Appearances in Galilee

192:0.1By the time the apos­tles left Je­ru­sa­lem for Gal­i­lee, the Jew­ish lead­ers had qui­eted down con­sid­er­ably. Since Je­sus ap­peared only to his fam­ily of king­dom be­liev­ers, and since the apos­tles were in hid­ing and did no pub­lic preach­ing, the rulers of the Jews con­cluded that the gospel move­ment was, af­ter all, ef­fec­tu­ally crushed. They were, of course, dis­con­certed by the in­creas­ing spread of ru­mors that Je­sus had risen from the dead, but they de­pended upon the bribed guards ef­fec­tively to coun­ter­act all such re­ports by their re­it­er­a­tion of the story that a band of his fol­low­ers had re­moved the body.

192:0.2From this time on, un­til the apos­tles were dis­persed by the ris­ing tide of per­se­cu­tion, Pe­ter was the gen­er­ally rec­og­nized head of the apos­tolic corps. Je­sus never gave him any such au­thor­ity, and his fel­low apos­tles never for­mally elected him to such a po­si­tion of re­spon­si­bil­ity; he nat­u­rally as­sumed it and held it by com­mon con­sent and also be­cause he was their chief preacher. From now on pub­lic preach­ing be­came the main busi­ness of the apos­tles. Af­ter their re­turn from Gal­i­lee, Matthias, whom they chose to take the place of Ju­das, be­came their trea­surer.

192:0.3Dur­ing the week they tar­ried in Je­ru­sa­lem, Mary the mother of Je­sus spent much of the time with the women be­liev­ers who were stop­ping at the home of Joseph of Ari­mathea.

192:0.4Early this Mon­day morn­ing when the apos­tles de­parted for Gal­i­lee, John Mark went along. He fol­lowed them out of the city, and when they had passed well be­yond Beth­any, he boldly came up among them, feel­ing con­fi­dent they would not send him back.

192:0.5The apos­tles paused sev­eral times on the way to Gal­i­lee to tell the story of their risen Mas­ter and there­fore did not ar­rive at Beth­saida un­til very late on Wednes­day night. It was noon­time on Thurs­day be­fore they were all awake and ready to par­take of break­fast.