Last Days at Capernaum

154:1.1From May 1 to May 7 Je­sus held in­ti­mate coun­sel with his fol­low­ers at the Zeb­e­dee house. Only the tried and trusted dis­ci­ples were ad­mit­ted to these con­fer­ences. At this time there were only about one hun­dred dis­ci­ples who had the moral cour­age to brave the op­po­si­tion of the Phar­isees and openly de­clare their ad­her­ence to Je­sus. With this group he held ses­sions morn­ing, af­ter­noon, and evening. Small com­pa­nies of in­quir­ers as­sem­bled each af­ter­noon by the sea­side, where some of the evan­ge­lists or apos­tles dis­coursed to them. These groups sel­dom num­bered more than fifty.

154:1.2On Fri­day of this week of­fi­cial ac­tion was taken by the rulers of the Ca­per­naum syn­a­gogue clos­ing the house of God to Je­sus and all his fol­low­ers. This ac­tion was taken at the in­sti­ga­tion of the Je­ru­sa­lem Phar­isees. Jairus re­signed as chief ruler and openly aligned him­self with Je­sus.

154:1.3The last of the sea­side meet­ings was held on Sab­bath af­ter­noon, May 7. Je­sus talked to less than one hun­dred and fifty who had as­sem­bled at that time. This Sat­ur­day night marked the time of the low­est ebb in the tide of pop­u­lar re­gard for Je­sus and his teach­ings. From then on there was a steady, slow, but more health­ful and de­pend­able growth in fa­vor­able sen­ti­ment; a new fol­low­ing was built up which was bet­ter grounded in spir­i­tual faith and true re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. The more or less com­pos­ite and com­pro­mis­ing tran­si­tion stage be­tween the ma­te­ri­al­is­tic con­cepts of the king­dom held by the Mas­ter’s fol­low­ers and those more ide­al­is­tic and spir­i­tual con­cepts taught by Je­sus, had now def­i­nitely ended. From now on there was a more open procla­ma­tion of the gospel of the king­dom in its larger scope and in its far-flung spir­i­tual im­pli­ca­tions.