A "CHRISTIAN" Nation?

[raging moderate]

45. And those religious leaders had a good excuse: their Roman tyrant conquerors.

The Romans had invaded Judea and continued to rule pompously, viciously, and greedily. They demanded large taxes from the conquered people of the land. They marched around blaring their trumpets and shouting bully slogans. They staged massacres when their narcissism was not sufficiently assuaged. Jesus mentioned a few of them, including one in which the Romans stormed a temple during a service and massacred several hundred people. The Romans set up crosses in many places, with various people tortured to death. People had property confiscated frequently. At the meeting where the Pharisees decided that Jesus had to be turned over to the Romans to be killed, their leader told the undecided ones, "You have to accept the fact that we MUST turn this man over to the Romans now, or they will sweep over our land and massacre most of us." If you read between the lines of the story where Pontius Pilate presides at Jesus's trial, you can feel that he is taunting the crowd, toying with them to extract the words he wants them to shout. The Jewish people obviously were living in constant fear.