Capernaum

• Joseph father of Jesus worked at

123:3.8The next few years Joseph did con­sid­er­able work at Cana, Beth­le­hem (of Gal­i­lee), Mag­dala, Nain, Sep­pho­ris, Ca­per­naum, and En­dor, as well as much build­ing in and near Naz­a­reth. As James grew up to be old enough to help his mother with the house­work and care of the younger chil­dren, Je­sus made fre­quent trips away from home with his fa­ther to these sur­round­ing towns and vil­lages. Je­sus was a keen ob­server and gained much prac­ti­cal knowl­edge from these trips away from home; he was as­sid­u­ously stor­ing up knowl­edge re­gard­ing man and the way he lived on earth.

• Jesus › Nazareth disfavor caused Jesus to move to C.

127:2.10The cri­sis for the time be­ing was over, but never was this in­ci­dent for­got­ten in Naz­a­reth. The ag­i­ta­tion per­sisted; not again was Je­sus in uni­ver­sal fa­vor; the di­vi­sion of sen­ti­ment was never fully over­come. And this, aug­mented by other and sub­se­quent oc­cur­rences, was one of the chief rea­sons why he moved to Ca­per­naum in later years. Hence­forth Naz­a­reth main­tained a di­vi­sion of sen­ti­ment re­gard­ing the Son of Man.

• Zebedee family from
• Zebedee’s boatbuilding shops south of

129:1.4Zeb­e­dee was a mod­er­ately well-to-do man; his boat­build­ing shops were on the lake to the south of Ca­per­naum, and his home was sit­u­ated down the lake shore near the fish­ing head­quar­ters of Beth­saida. Je­sus lived in the home of Zeb­e­dee dur­ing the year and more he re­mained at Ca­per­naum. He had long worked alone in the world, that is, with­out a fa­ther, and greatly en­joyed this pe­riod of work­ing with a fa­ther-part­ner.

• Jesus › often conducted services in synagogue
• Mangus built synagogue
• strong Roman military post on route from Damascus

129:1.7Through­out this year Je­sus built boats and con­tin­ued to ob­serve how men lived on earth. Fre­quently he would go down to visit at the car­a­van sta­tion, Ca­per­naum be­ing on the di­rect travel route from Da­mas­cus to the south. Ca­per­naum was a strong Ro­man mil­i­tary post, and the gar­ri­son’s com­mand­ing of­fi­cer was a gen­tile be­liever in Yah­weh, “a de­vout man,” as the Jews were wont to des­ig­nate such pros­e­lytes. This of­fi­cer be­longed to a wealthy Ro­man fam­ily, and he took it upon him­self to build a beau­ti­ful syn­a­gogue in Ca­per­naum, which had been pre­sented to the Jews a short time be­fore Je­sus came to live with Zeb­e­dee. Je­sus con­ducted the ser­vices in this new syn­a­gogue more than half the time this year, and some of the car­a­van peo­ple who chanced to at­tend re­mem­bered him as the car­pen­ter from Naz­a­reth.

• Jesus › home of Jesus

129:1.8When it came to the pay­ment of taxes, Je­sus reg­is­tered him­self as a “skilled crafts­man of Ca­per­naum.” From this day on to the end of his earth life he was known as a res­i­dent of Ca­per­naum. He never claimed any other le­gal res­i­dence, al­though he did, for var­i­ous rea­sons, per­mit oth­ers to as­sign his res­i­dence to Da­mas­cus, Beth­any, Naz­a­reth, and even Alexan­dria.

• Jesus › owned house in

129:2.4There­fore, af­ter Je­sus had de­parted for Je­ru­sa­lem, John con­sulted with his fa­ther, Zeb­e­dee, re­gard­ing the money due Je­sus, and he was sur­prised that it was such a large sum. As Je­sus had left the mat­ter so en­tirely in their hands, they agreed that it would be the bet­ter plan to in­vest these funds in prop­erty and use the in­come for as­sist­ing the fam­ily at Naz­a­reth; and since Zeb­e­dee knew of a lit­tle house in Ca­per­naum which car­ried a mort­gage and was for sale, he di­rected John to buy this house with Je­sus’ money and hold the ti­tle in trust for his friend. And John did as his fa­ther ad­vised him. For two years the rent of this house was ap­plied on the mort­gage, and this, aug­mented by a cer­tain large fund which Je­sus pres­ently sent up to John to be used as needed by the fam­ily, al­most equaled the amount of this obli­ga­tion; and Zeb­e­dee sup­plied the dif­fer­ence, so that John paid up the re­main­der of the mort­gage when it fell due, thereby se­cur­ing clear ti­tle to this two-room house. In this way Je­sus be­came the owner of a house in Ca­per­naum, but he had not been told about it.

• Mary and Ruth moved to

134:1.6About the time Je­sus was prepar­ing to leave Naz­a­reth, the con­duc­tor of a large car­a­van which was pass­ing through the city was taken vi­o­lently ill, and Je­sus, be­ing a lin­guist, vol­un­teered to take his place. Since this trip would ne­ces­si­tate his ab­sence for a year, and inas­much as all his broth­ers were mar­ried and his mother was liv­ing at home with Ruth, Je­sus called a fam­ily con­fer­ence at which he pro­posed that his mother and Ruth go to Ca­per­naum to live in the home which he had so re­cently given to James. Ac­cord­ingly, a few days af­ter Je­sus left with the car­a­van, Mary and Ruth moved to Ca­per­naum, where they lived for the rest of Mary’s life in the home that Je­sus had pro­vided. Joseph and his fam­ily moved into the old Naz­a­reth home.

