Jesus at Jerusalem

125:4.1In the mean­time, Je­sus had re­mained in the tem­ple through­out the af­ter­noon, lis­ten­ing to the dis­cus­sions and en­joy­ing the more quiet and deco­rous at­mo­sphere, the great crowds of Pass­over week hav­ing about dis­ap­peared. At the con­clu­sion of the af­ter­noon dis­cus­sions, in none of which Je­sus par­tic­i­pated, he be­took him­self to Beth­any, ar­riv­ing just as Si­mon’s fam­ily made ready to par­take of their evening meal. The three young­sters were over­joyed to greet Je­sus, and he re­mained in Si­mon’s house for the night. He vis­ited very lit­tle dur­ing the evening, spend­ing much of the time alone in the gar­den med­i­tat­ing.

125:4.2Early next day Je­sus was up and on his way to the tem­ple. On the brow of Oli­vet he paused and wept over the sight his eyes be­held—a spir­i­tu­ally im­pov­er­ished peo­ple, tra­di­tion bound and liv­ing un­der the surveil­lance of the Ro­man le­gions. Early forenoon found him in the tem­ple with his mind made up to take part in the dis­cus­sions. Mean­while, Joseph and Mary also had arisen with the early dawn with the in­ten­tion of re­trac­ing their steps to Je­ru­sa­lem. First, they has­tened to the house of their rel­a­tives, where they had lodged as a fam­ily dur­ing the Pass­over week, but in­quiry elicited the fact that no one had seen Je­sus. Af­ter search­ing all day and find­ing no trace of him, they re­turned to their rel­a­tives for the night.

125:4.3At the sec­ond con­fer­ence Je­sus had made bold to ask ques­tions, and in a very amaz­ing way he par­tic­i­pated in the tem­ple dis­cus­sions but al­ways in a man­ner con­sis­tent with his youth. Some­times his pointed ques­tions were some­what em­bar­rass­ing to the learned teach­ers of the Jew­ish law, but he evinced such a spirit of can­did fair­ness, cou­pled with an ev­i­dent hunger for knowl­edge, that the ma­jor­ity of the tem­ple teach­ers were dis­posed to treat him with ev­ery con­sid­er­a­tion. But when he pre­sumed to ques­tion the jus­tice of putting to death a drunken gen­tile who had wan­dered out­side the court of the gen­tiles and un­wit­tingly en­tered the for­bid­den and re­put­edly sa­cred precincts of the tem­ple, one of the more in­tol­er­ant teach­ers grew im­pa­tient with the lad’s im­plied crit­i­cisms and, glow­er­ing down upon him, asked how old he was. Je­sus replied, “thir­teen years lack­ing a tri­fle more than four months.” “Then,” re­joined the now irate teacher, “why are you here, since you are not of age as a son of the law?” And when Je­sus ex­plained that he had re­ceived con­se­cra­tion dur­ing the Pass­over, and that he was a fin­ished stu­dent of the Naz­a­reth schools, the teach­ers with one ac­cord de­ri­sively replied, “We might have known; he is from Naz­a­reth.” But the leader in­sisted that Je­sus was not to be blamed if the rulers of the syn­a­gogue at Naz­a­reth had grad­u­ated him, tech­ni­cally, when he was twelve in­stead of thir­teen; and not­with­stand­ing that sev­eral of his de­trac­tors got up and left, it was ruled that the lad might con­tinue undis­turbed as a pupil of the tem­ple dis­cus­sions.

125:4.4When this, his sec­ond day in the tem­ple, was fin­ished, again he went to Beth­any for the night. And again he went out in the gar­den to med­i­tate and pray. It was ap­par­ent that his mind was con­cerned with the con­tem­pla­tion of weighty prob­lems.