influence. Multitudes would follow him for weeks, just to hear his gracious words and behold his simple life. Devoted men and women loved Jesus with a well-nigh superhuman affection. And the better they knew him the more they loved him. And all this is still true; even today and in all future ages, the more man comes to know this God-man, the more he will love and follow after him. 3. Hostility of the Religious Leaders
149:3.1 (1672.4) Notwithstanding the favorable reception of Jesus and his teachings by the common people, the religious leaders at Jerusalem became increasingly alarmed and antagonistic. The Pharisees had formulated a systematic and dogmatic theology. Jesus was a teacher who taught as the occasion served; he was not a systematic teacher. Jesus taught not so much from the law as from life, by parables. (And when he employed a parable for illustrating his message, he designed to utilize just
149:3.2 (1672.5) The religious leaders at Jerusalem were becoming well-nigh frantic as a result of the recent conversion of young Abraham and by the desertion of the three spies who had been baptized by Peter, and who were now out with the evangelists on this second preaching tour of Galilee. The Jewish leaders were increasingly blinded by fear and prejudice, while their hearts were hardened by the continued rejection of the appealing truths of the gospel of the kingdom. When men shut off the appeal to the spirit that dwells within them, there is little that can be done to modify their attitude.
149:3.3 (1672.6) When Jesus first met with the evangelists at the Bethsaida camp, in concluding his address, he said: “You should remember that in body and mind—emotionally—men react individually. The only
149:4.1 (1673.1) Jesus did very little public work on this preaching tour, but he conducted many evening classes with the believers in most of the cities and villages where he chanced to sojourn with James and John. At one of these evening sessions one of the younger evangelists asked Jesus a question about anger, and the Master, among other things, said in reply:
149:4.2 (1673.2) “Anger is a material manifestation which represents, in a general way, the measure of the failure of the spiritual nature to gain control of the combined intellectual and physical natures. Anger indicates your lack of tolerant brotherly love plus your lack of self-respect and self-control. Anger depletes the health, debases the mind, and handicaps the spirit teacher of man’s soul. Have you not read in the Scriptures that ‘wrath kills the foolish man,’ and that man ‘tears himself in his anger’? That ‘he who is slow of wrath is of great understanding,’ while ‘he who is hasty of temper exalts folly’? You all know that ‘a soft answer turns away wrath,’ and how ‘grievous words stir up anger.’ ‘Discretion defers anger,’ while ‘he who has no control over his own self is like a defenseless city without walls.’ ‘Wrath is cruel and anger is outrageous.’ ‘Angry men stir up strife, while the furious multiply their transgressions.’ ‘Be not hasty in spirit, for anger rests in the bosom of fools.’” Before Jesus ceased speaking, he said further: “Let your hearts be so dominated by love that your spirit guide will have little trouble in delivering you from the tendency to give vent to those outbursts of animal anger which are inconsistent with the status of divine sonship.”
