As a child, I was filled with knowledge of the law, proper names and days,
foods and dogmas. I also knew a God who would annihilate my entirety, my very
spirit, if I failed to love Him as He demanded.
If I failed to trust Him as commanded.
In my fear I did fail, for even were every act to “appear beautiful
outwardly” “dead men’s bones and all uncleanness” reside
in a fallen heart “full of hypocrisy and iniquity.” What is the
essence of this hypocrisy? Denial of blood-guiltiness. “If we had been
in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the
blood of the prophets.”
{Matthew 23:27-35}
27 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye
are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but
are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness.
28 Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but
within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.
29 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because
ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous,
30 And say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would
not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.
31 Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the
children of them which killed the prophets.
32 Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers.
33 Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape
the damnation of hell?
34 Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes:
and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge
in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city:
35 That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon
the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son
of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar.