Final Admonitions and Warnings

181:0.1Af­ter the con­clu­sion of the farewell dis­course to the eleven, Je­sus vis­ited in­for­mally with them and re­counted many ex­pe­ri­ences which con­cerned them as a group and as in­di­vid­u­als. At last it was be­gin­ning to dawn upon these Galileans that their friend and teacher was go­ing to leave them, and their hope grasped at the prom­ise that, af­ter a lit­tle while, he would again be with them, but they were prone to for­get that this re­turn visit was also for a lit­tle while. Many of the apos­tles and the lead­ing dis­ci­ples re­ally thought that this prom­ise to re­turn for a short sea­son (the short in­ter­val be­tween the res­ur­rec­tion and the as­cen­sion) in­di­cated that Je­sus was just go­ing away for a brief visit with his Fa­ther, af­ter which he would re­turn to es­tab­lish the king­dom. And such an in­ter­pre­ta­tion of his teach­ing con­formed both with their pre­con­ceived be­liefs and with their ar­dent hopes. Since their life­long be­liefs and hopes of wish ful­fill­ment were thus agreed, it was not dif­fi­cult for them to find an in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the Mas­ter’s words which would jus­tify their in­tense long­ings.

181:0.2Af­ter the farewell dis­course had been dis­cussed and had be­gun to set­tle down in their minds, Je­sus again called the apos­tles to or­der and be­gan the im­par­ta­tion of his fi­nal ad­mo­ni­tions and warn­ings.