Last Days at Capernaum

154:7.1And so it was on this Sun­day morn­ing, the twenty-sec­ond of May, in the year A.D. 29, that Je­sus, with his twelve apos­tles and the twelve evan­ge­lists, en­gaged in this hasty flight from the San­hedrin of­fi­cers who were on their way to Beth­saida with au­thor­ity from Herod An­tipas to ar­rest him and take him to Je­ru­sa­lem for trial on charges of blas­phemy and other vi­o­la­tions of the sa­cred laws of the Jews. It was al­most half past eight this beau­ti­ful morn­ing when this com­pany of twenty-five manned the oars and pulled for the east­ern shore of the Sea of Gal­i­lee.

154:7.2Fol­low­ing the Mas­ter’s boat was an­other and smaller craft, con­tain­ing six of David’s mes­sen­gers, who had in­struc­tions to main­tain con­tact with Je­sus and his as­so­ciates and to see that in­for­ma­tion of their where­abouts and safety was reg­u­larly trans­mit­ted to the home of Zeb­e­dee in Beth­saida, which had served as head­quar­ters for the work of the king­dom for some time. But Je­sus was never again to make his home at the house of Zeb­e­dee. From now on, through­out the re­main­der of his earth life, the Mas­ter truly “had not where to lay his head.” No more did he have even the sem­blance of a set­tled abode.

154:7.3They rowed over to near the vil­lage of Kheresa, put their boat in the cus­tody of friends, and be­gan the wan­der­ings of this event­ful last year of the Mas­ter’s life on earth. For a time they re­mained in the do­mains of Philip, go­ing from Kheresa up to Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi, thence mak­ing their way over to the coast of Phoeni­cia.

154:7.4The crowd lin­gered about the home of Zeb­e­dee watch­ing these two boats make their way over the lake to­ward the east­ern shore, and they were well started when the Je­ru­sa­lem of­fi­cers hur­ried up and be­gan their search for Je­sus. They re­fused to be­lieve he had es­caped them, and while Je­sus and his party were jour­ney­ing north­ward through Batanea, the Phar­isees and their as­sis­tants spent al­most a full week vainly search­ing for him in the neigh­bor­hood of Ca­per­naum.

154:7.5Je­sus’ fam­ily re­turned to their home in Ca­per­naum and spent al­most a week in talk­ing, de­bat­ing, and pray­ing. They were filled with con­fu­sion and con­ster­na­tion. They en­joyed no peace of mind un­til Thurs­day af­ter­noon, when Ruth re­turned from a visit to the Zeb­e­dee house, where she learned from David that her fa­ther-brother was safe and in good health and mak­ing his way to­ward the Phoeni­cian coast.