The Visit to Philadelphia

167:4.1Very late on Sun­day night, Febru­ary 26, a run­ner from Beth­any ar­rived at Phil­a­del­phia, bring­ing a mes­sage from Martha and Mary which said, “Lord, he whom you love is very sick.” This mes­sage reached Je­sus at the close of the evening con­fer­ence and just as he was tak­ing leave of the apos­tles for the night. At first Je­sus made no re­ply. There oc­curred one of those strange in­ter­ludes, a time when he ap­peared to be in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with some­thing out­side of, and be­yond, him­self. And then, look­ing up, he ad­dressed the mes­sen­ger in the hear­ing of the apos­tles, say­ing: “This sick­ness is re­ally not to the death. Doubt not that it may be used to glo­rify God and ex­alt the Son.”

167:4.2Je­sus was very fond of Martha, Mary, and their brother, Laz­a­rus; he loved them with a fer­vent af­fec­tion. His first and hu­man thought was to go to their as­sis­tance at once, but an­other idea came into his com­bined mind. He had al­most given up hope that the Jew­ish lead­ers at Je­ru­sa­lem would ever ac­cept the king­dom, but he still loved his peo­ple, and there now oc­curred to him a plan whereby the scribes and Phar­isees of Je­ru­sa­lem might have one more chance to ac­cept his teach­ings; and he de­cided, his Fa­ther will­ing, to make this last ap­peal to Je­ru­sa­lem the most pro­found and stu­pen­dous out­ward work­ing of his en­tire earth ca­reer. The Jews clung to the idea of a won­der-work­ing de­liv­erer. And though he re­fused to stoop to the per­for­mance of ma­te­rial won­ders or to the en­act­ment of tem­po­ral ex­hi­bi­tions of po­lit­i­cal power, he did now ask the Fa­ther’s con­sent for the man­i­fes­ta­tion of his hith­erto un­ex­hib­ited power over life and death.

167:4.3The Jews were in the habit of bury­ing their dead on the day of their demise; this was a nec­es­sary prac­tice in such a warm cli­mate. It of­ten hap­pened that they put in the tomb one who was merely co­matose, so that on the sec­ond or even the third day, such a one would come forth from the tomb. But it was the be­lief of the Jews that, while the spirit or soul might linger near the body for two or three days, it never tar­ried af­ter the third day; that de­cay was well ad­vanced by the fourth day, and that no one ever re­turned from the tomb af­ter the lapse of such a pe­riod. And it was for these rea­sons that Je­sus tar­ried yet two full days in Phil­a­del­phia be­fore he made ready to start for Beth­any.

167:4.4Ac­cord­ingly, early on Wednes­day morn­ing he said to his apos­tles: “Let us pre­pare at once to go into Judea again.” And when the apos­tles heard their Mas­ter say this, they drew off by them­selves for a time to take coun­sel of one an­other. James as­sumed the di­rec­tion of the con­fer­ence, and they all agreed that it was only folly to al­low Je­sus to go again into Judea, and they came back as one man and so in­formed him. Said James: “Mas­ter, you were in Je­ru­sa­lem a few weeks back, and the lead­ers sought your death, while the peo­ple were minded to stone you. At that time you gave these men their chance to re­ceive the truth, and we will not per­mit you to go again into Judea.”

167:4.5Then said Je­sus: “But do you not un­der­stand that there are twelve hours of the day in which work may safely be done? If a man walks in the day, he does not stum­ble inas­much as he has light. If a man walks in the night, he is li­able to stum­ble since he is with­out light. As long as my day lasts, I fear not to en­ter Judea. I would do one more mighty work for these Jews; I would give them one more chance to be­lieve, even on their own terms—con­di­tions of out­ward glory and the vis­i­ble man­i­fes­ta­tion of the power of the Fa­ther and the love of the Son. Be­sides, do you not re­al­ize that our friend Laz­a­rus has fallen asleep, and I would go to awake him out of this sleep!”

167:4.6Then said one of the apos­tles: “Mas­ter, if Laz­a­rus has fallen asleep, then will he the more surely re­cover.” It was the cus­tom of the Jews at that time to speak of death as a form of sleep, but as the apos­tles did not un­der­stand that Je­sus meant that Laz­a­rus had de­parted from this world, he now said plainly: “Laz­a­rus is dead. And I am glad for your sakes, even if the oth­ers are not thereby saved, that I was not there, to the end that you shall now have new cause to be­lieve in me; and by that which you will wit­ness, you should all be strength­ened in prepa­ra­tion for that day when I shall take leave of you and go to the Fa­ther.”

167:4.7When they could not per­suade him to re­frain from go­ing into Judea, and when some of the apos­tles were loath even to ac­com­pany him, Thomas ad­dressed his fel­lows, say­ing: “We have told the Mas­ter our fears, but he is de­ter­mined to go to Beth­any. I am sat­is­fied it means the end; they will surely kill him, but if that is the Mas­ter’s choice, then let us ac­quit our­selves like men of cour­age; let us go also that we may die with him.” And it was ever so; in mat­ters re­quir­ing de­lib­er­ate and sus­tained cour­age, Thomas was al­ways the main­stay of the twelve apos­tles.