The Resurrection of Lazarus

168:5.1Laz­a­rus re­mained at the Beth­any home, be­ing the cen­ter of great in­ter­est to many sin­cere be­liev­ers and to nu­mer­ous cu­ri­ous in­di­vid­u­als, un­til the days of the cru­ci­fix­ion of Je­sus, when he re­ceived warn­ing that the San­hedrin had de­creed his death. The rulers of the Jews were de­ter­mined to put a stop to the fur­ther spread of the teach­ings of Je­sus, and they well judged that it would be use­less to put Je­sus to death if they per­mit­ted Laz­a­rus, who rep­re­sented the very peak of his won­der-work­ing, to live and bear tes­ti­mony to the fact that Je­sus had raised him from the dead. Al­ready had Laz­a­rus suf­fered bit­ter per­se­cu­tion from them.

168:5.2And so Laz­a­rus took hasty leave of his sis­ters at Beth­any, flee­ing down through Jeri­cho and across the Jor­dan, never per­mit­ting him­self to rest long un­til he had reached Phil­a­del­phia. Laz­a­rus knew Ab­ner well, and here he felt safe from the mur­der­ous in­trigues of the wicked San­hedrin.

168:5.3Soon af­ter this Martha and Mary dis­posed of their lands at Beth­any and joined their brother in Perea. Mean­time, Laz­a­rus had be­come the trea­surer of the church at Phil­a­del­phia. He be­came a strong sup­porter of Ab­ner in his con­tro­versy with Paul and the Je­ru­sa­lem church and ul­ti­mately died, when 67 years old, of the same sick­ness that car­ried him off when he was a younger man at Beth­any.