"But if one wants to understand the Gospel, it is necessary above all to remember that the first action of Jesus before preaching was to deny the external God......

"But if one wants to understand the Gospel, it is necessary above all to remember that the first action of Jesus before preaching was to deny the external God and every kind of worship. The destruction of the temple, repeated by all the evangelists (which is very rare), is the purging of the soil for the sowing. Only after the destruction of the former God the teaching about the God of Jesus and about that service of God, which Jesus teaches, is made possible........ Leo Tolstoy for gospel translation and harmonization.