The Two Crucial Years

126:3.1By the mid­dle of this fif­teenth year—and we are reck­on­ing time in ac­cor­dance with the twen­ti­eth-cen­tury cal­en­dar, not by the Jew­ish year—Je­sus had taken a firm grasp upon the man­age­ment of his fam­ily. Be­fore this year had passed, their sav­ings had about dis­ap­peared, and they were face to face with the ne­ces­sity of dis­pos­ing of one of the Naz­a­reth houses which Joseph and his neigh­bor Ja­cob owned in part­ner­ship.

126:3.2On Wednes­day evening, April 17, A.D. 9, Ruth, the baby of the fam­ily, was born, and to the best of his abil­ity Je­sus en­deav­ored to take the place of his fa­ther in com­fort­ing and min­is­ter­ing to his mother dur­ing this try­ing and pe­cu­liarly sad or­deal. For al­most a score of years (un­til he be­gan his pub­lic min­istry) no fa­ther could have loved and nur­tured his daugh­ter any more af­fec­tion­ately and faith­fully than Je­sus cared for lit­tle Ruth. And he was an equally good fa­ther to all the other mem­bers of his fam­ily.

126:3.3Dur­ing this year Je­sus first for­mu­lated the prayer which he sub­se­quently taught to his apos­tles, and which to many has be­come known as “The Lord’s Prayer.” In a way it was an evo­lu­tion of the fam­ily al­tar; they had many forms of praise and sev­eral for­mal prayers. Af­ter his fa­ther’s death Je­sus tried to teach the older chil­dren to ex­press them­selves in­di­vid­u­ally in prayer—much as he so en­joyed do­ing—but they could not grasp his thought and would in­vari­ably fall back upon their mem­o­rized prayer forms. It was in this ef­fort to stim­u­late his older broth­ers and sis­ters to say in­di­vid­ual prayers that Je­sus would en­deavor to lead them along by sug­ges­tive phrases, and pres­ently, with­out in­ten­tion on his part, it de­vel­oped that they were all us­ing a form of prayer which was largely built up from these sug­ges­tive lines which Je­sus had taught them.

126:3.4At last Je­sus gave up the idea of hav­ing each mem­ber of the fam­ily for­mu­late spon­ta­neous prayers, and one evening in Oc­to­ber he sat down by the lit­tle squat lamp on the low stone ta­ble, and, on a piece of smooth cedar board about eigh­teen inches square, with a piece of char­coal he wrote out the prayer which be­came from that time on the stan­dard fam­ily pe­ti­tion.

126:3.5This year Je­sus was much trou­bled with con­fused think­ing. Fam­ily re­spon­si­bil­ity had quite ef­fec­tively re­moved all thought of im­me­di­ately car­ry­ing out any plan for re­spond­ing to the Je­ru­sa­lem vis­i­ta­tion di­rect­ing him to “be about his Fa­ther’s busi­ness.” Je­sus rightly rea­soned that the watch­care of his earthly fa­ther’s fam­ily must take prece­dence of all du­ties; that the sup­port of his fam­ily must be­come his first obli­ga­tion.

126:3.6In the course of this year Je­sus found a pas­sage in the so-called Book of Enoch which in­flu­enced him in the later adop­tion of the term “Son of Man” as a des­ig­na­tion for his be­stowal mis­sion on Uran­tia. He had thor­oughly con­sid­ered the idea of the Jew­ish Mes­siah and was firmly con­vinced that he was not to be that Mes­siah. He longed to help his fa­ther’s peo­ple, but he never ex­pected to lead Jew­ish armies in over­throw­ing the for­eign dom­i­na­tion of Pales­tine. He knew he would never sit on the throne of David at Je­ru­sa­lem. Nei­ther did he be­lieve that his mis­sion was that of a spir­i­tual de­liv­erer or moral teacher solely to the Jew­ish peo­ple. In no sense, there­fore, could his life mis­sion be the ful­fill­ment of the in­tense long­ings and sup­posed Mes­sianic prophe­cies of the He­brew scrip­tures; at least, not as the Jews un­der­stood these pre­dic­tions of the proph­ets. Like­wise he was cer­tain he was never to ap­pear as the Son of Man de­picted by the Prophet Daniel.

126:3.7But when the time came for him to go forth as a world teacher, what would he call him­self? What claim should he make con­cern­ing his mis­sion? By what name would he be called by the peo­ple who would be­come be­liev­ers in his teach­ings?

