Page 124 - Gnosis volume 2
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What, then, was the exact significance of the phrase that Caïaphas pronounced:
Consider that it is expedient for us, that one man should die and that the whole nation
perish not? Did he share the Sanhedrin's fears that the Romans might totally
exterminate the Jews? Certainly not, as he brutally told the other members of the
assembly that they did not understand the situation. If he came to the same conclusions
as the majority, it was for different reasons. St. John says that his reply was inspired.
This is what leads us to believe that it had mystical foundations.
Let us try and place this reply in the general context of the mission of the chosen
people. This mission was certainly not aimed at establishing the superiority of a nation
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as such, nor at upholding any national pride, for the pride of life, is not of the Father .
In fact, their mission was to form a human nucleus which, through intensive spiritual
culture, would prepare the field for the Lord's Advent. It was necessary to enable the
esoteric avant-garde to cross the second Threshold and make straight the way leading,
as Isaiah prophesied, to a Christian era for the whole Earth. The high Priest was among
the initiated and, as such, should have been perfectly aware of the aim of Christ's
mission. But he must have also known that, once its glorious mission was fulfilled, the
chosen people would disappear as a national entity, just as the leaven disappears in the
lump of dough. There was a definite dan-
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I John, II, 16.