The Interlude Visit to Jerusalem

147:0.1Je­sus and the apos­tles ar­rived in Ca­per­naum on Wednes­day, March 17, and spent two weeks at the Beth­saida head­quar­ters be­fore they de­parted for Je­ru­sa­lem. These two weeks the apos­tles taught the peo­ple by the sea­side while Je­sus spent much time alone in the hills about his Fa­ther’s busi­ness. Dur­ing this pe­riod Je­sus, ac­com­pa­nied by James and John Zeb­e­dee, made two se­cret trips to Tiberias, where they met with the be­liev­ers and in­structed them in the gospel of the king­dom.

147:0.2Many of the house­hold of Herod be­lieved in Je­sus and at­tended these meet­ings. It was the in­flu­ence of these be­liev­ers among Herod’s of­fi­cial fam­ily that had helped to lessen that ruler’s en­mity to­ward Je­sus. These be­liev­ers at Tiberias had fully ex­plained to Herod that the “king­dom” which Je­sus pro­claimed was spir­i­tual in na­ture and not a po­lit­i­cal ven­ture. Herod rather be­lieved these mem­bers of his own house­hold and there­fore did not per­mit him­self to be­come un­duly alarmed by the spread­ing abroad of the re­ports con­cern­ing Je­sus’ teach­ing and heal­ing. He had no ob­jec­tions to Je­sus’ work as a healer or re­li­gious teacher. Not­with­stand­ing the fa­vor­able at­ti­tude of many of Herod’s ad­vis­ers, and even of Herod him­self, there ex­isted a group of his sub­or­di­nates who were so in­flu­enced by the re­li­gious lead­ers at Je­ru­sa­lem that they re­mained bit­ter and threat­en­ing en­e­mies of Je­sus and the apos­tles and, later on, did much to ham­per their pub­lic ac­tiv­i­ties. The great­est dan­ger to Je­sus lay in the Je­ru­sa­lem re­li­gious lead­ers and not in Herod. And it was for this very rea­son that Je­sus and the apos­tles spent so much time and did most of their pub­lic preach­ing in Gal­i­lee rather than at Je­ru­sa­lem and in Judea.