The Passover at Jerusalem

142:8.1By the end of April the op­po­si­tion to Je­sus among the Phar­isees and Sad­ducees had be­come so pro­nounced that the Mas­ter and his apos­tles de­cided to leave Je­ru­sa­lem for a while, go­ing south to work in Beth­le­hem and He­bron. The en­tire month of May was spent in do­ing per­sonal work in these cities and among the peo­ple of the sur­round­ing vil­lages. No pub­lic preach­ing was done on this trip, only house-to-house vis­i­ta­tion. A part of this time, while the apos­tles taught the gospel and min­is­tered to the sick, Je­sus and Ab­ner spent at En­gedi, vis­it­ing the Nazarite colony. John the Bap­tist had gone forth from this place, and Ab­ner had been head of this group. Many of the Nazarite broth­er­hood be­came be­liev­ers in Je­sus, but the ma­jor­ity of these as­cetic and ec­cen­tric men re­fused to ac­cept him as a teacher sent from heaven be­cause he did not teach fast­ing and other forms of self-de­nial.

142:8.2The peo­ple liv­ing in this re­gion did not know that Je­sus had been born in Beth­le­hem. They al­ways sup­posed the Mas­ter had been born at Naz­a­reth, as did the vast ma­jor­ity of his dis­ci­ples, but the twelve knew the facts.

142:8.3This so­journ in the south of Judea was a rest­ful and fruit­ful sea­son of la­bor; many souls were added to the king­dom. By the first days of June the ag­i­ta­tion against Je­sus had so qui­eted down in Je­ru­sa­lem that the Mas­ter and the apos­tles re­turned to in­struct and com­fort be­liev­ers.

142:8.4Al­though Je­sus and the apos­tles spent the en­tire month of June in or near Je­ru­sa­lem, they did no pub­lic teach­ing dur­ing this pe­riod. They lived for the most part in tents, which they pitched in a shaded park, or gar­den, known in that day as Geth­sem­ane. This park was sit­u­ated on the west­ern slope of the Mount of Olives not far from the brook Kidron. The Sab­bath week­ends they usu­ally spent with Laz­a­rus and his sis­ters at Beth­any. Je­sus en­tered within the walls of Je­ru­sa­lem only a few times, but a large num­ber of in­ter­ested in­quir­ers came out to Geth­sem­ane to visit with him. One Fri­day evening Nicode­mus and one Joseph of Ari­mathea ven­tured out to see Je­sus but turned back through fear even af­ter they were stand­ing be­fore the en­trance to the Mas­ter’s tent. And, of course, they did not per­ceive that Je­sus knew all about their do­ings.

142:8.5When the rulers of the Jews learned that Je­sus had re­turned to Je­ru­sa­lem, they pre­pared to ar­rest him; but when they ob­served that he did no pub­lic preach­ing, they con­cluded that he had be­come fright­ened by their pre­vi­ous ag­i­ta­tion and de­cided to al­low him to carry on his teach­ing in this pri­vate man­ner with­out fur­ther mo­lesta­tion. And thus af­fairs moved along qui­etly un­til the last days of June, when one Si­mon, a mem­ber of the San­hedrin, pub­licly es­poused the teach­ings of Je­sus, af­ter so declar­ing him­self be­fore the rulers of the Jews. Im­me­di­ately a new ag­i­ta­tion for Je­sus’ ap­pre­hen­sion sprang up and grew so strong that the Mas­ter de­cided to re­tire into the cities of Samaria and the De­capo­lis.