• Jesus › home of Jesus

134:2.5On the re­turn from the Caspian re­gion, Je­sus gave up the di­rec­tion of the car­a­van at Lake Ur­mia, where he tar­ried for slightly over two weeks. He re­turned as a pas­sen­ger with a later car­a­van to Da­mas­cus, where the own­ers of the camels be­sought him to re­main in their ser­vice. De­clin­ing this of­fer, he jour­neyed on with the car­a­van train to Ca­per­naum, ar­riv­ing the first of April, A.D. 25. No longer did he re­gard Naz­a­reth as his home. Ca­per­naum had be­come the home of Je­sus, James, Mary, and Ruth. But Je­sus never again lived with his fam­ily; when in Ca­per­naum he made his home with the Zebe­dees.

• Capernaum

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.

137:3.1The next day Je­sus sent his apos­tles on to Cana, since all of them were in­vited to the wed­ding of a promi­nent young woman of that town, while he pre­pared to pay a hur­ried visit to his mother at Ca­per­naum, stop­ping at Mag­dala to see his brother Jude.

137:3.2Be­fore leav­ing Naz­a­reth, the new as­so­ciates of Je­sus told Joseph and other mem­bers of Je­sus’ fam­ily about the won­der­ful events of the then re­cent past and gave free ex­pres­sion to their be­lief that Je­sus was the long-ex­pected de­liv­erer. And these mem­bers of Je­sus’ fam­ily talked all this over, and Joseph said: “Maybe, af­ter all, Mother was right—maybe our strange brother is the com­ing king.”

137:3.3Jude was pres­ent at Je­sus’ bap­tism and, with his brother James, had be­come a firm be­liever in Je­sus’ mis­sion on earth. Al­though both James and Jude were much per­plexed as to the na­ture of their brother’s mis­sion, their mother had res­ur­rected all her early hopes of Je­sus as the Mes­siah, the son of David, and she en­cour­aged her sons to have faith in their brother as the de­liv­erer of Is­rael.

137:3.4Je­sus ar­rived in Ca­per­naum Mon­day night, but he did not go to his own home, where lived James and his mother; he went di­rectly to the home of Zeb­e­dee. All his friends at Ca­per­naum saw a great and pleas­ant change in him. Once more he seemed to be com­par­a­tively cheer­ful and more like him­self as he was dur­ing the ear­lier years at Naz­a­reth. For years pre­vi­ous to his bap­tism and the iso­la­tion pe­ri­ods just be­fore and just af­ter, he had grown in­creas­ingly se­ri­ous and self-con­tained. Now he seemed quite like his old self to all of them. There was about him some­thing of ma­jes­tic im­port and ex­alted as­pect, but he was once again light­hearted and joy­ful.

137:3.5Mary was thrilled with ex­pec­ta­tion. She an­tic­i­pated that the prom­ise of Ga­briel was near­ing ful­fill­ment. She ex­pected all Pales­tine soon to be star­tled and stunned by the mirac­u­lous rev­e­la­tion of her son as the super­nat­u­ral king of the Jews. But to all of the many ques­tions which his mother, James, Jude, and Zeb­e­dee asked, Je­sus only smil­ingly replied: “It is bet­ter that I tarry here for a while; I must do the will of my Fa­ther who is in heaven.”

137:3.6On the next day, Tues­day, they all jour­neyed over to Cana for the wed­ding of Naomi, which was to take place on the fol­low­ing day. And in spite of Je­sus’ re­peated warn­ings that they tell no man about him “un­til the Fa­ther’s hour shall come,” they in­sisted on qui­etly spread­ing the news abroad that they had found the De­liv­erer. They each con­fi­dently ex­pected that Je­sus would in­au­gu­rate his as­sump­tion of Mes­sianic au­thor­ity at the forth­com­ing wed­ding at Cana, and that he would do so with great power and sub­lime grandeur. They re­mem­bered what had been told them about the phe­nom­ena at­ten­dant upon his bap­tism, and they be­lieved that his fu­ture course on earth would be marked by in­creas­ing man­i­fes­ta­tions of super­nat­u­ral won­ders and mirac­u­lous demon­stra­tions. Ac­cord­ingly, the en­tire coun­try­side was prepar­ing to gather to­gether at Cana for the wed­ding feast of Naomi and Jo­hab the son of Nathan.

137:3.7Mary had not been so joy­ous in years. She jour­neyed to Cana in the spirit of the queen mother on the way to wit­ness the coro­na­tion of her son. Not since he was thir­teen years old had Je­sus’ fam­ily and friends seen him so care­free and happy, so thought­ful and un­der­stand­ing of the wishes and de­sires of his as­so­ciates, so touch­ingly sym­pa­thetic. And so they all whis­pered among them­selves, in small groups, won­der­ing what was go­ing to hap­pen. What would this strange per­son do next? How would he usher in the glory of the com­ing king­dom? And they were all thrilled with the thought that they were to be pres­ent to see the rev­e­la­tion of the might and power of Is­rael’s God.

137:5.1Though many of the guests re­mained for the full week of wed­ding fes­tiv­i­ties, Je­sus, with his newly cho­sen dis­ci­ple-apos­tles—James, John, An­drew, Pe­ter, Philip, and Na­than­iel—de­parted very early the next morn­ing for Ca­per­naum, go­ing away with­out tak­ing leave of any­one. Je­sus’ fam­ily and all his friends in Cana were much dis­tressed be­cause he so sud­denly left them, and Jude, Je­sus’ young­est brother, set out in search of him. Je­sus and his apos­tles went di­rectly to the home of Zeb­e­dee at Beth­saida. On this jour­ney Je­sus talked over many things of im­por­tance to the com­ing king­dom with his newly cho­sen as­so­ciates and es­pe­cially warned them to make no men­tion of the turn­ing of the wa­ter into wine. He also ad­vised them to avoid the cities of Sep­pho­ris and Tiberias in their fu­ture work.

137:5.2Af­ter sup­per that evening, in this home of Zeb­e­dee and Sa­lome, there was held one of the most im­por­tant con­fer­ences of all Je­sus’ earthly ca­reer. Only the six apos­tles were pres­ent at this meet­ing; Jude ar­rived as they were about to sep­a­rate. These six cho­sen men had jour­neyed from Cana to Beth­saida with Je­sus, walk­ing, as it were, on air. They were alive with ex­pectancy and thrilled with the thought of hav­ing been se­lected as close as­so­ciates of the Son of Man. But when Je­sus set out to make clear to them who he was and what was to be his mis­sion on earth and how it might pos­si­bly end, they were stunned. They could not grasp what he was telling them. They were speech­less; even Pe­ter was crushed be­yond ex­pres­sion. Only the deep-think­ing An­drew dared to make re­ply to Je­sus’ words of coun­sel. When Je­sus per­ceived that they did not com­pre­hend his mes­sage, when he saw that their ideas of the Jew­ish Mes­siah were so com­pletely crys­tal­lized, he sent them to their rest while he walked and talked with his brother Jude. And be­fore Jude took leave of Je­sus, he said with much feel­ing: “My fa­ther-brother, I never have un­der­stood you. I do not know of a cer­tainty whether you are what my mother has taught us, and I do not fully com­pre­hend the com­ing king­dom, but I do know you are a mighty man of God. I heard the voice at the Jor­dan, and I am a be­liever in you, no mat­ter who you are.” And when he had spo­ken, he de­parted, go­ing to his own home at Mag­dala.

137:5.3That night Je­sus did not sleep. Don­ning his evening wraps, he sat out on the lake shore think­ing, think­ing un­til the dawn of the next day. In the long hours of that night of med­i­ta­tion Je­sus came clearly to com­pre­hend that he never would be able to make his fol­low­ers see him in any other light than as the long-ex­pected Mes­siah. At last he rec­og­nized that there was no way to launch his mes­sage of the king­dom ex­cept as the ful­fill­ment of John’s pre­dic­tion and as the one for whom the Jews were look­ing. Af­ter all, though he was not the Da­vidic type of Mes­siah, he was truly the ful­fill­ment of the pro­phetic ut­ter­ances of the more spir­i­tu­ally minded of the olden seers. Never again did he wholly deny that he was the Mes­siah. He de­cided to leave the fi­nal un­tan­gling of this com­pli­cated sit­u­a­tion to the out­work­ing of the Fa­ther’s will.

137:5.4The next morn­ing Je­sus joined his friends at break­fast, but they were a cheer­less group. He vis­ited with them and at the end of the meal gath­ered them about him, say­ing: “It is my Fa­ther’s will that we tarry here­abouts for a sea­son. You have heard John say that he came to pre­pare the way for the king­dom; there­fore it be­hooves us to await the com­ple­tion of John’s preach­ing. When the fore­run­ner of the Son of Man shall have fin­ished his work, we will be­gin the procla­ma­tion of the good tid­ings of the king­dom.” He di­rected his apos­tles to re­turn to their nets while he made ready to go with Zeb­e­dee to the boat­shop, promis­ing to see them the next day at the syn­a­gogue, where he was to speak, and ap­point­ing a con­fer­ence with them that Sab­bath af­ter­noon.

• Capernaum

138:1.1The next day, Sun­day, June 23, A.D. 26, Je­sus im­parted his fi­nal in­struc­tions to the six. He di­rected them to go forth, two and two, to teach the glad tid­ings of the king­dom. He for­bade them to bap­tize and ad­vised against pub­lic preach­ing. He went on to ex­plain that later he would per­mit them to preach in pub­lic, but that for a sea­son, and for many rea­sons, he de­sired them to ac­quire prac­ti­cal ex­pe­ri­ence in deal­ing per­son­ally with their fel­low men. Je­sus pur­posed to make their first tour en­tirely one of per­sonal work. Al­though this an­nounce­ment was some­thing of a dis­ap­point­ment to the apos­tles, still they saw, at least in part, Je­sus’ rea­son for thus be­gin­ning the procla­ma­tion of the king­dom, and they started out in good heart and with con­fi­dent en­thu­si­asm. He sent them forth by twos, James and John go­ing to Kheresa, An­drew and Pe­ter to Ca­per­naum, while Philip and Na­than­iel went to Ta­ri­chea.

• Matthew from

138:2.41. Mat­thew Levi, the cus­toms col­lec­tor of Ca­per­naum, who had his of­fice just to the east of the city, near the bor­ders of Batanea. He was se­lected by An­drew.

138:3.1The next day Je­sus and the six went to call upon Mat­thew, the cus­toms col­lec­tor. Mat­thew was await­ing them, hav­ing bal­anced his books and made ready to turn the af­fairs of his of­fice over to his brother. As they ap­proached the toll house, An­drew stepped for­ward with Je­sus, who, look­ing into Mat­thew’s face, said, “Fol­low me.” And he arose and went to his house with Je­sus and the apos­tles.

138:3.2Mat­thew told Je­sus of the ban­quet he had ar­ranged for that evening, at least that he wished to give such a din­ner to his fam­ily and friends if Je­sus would ap­prove and con­sent to be the guest of honor. And Je­sus nod­ded his con­sent. Pe­ter then took Mat­thew aside and ex­plained that he had in­vited one Si­mon to join the apos­tles and se­cured his con­sent that Si­mon be also bid­den to this feast.

138:3.3Af­ter a noon­tide lun­cheon at Mat­thew’s house they all went with Pe­ter to call upon Si­mon the Zealot, whom they found at his old place of busi­ness, which was now be­ing con­ducted by his nephew. When Pe­ter led Je­sus up to Si­mon, the Mas­ter greeted the fiery pa­triot and only said, “Fol­low me.”

138:3.4They all re­turned to Mat­thew’s home, where they talked much about pol­i­tics and re­li­gion un­til the hour of the evening meal. The Levi fam­ily had long been en­gaged in busi­ness and tax gath­er­ing; there­fore many of the guests bid­den to this ban­quet by Mat­thew would have been de­nom­i­nated “pub­li­cans and sin­ners” by the Phar­isees.

138:3.5In those days, when a re­cep­tion-ban­quet of this sort was ten­dered a promi­nent in­di­vid­ual, it was the cus­tom for all in­ter­ested per­sons to linger about the ban­quet room to ob­serve the guests at meat and to lis­ten to the con­ver­sa­tion and speeches of the men of honor. Ac­cord­ingly, most of the Ca­per­naum Phar­isees were pres­ent on this oc­ca­sion to ob­serve Je­sus’ con­duct at this un­usual so­cial gath­er­ing.

138:3.6As the din­ner pro­gressed, the joy of the din­ers mounted to heights of good cheer, and ev­ery­body was hav­ing such a splen­did time that the on­look­ing Phar­isees be­gan, in their hearts, to crit­i­cize Je­sus for his par­tic­i­pa­tion in such a light­hearted and care­free af­fair. Later in the evening, when they were mak­ing speeches, one of the more ma­lig­nant of the Phar­isees went so far as to crit­i­cize Je­sus’ con­duct to Pe­ter, say­ing: “How dare you to teach that this man is righ­teous when he eats with pub­li­cans and sin­ners and thus lends his pres­ence to such scenes of care­less plea­sure mak­ing.” Pe­ter whis­pered this crit­i­cism to Je­sus be­fore he spoke the part­ing bless­ing upon those as­sem­bled. When Je­sus be­gan to speak, he said: “In com­ing here tonight to wel­come Mat­thew and Si­mon to our fel­low­ship, I am glad to wit­ness your light­heart­ed­ness and so­cial good cheer, but you should re­joice still more be­cause many of you will find en­trance into the com­ing king­dom of the spirit, wherein you shall more abun­dantly en­joy the good things of the king­dom of heaven. And to you who stand about crit­i­ciz­ing me in your hearts be­cause I have come here to make merry with these friends, let me say that I have come to pro­claim joy to the so­cially down­trod­den and spir­i­tual lib­erty to the moral cap­tives. Need I re­mind you that they who are whole need not a physi­cian, but rather those who are sick? I have come, not to call the righ­teous, but sin­ners.”

138:3.7And truly this was a strange sight in all Jewry: to see a man of righ­teous char­ac­ter and no­ble sen­ti­ments min­gling freely and joy­ously with the com­mon peo­ple, even with an ir­re­li­gious and plea­sure-seek­ing throng of pub­li­cans and re­puted sin­ners. Si­mon Ze­lo­tes de­sired to make a speech at this gath­er­ing in Mat­thew’s house, but An­drew, know­ing that Je­sus did not want the com­ing king­dom to be­come con­fused with the Zealots’ move­ment, pre­vailed upon him to re­frain from mak­ing any pub­lic re­marks.

138:3.8Je­sus and the apos­tles re­mained that night in Mat­thew’s house, and as the peo­ple went to their homes, they spoke of but one thing: the good­ness and friend­li­ness of Je­sus.

• Capernaum

138:9.3The apos­tles car­ried on their per­sonal work in Ca­per­naum, Beth­saida-Ju­lias, Cho­ra­zin, Gerasa, Hip­pos, Mag­dala, Cana, Beth­le­hem of Gal­i­lee, Jo­ta­p­ata, Ramah, Safed, Gis­chala, Gadara, and Abila. Be­sides these towns they la­bored in many vil­lages as well as in the coun­try­side. By the end of this pe­riod the twelve had worked out fairly sat­is­fac­tory plans for the care of their re­spec­tive fam­i­lies. Most of the apos­tles were mar­ried, some had sev­eral chil­dren, but they had made such ar­range­ments for the sup­port of their home folks that, with some lit­tle as­sis­tance from the apos­tolic funds, they could de­vote their en­tire en­er­gies to the Mas­ter’s work with­out hav­ing to worry about the fi­nan­cial wel­fare of their fam­i­lies.

• Andrew from
• Bethsaida was fishing harbor of

139:1.1An­drew, chair­man of the apos­tolic corps of the king­dom, was born in Ca­per­naum. He was the old­est child in a fam­ily of five—him­self, his brother Si­mon, and three sis­ters. His fa­ther, now dead, had been a part­ner of Zeb­e­dee in the fish-dry­ing busi­ness at Beth­saida, the fish­ing har­bor of Ca­per­naum. When he be­came an apos­tle, An­drew was un­mar­ried but made his home with his mar­ried brother, Si­mon Pe­ter. Both were fish­er­men and part­ners of James and John the sons of Zeb­e­dee.

• Zebedee family from

139:3.1James, the older of the two apos­tle sons of Zeb­e­dee, whom Je­sus nick­named “sons of thun­der,” was thirty years old when he be­came an apos­tle. He was mar­ried, had four chil­dren, and lived near his par­ents in the out­skirts of Ca­per­naum, Beth­saida. He was a fish­er­man, ply­ing his call­ing in com­pany with his younger brother John and in as­so­ci­a­tion with An­drew and Si­mon. James and his brother John en­joyed the ad­van­tage of hav­ing known Je­sus longer than any of the other apos­tles.

• Zebedee family from

139:4.1When he be­came an apos­tle, John was twenty-four years old and was the young­est of the twelve. He was un­mar­ried and lived with his par­ents at Beth­saida; he was a fish­er­man and worked with his brother James in part­ner­ship with An­drew and Pe­ter. Both be­fore and af­ter be­com­ing an apos­tle, John func­tioned as the per­sonal agent of Je­sus in deal­ing with the Mas­ter’s fam­ily, and he con­tin­ued to bear this re­spon­si­bil­ity as long as Mary the mother of Je­sus lived.

• Matthew from

139:7.1Mat­thew, the sev­enth apos­tle, was cho­sen by An­drew. Mat­thew be­longed to a fam­ily of tax gath­er­ers, or pub­li­cans, but was him­self a cus­toms col­lec­tor in Ca­per­naum, where he lived. He was thirty-one years old and mar­ried and had four chil­dren. He was a man of mod­er­ate wealth, the only one of any means be­long­ing to the apos­tolic corps. He was a good busi­ness man, a good so­cial mixer, and was gifted with the abil­ity to make friends and to get along smoothly with a great va­ri­ety of peo­ple.

• Simon Zelotes from

139:11.1Si­mon Ze­lo­tes, the eleventh apos­tle, was cho­sen by Si­mon Pe­ter. He was an able man of good an­ces­try and lived with his fam­ily at Ca­per­naum. He was twenty-eight years old when he be­came at­tached to the apos­tles. He was a fiery ag­i­ta­tor and was also a man who spoke much with­out think­ing. He had been a mer­chant in Ca­per­naum be­fore he turned his en­tire at­ten­tion to the pa­tri­otic or­ga­ni­za­tion of the Zealots.

145:3.1By the time Je­sus and his apos­tles had made ready to par­take of their evening meal near the end of this event­ful Sab­bath day, all Ca­per­naum and its en­vi­rons were agog over these re­puted mir­a­cles of heal­ing; and all who were sick or af­flicted be­gan prepa­ra­tions to go to Je­sus or to have them­selves car­ried there by their friends just as soon as the sun went down. Ac­cord­ing to Jew­ish teach­ing it was not per­mis­si­ble even to go in quest of health dur­ing the sa­cred hours of the Sab­bath.

145:3.2There­fore, as soon as the sun sank be­neath the hori­zon, scores of af­flicted men, women, and chil­dren be­gan to make their way to­ward the Zeb­e­dee home in Beth­saida. One man started out with his par­a­lyzed daugh­ter just as soon as the sun sank be­hind his neigh­bor’s house.

145:3.3The whole day’s events had set the stage for this ex­traor­di­nary sun­down scene. Even the text Je­sus had used for his af­ter­noon ser­mon had in­ti­mated that sick­ness should be ban­ished; and he had spo­ken with such un­prece­dented power and au­thor­ity! His mes­sage was so com­pelling! While he made no ap­peal to hu­man au­thor­ity, he did speak di­rectly to the con­sciences and souls of men. Though he did not re­sort to logic, le­gal quib­bles, or clever say­ings, he did make a pow­er­ful, di­rect, clear, and per­sonal ap­peal to the hearts of his hear­ers.

145:3.4That Sab­bath was a great day in the earth life of Je­sus, yes, in the life of a uni­verse. To all lo­cal uni­verse in­tents and pur­poses the lit­tle Jew­ish city of Ca­per­naum was the real cap­i­tal of Neb­a­don. The hand­ful of Jews in the Ca­per­naum syn­a­gogue were not the only be­ings to hear that mo­men­tous clos­ing state­ment of Je­sus’ ser­mon: “Hate is the shadow of fear; re­venge the mask of cow­ardice.” Nei­ther could his hear­ers for­get his blessed words, declar­ing, “Man is the son of God, not a child of the devil.”

145:3.5Soon af­ter the set­ting of the sun, as Je­sus and the apos­tles still lin­gered about the sup­per ta­ble, Pe­ter’s wife heard voices in the front yard and, on go­ing to the door, saw a large com­pany of sick folks as­sem­bling, and that the road from Ca­per­naum was crowded by those who were on their way to seek heal­ing at Je­sus’ hands. On see­ing this sight, she went at once and in­formed her hus­band, who told Je­sus.

145:3.6When the Mas­ter stepped out of the front en­trance of Zeb­e­dee’s house, his eyes met an ar­ray of stricken and af­flicted hu­man­ity. He gazed upon al­most one thou­sand sick and ail­ing hu­man be­ings; at least that was the num­ber of per­sons gath­ered to­gether be­fore him. Not all pres­ent were af­flicted; some had come as­sist­ing their loved ones in this ef­fort to se­cure heal­ing.

145:3.7The sight of these af­flicted mor­tals, men, women, and chil­dren, suf­fer­ing in large mea­sure as a re­sult of the mis­takes and mis­deeds of his own trusted Sons of uni­verse ad­min­is­tra­tion, pe­cu­liarly touched the hu­man heart of Je­sus and chal­lenged the di­vine mercy of this benev­o­lent Cre­ator Son. But Je­sus well knew he could never build an en­dur­ing spir­i­tual move­ment upon the foun­da­tion of purely ma­te­rial won­ders. It had been his con­sis­tent pol­icy to re­frain from ex­hibit­ing his cre­ator pre­rog­a­tives. Not since Cana had the super­nat­u­ral or mirac­u­lous at­tended his teach­ing; still, this af­flicted mul­ti­tude touched his sym­pa­thetic heart and might­ily ap­pealed to his un­der­stand­ing af­fec­tion.

145:3.8A voice from the front yard ex­claimed: “Mas­ter, speak the word, re­store our health, heal our dis­eases, and save our souls.” No sooner had these words been ut­tered than a vast ret­inue of ser­a­phim, phys­i­cal con­trol­lers, Life Car­ri­ers, and mid­way­ers, such as al­ways at­tended this in­car­nated Cre­ator of a uni­verse, made them­selves ready to act with cre­ative power should their Sov­er­eign give the sig­nal. This was one of those mo­ments in the earth ca­reer of Je­sus in which di­vine wis­dom and hu­man com­pas­sion were so in­ter­locked in the judg­ment of the Son of Man that he sought refuge in ap­peal to his Fa­ther’s will.

145:3.9When Pe­ter im­plored the Mas­ter to heed their cry for help, Je­sus, look­ing down upon the af­flicted throng, an­swered: “I have come into the world to re­veal the Fa­ther and es­tab­lish his king­dom. For this pur­pose have I lived my life to this hour. If, there­fore, it should be the will of Him who sent me and not in­con­sis­tent with my ded­i­ca­tion to the procla­ma­tion of the gospel of the king­dom of heaven, I would de­sire to see my chil­dren made whole—and—” but the fur­ther words of Je­sus were lost in the tu­mult.

145:3.10Je­sus had passed the re­spon­si­bil­ity of this heal­ing de­ci­sion to the rul­ing of his Fa­ther. Ev­i­dently the Fa­ther’s will in­ter­posed no ob­jec­tion, for the words of the Mas­ter had scarcely been ut­tered when the as­sem­bly of ce­les­tial per­son­al­i­ties serv­ing un­der the com­mand of Je­sus’ Per­son­al­ized Thought Ad­juster was might­ily astir. The vast ret­inue de­scended into the midst of this mot­ley throng of af­flicted mor­tals, and in a mo­ment of time 683 men, women, and chil­dren were made whole, were per­fectly healed of all their phys­i­cal dis­eases and other ma­te­rial dis­or­ders. Such a scene was never wit­nessed on earth be­fore that day, nor since. And for those of us who were pres­ent to be­hold this cre­ative wave of heal­ing, it was in­deed a thrilling spec­ta­cle.

145:3.11But of all the be­ings who were as­ton­ished at this sud­den and un­ex­pected out­break of super­nat­u­ral heal­ing, Je­sus was the most sur­prised. In a mo­ment when his hu­man in­ter­ests and sym­pa­thies were fo­cused upon the scene of suf­fer­ing and af­flic­tion there spread out be­fore him, he ne­glected to bear in his hu­man mind the ad­mon­i­tory warn­ings of his Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster re­gard­ing the im­pos­si­bil­ity of lim­it­ing the time el­e­ment of the cre­ator pre­rog­a­tives of a Cre­ator Son un­der cer­tain con­di­tions and in cer­tain cir­cum­stances. Je­sus de­sired to see these suf­fer­ing mor­tals made whole if his Fa­ther’s will would not thereby be vi­o­lated. The Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster of Je­sus in­stantly ruled that such an act of cre­ative en­ergy at that time would not transgress the will of the Par­a­dise Fa­ther, and by such a de­ci­sion—in view of Je­sus’ pre­ced­ing ex­pres­sion of heal­ing de­sire—the cre­ative act was. What a Cre­ator Son de­sires and his Fa­ther wills IS. Not in all of Je­sus’ sub­se­quent earth life did an­other such en masse phys­i­cal heal­ing of mor­tals take place.

