Last Days at Capernaum

154:2.1Sun­day, May 8, A.D. 29, at Je­ru­sa­lem, the San­hedrin passed a de­cree clos­ing all the syn­a­gogues of Pales­tine to Je­sus and his fol­low­ers. This was a new and un­prece­dented usurpa­tion of au­thor­ity by the Je­ru­sa­lem San­hedrin. Thereto­fore each syn­a­gogue had ex­isted and func­tioned as an in­de­pen­dent con­gre­ga­tion of wor­shipers and was un­der the rule and di­rec­tion of its own board of gov­er­nors. Only the syn­a­gogues of Je­ru­sa­lem had been sub­ject to the au­thor­ity of the San­hedrin. This sum­mary ac­tion of the San­hedrin was fol­lowed by the res­ig­na­tion of five of its mem­bers. One hun­dred mes­sen­gers were im­me­di­ately dis­patched to con­vey and en­force this de­cree. Within the short space of two weeks ev­ery syn­a­gogue in Pales­tine had bowed to this man­i­festo of the San­hedrin ex­cept the syn­a­gogue at He­bron. The rulers of the He­bron syn­a­gogue re­fused to ac­knowl­edge the right of the San­hedrin to ex­er­cise such ju­ris­dic­tion over their as­sem­bly. This re­fusal to ac­cede to the Je­ru­sa­lem de­cree was based on their con­tention of con­gre­ga­tional au­ton­omy rather than on sym­pa­thy with Je­sus’ cause. Shortly there­after the He­bron syn­a­gogue was de­stroyed by fire.

154:2.2This same Sun­day morn­ing, Je­sus de­clared a week’s hol­i­day, urg­ing all of his dis­ci­ples to re­turn to their homes or friends to rest their trou­bled souls and speak words of en­cour­age­ment to their loved ones. He said: “Go to your sev­eral places to play or fish while you pray for the ex­ten­sion of the king­dom.”

154:2.3This week of rest en­abled Je­sus to visit many fam­i­lies and groups about the sea­side. He also went fish­ing with David Zeb­e­dee on sev­eral oc­ca­sions, and while he went about alone much of the time, there al­ways lurked near by two or three of David’s most trusted mes­sen­gers, who had no un­cer­tain or­ders from their chief re­spect­ing the safe­guard­ing of Je­sus. There was no pub­lic teach­ing of any sort dur­ing this week of rest.

154:2.4This was the week that Na­than­iel and James Zeb­e­dee suf­fered from more than a slight ill­ness. For three days and nights they were acutely af­flicted with a painful di­ges­tive dis­tur­bance. On the third night Je­sus sent Sa­lome, James’s mother, to her rest, while he min­is­tered to his suf­fer­ing apos­tles. Of course Je­sus could have in­stantly healed these two men, but that is not the method of ei­ther the Son or the Fa­ther in deal­ing with these com­mon­place dif­fi­cul­ties and af­flic­tions of the chil­dren of men on the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds of time and space. Never once, through­out all of his event­ful life in the flesh, did Je­sus en­gage in any sort of super­nat­u­ral min­is­tra­tion to any mem­ber of his earth fam­ily or in be­half of any one of his im­me­di­ate fol­low­ers.

154:2.5Uni­verse dif­fi­cul­ties must be met and plan­e­tary ob­sta­cles must be en­coun­tered as a part of the ex­pe­ri­ence train­ing pro­vided for the growth and de­vel­op­ment, the pro­gres­sive per­fec­tion, of the evolv­ing souls of mor­tal crea­tures. The spir­i­tu­al­iza­tion of the hu­man soul re­quires in­ti­mate ex­pe­ri­ence with the ed­u­ca­tional solv­ing of a wide range of real uni­verse prob­lems. The an­i­mal na­ture and the lower forms of will crea­tures do not pro­gress fa­vor­ably in en­vi­ron­men­tal ease. Prob­lem­atic sit­u­a­tions, cou­pled with ex­er­tion stim­uli, con­spire to pro­duce those ac­tiv­i­ties of mind, soul, and spirit which con­tribute might­ily to the achieve­ment of wor­thy goals of mor­tal pro­gres­sion and to the at­tain­ment of higher lev­els of spirit des­tiny.