Events Leading up to the Capernaum Crisis

152:6.1While rest­ing at the home of a wealthy be­liever in the Gen­nesaret re­gion, Je­sus held in­for­mal con­fer­ences with the twelve ev­ery af­ter­noon. The am­bas­sadors of the king­dom were a se­ri­ous, sober, and chas­tened group of dis­il­lu­sioned men. But even af­ter all that had hap­pened, and as sub­se­quent events dis­closed, these twelve men were not yet fully de­liv­ered from their in­bred and long-cher­ished no­tions about the com­ing of the Jew­ish Mes­siah. Events of the pre­ced­ing few weeks had moved too swiftly for these as­ton­ished fish­er­men to grasp their full sig­nif­i­cance. It re­quires time for men and women to ef­fect rad­i­cal and ex­ten­sive changes in their ba­sic and fun­da­men­tal con­cepts of so­cial con­duct, philo­sophic at­ti­tudes, and re­li­gious con­vic­tions.

152:6.2While Je­sus and the twelve were rest­ing at Gen­nesaret, the mul­ti­tudes dis­persed, some go­ing to their homes, oth­ers go­ing on up to Je­ru­sa­lem for the Pass­over. In less than one month’s time the en­thu­si­as­tic and open fol­low­ers of Je­sus, who num­bered more than fifty thou­sand in Gal­i­lee alone, shrank to less than five hun­dred. Je­sus de­sired to give his apos­tles such an ex­pe­ri­ence with the fick­le­ness of pop­u­lar ac­claim that they would not be tempted to rely on such man­i­fes­ta­tions of tran­sient re­li­gious hys­te­ria af­ter he should leave them alone in the work of the king­dom, but he was only par­tially suc­cess­ful in this ef­fort.

152:6.3The sec­ond night of their so­journ at Gen­nesaret the Mas­ter again told the apos­tles the para­ble of the sower and added these words: “You see, my chil­dren, the ap­peal to hu­man feel­ings is tran­si­tory and ut­terly dis­ap­point­ing; the ex­clu­sive ap­peal to the in­tel­lect of man is like­wise empty and bar­ren; it is only by mak­ing your ap­peal to the spirit which lives within the hu­man mind that you can hope to achieve last­ing suc­cess and ac­com­plish those mar­velous trans­for­ma­tions of hu­man char­ac­ter that are pres­ently shown in the abun­dant yield­ing of the gen­uine fruits of the spirit in the daily lives of all who are thus de­liv­ered from the dark­ness of doubt by the birth of the spirit into the light of faith—the king­dom of heaven.”

152:6.4Je­sus taught the ap­peal to the emo­tions as the tech­nique of ar­rest­ing and fo­cus­ing the in­tel­lec­tual at­ten­tion. He des­ig­nated the mind thus aroused and quick­ened as the gate­way to the soul, where there re­sides that spir­i­tual na­ture of man which must rec­og­nize truth and re­spond to the spir­i­tual ap­peal of the gospel in or­der to af­ford the per­ma­nent re­sults of true char­ac­ter trans­for­ma­tions.

152:6.5Je­sus thus en­deav­ored to pre­pare the apos­tles for the im­pend­ing shock—the cri­sis in the pub­lic at­ti­tude to­ward him which was only a few days dis­tant. He ex­plained to the twelve that the re­li­gious rulers of Je­ru­sa­lem would con­spire with Herod An­tipas to ef­fect their de­struc­tion. The twelve be­gan to re­al­ize more fully (though not fi­nally) that Je­sus was not go­ing to sit on David’s throne. They saw more fully that spir­i­tual truth was not to be ad­vanced by ma­te­rial won­ders. They be­gan to re­al­ize that the feed­ing of the five thou­sand and the pop­u­lar move­ment to make Je­sus king was the apex of the mir­a­cle-seek­ing, won­der-work­ing ex­pectance of the peo­ple and the height of Je­sus’ ac­claim by the pop­u­lace. They vaguely dis­cerned and dimly fore­saw the ap­proach­ing times of spir­i­tual sift­ing and cruel ad­ver­sity. These twelve men were slowly awak­ing to the re­al­iza­tion of the real na­ture of their task as am­bas­sadors of the king­dom, and they be­gan to gird them­selves for the try­ing and test­ing or­deals of the last year of the Mas­ter’s min­istry on earth.

152:6.6Be­fore they left Gen­nesaret, Je­sus in­structed them re­gard­ing the mirac­u­lous feed­ing of the five thou­sand, telling them just why he en­gaged in this ex­traor­di­nary man­i­fes­ta­tion of cre­ative power and also as­sur­ing them that he did not thus yield to his sym­pa­thy for the mul­ti­tude un­til he had as­cer­tained that it was “ac­cord­ing to the Fa­ther’s will.”