145:3.12As might have been ex­pected, the fame of this sun­down heal­ing at Beth­saida in Ca­per­naum spread through­out all Gal­i­lee and Judea and to the re­gions be­yond. Once more were the fears of Herod aroused, and he sent watch­ers to re­port on the work and teach­ings of Je­sus and to as­cer­tain if he was the for­mer car­pen­ter of Naz­a­reth or John the Bap­tist risen from the dead.

145:3.13Chiefly be­cause of this un­in­tended dem­on­stra­tion of phys­i­cal heal­ing, hence­forth, through­out the re­main­der of his earth ca­reer, Je­sus be­came as much a physi­cian as a preacher. True, he con­tin­ued his teach­ing, but his per­sonal work con­sisted mostly in min­is­ter­ing to the sick and the dis­tressed, while his apos­tles did the work of pub­lic preach­ing and bap­tiz­ing be­liev­ers.

145:3.14But the ma­jor­ity of those who were re­cip­i­ents of super­nat­u­ral or cre­ative phys­i­cal heal­ing at this sun­down dem­on­stra­tion of di­vine en­ergy were not per­ma­nently spir­i­tu­ally ben­e­fited by this ex­traor­di­nary man­i­fes­ta­tion of mercy. A small num­ber were truly ed­i­fied by this phys­i­cal min­istry, but the spir­i­tual king­dom was not ad­vanced in the hearts of men by this amaz­ing erup­tion of time­less cre­ative heal­ing.

145:3.15The heal­ing won­ders which ev­ery now and then at­tended Je­sus’ mis­sion on earth were not a part of his plan of pro­claim­ing the king­dom. They were in­ci­den­tally in­her­ent in hav­ing on earth a di­vine be­ing of well-nigh un­lim­ited cre­ator pre­rog­a­tives in as­so­ci­a­tion with an un­prece­dented com­bi­na­tion of di­vine mercy and hu­man sym­pa­thy. But such so-called mir­a­cles gave Je­sus much trou­ble in that they pro­vided prej­u­dice-rais­ing pub­lic­ity and af­forded much un­sought no­to­ri­ety.

• Mangus built synagogue

147:1.1On the day be­fore they made ready to go to Je­ru­sa­lem for the feast of the Pass­over, Man­gus, a cen­tu­rion, or cap­tain, of the Ro­man guard sta­tioned at Ca­per­naum, came to the rulers of the syn­a­gogue, say­ing: “My faith­ful or­derly is sick and at the point of death. Would you, there­fore, go to Je­sus in my be­half and be­seech him to heal my ser­vant?” The Ro­man cap­tain did this be­cause he thought the Jew­ish lead­ers would have more in­flu­ence with Je­sus. So the el­ders went to see Je­sus and their spokesman said: “Teacher, we earnestly re­quest you to go over to Ca­per­naum and save the fa­vorite ser­vant of the Ro­man cen­tu­rion, who is wor­thy of your no­tice be­cause he loves our na­tion and even built us the very syn­a­gogue wherein you have so many times spo­ken.”

147:7.1It was around noon on Mon­day, May 3, when Je­sus and the twelve came to Beth­saida by boat from Ta­ri­chea. They trav­eled by boat in or­der to es­cape those who jour­neyed with them. But by the next day the oth­ers, in­clud­ing the of­fi­cial spies from Je­ru­sa­lem, had again found Je­sus.

147:7.2On Tues­day evening Je­sus was con­duct­ing one of his cus­tom­ary classes of ques­tions and an­swers when the leader of the six spies said to him: “I was to­day talk­ing with one of John’s dis­ci­ples who is here at­tend­ing upon your teach­ing, and we were at a loss to un­der­stand why you never com­mand your dis­ci­ples to fast and pray as we Phar­isees fast and as John bade his fol­low­ers.” And Je­sus, re­fer­ring to a state­ment by John, an­swered this ques­tioner: “Do the sons of the bridecham­ber fast while the bride­groom is with them? As long as the bride­groom re­mains with them, they can hardly fast. But the time is com­ing when the bride­groom shall be taken away, and dur­ing those times the chil­dren of the bridecham­ber un­doubt­edly will fast and pray. To pray is nat­u­ral for the chil­dren of light, but fast­ing is not a part of the gospel of the king­dom of heaven. Be re­minded that a wise tai­lor does not sew a piece of new and un­shrunk cloth upon an old gar­ment, lest, when it is wet, it shrink and pro­duce a worse rent. Nei­ther do men put new wine into old wine skins, lest the new wine burst the skins so that both the wine and the skins per­ish. The wise man puts the new wine into fresh wine skins. There­fore do my dis­ci­ples show wis­dom in that they do not bring too much of the old or­der over into the new teach­ing of the gospel of the king­dom. You who have lost your teacher may be jus­ti­fied in fast­ing for a time. Fast­ing may be an ap­pro­pri­ate part of the law of Moses, but in the com­ing king­dom the sons of God shall ex­pe­ri­ence free­dom from fear and joy in the di­vine spirit.” And when they heard these words, the dis­ci­ples of John were com­forted while the Phar­isees them­selves were the more con­founded.

