Tarrying Time in Galilee

137:7.1For four long months—March, April, May, and June—this tar­ry­ing time con­tin­ued; Je­sus held over one hun­dred long and earnest, though cheer­ful and joy­ous, ses­sions with these six as­so­ciates and his own brother James. Ow­ing to sick­ness in his fam­ily, Jude sel­dom was able to at­tend these classes. James, Je­sus’ brother, did not lose faith in him, but dur­ing these months of de­lay and in­ac­tion Mary nearly de­spaired of her son. Her faith, raised to such heights at Cana, now sank to new low lev­els. She could only fall back on her so oft-re­peated ex­cla­ma­tion: “I can­not un­der­stand him. I can­not fig­ure out what it all means.” But James’s wife did much to bol­ster Mary’s cour­age.

137:7.2Through­out these four months these seven be­liev­ers, one his own brother in the flesh, were get­ting ac­quainted with Je­sus; they were get­ting used to the idea of liv­ing with this God-man. Though they called him Rabbi, they were learn­ing not to be afraid of him. Je­sus pos­sessed that match­less grace of per­son­al­ity which en­abled him so to live among them that they were not dis­mayed by his di­vin­ity. They found it re­ally easy to be “friends with God,” God in­car­nate in the like­ness of mor­tal flesh. This time of wait­ing severely tested the en­tire group of be­liev­ers. Noth­ing, ab­so­lutely noth­ing, mirac­u­lous hap­pened. Day by day they went about their or­di­nary work, while night af­ter night they sat at Je­sus’ feet. And they were held to­gether by his match­less per­son­al­ity and by the gra­cious words which he spoke to them evening upon evening.

137:7.3This pe­riod of wait­ing and teach­ing was es­pe­cially hard on Si­mon Pe­ter. He re­peat­edly sought to per­suade Je­sus to launch forth with the preach­ing of the king­dom in Gal­i­lee while John con­tin­ued to preach in Judea. But Je­sus’ re­ply to Pe­ter ever was: “Be pa­tient, Si­mon. Make prog­ress. We shall be none too ready when the Fa­ther calls.” And An­drew would calm Pe­ter now and then with his more sea­soned and philo­sophic coun­sel. An­drew was tremen­dously im­pressed with the hu­man nat­u­ral­ness of Je­sus. He never grew weary of con­tem­plat­ing how one who could live so near God could be so friendly and con­sid­er­ate of men.

137:7.4Through­out this en­tire pe­riod Je­sus spoke in the syn­a­gogue but twice. By the end of these many weeks of wait­ing the re­ports about his bap­tism and the wine of Cana had be­gun to quiet down. And Je­sus saw to it that no more ap­par­ent mir­a­cles hap­pened dur­ing this time. But even though they lived so qui­etly at Beth­saida, re­ports of the strange do­ings of Je­sus had been car­ried to Herod An­tipas, who in turn sent spies to as­cer­tain what he was about. But Herod was more con­cerned about the preach­ing of John. He de­cided not to mo­lest Je­sus, whose work con­tin­ued along so qui­etly at Ca­per­naum.

137:7.5In this time of wait­ing Je­sus en­deav­ored to teach his as­so­ciates what their at­ti­tude should be to­ward the var­i­ous re­li­gious groups and the po­lit­i­cal par­ties of Pales­tine. Je­sus’ words al­ways were, “We are seek­ing to win all of them, but we are not of any of them.”

137:7.6The scribes and rab­bis, taken to­gether, were called Phar­isees. They re­ferred to them­selves as the “as­so­ciates.” In many ways they were the pro­gres­sive group among the Jews, hav­ing adopted many teach­ings not clearly found in the He­brew scrip­tures, such as be­lief in the res­ur­rec­tion of the dead, a doc­trine only men­tioned by a later prophet, Daniel.

137:7.7The Sad­ducees con­sisted of the priest­hood and cer­tain wealthy Jews. They were not such stick­lers for the de­tails of law en­force­ment. The Phar­isees and Sad­ducees were re­ally re­li­gious par­ties, rather than sects.

137:7.8The Es­senes were a true re­li­gious sect, orig­i­nat­ing dur­ing the Mac­cabean re­volt, whose re­quire­ments were in some re­spects more ex­act­ing than those of the Phar­isees. They had adopted many Per­sian be­liefs and prac­tices, lived as a broth­er­hood in monas­ter­ies, re­frained from mar­riage, and had all things in com­mon. They spe­cial­ized in teach­ings about an­gels.

137:7.9The Zealots were a group of in­tense Jew­ish pa­tri­ots. They ad­vo­cated that any and all meth­ods were jus­ti­fied in the strug­gle to es­cape the bond­age of the Ro­man yoke.

137:7.10The Hero­di­ans were a purely po­lit­i­cal party that ad­vo­cated eman­ci­pa­tion from the di­rect Ro­man rule by a restora­tion of the Hero­dian dy­nasty.

137:7.11In the very midst of Pales­tine there lived the Samar­i­tans, with whom “the Jews had no deal­ings,” not­with­stand­ing that they held many views sim­i­lar to the Jew­ish teach­ings.

137:7.12All of these par­ties and sects, in­clud­ing the smaller Nazarite broth­er­hood, be­lieved in the some­time com­ing of the Mes­siah. They all looked for a na­tional de­liv­erer. But Je­sus was very pos­i­tive in mak­ing it clear that he and his dis­ci­ples would not be­come al­lied to any of these schools of thought or prac­tice. The Son of Man was to be nei­ther a Nazarite nor an Es­sene.

137:7.13While Je­sus later di­rected that the apos­tles should go forth, as John had, preach­ing the gospel and in­struct­ing be­liev­ers, he laid em­pha­sis on the procla­ma­tion of the “good tid­ings of the king­dom of heaven.” He un­fail­ingly im­pressed upon his as­so­ciates that they must “show forth love, com­pas­sion, and sym­pa­thy.” He early taught his fol­low­ers that the king­dom of heaven was a spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence hav­ing to do with the en­throne­ment of God in the hearts of men.

137:7.14As they thus tar­ried be­fore em­bark­ing on their ac­tive pub­lic preach­ing, Je­sus and the seven spent two evenings each week at the syn­a­gogue in the study of the He­brew scrip­tures. In later years af­ter sea­sons of in­tense pub­lic work, the apos­tles looked back upon these four months as the most pre­cious and prof­itable of all their as­so­ci­a­tion with the Mas­ter. Je­sus taught these men all they could as­sim­i­late. He did not make the mis­take of overteach­ing them. He did not pre­cip­i­tate con­fu­sion by the pre­sen­ta­tion of truth too far be­yond their ca­pac­ity to com­pre­hend.