143rd Post Jesus Said on Hell Con't. - Matthew 23: 15

Matthew 23: 15
Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.
This passage comes late in Jesus' earthly ministry. Jesus is very strong in what He says here. To understand this passage you need to tear apart the verse. We will start with teachers of the law and Pharisees, Jesus is making a distinction here about teachers being of one or more groups. The religious leaders of that day were put into two groups, the Pharisees and the Sadducees. To be in one of these groups you had to be of the line of Aaron. The Sadducees only believed in the first 5 books of the Old Testament, and did not believe in the resurrection of the dead. The Sadducees were the priests that ran the Temple in Jerusalem. The Pharisees, were the rabbies that taught in the Synagoues in the cities and they believed in the first 5 books of the Old Testament and the Prophets and they believed in some form of resurrection of the dead. I will not explain this further here, when we teach on resurrection, we will look at their different points of view. The teachers of the law is another group, Jesus was talking to, they could have been made up of some of those mentioned above, but were singled out, because these could also be non-believer's. Jesus was talking to these people because they were in a place of authority, and could lead the people astray. This post will have to be continued also.