Tarrying Time in Galilee

137:5.1Though many of the guests re­mained for the full week of wed­ding fes­tiv­i­ties, Je­sus, with his newly cho­sen dis­ci­ple-apos­tles—James, John, An­drew, Pe­ter, Philip, and Na­than­iel—de­parted very early the next morn­ing for Ca­per­naum, go­ing away with­out tak­ing leave of any­one. Je­sus’ fam­ily and all his friends in Cana were much dis­tressed be­cause he so sud­denly left them, and Jude, Je­sus’ young­est brother, set out in search of him. Je­sus and his apos­tles went di­rectly to the home of Zeb­e­dee at Beth­saida. On this jour­ney Je­sus talked over many things of im­por­tance to the com­ing king­dom with his newly cho­sen as­so­ciates and es­pe­cially warned them to make no men­tion of the turn­ing of the wa­ter into wine. He also ad­vised them to avoid the cities of Sep­pho­ris and Tiberias in their fu­ture work.

137:5.2Af­ter sup­per that evening, in this home of Zeb­e­dee and Sa­lome, there was held one of the most im­por­tant con­fer­ences of all Je­sus’ earthly ca­reer. Only the six apos­tles were pres­ent at this meet­ing; Jude ar­rived as they were about to sep­a­rate. These six cho­sen men had jour­neyed from Cana to Beth­saida with Je­sus, walk­ing, as it were, on air. They were alive with ex­pectancy and thrilled with the thought of hav­ing been se­lected as close as­so­ciates of the Son of Man. But when Je­sus set out to make clear to them who he was and what was to be his mis­sion on earth and how it might pos­si­bly end, they were stunned. They could not grasp what he was telling them. They were speech­less; even Pe­ter was crushed be­yond ex­pres­sion. Only the deep-think­ing An­drew dared to make re­ply to Je­sus’ words of coun­sel. When Je­sus per­ceived that they did not com­pre­hend his mes­sage, when he saw that their ideas of the Jew­ish Mes­siah were so com­pletely crys­tal­lized, he sent them to their rest while he walked and talked with his brother Jude. And be­fore Jude took leave of Je­sus, he said with much feel­ing: “My fa­ther-brother, I never have un­der­stood you. I do not know of a cer­tainty whether you are what my mother has taught us, and I do not fully com­pre­hend the com­ing king­dom, but I do know you are a mighty man of God. I heard the voice at the Jor­dan, and I am a be­liever in you, no mat­ter who you are.” And when he had spo­ken, he de­parted, go­ing to his own home at Mag­dala.

137:5.3That night Je­sus did not sleep. Don­ning his evening wraps, he sat out on the lake shore think­ing, think­ing un­til the dawn of the next day. In the long hours of that night of med­i­ta­tion Je­sus came clearly to com­pre­hend that he never would be able to make his fol­low­ers see him in any other light than as the long-ex­pected Mes­siah. At last he rec­og­nized that there was no way to launch his mes­sage of the king­dom ex­cept as the ful­fill­ment of John’s pre­dic­tion and as the one for whom the Jews were look­ing. Af­ter all, though he was not the Da­vidic type of Mes­siah, he was truly the ful­fill­ment of the pro­phetic ut­ter­ances of the more spir­i­tu­ally minded of the olden seers. Never again did he wholly deny that he was the Mes­siah. He de­cided to leave the fi­nal un­tan­gling of this com­pli­cated sit­u­a­tion to the out­work­ing of the Fa­ther’s will.

137:5.4The next morn­ing Je­sus joined his friends at break­fast, but they were a cheer­less group. He vis­ited with them and at the end of the meal gath­ered them about him, say­ing: “It is my Fa­ther’s will that we tarry here­abouts for a sea­son. You have heard John say that he came to pre­pare the way for the king­dom; there­fore it be­hooves us to await the com­ple­tion of John’s preach­ing. When the fore­run­ner of the Son of Man shall have fin­ished his work, we will be­gin the procla­ma­tion of the good tid­ings of the king­dom.” He di­rected his apos­tles to re­turn to their nets while he made ready to go with Zeb­e­dee to the boat­shop, promis­ing to see them the next day at the syn­a­gogue, where he was to speak, and ap­point­ing a con­fer­ence with them that Sab­bath af­ter­noon.