The Later Childhood of Jesus

124:5.1In this year the lad of Naz­a­reth passed from boy­hood to the be­gin­ning of young man­hood; his voice be­gan to change, and other fea­tures of mind and body gave ev­i­dence of the on­com­ing sta­tus of man­hood.

124:5.2On Sun­day night, Jan­uary 9, A.D. 7, his baby brother, Amos, was born. Jude was not yet two years of age, and the baby sis­ter, Ruth, was yet to come; so it may be seen that Je­sus had a siz­able fam­ily of small chil­dren left to his watch­care when his fa­ther met his ac­ci­den­tal death the fol­low­ing year.

124:5.3It was about the mid­dle of Febru­ary that Je­sus be­came hu­manly as­sured that he was des­tined to per­form a mis­sion on earth for the en­light­en­ment of man and the rev­e­la­tion of God. Mo­men­tous de­ci­sions, cou­pled with far-reach­ing plans, were for­mu­lat­ing in the mind of this youth, who was, to out­ward ap­pear­ances, an av­er­age Jew­ish lad of Naz­a­reth. The in­tel­li­gent life of all Neb­a­don looked on with fas­ci­na­tion and amaze­ment as all this be­gan to un­fold in the think­ing and act­ing of the now ado­les­cent car­pen­ter’s son.

124:5.4On the first day of the week, March 20, A.D. 7, Je­sus grad­u­ated from the course of train­ing in the lo­cal school con­nected with the Naz­a­reth syn­a­gogue. This was a great day in the life of any am­bi­tious Jew­ish fam­ily, the day when the first-born son was pro­nounced a “son of the com­mand­ment” and the ran­somed first-born of the Lord God of Is­rael, a “child of the Most High” and ser­vant of the Lord of all the earth.

124:5.5Fri­day of the week be­fore, Joseph had come over from Sep­pho­ris, where he was in charge of the work on a new pub­lic build­ing, to be pres­ent on this glad oc­ca­sion. Je­sus’ teacher con­fi­dently be­lieved that his alert and dili­gent pupil was des­tined to some out­stand­ing ca­reer, some dis­tin­guished mis­sion. The el­ders, not­with­stand­ing all their trou­ble with Je­sus’ non­con­formist ten­den­cies, were very proud of the lad and had al­ready be­gun lay­ing plans which would en­able him to go to Je­ru­sa­lem to con­tinue his ed­u­ca­tion in the renowned He­brew academies.

124:5.6As Je­sus heard these plans dis­cussed from time to time, he be­came in­creas­ingly sure that he would never go to Je­ru­sa­lem to study with the rab­bis. But he lit­tle dreamed of the tragedy, so soon to oc­cur, which would in­sure the aban­don­ment of all such plans by caus­ing him to as­sume the re­spon­si­bil­ity for the sup­port and di­rec­tion of a large fam­ily, pres­ently to con­sist of five broth­ers and three sis­ters as well as his mother and him­self. Je­sus had a larger and longer ex­pe­ri­ence rear­ing this fam­ily than was ac­corded to Joseph, his fa­ther; and he did mea­sure up to the stan­dard which he sub­se­quently set for him­self: to be­come a wise, pa­tient, un­der­stand­ing, and ef­fec­tive teacher and el­dest brother to this fam­ily—his fam­ily—so sud­denly sor­row-stricken and so un­ex­pect­edly be­reaved.