126:3.8While turn­ing all these prob­lems over in his mind, he found in the syn­a­gogue li­brary at Naz­a­reth, among the apoc­a­lyp­tic books which he had been study­ing, this man­u­script called “The Book of Enoch”; and though he was cer­tain that it had not been writ­ten by Enoch of old, it proved very in­trigu­ing to him, and he read and reread it many times. There was one pas­sage which par­tic­u­larly im­pressed him, a pas­sage in which this term “Son of Man” ap­peared. The writer of this so-called Book of Enoch went on to tell about this Son of Man, de­scrib­ing the work he would do on earth and ex­plain­ing that this Son of Man, be­fore com­ing down on this earth to bring sal­va­tion to man­kind, had walked through the courts of heav­enly glory with his Fa­ther, the Fa­ther of all; and that he had turned his back upon all this grandeur and glory to come down on earth to pro­claim sal­va­tion to needy mor­tals. As Je­sus would read these pas­sages (well un­der­stand­ing that much of the East­ern mys­ti­cism which had be­come ad­mixed with these teach­ings was er­ro­neous), he re­sponded in his heart and rec­og­nized in his mind that of all the Mes­sianic pre­dic­tions of the He­brew scrip­tures and of all the the­o­ries about the Jew­ish de­liv­erer, none was so near the truth as this story tucked away in this only par­tially ac­cred­ited Book of Enoch; and he then and there de­cided to adopt as his in­au­gu­ral ti­tle “the Son of Man.” And this he did when he sub­se­quently be­gan his pub­lic work. Je­sus had an unerring abil­ity for the rec­og­ni­tion of truth, and truth he never hes­i­tated to em­brace, no mat­ter from what source it ap­peared to em­anate.

126:3.9By this time he had quite thor­oughly set­tled many things about his forth­com­ing work for the world, but he said noth­ing of these mat­ters to his mother, who still held stoutly to the idea of his be­ing the Jew­ish Mes­siah.

126:3.10The great con­fu­sion of Je­sus’ younger days now arose. Hav­ing set­tled some­thing about the na­ture of his mis­sion on earth, “to be about his Fa­ther’s busi­ness”—to show forth his Fa­ther’s lov­ing na­ture to all man­kind—he be­gan to pon­der anew the many state­ments in the Scrip­tures re­fer­ring to the com­ing of a na­tional de­liv­erer, a Jew­ish teacher or king. To what event did these prophe­cies re­fer? Was not he a Jew? or was he? Was he or was he not of the house of David? His mother averred he was; his fa­ther had ruled that he was not. He de­cided he was not. But had the proph­ets con­fused the na­ture and mis­sion of the Mes­siah?

126:3.11Af­ter all, could it be pos­si­ble that his mother was right? In most mat­ters, when dif­fer­ences of opin­ion had arisen in the past, she had been right. If he were a new teacher and not the Mes­siah, then how should he rec­og­nize the Jew­ish Mes­siah if such a one should ap­pear in Je­ru­sa­lem dur­ing the time of his earth mis­sion; and, fur­ther, what should be his re­la­tion to this Jew­ish Mes­siah? And what should be his re­la­tion, af­ter em­bark­ing on his life mis­sion, to his fam­ily? to the Jew­ish com­mon­wealth and re­li­gion? to the Ro­man Em­pire? to the gen­tiles and their re­li­gions? Each of these mo­men­tous prob­lems this young Galilean turned over in his mind and se­ri­ously pon­dered while he con­tin­ued to work at the car­pen­ter’s bench, la­bo­ri­ously mak­ing a liv­ing for him­self, his mother, and eight other hun­gry mouths.

126:3.12Be­fore the end of this year Mary saw the fam­ily funds di­min­ish­ing. She turned the sale of doves over to James. Pres­ently they bought a sec­ond cow, and with the aid of Miriam they be­gan the sale of milk to their Naz­a­reth neigh­bors.

126:3.13His pro­found pe­ri­ods of med­i­ta­tion, his fre­quent jour­neys to the hill­top for prayer, and the many strange ideas which Je­sus ad­vanced from time to time, thor­oughly alarmed his mother. Some­times she thought the lad was be­side him­self, and then she would steady her fears, re­mem­ber­ing that he was, af­ter all, a child of prom­ise and in some man­ner dif­fer­ent from other youths.

126:3.14But Je­sus was learn­ing not to speak of all his thoughts, not to pre­sent all his ideas to the world, not even to his own mother. From this year on, Je­sus’ dis­clo­sures about what was go­ing on in his mind steadily di­min­ished; that is, he talked less about those things which an av­er­age per­son could not grasp, and which would lead to his be­ing re­garded as pe­cu­liar or dif­fer­ent from or­di­nary folks. To all ap­pear­ances he be­came com­mon­place and con­ven­tional, though he did long for some­one who could un­der­stand his prob­lems. He craved a trust­wor­thy and con­fi­den­tial friend, but his prob­lems were too com­plex for his hu­man as­so­ciates to com­pre­hend. The unique­ness of the un­usual sit­u­a­tion com­pelled him to bear his bur­dens alone.