Matthew 27:20; “But the chief priests and elders persuaded the multitude that they should ask Barabbas, and destroy Jesus.”
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Despised … the flock of Israel was in deep trouble by the time Jesus spoke these words. The chief priests spoke evil of God’s blessing to them and wanted nothing more than to rid themselves of the ‘nuisance’ that kept interfering. He came to give them life and they wanted military might, worldly power and temporal riches.
The same scenario played itself out in the 19th century cloaked in the names of Joe Smith and Mormonism. They felt they deserved stuff and their ‘mighty’ leader led them into an array of falsehoods that included self entitlement, false gospels from Egypt and sexual perversions; aka Ba’al worship.
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History of the Church 6:78; “The whole earth shall bear me witness that I, like the towering rock in the midst of the ocean, which has withstood the mighty surges of the warring waves for centuries, am impregnable, and am a faithful friend to virtue, and a fearless foe to vice,—no odds whether the former was sold as a pearl in Asia or hid as a gem in America, and the latter dazzles in palaces or glimmers among the tombs. I combat the errors of ages; I meet the violence of mobs; I cope with illegal proceedings from executive authority; I cut the guardian knot of powers, and I solve mathematical problems of universities, with truth—diamond truth; and God is my “right hand man.”” – Nauvoo, Illinois, Nov. 13, 1843