John 11:45-48 : Therefore many of the Jews, who came to Mary and saw what Jesus did, believed in him. But some of them went away to the Pharisees, and told them the things which Jesus had done. The chief priests therefore and the Pharisees gathered a council, and said, “What are we doing? For this man does many signs. If we leave him alone like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.”

It is great to see that “many Jews” saw this miracle and believed in Jesus. The pain and suffering was worth it. It did end up becoming something that glorified God. It is a great victory for us when we are able to see this glory in advance by faith. This is how we can be happy even when we are in the middle of our problems. Jesus was always able to do this. When we have a good relationship with one who raises the dead, we know that our story will have a good ending. We may have to look beyond the grave, sometimes we don’t even have to look that far.

Obviously, human politics have changed very little in the last 2000 years. The Pharisees were pretty concerned about losing power as we see here. Evidently, they couldn’t come up with a good response to a man who can raise the dead. So they decided to do the next best thing… kill Him. The Romans had approved of some of the Jewish leadership and allowed them to be in charge of the people. It is my understanding that many of the more recent settlers to Israel, at that time lived, in the Galilee area and they were not very fond of the Roman occupation or of the leaders that they had installed. There were some leaders that the people liked that the Romans definitely would not allow who lived in the Galilee region, but these “chief priests and Pharisees” were in good to some degree with the Romans. Jesus was winning the hearts of the people. It could be that the Romans would let Jesus be in charge, or that Jesus would cause such a problem for the Roman government that they would be unable to stop Him and they would lose favor with Rome. Whatever they were thinking, it is clear that they didn’t want to lose power.

So, you can see here, that the concept that we read about in “The Lord of the Rings” is clearly presented in the Bible. When men get crazy for power, they start to do things that don’t make sense in order to protect it. They may even try to do very illogical things like attempt to kill a person who has the power to resurrect the dead.