On the Way to Jerusalem

171:1.1On the forenoon of Mon­day, March 13, Je­sus and his twelve apos­tles took fi­nal leave of the Pella en­camp­ment, start­ing south on their tour of the cities of south­ern Perea, where Ab­ner’s as­so­ciates were at work. They spent more than two weeks vis­it­ing among the sev­enty and then went di­rectly to Je­ru­sa­lem for the Pass­over.

171:1.2When the Mas­ter left Pella, the dis­ci­ples en­camped with the apos­tles, about one thou­sand in num­ber, fol­lowed af­ter him. About one half of this group left him at the Jor­dan ford on the road to Jeri­cho when they learned he was go­ing over to Hes­h­bon, and af­ter he had preached the ser­mon on “Count­ing the Cost.” They went on up to Je­ru­sa­lem, while the other half fol­lowed him for two weeks, vis­it­ing the towns in south­ern Perea.

171:1.3In a gen­eral way, most of Je­sus’ im­me­di­ate fol­low­ers un­der­stood that the camp at Pella had been aban­doned, but they re­ally thought this in­di­cated that their Mas­ter at last in­tended to go to Je­ru­sa­lem and lay claim to David’s throne. A large ma­jor­ity of his fol­low­ers never were able to grasp any other con­cept of the king­dom of heaven; no mat­ter what he taught them, they would not give up this Jew­ish idea of the king­dom.

171:1.4Act­ing on the in­struc­tions of the Apos­tle An­drew, David Zeb­e­dee closed the vis­i­tors’ camp at Pella on Wednes­day, March 15. At this time al­most four thou­sand vis­i­tors were in res­i­dence, and this does not in­clude the one thou­sand and more per­sons who so­journed with the apos­tles at what was known as the teach­ers’ camp, and who went south with Je­sus and the twelve. Much as David dis­liked to do it, he sold the en­tire equip­ment to nu­mer­ous buy­ers and pro­ceeded with the funds to Je­ru­sa­lem, sub­se­quently turn­ing the money over to Ju­das Is­car­iot.

171:1.5David was pres­ent in Je­ru­sa­lem dur­ing the tragic last week, tak­ing his mother back with him to Beth­saida af­ter the cru­ci­fix­ion. While await­ing Je­sus and the apos­tles, David stopped with Laz­a­rus at Beth­any and be­came tremen­dously ag­i­tated by the man­ner in which the Phar­isees had be­gun to per­se­cute and ha­rass him since his res­ur­rec­tion. An­drew had di­rected David to dis­con­tinue the mes­sen­ger ser­vice; and this was con­strued by all as an in­di­ca­tion of the early es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom at Je­ru­sa­lem. David found him­self with­out a job, and he had about de­cided to be­come the self-ap­pointed de­fender of Laz­a­rus when pres­ently the ob­ject of his in­dig­nant so­lic­i­tude fled in haste to Phil­a­del­phia. Ac­cord­ingly, some­time af­ter the res­ur­rec­tion and also af­ter the death of his mother, David be­took him­self to Phil­a­del­phia, hav­ing first as­sisted Martha and Mary in dis­pos­ing of their real es­tate; and there, in as­so­ci­a­tion with Ab­ner and Laz­a­rus, he spent the re­main­der of his life, be­com­ing the fi­nan­cial over­seer of all those large in­ter­ests of the king­dom which had their cen­ter at Phil­a­del­phia dur­ing the life­time of Ab­ner.

171:1.6Within a short time af­ter the de­struc­tion of Je­ru­sa­lem, An­ti­och be­came the head­quar­ters of Pauline Chris­tian­ity, while Phil­a­del­phia re­mained the cen­ter of the Ab­ne­r­ian king­dom of heaven. From An­ti­och the Pauline ver­sion of the teach­ings of Je­sus and about Je­sus spread to all the West­ern world; from Phil­a­del­phia the mis­sion­ar­ies of the Ab­ne­r­ian ver­sion of the king­dom of heaven spread through­out Mes­o­po­ta­mia and Ara­bia un­til the later times when these un­com­pro­mis­ing emis­saries of the teach­ings of Je­sus were over­whelmed by the sud­den rise of Is­lam.