At Caesarea-Philippi

157:7.1That evening An­drew took it upon him­self to hold a per­sonal and search­ing con­fer­ence with each of his breth­ren, and he had prof­itable and heart­en­ing talks with all of his as­so­ciates ex­cept Ju­das Is­car­iot. An­drew had never en­joyed such in­ti­mate per­sonal as­so­ci­a­tion with Ju­das as with the other apos­tles and there­fore had not thought it of se­ri­ous ac­count that Ju­das never had freely and con­fi­den­tially re­lated him­self to the head of the apos­tolic corps. But An­drew was now so wor­ried by Ju­das’s at­ti­tude that, later on that night, af­ter all the apos­tles were fast asleep, he sought out Je­sus and pre­sented his cause for anx­i­ety to the Mas­ter. Said Je­sus: “It is not amiss, An­drew, that you have come to me with this mat­ter, but there is noth­ing more that we can do; only go on plac­ing the ut­most con­fi­dence in this apos­tle. And say noth­ing to his breth­ren con­cern­ing this talk with me.”

157:7.2And that was all An­drew could elicit from Je­sus. Al­ways had there been some strangeness be­tween this Judean and his Galilean breth­ren. Ju­das had been shocked by the death of John the Bap­tist, severely hurt by the Mas­ter’s re­bukes on sev­eral oc­ca­sions, dis­ap­pointed when Je­sus re­fused to be made king, hu­mil­i­ated when he fled from the Phar­isees, cha­grined when he re­fused to ac­cept the chal­lenge of the Phar­isees for a sign, be­wil­dered by the re­fusal of his Mas­ter to re­sort to man­i­fes­ta­tions of power, and now, more re­cently, de­pressed and some­times de­jected by an empty trea­sury. And Ju­das missed the stim­u­lus of the mul­ti­tudes.

157:7.3Each of the other apos­tles was, in some and vary­ing mea­sure, like­wise af­fected by these self­same tri­als and tribu­la­tions, but they loved Je­sus. At least they must have loved the Mas­ter more than did Ju­das, for they went through with him to the bit­ter end.

157:7.4Be­ing from Judea, Ju­das took per­sonal of­fense at Je­sus’ re­cent warn­ing to the apos­tles to “be­ware the leaven of the Phar­isees”; he was dis­posed to re­gard this state­ment as a veiled ref­er­ence to him­self. But the great mis­take of Ju­das was: Time and again, when Je­sus would send his apos­tles off by them­selves to pray, Ju­das, in­stead of en­gag­ing in sin­cere com­mu­nion with the spir­i­tual forces of the uni­verse, in­dulged in thoughts of hu­man fear while he per­sisted in the en­ter­tain­ment of sub­tle doubts about the mis­sion of Je­sus as well as giv­ing in to his un­for­tu­nate ten­dency to har­bor feel­ings of re­venge.

157:7.5And now Je­sus would take his apos­tles along with him to Mount Her­mon, where he had ap­pointed to in­au­gu­rate his fourth phase of earth min­istry as the Son of God. Some of them were pres­ent at his bap­tism in the Jor­dan and had wit­nessed the be­gin­ning of his ca­reer as the Son of Man, and he de­sired that some of them should also be pres­ent to hear his au­thor­ity for the as­sump­tion of the new and pub­lic role of a Son of God. Ac­cord­ingly, on the morn­ing of Fri­day, Au­gust 12, Je­sus said to the twelve: “Lay in pro­vi­sions and pre­pare your­selves for a jour­ney to yon­der moun­tain, where the spirit bids me go to be en­dowed for the fin­ish of my work on earth. And I would take my breth­ren along that they may also be strength­ened for the try­ing times of go­ing with me through this ex­pe­ri­ence.”