At Gilboa and in the Decapolis

144:1.1As time passed, the twelve be­came more de­voted to Je­sus and in­creas­ingly com­mit­ted to the work of the king­dom. Their de­vo­tion was in large part a mat­ter of per­sonal loy­alty. They did not grasp his many-sided teach­ing; they did not fully com­pre­hend the na­ture of Je­sus or the sig­nif­i­cance of his be­stowal on earth.

144:1.2Je­sus made it plain to his apos­tles that they were in re­tire­ment for three rea­sons:

144:1.31. To con­firm their un­der­stand­ing of, and faith in, the gospel of the king­dom.

144:1.42. To al­low op­po­si­tion to their work in both Judea and Gal­i­lee to quiet down.

144:1.53. To await the fate of John the Bap­tist.

144:1.6While tar­ry­ing on Gil­boa, Je­sus told the twelve much about his early life and his ex­pe­ri­ences on Mount Her­mon; he also re­vealed some­thing of what hap­pened in the hills dur­ing the forty days im­me­di­ately af­ter his bap­tism. And he di­rectly charged them that they should tell no man about these ex­pe­ri­ences un­til af­ter he had re­turned to the Fa­ther.

144:1.7Dur­ing these Sep­tem­ber weeks they rested, vis­ited, re­counted their ex­pe­ri­ences since Je­sus first called them to ser­vice, and en­gaged in an earnest ef­fort to co-or­di­nate what the Mas­ter had so far taught them. In a mea­sure they all sensed that this would be their last op­por­tu­nity for pro­longed rest. They re­al­ized that their next pub­lic ef­fort in ei­ther Judea or Gal­i­lee would mark the be­gin­ning of the fi­nal procla­ma­tion of the com­ing king­dom, but they had lit­tle or no set­tled idea as to what the king­dom would be when it came. John and An­drew thought the king­dom had al­ready come; Pe­ter and James be­lieved that it was yet to come; Na­than­iel and Thomas frankly con­fessed they were puz­zled; Mat­thew, Philip, and Si­mon Ze­lo­tes were un­cer­tain and con­fused; the twins were bliss­fully ig­no­rant of the con­tro­versy; and Ju­das Is­car­iot was silent, non­com­mit­tal.

144:1.8Much of this time Je­sus was alone on the moun­tain near the camp. Oc­ca­sion­ally he took with him Pe­ter, James, or John, but more of­ten he went off to pray or com­mune alone. Sub­se­quent to the bap­tism of Je­sus and the forty days in the Perean hills, it is hardly proper to speak of these sea­sons of com­mu­nion with his Fa­ther as prayer, nor is it con­sis­tent to speak of Je­sus as wor­ship­ing, but it is al­to­gether cor­rect to al­lude to these sea­sons as per­sonal com­mu­nion with his Fa­ther.

144:1.9The cen­tral theme of the dis­cus­sions through­out the en­tire month of Septem­ber was prayer and wor­ship. Af­ter they had dis­cussed wor­ship for some days, Je­sus fi­nally de­liv­ered his mem­o­rable dis­course on prayer in an­swer to Thomas’s re­quest: “Mas­ter, teach us how to pray.”

144:1.10John had taught his dis­ci­ples a prayer, a prayer for sal­va­tion in the com­ing king­dom. Al­though Je­sus never for­bade his fol­low­ers to use John’s form of prayer, the apos­tles very early per­ceived that their Mas­ter did not fully ap­prove of the prac­tice of ut­ter­ing set and for­mal prayers. Nev­er­the­less, be­liev­ers con­stantly re­quested to be taught how to pray. The twelve longed to know what form of pe­ti­tion Je­sus would ap­prove. And it was chiefly be­cause of this need for some sim­ple pe­ti­tion for the com­mon peo­ple that Je­sus at this time con­sented, in an­swer to Thomas’s re­quest, to teach them a sug­ges­tive form of prayer. Je­sus gave this les­son one af­ter­noon in the third week of their so­journ on Mount Gil­boa.