Events Leading up to the Capernaum Crisis

152:4.1The apos­tles, with­out their Mas­ter—sent off by them­selves—en­tered the boat and in si­lence be­gan to row to­ward Beth­saida on the west­ern shore of the lake. None of the twelve was so crushed and down­cast as Si­mon Pe­ter. Hardly a word was spo­ken; they were all think­ing of the Mas­ter alone in the hills. Had he for­saken them? He had never be­fore sent them all away and re­fused to go with them. What could all this mean?

152:4.2Dark­ness de­scended upon them, for there had arisen a strong and con­trary wind which made prog­ress al­most im­pos­si­ble. As the hours of dark­ness and hard row­ing passed, Pe­ter grew weary and fell into a deep sleep of ex­haus­tion. An­drew and James put him to rest on the cush­ioned seat in the stern of the boat. While the other apos­tles toiled against the wind and the waves, Pe­ter dreamed a dream; he saw a vi­sion of Je­sus com­ing to them walk­ing on the sea. When the Mas­ter seemed to walk on by the boat, Pe­ter cried out, “Save us, Mas­ter, save us.” And those who were in the rear of the boat heard him say some of these words. As this ap­pari­tion of the night sea­son con­tin­ued in Pe­ter’s mind, he dreamed that he heard Je­sus say: “Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid.” This was like the balm of Gilead to Pe­ter’s dis­turbed soul; it soothed his trou­bled spirit, so that (in his dream) he cried out to the Mas­ter: “Lord, if it re­ally is you, bid me come and walk with you on the wa­ter.” And when Pe­ter started to walk upon the wa­ter, the bois­ter­ous waves fright­ened him, and as he was about to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” And many of the twelve heard him ut­ter this cry. Then Pe­ter dreamed that Je­sus came to the res­cue and, stretch­ing forth his hand, took hold and lifted him up, say­ing: “O, you of lit­tle faith, where­fore did you doubt?”

152:4.3In con­nec­tion with the lat­ter part of his dream Pe­ter arose from the seat whereon he slept and ac­tu­ally stepped over­board and into the wa­ter. And he awak­ened from his dream as An­drew, James, and John reached down and pulled him out of the sea.

152:4.4To Pe­ter this ex­pe­ri­ence was al­ways real. He sin­cerely be­lieved that Je­sus came to them that night. He only par­tially con­vinced John Mark, which ex­plains why Mark left a por­tion of the story out of his nar­ra­tive. Luke, the physi­cian, who made care­ful search into these mat­ters, con­cluded that the episode was a vi­sion of Pe­ter’s and there­fore re­fused to give place to this story in the prepa­ra­tion of his nar­ra­tive.