The Later Childhood of Jesus

124:6.1Je­sus, hav­ing now reached the thresh­old of young man­hood and hav­ing been for­mally grad­u­ated from the syn­a­gogue schools, was qual­i­fied to pro­ceed to Je­ru­sa­lem with his par­ents to par­tic­i­pate with them in the cel­e­bra­tion of his first Pass­over. The Pass­over feast of this year fell on Sat­ur­day, April 9, A.D. 7. A con­sid­er­able com­pany (103) made ready to de­part from Naz­a­reth early Mon­day morn­ing, April 4, for Je­ru­sa­lem. They jour­neyed south to­ward Samaria, but on reach­ing Jezreel, they turned east, go­ing around Mount Gil­boa into the Jor­dan val­ley in or­der to avoid pass­ing through Samaria. Joseph and his fam­ily would have en­joyed go­ing down through Samaria by way of Ja­cob’s well and Bethel, but since the Jews dis­liked to deal with the Samar­i­tans, they de­cided to go with their neigh­bors by way of the Jor­dan val­ley.

124:6.2The much-dreaded Archelaus had been de­posed, and they had lit­tle to fear in tak­ing Je­sus to Je­ru­sa­lem. Twelve years had passed since the first Herod had sought to de­stroy the babe of Beth­le­hem, and no one would now think of as­so­ci­at­ing that af­fair with this ob­scure lad of Naz­a­reth.

124:6.3Be­fore reach­ing the Jezreel junc­tion, and as they jour­neyed on, very soon, on the left, they passed the an­cient vil­lage of Shunem, and Je­sus heard again about the most beau­ti­ful maiden of all Is­rael who once lived there and also about the won­der­ful works El­isha per­formed there. In pass­ing by Jezreel, Je­sus’ par­ents re­counted the do­ings of Ahab and Jezebel and the ex­ploits of Jehu. In pass­ing around Mount Gil­boa, they talked much about Saul, who took his life on the slopes of this moun­tain, King David, and the as­so­ci­a­tions of this his­toric spot.

124:6.4As they rounded the base of Gil­boa, the pil­grims could see the Greek city of Scythopo­lis on the right. They gazed upon the mar­ble struc­tures from a dis­tance but went not near the gen­tile city lest they so de­file them­selves that they could not par­tic­i­pate in the forth­com­ing solemn and sa­cred cer­e­monies of the Pass­over at Je­ru­sa­lem. Mary could not un­der­stand why nei­ther Joseph nor Je­sus would speak of Scythopo­lis. She did not know about their con­tro­versy of the pre­vi­ous year as they had never re­vealed this episode to her.

124:6.5The road now led im­me­di­ately down into the trop­i­cal Jor­dan val­ley, and soon Je­sus was to have ex­posed to his won­der­ing gaze the crooked and ever-wind­ing Jor­dan with its glis­ten­ing and rip­pling wa­ters as it flowed down to­ward the Dead Sea. They laid aside their outer gar­ments as they jour­neyed south in this trop­i­cal val­ley, en­joy­ing the lux­u­ri­ous fields of grain and the beau­ti­ful ole­an­ders laden with their pink blos­soms, while mas­sive snow-capped Mount Her­mon stood far to the north, in majesty look­ing down on the his­toric val­ley. A lit­tle over three hours’ travel from op­po­site Scythopo­lis they came upon a bub­bling spring, and here they camped for the night, out un­der the star­lit heav­ens.

124:6.6On their sec­ond day’s jour­ney they passed by where the Jab­bok, from the east, flows into the Jor­dan, and look­ing east up this river val­ley, they re­counted the days of Gideon, when the Mid­i­an­ites poured into this re­gion to over­run the land. To­ward the end of the sec­ond day’s jour­ney they camped near the base of the high­est moun­tain over­look­ing the Jor­dan val­ley, Mount Sartaba, whose sum­mit was oc­cu­pied by the Alexan­drian fortress where Herod had im­pris­oned one of his wives and buried his two stran­gled sons.

124:6.7The third day they passed by two vil­lages which had been re­cently built by Herod and noted their su­pe­rior ar­chi­tec­ture and their beau­ti­ful palm gar­dens. By night­fall they reached Jeri­cho, where they re­mained un­til the mor­row. That evening Joseph, Mary, and Je­sus walked a mile and a half to the site of the an­cient Jeri­cho, where Joshua, for whom Je­sus was named, had per­formed his renowned ex­ploits, ac­cord­ing to Jew­ish tra­di­tion.

124:6.8By the fourth and last day’s jour­ney the road was a con­tin­u­ous pro­ces­sion of pil­grims. They now be­gan to climb the hills lead­ing up to Je­ru­sa­lem. As they neared the top, they could look across the Jor­dan to the moun­tains be­yond and south over the slug­gish wa­ters of the Dead Sea. About half­way up to Je­ru­sa­lem, Je­sus gained his first view of the Mount of Olives (the re­gion to be so much a part of his sub­se­quent life), and Joseph pointed out to him that the Holy City lay just be­yond this ridge, and the lad’s heart beat fast with joy­ous an­tic­i­pa­tion of soon be­hold­ing the city and house of his heav­enly Fa­ther.

