The "Upper Room Discourse" of Jesus on the night he was betrayed is a portion of Scripture beloved by Bible students, preachers, and all who seek the deeper, timeless truth within the gospel record. In The Night He Was Betrayed. R. E. O. White attempts to reveal the meaning of the "extraordinarily impressive, solemn, searching. and instructive" conversation of that one evening, as it is recorded in John 13-17.

White finds the importance of the passage to lie, first, in the ex-planation of Christ's death implied in the servant's washing of the disciples' feet, and second, in Christ's preparation of his followers for the inter-advent years. He analyzes the new kind of Christian ex-perience which will replace the disciples' face-to-face relationship to Jesus, examines the great promise of the Spirit, and explains questions (including the delayed Advent) which bewildered the church of John's own day.

Throughout, White emphasizes the relevance of John 13-17 for the life of Christians today. "In one respect," he writes, "Christ's words on that occasion were directed even more to the church that was to be than to those immediately present. His main theme was 'the time be-tween the advents'; the circumstances, needs, dangers, and resources of the days between his 'going' and his 'coming again. If the Eleven needed instruction as they looked forward fearfully to that time, so did the church of John's day, who lived in the midst of it. And so do we, who still look backwards and forwards, in remembrance and hope."

R. E. O. WHITE was, until 1979, Principal and lecturer in New Testa-ment Greek, Philosophy of Religion, and Ethics at the Baptist Theologi-cal College of Scotland.