Last Day at the Camp

178:3.1Seek­ing again to avoid the crowds pass­ing through the Kidron val­ley back and forth be­tween Geth­sem­ane Park and Je­ru­sa­lem, Je­sus and the twelve walked over the west­ern brow of Mount Oli­vet to meet the road lead­ing from Beth­any down to the city. As they drew near the place where Je­sus had tar­ried the pre­vi­ous evening to dis­course on the de­struc­tion of Je­ru­sa­lem, they un­con­sciously paused while they stood and looked down in si­lence upon the city. As they were a lit­tle early, and since Je­sus did not wish to pass through the city un­til af­ter sun­set, he said to his as­so­ciates:

178:3.2“Sit down and rest your­selves while I talk with you about what must shortly come to pass. All these years have I lived with you as breth­ren, and I have taught you the truth con­cern­ing the king­dom of heaven and have re­vealed to you the mys­ter­ies thereof. And my Fa­ther has in­deed done many won­der­ful works in con­nec­tion with my mis­sion on earth. You have been wit­nesses of all this and par­tak­ers in the ex­pe­ri­ence of be­ing la­bor­ers to­gether with God. And you will bear me wit­ness that I have for some time warned you that I must pres­ently re­turn to the work the Fa­ther has given me to do; I have plainly told you that I must leave you in the world to carry on the work of the king­dom. It was for this pur­pose that I set you apart, in the hills of Ca­per­naum. The ex­pe­ri­ence you have had with me, you must now make ready to share with oth­ers. As the Fa­ther sent me into this world, so am I about to send you forth to rep­re­sent me and fin­ish the work I have be­gun.

178:3.3“You look down on yon­der city in sor­row, for you have heard my words telling of the end of Je­ru­sa­lem. I have fore­warned you lest you should per­ish in her de­struc­tion and so de­lay the procla­ma­tion of the gospel of the king­dom. Like­wise do I warn you to take heed lest you need­lessly ex­pose your­selves to peril when they come to take the Son of Man. I must go, but you are to re­main to wit­ness to this gospel when I have gone, even as I di­rected that Laz­a­rus flee from the wrath of man that he might live to make known the glory of God. If it is the Fa­ther’s will that I de­part, noth­ing you may do can frus­trate the di­vine plan. Take heed to your­selves lest they kill you also. Let your souls be valiant in de­fense of the gospel by spirit power but be not mis­led into any fool­ish at­tempt to de­fend the Son of Man. I need no de­fense by the hand of man; the armies of heaven are even now near at hand; but I am de­ter­mined to do the will of my Fa­ther in heaven, and there­fore must we sub­mit to that which is so soon to come upon us.

178:3.4“When you see this city de­stroyed, for­get not that you have en­tered al­ready upon the eter­nal life of end­less ser­vice in the ever-ad­vanc­ing king­dom of heaven, even of the heaven of heav­ens. You should know that in my Fa­ther’s uni­verse and in mine are many abodes, and that there awaits the chil­dren of light the rev­e­la­tion of cities whose builder is God and worlds whose habit of life is righ­teous­ness and joy in the truth. I have brought the king­dom of heaven to you here on earth, but I de­clare that all of you who by faith en­ter therein and re­main therein by the liv­ing ser­vice of truth, shall surely as­cend to the worlds on high and sit with me in the spirit king­dom of our Fa­ther. But first must you gird your­selves and com­plete the work which you have be­gun with me. You must first pass through much tribu­la­tion and en­dure many sor­rows—and these tri­als are even now upon us—and when you have fin­ished your work on earth, you shall come to my joy, even as I have fin­ished my Fa­ther’s work on earth and am about to re­turn to his em­brace.”

178:3.5When the Mas­ter had spo­ken, he arose, and they all fol­lowed him down Oli­vet and into the city. None of the apos­tles, save three, knew where they were go­ing as they made their way along the nar­row streets in the ap­proach­ing dark­ness. The crowds jos­tled them, but no one rec­og­nized them nor knew that the Son of God was pass­ing by on his way to the last mor­tal ren­dezvous with his cho­sen am­bas­sadors of the king­dom. And nei­ther did the apos­tles know that one of their own num­ber had al­ready en­tered into a con­spir­acy to be­tray the Mas­ter into the hands of his en­e­mies.

178:3.6John Mark had fol­lowed them all the way into the city, and af­ter they had en­tered the gate, he hur­ried on by an­other street so that he was wait­ing to wel­come them to his fa­ther’s home when they ar­rived.