Caesarea-Philippi

• Caesarea-Philippi

134:8.1Af­ter spend­ing some time in the vicin­ity of Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi, Je­sus made ready his sup­plies, and se­cur­ing a beast of bur­den and a lad named Tiglath, he pro­ceeded along the Da­mas­cus road to a vil­lage some­time known as Beit Jenn in the foothills of Mount Her­mon. Here, near the mid­dle of Au­gust, A.D. 25, he es­tab­lished his head­quar­ters, and leav­ing his sup­plies in the cus­tody of Tiglath, he as­cended the lonely slopes of the moun­tain. Tiglath ac­com­pa­nied Je­sus this first day up the moun­tain to a des­ig­nated point about 6,000 feet above sea level, where they built a stone con­tainer in which Tiglath was to de­posit food twice a week.

• Caesarea-Philippi

134:8.10At the end of this so­journ on the moun­tain, as Je­sus was mak­ing his de­scent, he met Tiglath com­ing up to the ren­dezvous with food. Turn­ing him back, he said only: “The pe­riod of rest is over; I must re­turn to my Fa­ther’s busi­ness.” He was a silent and much changed man as they jour­neyed back to Dan, where he took leave of the lad, giv­ing him the don­key. He then pro­ceeded south by the same way he had come, to Ca­per­naum.

155:3.1Al­though Je­sus did no pub­lic work dur­ing this two weeks’ so­journ near Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi, the apos­tles held nu­mer­ous quiet evening meet­ings in the city, and many of the be­liev­ers came out to the camp to talk with the Mas­ter. Very few were added to the group of be­liev­ers as a re­sult of this visit. Je­sus talked with the apos­tles each day, and they more clearly dis­cerned that a new phase of the work of preach­ing the king­dom of heaven was now be­gin­ning. They were com­menc­ing to com­pre­hend that the “king­dom of heaven is not meat and drink but the re­al­iza­tion of the spir­i­tual joy of the ac­cep­tance of di­vine son­ship.”

155:3.2The so­journ at Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi was a real test to the eleven apos­tles; it was a dif­fi­cult two weeks for them to live through. They were well-nigh de­pressed, and they missed the pe­ri­odic stim­u­la­tion of Pe­ter’s en­thu­si­as­tic per­son­al­ity. In these times it was truly a great and test­ing ad­ven­ture to be­lieve in Je­sus and go forth to fol­low af­ter him. Though they made few con­verts dur­ing these two weeks, they did learn much that was highly prof­itable from their daily con­fer­ences with the Mas­ter.

155:3.3The apos­tles learned that the Jews were spir­i­tu­ally stag­nant and dy­ing be­cause they had crys­tal­lized truth into a creed; that when truth be­comes for­mu­lated as a bound­ary line of self-righ­teous ex­clu­sive­ness in­stead of serv­ing as sign­posts of spir­i­tual guid­ance and prog­ress, such teach­ings lose their cre­ative and life-giv­ing power and ul­ti­mately be­come merely preser­va­tive and fos­siliz­ing.

155:3.4In­creas­ingly they learned from Je­sus to look upon hu­man per­son­al­i­ties in terms of their pos­si­bil­i­ties in time and in eter­nity. They learned that many souls can best be led to love the un­seen God by be­ing first taught to love their breth­ren whom they can see. And it was in this con­nec­tion that new mean­ing be­came at­tached to the Mas­ter’s pro­nounce­ment con­cern­ing un­selfish ser­vice for one’s fel­lows: “Inas­much as you did it to one of the least of my breth­ren, you did it to me.”

155:3.5One of the great lessons of this so­journ at Cae­sarea had to do with the ori­gin of re­li­gious tra­di­tions, with the grave dan­ger of al­low­ing a sense of sa­cred­ness to be­come at­tached to non­sa­cred things, com­mon ideas, or ev­ery­day events. From one con­fer­ence they emerged with the teach­ing that true re­li­gion was man’s heart­felt loy­alty to his high­est and truest con­vic­tions.

155:3.6Je­sus warned his be­liev­ers that, if their re­li­gious long­ings were only ma­te­rial, in­creas­ing knowl­edge of na­ture would, by pro­gres­sive dis­place­ment of the sup­posed super­nat­u­ral ori­gin of things, ul­ti­mately de­prive them of their faith in God. But that, if their re­li­gion were spir­i­tual, never could the prog­ress of phys­i­cal sci­ence dis­turb their faith in eter­nal re­al­i­ties and di­vine val­ues.

155:3.7They learned that, when re­li­gion is wholly spir­i­tual in mo­tive, it makes all life more worth while, fill­ing it with high pur­poses, dig­ni­fy­ing it with tran­scen­dent val­ues, in­spir­ing it with su­perb mo­tives, all the while com­fort­ing the hu­man soul with a sub­lime and sus­tain­ing hope. True re­li­gion is de­signed to lessen the strain of ex­is­tence; it re­leases faith and cour­age for daily liv­ing and un­selfish serv­ing. Faith pro­motes spir­i­tual vi­tal­ity and righ­teous fruit­ful­ness.

155:3.8Je­sus re­peat­edly taught his apos­tles that no civ­i­liza­tion could long sur­vive the loss of the best in its re­li­gion. And he never grew weary of point­ing out to the twelve the great dan­ger of ac­cept­ing re­li­gious sym­bols and cer­e­monies in the place of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. His whole earth life was con­sis­tently de­voted to the mis­sion of thaw­ing out the frozen forms of re­li­gion into the liq­uid lib­er­ties of en­light­ened son­ship.

