Wednesday, the Rest Day

177:3.1The apos­tles spent most of this day walk­ing about on Mount Oli­vet and vis­it­ing with the dis­ci­ples who were en­camped with them, but early in the af­ter­noon they be­came very de­sirous of see­ing Je­sus re­turn. As the day wore on, they grew in­creas­ingly anx­ious about his safety; they felt in­ex­press­ibly lonely with­out him. There was much de­bat­ing through­out the day as to whether the Mas­ter should have been al­lowed to go off by him­self in the hills, ac­com­pa­nied only by an er­rand boy. Though no man openly so ex­pressed his thoughts, there was not one of them, save Ju­das Is­car­iot, who did not wish him­self in John Mark’s place.

177:3.2It was about midafter­noon when Na­than­iel made his speech on “Su­preme De­sire” to about half a dozen of the apos­tles and as many dis­ci­ples, the end­ing of which was: “What is wrong with most of us is that we are only half­hearted. We fail to love the Mas­ter as he loves us. If we had all wanted to go with him as much as John Mark did, he would surely have taken us all. We stood by while the lad ap­proached the Mas­ter and of­fered him the bas­ket, but when the Mas­ter took hold of it, the lad would not let go. And so the Mas­ter left us here while he went off to the hills with bas­ket, boy, and all.”

177:3.3About four o’clock, run­ners came to David Zeb­e­dee bring­ing him word from his mother at Beth­saida and from Je­sus’ mother. Sev­eral days pre­vi­ously David had made up his mind that the chief priests and rulers were go­ing to kill Je­sus. David knew they were de­ter­mined to de­stroy the Mas­ter, and he was about con­vinced that Je­sus would nei­ther ex­ert his di­vine power to save him­self nor per­mit his fol­low­ers to em­ploy force in his de­fense. Hav­ing reached these con­clu­sions, he lost no time in dis­patch­ing a mes­sen­ger to his mother, urg­ing her to come at once to Je­ru­sa­lem and to bring Mary the mother of Je­sus and ev­ery mem­ber of his fam­ily.

177:3.4David’s mother did as her son re­quested, and now the run­ners came back to David bring­ing the word that his mother and Je­sus’ en­tire fam­ily were on the way to Je­ru­sa­lem and should ar­rive some­time late on the fol­low­ing day or very early the next morn­ing. Since David did this on his own ini­tia­tive, he thought it wise to keep the mat­ter to him­self. He told no one, there­fore, that Je­sus’ fam­ily was on the way to Je­ru­sa­lem.

177:3.5Shortly af­ter noon, more than twenty of the Greeks who had met with Je­sus and the twelve at the home of Joseph of Ari­mathea ar­rived at the camp, and Pe­ter and John spent sev­eral hours in con­fer­ence with them. These Greeks, at least some of them, were well ad­vanced in the knowl­edge of the king­dom, hav­ing been in­structed by Ro­dan at Alexan­dria.

177:3.6That evening, af­ter re­turn­ing to the camp, Je­sus vis­ited with the Greeks, and had it not been that such a course would have greatly dis­turbed his apos­tles and many of his lead­ing dis­ci­ples, he would have or­dained these twenty Greeks, even as he had the sev­enty.

177:3.7While all of this was go­ing on at the camp, in Je­ru­sa­lem the chief priests and el­ders were amazed that Je­sus did not re­turn to ad­dress the mul­ti­tudes. True, the day be­fore, when he left the tem­ple, he had said, “I leave your house to you des­o­late.” But they could not un­der­stand why he would be will­ing to forgo the great ad­van­tage which he had built up in the friendly at­ti­tude of the crowds. While they feared he would stir up a tu­mult among the peo­ple, the Mas­ter’s last words to the mul­ti­tude had been an ex­hor­ta­tion to con­form in ev­ery rea­son­able man­ner with the au­thor­ity of those “who sit in Moses’ seat.” But it was a busy day in the city as they si­mul­ta­ne­ously pre­pared for the Pass­over and per­fected their plans for de­stroy­ing Je­sus.

177:3.8Not many peo­ple came to the camp, for its es­tab­lish­ment had been kept a well-guarded se­cret by all who knew that Je­sus was ex­pect­ing to stay there in place of go­ing out to Beth­any ev­ery night.