Just Before the Crucifixion

186:3.1Shortly af­ter Je­sus was turned over to the Ro­man sol­diers at the con­clu­sion of the hear­ing be­fore Pi­late, a de­tach­ment of the tem­ple guards has­tened out to Geth­sem­ane to dis­perse or ar­rest the fol­low­ers of the Mas­ter. But long be­fore their ar­rival these fol­low­ers had scat­tered. The apos­tles had re­tired to des­ig­nated hid­ing places; the Greeks had sep­a­rated and gone to var­i­ous homes in Je­ru­sa­lem; the other dis­ci­ples had like­wise dis­ap­peared. David Zeb­e­dee be­lieved that Je­sus’ en­e­mies would re­turn; so he early re­moved some five or six tents up the ravine near where the Mas­ter so of­ten re­tired to pray and wor­ship. Here he pro­posed to hide and at the same time main­tain a cen­ter, or co-or­di­nat­ing sta­tion, for his mes­sen­ger ser­vice. David had hardly left the camp when the tem­ple guards ar­rived. Find­ing no one there, they con­tented them­selves with burn­ing the camp and then has­tened back to the tem­ple. On hear­ing their re­port, the San­hedrin was sat­is­fied that the fol­low­ers of Je­sus were so thor­oughly fright­ened and sub­dued that there would be no dan­ger of an up­ris­ing or any at­tempt to res­cue Je­sus from the hands of his ex­e­cu­tion­ers. They were at last able to breathe eas­ily, and so they ad­journed, ev­ery man go­ing his way to pre­pare for the Pass­over.

186:3.2As soon as Je­sus was turned over to the Ro­man sol­diers by Pi­late for cru­ci­fix­ion, a mes­sen­ger has­tened away to Geth­sem­ane to in­form David, and within five min­utes run­ners were on their way to Beth­saida, Pella, Phil­a­del­phia, Sidon, Shechem, He­bron, Da­mas­cus, and Alexan­dria. And these mes­sen­gers car­ried the news that Je­sus was about to be cru­ci­fied by the Ro­mans at the in­sis­tent be­hest of the rulers of the Jews.

186:3.3Through­out this tragic day, un­til the mes­sage fi­nally went forth that the Mas­ter had been laid in the tomb, David sent mes­sen­gers about ev­ery half hour with re­ports to the apos­tles, the Greeks, and Je­sus’ earthly fam­ily, as­sem­bled at the home of Laz­a­rus in Beth­any. When the mes­sen­gers de­parted with the word that Je­sus had been buried, David dis­missed his corps of lo­cal run­ners for the Pass­over cel­e­bra­tion and for the com­ing Sab­bath of rest, in­struct­ing them to re­port to him qui­etly on Sun­day morn­ing at the home of Nicode­mus, where he pro­posed to go in hid­ing for a few days with An­drew and Si­mon Pe­ter.

186:3.4This pe­cu­liar-minded David Zeb­e­dee was the only one of the lead­ing dis­ci­ples of Je­sus who was in­clined to take a lit­eral and plain mat­ter-of-fact view of the Mas­ter’s as­ser­tion that he would die and “rise again on the third day.” David had once heard him make this pre­dic­tion and, be­ing of a lit­eral turn of mind, now pro­posed to as­sem­ble his mes­sen­gers early Sun­day morn­ing at the home of Nicode­mus so that they would be on hand to spread the news in case Je­sus rose from the dead. David soon dis­cov­ered that none of Je­sus’ fol­low­ers were look­ing for him to re­turn so soon from the grave; there­fore did he say lit­tle about his be­lief and noth­ing about the mo­bi­liza­tion of all his mes­sen­ger force on early Sun­day morn­ing ex­cept to the run­ners who had been dis­patched on Fri­day forenoon to dis­tant cities and be­liever cen­ters.

186:3.5And so these fol­low­ers of Je­sus, scat­tered through­out Je­ru­sa­lem and its en­vi­rons, that night par­took of the Pass­over and the fol­low­ing day re­mained in seclu­sion.