“I have said all this to you to keep you from falling away. They will put you out of the synagogues; indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God. And they will do this because they have not known the Father, nor me. But I have said these things to you, that when their hour comes you may remember that I told you of them. “I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you. But now I am going to him who sent me; yet none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts. Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will convince the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no more; concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged. “I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
Jesus does not leave His disciples unprepared for what will befall them because they have followed Him. While He was with them, He did not tell them everything. But now, when the hour of His death is imminent, He wants to prepare them so that, when it is all fulfilled, they will remember that He had already told them. Then He will send them the Holy Spirit to remind them of all things and guide them into the full truth, for He still has much to tell them that they would not have been able to bear at that time.
One of the most striking words of Jesus is His prediction that the disciples will be driven out of the synagogues and that the blindness of men will reach the point where those who kill them will fall into the terrible delusion of believing that they are worshipping God.
In visualising this, we can clearly see how satanic forces work. Instead of people, inspired by the Holy Spirit, recognising the glory of Jesus and praising His presence in the disciples, the devil blinds them and even abuses their religious feelings, so that, in committing a serious crime, they believe they are serving God by this act. Thus, the evildoers are totally imprisoned in their error and justify the worst crimes.
These words of Jesus are not only fulfilled in what the hostile Jews did to Himself and later to His disciples, but we find this terrible blindness to this day in religious extremism and, with a slightly different nuance, also in ideological systems, which leave behind them a bloody trail of atrocious crimes.
All those who fall into this satanic blindness have one thing in common: they have not known Jesus and the Heavenly Father, otherwise they would not be able to commit such atrocities.
Jesus comforts His own, whose hearts have been filled with sadness at His return to the Father, by telling them that it is good for them that He is going away, for then He will send them the Spirit. This is the Spirit of truth, who convinces the world that it is a sin not to believe in Jesus after they have received the message. This is because man is created for truth. His freedom consists in following the truth. By rejecting it, man deliberately separates himself from God. In Jesus’ disputes with the hostile Jews, we clearly hear Him say that they have no excuse for not having believed in Him, for they were witnesses of His words and deeds. This also applies to all later times.
The Holy Spirit also convinces the world that it is right for Jesus to return to the Father. He has fulfilled His mission and it is now up to the disciples, moved by the Holy Spirit, to fulfil the missionary mandate given to them by the Lord after His resurrection: to take the Gospel to the ends of the earth, to make disciples of all nations and to baptise them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Mt 28:19).
Along with this proclamation, the judgement of the Prince of this world takes place. Jesus has ransomed His own at the price of His blood, and everyone who believes in Him and accepts the salvation offered to them is taken away from the power of the Prince of this world. He no longer has power over them. The devil has been defeated.
All this the Holy Spirit will announce, leading men into the full truth. He does not speak for Himself, but conveys what comes from Jesus and glorifies Him. And all that comes from Jesus proceeds from the Father.