Four Eventful Days at Capernaum

145:0.1Je­sus and the apos­tles ar­rived in Ca­per­naum the evening of Tues­day, Jan­uary 13. As usual, they made their head­quar­ters at the home of Zeb­e­dee in Beth­saida. Now that John the Bap­tist had been sent to his death, Je­sus pre­pared to launch out in the first open and pub­lic preach­ing tour of Gal­i­lee. The news that Je­sus had re­turned rapidly spread through­out the city, and early the next day, Mary the mother of Je­sus has­tened away, go­ing over to Naz­a­reth to visit her son Joseph.

145:0.2Wednes­day, Thurs­day, and Fri­day Je­sus spent at the Zeb­e­dee house in­struct­ing his apos­tles prepara­tory to their first ex­ten­sive pub­lic preach­ing tour. He also re­ceived and taught many earnest in­quir­ers, both singly and in groups. Through An­drew, he ar­ranged to speak in the syn­a­gogue on the com­ing Sab­bath day.

145:0.3Late on Fri­day evening Je­sus’ baby sis­ter, Ruth, se­cretly paid him a visit. They spent al­most an hour to­gether in a boat an­chored a short dis­tance from the shore. No hu­man be­ing, save John Zeb­e­dee, ever knew of this visit, and he was ad­mon­ished to tell no man. Ruth was the only mem­ber of Je­sus’ fam­ily who con­sis­tently and un­wa­ver­ingly be­lieved in the di­vin­ity of his earth mis­sion from the times of her ear­li­est spir­i­tual con­scious­ness right on down through his event­ful min­istry, death, res­ur­rec­tion, and as­cen­sion; and she fi­nally passed on to the worlds be­yond never hav­ing doubted the super­nat­u­ral char­ac­ter of her fa­ther-brother’s mis­sion in the flesh. Baby Ruth was the chief com­fort of Je­sus, as re­gards his earth fam­ily, through­out the try­ing or­deal of his trial, re­jec­tion, and cru­ci­fix­ion.