134:7.5Je­sus then started on his fi­nal tour, as a pri­vate in­di­vid­ual, through the heart of Pales­tine, go­ing from Beer­sheba in the south to Dan in the north. On this jour­ney north­ward he stopped at He­bron, Beth­le­hem (where he saw his birth­place), Je­ru­sa­lem (he did not visit Beth­any), Beeroth, Lebonah, Sy­char, Shechem, Samaria, Geba, En-Gan­nim, En­dor, Madon; pass­ing through Mag­dala and Ca­per­naum, he jour­neyed on north; and pass­ing east of the Wa­ters of Merom, he went by Karahta to Dan, or Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi.

157:3.1Early Tues­day morn­ing Je­sus and the twelve apos­tles left Ma­g­a­dan Park for Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi, the cap­i­tal of the Tetrarch Philip’s do­main. Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi was sit­u­ated in a re­gion of won­drous beauty. It nes­tled in a charm­ing val­ley be­tween scenic hills where the Jor­dan poured forth from an un­der­ground cave. The heights of Mount Her­mon were in full view to the north, while from the hills just to the south a mag­nif­i­cent view was had of the up­per Jor­dan and the Sea of Gal­i­lee.

157:3.7And so they re­sumed their jour­ney to Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi, ar­riv­ing late that evening and stop­ping at the home of Cel­sus, who was ex­pect­ing them. The apos­tles slept lit­tle that night; they seemed to sense that a great event in their lives and in the work of the king­dom had tran­spired.

157:4.1Since the oc­ca­sions of Je­sus’ bap­tism by John and the turn­ing of the wa­ter into wine at Cana, the apos­tles had, at var­i­ous times, vir­tu­ally ac­cepted him as the Mes­siah. For short pe­ri­ods some of them had truly be­lieved that he was the ex­pected De­liv­erer. But hardly would such hopes spring up in their hearts than the Mas­ter would dash them to pieces by some crush­ing word or dis­ap­point­ing deed. They had long been in a state of tur­moil due to con­flict be­tween the con­cepts of the ex­pected Mes­siah which they held in their minds and the ex­pe­ri­ence of their ex­traor­di­nary as­so­ci­a­tion with this ex­traor­di­nary man which they held in their hearts.

157:6.1Je­sus and the apos­tles re­mained an­other day at the home of Cel­sus, wait­ing for mes­sen­gers to ar­rive from David Zeb­e­dee with funds. Fol­low­ing the col­lapse of the pop­u­lar­ity of Je­sus with the masses there oc­curred a great falling off in rev­enue. When they reached Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi, the trea­sury was empty. Mat­thew was loath to leave Je­sus and his breth­ren at such a time, and he had no ready funds of his own to hand over to Ju­das as he had so many times done in the past. How­ever, David Zeb­e­dee had fore­seen this prob­a­ble diminu­tion of rev­enue and had ac­cord­ingly in­structed his mes­sen­gers that, as they made their way through Judea, Samaria, and Gal­i­lee, they should act as col­lec­tors of money to be for­warded to the ex­iled apos­tles and their Mas­ter. And so, by evening of this day, these mes­sen­gers ar­rived from Beth­saida bring­ing funds suf­fi­cient to sus­tain the apos­tles un­til their re­turn to em­bark upon the De­capo­lis tour. Mat­thew ex­pected to have money from the sale of his last piece of prop­erty in Ca­per­naum by that time, hav­ing ar­ranged that these funds should be anony­mously turned over to Ju­das.

158:6.1They re­mained overnight with Cel­sus, and that evening in the gar­den, af­ter they had eaten and rested, the twelve gath­ered about Je­sus, and Thomas said: “Mas­ter, while we who tar­ried be­hind still re­main ig­no­rant of what tran­spired up on the moun­tain, and which so greatly cheered our breth­ren who were with you, we crave to have you talk with us con­cern­ing our de­feat and in­struct us in these mat­ters, see­ing that those things which hap­pened on the moun­tain can­not be dis­closed at this time.”

152:0.3When Je­sus heard this, he took the woman by the hand and, lift­ing her up, said: “Daugh­ter, your faith has made you whole; go in peace.” It was her faith and not her touch that made her whole. And this case is a good il­lus­tra­tion of many ap­par­ently mirac­u­lous cures which at­tended upon Je­sus’ earth ca­reer, but which he in no sense con­sciously willed. The pass­ing of time demon­strated that this woman was re­ally cured of her mal­ady. Her faith was of the sort that laid di­rect hold upon the cre­ative power res­i­dent in the Mas­ter’s per­son. With the faith she had, it was only nec­es­sary to ap­proach the Mas­ter’s per­son. It was not at all nec­es­sary to touch his gar­ment; that was merely the su­per­sti­tious part of her be­lief. Je­sus called this woman, Veron­ica of Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi, into his pres­ence to cor­rect two er­rors which might have lin­gered in her mind, or which might have per­sisted in the minds of those who wit­nessed this heal­ing: He did not want Veron­ica to go away think­ing that her fear in at­tempt­ing to steal her cure had been hon­ored, or that her su­per­sti­tion in as­so­ci­at­ing the touch of his gar­ment with her heal­ing had been ef­fec­tive. He de­sired all to know that it was her pure and liv­ing faith that had wrought the cure.