Jesus’ Early Manhood

128:7.1As this year be­gan, Je­sus of Naz­a­reth be­came strongly con­scious that he pos­sessed a wide range of po­ten­tial power. But he was like­wise fully per­suaded that this power was not to be em­ployed by his per­son­al­ity as the Son of Man, at least not un­til his hour should come.

128:7.2At this time he thought much but said lit­tle about the re­la­tion of him­self to his Fa­ther in heaven. And the con­clu­sion of all this think­ing was ex­pressed once in his prayer on the hill­top, when he said: “Re­gard­less of who I am and what power I may or may not wield, I al­ways have been, and al­ways will be, sub­ject to the will of my Par­a­dise Fa­ther.” And yet, as this man walked about Naz­a­reth to and from his work, it was lit­er­ally true—as con­cerned a vast uni­verse—that “in him were hid­den all the trea­sures of wis­dom and knowl­edge.”

128:7.3All this year the fam­ily af­fairs ran smoothly ex­cept for Jude. For years James had trou­ble with his young­est brother, who was not in­clined to set­tle down to work nor was he to be de­pended upon for his share of the home ex­penses. While he would live at home, he was not con­sci­en­tious about earn­ing his share of the fam­ily up­keep.

128:7.4Je­sus was a man of peace, and ever and anon was he em­bar­rassed by Jude’s bel­liger­ent ex­ploits and nu­mer­ous pa­tri­otic out­bursts. James and Joseph were in fa­vor of cast­ing him out, but Je­sus would not con­sent. When their pa­tience would be severely tried, Je­sus would only coun­sel: “Be pa­tient. Be wise in your coun­sel and elo­quent in your lives, that your young brother may first know the bet­ter way and then be con­strained to fol­low you in it.” The wise and lov­ing coun­sel of Je­sus pre­vented a break in the fam­ily; they re­mained to­gether. But Jude never was brought to his sober senses un­til af­ter his mar­riage.

128:7.5Mary sel­dom spoke of Je­sus’ fu­ture mis­sion. When­ever this sub­ject was re­ferred to, Je­sus only replied, “My hour has not yet come.” Je­sus had about com­pleted the dif­fi­cult task of wean­ing his fam­ily from de­pen­dence on the im­me­di­ate pres­ence of his per­son­al­ity. He was rapidly prepar­ing for the day when he could con­sis­tently leave this Naz­a­reth home to be­gin the more ac­tive pre­lude to his real min­istry for men.

128:7.6Never lose sight of the fact that the prime mis­sion of Je­sus in his sev­enth be­stowal was the ac­quire­ment of crea­ture ex­pe­ri­ence, the achieve­ment of the sov­er­eignty of Neb­a­don. And in the gath­er­ing of this very ex­pe­ri­ence he made the su­preme rev­e­la­tion of the Par­a­dise Fa­ther to Uran­tia and to his en­tire lo­cal uni­verse. In­ci­den­tal to these pur­poses he also un­der­took to un­tan­gle the com­pli­cated af­fairs of this planet as they were re­lated to the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion.

128:7.7This year Je­sus en­joyed more than usual leisure, and he de­voted much time to train­ing James in the man­age­ment of the re­pair shop and Joseph in the di­rec­tion of home af­fairs. Mary sensed that he was mak­ing ready to leave them. Leave them to go where? To do what? She had about given up the thought that Je­sus was the Mes­siah. She could not un­der­stand him; she sim­ply could not fathom her first-born son.

128:7.8Je­sus spent a great deal of time this year with the in­di­vid­ual mem­bers of his fam­ily. He would take them for long and fre­quent strolls up the hill and through the coun­try­side. Be­fore har­vest he took Jude to the farmer un­cle south of Naz­a­reth, but Jude did not re­main long af­ter the har­vest. He ran away, and Si­mon later found him with the fish­er­men at the lake. When Si­mon brought him back home, Je­sus talked things over with the run­away lad and, since he wanted to be a fish­er­man, went over to Mag­dala with him and put him in the care of a rel­a­tive, a fish­er­man; and Jude worked fairly well and reg­u­larly from that time on un­til his mar­riage, and he con­tin­ued as a fish­er­man af­ter his mar­riage.

128:7.9At last the day had come when all Je­sus’ broth­ers had cho­sen, and were es­tab­lished in, their life­work. The stage was be­ing set for Je­sus’ de­par­ture from home.

128:7.10In Novem­ber a dou­ble wed­ding oc­curred. James and Esta, and Miriam and Ja­cob were mar­ried. It was truly a joy­ous oc­ca­sion. Even Mary was once more happy ex­cept ev­ery now and then when she re­al­ized that Je­sus was prepar­ing to go away. She suf­fered un­der the bur­den of a great un­cer­tainty: If Je­sus would only sit down and talk it all over freely with her as he had done when he was a boy, but he was con­sis­tently un­com­mu­nica­tive; he was pro­foundly silent about the fu­ture.

128:7.11James and his bride, Esta, moved into a neat lit­tle home on the west side of town, the gift of her fa­ther. While James con­tin­ued his sup­port of his mother’s home, his quota was cut in half be­cause of his mar­riage, and Joseph was for­mally in­stalled by Je­sus as head of the fam­ily. Jude was now very faith­fully send­ing his share of funds home each month. The wed­dings of James and Miriam had a very ben­e­fi­cial in­flu­ence on Jude, and when he left for the fish­ing grounds, the day af­ter the dou­ble wed­ding, he as­sured Joseph that he could de­pend on him “to do my full duty, and more if it is needed.” And he kept his prom­ise.

128:7.12Miriam lived next door to Mary in the home of Ja­cob, Ja­cob the el­der hav­ing been laid to rest with his fa­thers. Martha took Miriam’s place in the home, and the new or­ga­ni­za­tion was work­ing smoothly be­fore the year ended.

128:7.13The day af­ter this dou­ble wed­ding Je­sus held an im­por­tant con­fer­ence with James. He told James, con­fi­den­tially, that he was prepar­ing to leave home. He pre­sented full ti­tle to the re­pair shop to James, for­mally and solemnly ab­di­cated as head of Joseph’s house, and most touch­ingly es­tab­lished his brother James as “head and pro­tec­tor of my fa­ther’s house.” He drew up, and they both signed, a se­cret com­pact in which it was stip­u­lated that, in re­turn for the gift of the re­pair shop, James would hence­forth as­sume full fi­nan­cial re­spon­si­bil­ity for the fam­ily, thus re­leas­ing Je­sus from all fur­ther obli­ga­tions in these mat­ters. Af­ter the con­tract was signed, af­ter the bud­get was so ar­ranged that the ac­tual ex­penses of the fam­ily would be met with­out any con­tri­bu­tion from Je­sus, Je­sus said to James: “But, my son, I will con­tinue to send you some­thing each month un­til my hour shall have come, but what I send shall be used by you as the oc­ca­sion de­mands. Ap­ply my funds to the fam­ily ne­ces­si­ties or plea­sures as you see fit. Use them in case of sick­ness or ap­ply them to meet the un­ex­pected emer­gen­cies which may be­fall any in­di­vid­ual mem­ber of the fam­ily.”

128:7.14And thus did Je­sus make ready to en­ter upon the sec­ond and home-de­tached phase of his adult life be­fore the pub­lic en­trance upon his Fa­ther’s busi­ness.