Fleeing Through Northern Galilee

155:4.1On Thurs­day morn­ing, June 9, af­ter re­ceiv­ing word re­gard­ing the prog­ress of the king­dom brought by the mes­sen­gers of David from Beth­saida, this group of twenty-five teach­ers of truth left Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi to be­gin their jour­ney to the Phoeni­cian coast. They passed around the marsh coun­try, by way of Luz, to the point of junc­tion with the Mag­dala-Mount Lebanon trail road, thence to the cross­ing with the road lead­ing to Sidon, ar­riv­ing there Fri­day af­ter­noon.

155:4.2While paus­ing for lunch un­der the shadow of an over­hang­ing ledge of rock, near Luz, Je­sus de­liv­ered one of the most re­mark­able ad­dresses which his apos­tles ever lis­tened to through­out all their years of as­so­ci­a­tion with him. No sooner had they seated them­selves to break bread than Si­mon Pe­ter asked Je­sus: “Mas­ter, since the Fa­ther in heaven knows all things, and since his spirit is our sup­port in the es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom of heaven on earth, why is it that we flee from the threats of our en­e­mies? Why do we refuse to con­front the foes of truth?” But be­fore Je­sus had be­gun to an­swer Pe­ter’s ques­tion, Thomas broke in, ask­ing: “Mas­ter, I should re­ally like to know just what is wrong with the re­li­gion of our en­e­mies at Je­ru­sa­lem. What is the real dif­fer­ence be­tween their re­li­gion and ours? Why is it we are at such di­ver­sity of be­lief when we all pro­fess to serve the same God?” And when Thomas had fin­ished, Je­sus said: “While I would not ig­nore Pe­ter’s ques­tion, know­ing full well how easy it would be to mis­un­der­stand my rea­sons for avoid­ing an open clash with the rulers of the Jews at just this time, still it will prove more help­ful to all of you if I choose rather to an­swer Thomas’s ques­tion. And that I will pro­ceed to do when you have fin­ished your lunch.”