First Preaching Tour of Galilee

146:6.1These peo­ple be­lieved in signs; they were a won­der-seek­ing gen­er­a­tion. By this time the peo­ple of cen­tral and south­ern Gal­i­lee had be­come mir­a­cle minded re­gard­ing Je­sus and his per­sonal min­istry. Scores, hun­dreds, of hon­est per­sons suf­fer­ing from purely ner­vous dis­or­ders and af­flicted with emo­tional dis­tur­bances came into Je­sus’ pres­ence and then re­turned home to their friends an­nounc­ing that Je­sus had healed them. And such cases of men­tal heal­ing these ig­no­rant and sim­ple-minded peo­ple re­garded as phys­i­cal heal­ing, mirac­u­lous cures.

146:6.2When Je­sus sought to leave Cana and go to Nain, a great mul­ti­tude of be­liev­ers and many cu­ri­ous peo­ple fol­lowed af­ter him. They were bent on be­hold­ing mir­a­cles and won­ders, and they were not to be dis­ap­pointed. As Je­sus and his apos­tles drew near the gate of the city, they met a fu­neral pro­ces­sion on its way to the near-by ceme­tery, car­ry­ing the only son of a wid­owed mother of Nain. This woman was much re­spected, and half of the vil­lage fol­lowed the bear­ers of the bier of this sup­pos­edly dead boy. When the fu­neral pro­ces­sion had come up to Je­sus and his fol­low­ers, the widow and her friends rec­og­nized the Mas­ter and be­sought him to bring the son back to life. Their mir­a­cle ex­pectancy was aroused to such a high pitch they thought Je­sus could cure any hu­man dis­ease, and why could not such a healer even raise the dead? Je­sus, while be­ing thus im­por­tuned, stepped for­ward and, rais­ing the cov­er­ing of the bier, ex­am­ined the boy. Dis­cov­er­ing that the young man was not re­ally dead, he per­ceived the tragedy which his pres­ence could avert; so, turn­ing to the mother, he said: “Weep not. Your son is not dead; he sleeps. He will be re­stored to you.” And then, tak­ing the young man by the hand, he said, “Awake and arise.” And the youth who was sup­posed to be dead pres­ently sat up and be­gan to speak, and Je­sus sent them back to their homes.

146:6.3Je­sus en­deav­ored to calm the mul­ti­tude and vainly tried to ex­plain that the lad was not re­ally dead, that he had not brought him back from the grave, but it was use­less. The mul­ti­tude which fol­lowed him, and the whole vil­lage of Nain, were aroused to the high­est pitch of emo­tional frenzy. Fear seized many, panic oth­ers, while still oth­ers fell to pray­ing and wail­ing over their sins. And it was not un­til long af­ter night­fall that the clam­or­ing mul­ti­tude could be dis­persed. And, of course, not­with­stand­ing Je­sus’ state­ment that the boy was not dead, ev­ery­one in­sisted that a mir­a­cle had been wrought, even the dead raised. Al­though Je­sus told them the boy was merely in a deep sleep, they ex­plained that that was the man­ner of his speak­ing and called at­ten­tion to the fact that he al­ways in great mod­esty tried to hide his mir­a­cles.

146:6.4So the word went abroad through­out Gal­i­lee and into Judea that Je­sus had raised the widow’s son from the dead, and many who heard this re­port be­lieved it. Never was Je­sus able to make even all his apos­tles fully un­der­stand that the widow’s son was not re­ally dead when he bade him awake and arise. But he did im­press them suf­fi­ciently to keep it out of all sub­se­quent rec­ords ex­cept that of Luke, who re­corded it as the episode had been re­lated to him. And again was Je­sus so be­sieged as a physi­cian that he de­parted early the next day for En­dor.