Beginning the Public Work

141:1.1Ca­per­naum was not far from Tiberias, and the fame of Je­sus had be­gun to spread well over all of Gal­i­lee and even to parts be­yond. Je­sus knew that Herod would soon be­gin to take no­tice of his work; so he thought best to jour­ney south and into Judea with his apos­tles. A com­pany of over one hun­dred be­liev­ers de­sired to go with them, but Je­sus spoke to them and be­sought them not to ac­com­pany the apos­tolic group on their way down the Jor­dan. Though they con­sented to re­main be­hind, many of them fol­lowed af­ter the Mas­ter within a few days.

141:1.2The first day Je­sus and the apos­tles only jour­neyed as far as Ta­ri­chea, where they rested for the night. The next day they trav­eled to a point on the Jor­dan near Pella where John had preached about one year be­fore, and where Je­sus had re­ceived bap­tism. Here they tar­ried for more than two weeks, teach­ing and preach­ing. By the end of the first week sev­eral hun­dred peo­ple had as­sem­bled in a camp near where Je­sus and the twelve dwelt, and they had come from Gal­i­lee, Phoeni­cia, Syria, the De­capo­lis, Perea, and Judea.

141:1.3Je­sus did no pub­lic preach­ing. An­drew di­vided the mul­ti­tude and as­signed the preach­ers for the forenoon and af­ter­noon as­sem­blies; af­ter the evening meal Je­sus talked with the twelve. He taught them noth­ing new but re­viewed his for­mer teach­ing and an­swered their many ques­tions. On one of these evenings he told the twelve some­thing about the forty days which he spent in the hills near this place.

141:1.4Many of those who came from Perea and Judea had been bap­tized by John and were in­ter­ested in find­ing out more about Je­sus’ teach­ings. The apos­tles made much prog­ress in teach­ing the dis­ci­ples of John inas­much as they did not in any way de­tract from John’s preach­ing, and since they did not at this time even bap­tize their new dis­ci­ples. But it was al­ways a stum­bling stone to John’s fol­low­ers that Je­sus, if he were all that John had an­nounced, did noth­ing to get him out of prison. John’s dis­ci­ples never could un­der­stand why Je­sus did not pre­vent the cruel death of their beloved leader.

141:1.5From night to night An­drew care­fully in­structed his fel­low apos­tles in the del­i­cate and dif­fi­cult task of get­ting along smoothly with the fol­low­ers of John the Bap­tist. Dur­ing this first year of Je­sus’ pub­lic min­istry more than three fourths of his fol­low­ers had pre­vi­ously fol­lowed John and had re­ceived his bap­tism. This en­tire year of A.D. 27 was spent in qui­etly tak­ing over John’s work in Perea and Judea.