The Third Preaching Tour

150:7.1This Fri­day af­ter­noon Je­sus walked about Naz­a­reth quite un­ob­served and wholly un­rec­og­nized. He passed by the home of his child­hood and the car­pen­ter shop and spent a half hour on the hill which he so much en­joyed when a lad. Not since the day of his bap­tism by John in the Jor­dan had the Son of Man had such a flood of hu­man emo­tion stirred up within his soul. While com­ing down from the mount, he heard the fa­mil­iar sounds of the trum­pet blast an­nounc­ing the go­ing down of the sun, just as he had so many, many times heard it when a boy grow­ing up in Naz­a­reth. Be­fore re­turn­ing to the en­camp­ment, he walked down by the syn­a­gogue where he had gone to school and in­dulged his mind in many rem­i­nis­cences of his child­hood days. Ear­lier in the day Je­sus had sent Thomas to ar­range with the ruler of the syn­a­gogue for his preach­ing at the Sab­bath morn­ing ser­vice.

150:7.2The peo­ple of Naz­a­reth were never re­puted for piety and righ­teous liv­ing. As the years passed, this vil­lage be­came in­creas­ingly con­tam­i­nated by the low moral stan­dards of near-by Sep­pho­ris. Through­out Je­sus’ youth and young man­hood there had been a di­vi­sion of opin­ion in Naz­a­reth re­gard­ing him; there was much re­sent­ment when he moved to Ca­per­naum. While the in­hab­i­tants of Naz­a­reth had heard much about the do­ings of their for­mer car­pen­ter, they were of­fended that he had never in­cluded his na­tive vil­lage in any of his ear­lier preach­ing tours. They had in­deed heard of Je­sus’ fame, but the ma­jor­ity of the cit­i­zens were an­gry be­cause he had done none of his great works in the city of his youth. For months the peo­ple of Naz­a­reth had dis­cussed Je­sus much, but their opin­ions were, on the whole, un­fa­vor­able to him.

150:7.3Thus did the Mas­ter find him­self in the midst of, not a wel­come home­com­ing, but a de­cid­edly hos­tile and hy­per­crit­i­cal at­mo­sphere. But this was not all. His en­e­mies, know­ing that he was to spend this Sab­bath day in Naz­a­reth and sup­pos­ing that he would speak in the syn­a­gogue, had hired nu­mer­ous rough and un­couth men to ha­rass him and in ev­ery way pos­si­ble make trou­ble.

150:7.4Most of the older of Je­sus’ friends, in­clud­ing the dot­ing chazan teacher of his youth, were dead or had left Naz­a­reth, and the younger gen­er­a­tion was prone to re­sent his fame with strong jeal­ousy. They failed to re­mem­ber his early de­vo­tion to his fa­ther’s fam­ily, and they were bit­ter in their crit­i­cism of his ne­glect to visit his brother and his mar­ried sis­ters liv­ing in Naz­a­reth. The at­ti­tude of Je­sus’ fam­ily to­ward him had also tended to in­crease this un­kind feel­ing of the cit­i­zenry. The or­tho­dox among the Jews even pre­sumed to crit­i­cize Je­sus be­cause he walked too fast on the way to the syn­a­gogue this Sab­bath morn­ing.