124:6.9On the east­ern slopes of Oli­vet they paused for rest in the bor­ders of a lit­tle vil­lage called Beth­any. The hos­pitable vil­lagers poured forth to min­is­ter to the pil­grims, and it hap­pened that Joseph and his fam­ily had stopped near the house of one Si­mon, who had three chil­dren about the same age as Je­sus—Mary, Martha, and Laz­a­rus. They in­vited the Naz­a­reth fam­ily in for re­fresh­ment, and a life­long friend­ship sprang up be­tween the two fam­i­lies. Many times af­ter­ward, in his event­ful life, Je­sus stopped in this home.

124:6.10They pressed on, soon stand­ing on the brink of Oli­vet, and Je­sus saw for the first time (in his mem­ory) the Holy City, the pre­ten­tious palaces, and the in­spir­ing tem­ple of his Fa­ther. At no time in his life did Je­sus ever ex­pe­ri­ence such a purely hu­man thrill as that which at this time so com­pletely en­thralled him as he stood there on this April af­ter­noon on the Mount of Olives, drink­ing in his first view of Je­ru­sa­lem. And in af­ter years, on this same spot he stood and wept over the city which was about to re­ject an­other prophet, the last and the great­est of her heav­enly teach­ers.

124:6.11But they hur­ried on to Je­ru­sa­lem. It was now Thurs­day af­ter­noon. On reach­ing the city, they jour­neyed past the tem­ple, and never had Je­sus be­held such throngs of hu­man be­ings. He med­i­tated deeply on how these Jews had as­sem­bled here from the ut­ter­most parts of the known world.

124:6.12Soon they reached the place pre­ar­ranged for their ac­com­mo­da­tion dur­ing the Pass­over week, the large home of a well-to-do rel­a­tive of Mary’s, one who knew some­thing of the early his­tory of both John and Je­sus, through Zach­a­rias. The fol­low­ing day, the day of prepa­ra­tion, they made ready for the ap­pro­pri­ate cel­e­bra­tion of the Pass­over Sab­bath.

124:6.13While all Je­ru­sa­lem was astir in prepa­ra­tion for the Pass­over, Joseph found time to take his son around to visit the academy where it had been ar­ranged for him to re­sume his ed­u­ca­tion two years later, as soon as he reached the re­quired age of fif­teen. Joseph was truly puz­zled when he ob­served how lit­tle in­ter­est Je­sus evinced in all these care­fully laid plans.

124:6.14Je­sus was pro­foundly im­pressed by the tem­ple and all the as­so­ci­ated ser­vices and other ac­tiv­i­ties. For the first time since he was four years old, he was too much pre­oc­cu­pied with his own med­i­ta­tions to ask many ques­tions. He did, how­ever, ask his fa­ther sev­eral em­bar­rass­ing ques­tions (as he had on pre­vi­ous oc­ca­sions) as to why the heav­enly Fa­ther re­quired the slaugh­ter of so many in­no­cent and help­less an­i­mals. And his fa­ther well knew from the ex­pres­sion on the lad’s face that his an­swers and at­tempts at ex­pla­na­tion were un­sat­is­fac­tory to his deep-think­ing and keen-rea­son­ing son.

124:6.15On the day be­fore the Pass­over Sab­bath, flood tides of spir­i­tual il­lu­mi­na­tion swept through the mor­tal mind of Je­sus and filled his hu­man heart to over­flow­ing with af­fec­tion­ate pity for the spir­i­tu­ally blind and morally ig­no­rant mul­ti­tudes as­sem­bled for the cel­e­bra­tion of the an­cient Pass­over com­mem­o­ra­tion. This was one of the most ex­traor­di­nary days that the Son of God spent in the flesh; and dur­ing the night, for the first time in his earth ca­reer, there ap­peared to him an as­signed mes­sen­ger from Sal­ving­ton, com­mis­sioned by Im­manuel, who said: “The hour has come. It is time that you be­gan to be about your Fa­ther’s busi­ness.”

124:6.16And so, even ere the heavy re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of the Naz­a­reth fam­ily de­scended upon his youth­ful shoul­ders, there now ar­rived the ce­les­tial mes­sen­ger to re­mind this lad, not quite thir­teen years of age, that the hour had come to be­gin the re­sump­tion of the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of a uni­verse. This was the first act of a long suc­ces­sion of events which fi­nally cul­mi­nated in the com­ple­tion of the Son’s be­stowal on Uran­tia and the re­plac­ing of “the gov­ern­ment of a uni­verse on his hu­man-di­vine shoul­ders.”

124:6.17As time passed, the mys­tery of the in­car­na­tion be­came, to all of us, more and more un­fath­omable. We could hardly com­pre­hend that this lad of Naz­a­reth was the cre­ator of all Neb­a­don. Nei­ther do we nowa­days un­der­stand how the spirit of this same Cre­ator Son and the spirit of his Par­a­dise Fa­ther are as­so­ci­ated with the souls of man­kind. With the pass­ing of time, we could see that his hu­man mind was in­creas­ingly dis­cern­ing that, while he lived his life in the flesh, in spirit on his shoul­ders rested the re­spon­si­bil­ity of a uni­verse.

124:6.18Thus ends the ca­reer of the Naz­a­reth lad, and be­gins the nar­ra­tive of that ado­les­cent youth—the in­creas­ingly self-con­scious di­vine hu­man—who now be­gins the con­tem­pla­tion of his world ca­reer as he strives to in­te­grate his ex­pand­ing life pur­pose with the de­sires of his par­ents and his obli­ga­tions to his fam­ily and the so­ci­ety of his day and age.