Four Eventful Days at Capernaum

145:4.1Through­out the evening fol­low­ing this great out­burst of heal­ing, the re­joic­ing and happy throng over­ran Zeb­e­dee’s home, and the apos­tles of Je­sus were keyed up to the high­est pitch of emo­tional en­thu­si­asm. From a hu­man stand­point, this was prob­a­bly the great­est day of all the great days of their as­so­ci­a­tion with Je­sus. At no time be­fore or af­ter did their hopes surge to such heights of con­fi­dent ex­pec­ta­tion. Je­sus had told them only a few days be­fore, and when they were yet within the bor­ders of Samaria, that the hour had come when the king­dom was to be pro­claimed in power, and now their eyes had seen what they sup­posed was the ful­fill­ment of that prom­ise. They were thrilled by the vi­sion of what was to come if this amaz­ing man­i­fes­ta­tion of heal­ing power was just the be­gin­ning. Their lin­ger­ing doubts of Je­sus’ di­vin­ity were ban­ished. They were lit­er­ally in­tox­i­cated with the ec­stasy of their be­wil­dered en­chant­ment.

145:4.2But when they sought for Je­sus, they could not find him. The Mas­ter was much per­turbed by what had hap­pened. These men, women, and chil­dren who had been healed of di­verse dis­eases lin­gered late into the evening, hop­ing for Je­sus’ re­turn that they might thank him. The apos­tles could not un­der­stand the Mas­ter’s con­duct as the hours passed and he re­mained in seclu­sion; their joy would have been full and per­fect but for his con­tin­ued ab­sence. When Je­sus did re­turn to their midst, the hour was late, and prac­ti­cally all of the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the heal­ing episode had gone to their homes. Je­sus re­fused the con­grat­u­la­tions and ado­ra­tion of the twelve and the oth­ers who had lin­gered to greet him, only say­ing: “Re­joice not that my Fa­ther is pow­er­ful to heal the body, but rather that he is mighty to save the soul. Let us go to our rest, for to­mor­row we must be about the Fa­ther’s busi­ness.”

145:4.3And again did twelve dis­ap­pointed, per­plexed, and heart-sor­row­ing men go to their rest; few of them, ex­cept the twins, slept much that night. No sooner would the Mas­ter do some­thing to cheer the souls and glad­den the hearts of his apos­tles, than he seemed im­me­di­ately to dash their hopes in pieces and ut­terly to de­mol­ish the foun­da­tions of their cour­age and en­thu­si­asm. As these be­wil­dered fish­er­men looked into each other’s eyes, there was but one thought: “We can­not un­der­stand him. What does all this mean?”