First Preaching Tour of Galilee

146:4.1At Iron, as in many of even the smaller cities of Gal­i­lee and Judea, there was a syn­a­gogue, and dur­ing the ear­lier times of Je­sus’ min­istry it was his cus­tom to speak in these syn­a­gogues on the Sab­bath day. Some­times he would speak at the morn­ing ser­vice, and Pe­ter or one of the other apos­tles would preach at the af­ter­noon hour. Je­sus and the apos­tles would also of­ten teach and preach at the week­day evening as­sem­blies at the syn­a­gogue. Al­though the re­li­gious lead­ers at Je­ru­sa­lem be­came in­creas­ingly an­tag­o­nis­tic to­ward Je­sus, they ex­er­cised no di­rect con­trol over the syn­a­gogues out­side of that city. It was not un­til later in Je­sus’ pub­lic min­istry that they were able to cre­ate such a wide­spread sen­ti­ment against him as to bring about the al­most uni­ver­sal clos­ing of the syn­a­gogues to his teach­ing. At this time all the syn­a­gogues of Gal­i­lee and Judea were open to him.

146:4.2Iron was the site of ex­ten­sive min­eral mines for those days, and since Je­sus had never shared the life of the miner, he spent most of his time, while so­journ­ing at Iron, in the mines. While the apos­tles vis­ited the homes and preached in the pub­lic places, Je­sus worked in the mines with these un­der­ground la­bor­ers. The fame of Je­sus as a healer had spread even to this re­mote vil­lage, and many sick and af­flicted sought help at his hands, and many were greatly ben­e­fited by his heal­ing min­istry. But in none of these cases did the Mas­ter per­form a so-called mir­a­cle of heal­ing save in that of the leper.

146:4.3Late on the af­ter­noon of the third day at Iron, as Je­sus was re­turn­ing from the mines, he chanced to pass through a nar­row side street on his way to his lodg­ing place. As he drew near the squalid hovel of a cer­tain lep­rous man, the af­flicted one, hav­ing heard of his fame as a healer, made bold to ac­cost him as he passed his door, say­ing as he knelt be­fore him: “Lord, if only you would, you could make me clean. I have heard the mes­sage of your teach­ers, and I would en­ter the king­dom if I could be made clean.” And the leper spoke in this way be­cause among the Jews lep­ers were for­bid­den even to at­tend the syn­a­gogue or oth­er­wise en­gage in pub­lic wor­ship. This man re­ally be­lieved that he could not be re­ceived into the com­ing king­dom un­less he could find a cure for his lep­rosy. And when Je­sus saw him in his af­flic­tion and heard his words of cling­ing faith, his hu­man heart was touched, and the di­vine mind was moved with com­pas­sion. As Je­sus looked upon him, the man fell upon his face and wor­shiped. Then the Mas­ter stretched forth his hand and, touch­ing him, said: “I will—be clean.” And im­me­di­ately he was healed; the lep­rosy no longer af­flicted him.

146:4.4When Je­sus had lifted the man upon his feet, he charged him: “See that you tell no man about your heal­ing but rather go qui­etly about your busi­ness, show­ing your­self to the priest and of­fer­ing those sac­ri­fices com­manded by Moses in tes­ti­mony of your cleans­ing.” But this man did not do as Je­sus had in­structed him. In­stead, he be­gan to pub­lish abroad through­out the town that Je­sus had cured his lep­rosy, and since he was known to all the vil­lage, the peo­ple could plainly see that he had been cleansed of his dis­ease. He did not go to the priests as Je­sus had ad­mon­ished him. As a re­sult of his spread­ing abroad the news that Je­sus had healed him, the Mas­ter was so thronged by the sick that he was forced to rise early the next day and leave the vil­lage. Al­though Je­sus did not again en­ter the town, he re­mained two days in the out­skirts near the mines, con­tin­u­ing to in­struct the be­liev­ing min­ers fur­ther re­gard­ing the gospel of the king­dom.

146:4.5This cleans­ing of the leper was the first so-called mir­a­cle which Je­sus had in­ten­tion­ally and de­lib­er­ately per­formed up to this time. And this was a case of real lep­rosy.

146:4.6From Iron they went to Gis­chala, spend­ing two days pro­claim­ing the gospel, and then de­parted for Cho­ra­zin, where they spent al­most a week preach­ing the good news; but they were un­able to win many be­liev­ers for the king­dom in Cho­ra­zin. In no place where Je­sus had taught had he met with such a gen­eral re­jec­tion of his mes­sage. The so­journ at Cho­ra­zin was very de­press­ing to most of the apos­tles, and An­drew and Ab­ner had much dif­fi­culty in up­hold­ing the cour­age of their as­so­ciates. And so, pass­ing qui­etly through Ca­per­naum, they went on to the vil­lage of Madon, where they fared lit­tle bet­ter. There pre­vailed in the minds of most of the apos­tles the idea that their fail­ure to meet with suc­cess in these towns so re­cently vis­ited was due to Je­sus’ in­sis­tence that they re­frain, in their teach­ing and preach­ing, from re­fer­ring to him as a healer. How they wished he would cleanse an­other leper or in some other man­ner so man­i­fest his power as to at­tract the at­ten­tion of the peo­ple! But the Mas­ter was un­moved by their earnest urg­ing.