147:7.3Then the Mas­ter pro­ceeded to warn his hear­ers against en­ter­tain­ing the no­tion that all olden teach­ing should be re­placed en­tirely by new doc­trines. Said Je­sus: “That which is old and also true must abide. Like­wise, that which is new but false must be re­jected. But that which is new and also true, have the faith and cour­age to ac­cept. Re­mem­ber it is writ­ten: ‘For­sake not an old friend, for the new is not com­pa­ra­ble to him. As new wine, so is a new friend; if it be­comes old, you shall drink it with glad­ness.’”

• Jairus was ruler of synagogue

152:0.1The story of the cure of Amos, the Kheresa lu­natic, had al­ready reached Beth­saida and Ca­per­naum, so that a great crowd was wait­ing for Je­sus when his boat landed that Tues­day forenoon. Among this throng were the new ob­servers from the Je­ru­sa­lem San­hedrin who had come down to Ca­per­naum to find cause for the Mas­ter’s ap­pre­hen­sion and con­vic­tion. As Je­sus spoke with those who had as­sem­bled to greet him, Jairus, one of the rulers of the syn­a­gogue, made his way through the crowd and, falling down at his feet, took him by the hand and be­sought that he would has­ten away with him, say­ing: “Mas­ter, my lit­tle daugh­ter, an only child, lies in my home at the point of death. I pray that you will come and heal her.” When Je­sus heard the re­quest of this fa­ther, he said: “I will go with you.”

153:4.1In the midst of the dis­cus­sions of this af­ter meet­ing, one of the Phar­isees from Je­ru­sa­lem brought to Je­sus a dis­traught youth who was pos­sessed of an un­ruly and re­bel­lious spirit. Lead­ing this de­mented lad up to Je­sus, he said: “What can you do for such af­flic­tion as this? Can you cast out dev­ils?” And when the Mas­ter looked upon the youth, he was moved with com­pas­sion and, beck­on­ing for the lad to come to him, took him by the hand and said: “You know who I am; come out of him; and I charge one of your loyal fel­lows to see that you do not re­turn.” And im­me­di­ately the lad was nor­mal and in his right mind. And this is the first case where Je­sus re­ally cast an “evil spirit” out of a hu­man be­ing. All of the pre­vi­ous cases were only sup­posed pos­ses­sion of the devil; but this was a gen­uine case of de­mo­niac pos­ses­sion, even such as some­times oc­curred in those days and right up to the day of Pen­te­cost, when the Mas­ter’s spirit was poured out upon all flesh, mak­ing it for­ever im­pos­si­ble for these few ce­les­tial rebels to take such ad­van­tage of cer­tain un­sta­ble types of hu­man be­ings.

153:4.2When the peo­ple mar­veled, one of the Phar­isees stood up and charged that Je­sus could do these things be­cause he was in league with dev­ils; that he ad­mit­ted in the lan­guage which he em­ployed in cast­ing out this devil that they were known to each other; and he went on to state that the re­li­gious teach­ers and lead­ers at Je­ru­sa­lem had de­cided that Je­sus did all his so-called mir­a­cles by the power of Beelze­bub, the prince of dev­ils. Said the Phar­isee: “Have noth­ing to do with this man; he is in part­ner­ship with Sa­tan.”

153:4.3Then said Je­sus: “How can Sa­tan cast out Sa­tan? A king­dom di­vided against it­self can­not stand; if a house be di­vided against it­self, it is soon brought to des­o­la­tion. Can a city with­stand a siege if it is not united? If Sa­tan casts out Sa­tan, he is di­vided against him­self; how then shall his king­dom stand? But you should know that no one can en­ter into the house of a strong man and de­spoil his goods ex­cept he first over­power and bind that strong man. And so, if I by the power of Beelze­bub cast out dev­ils, by whom do your sons cast them out? There­fore shall they be your judges. But if I, by the spirit of God, cast out dev­ils, then has the king­dom of God truly come upon you. If you were not blinded by prej­u­dice and mis­led by fear and pride, you would eas­ily per­ceive that one who is greater than dev­ils stands in your midst. You com­pel me to de­clare that he who is not with me is against me, while he who gath­ers not with me scat­ters abroad. Let me ut­ter a solemn warn­ing to you who would pre­sume, with your eyes open and with pre­med­i­tated mal­ice, know­ingly to as­cribe the works of God to the do­ings of dev­ils! Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you, all your sins shall be for­given, even all of your blas­phemies, but whoso­ever shall blas­pheme against God with de­lib­er­a­tion and wicked in­ten­tion shall never ob­tain for­give­ness. Since such per­sis­tent work­ers of in­iq­uity will never seek nor re­ceive for­give­ness, they are guilty of the sin of eter­nally re­ject­ing di­vine for­give­ness.

153:4.4“Many of you have this day come to the part­ing of the ways; you have come to a be­gin­ning of the mak­ing of the in­ev­i­ta­ble choice be­tween the will of the Fa­ther and the self-cho­sen ways of dark­ness. And as you now choose, so shall you even­tu­ally be. You must ei­ther make the tree good and its fruit good, or else will the tree be­come cor­rupt and its fruit cor­rupt. I de­clare that in my Fa­ther’s eter­nal king­dom the tree is known by its fruits. But some of you who are as vipers, how can you, hav­ing al­ready cho­sen evil, bring forth good fruits? Af­ter all, out of the abun­dance of the evil in your hearts your mouths speak.”

153:4.5Then stood up an­other Phar­isee, who said: “Teacher, we would have you give us a pre­de­ter­mined sign which we will agree upon as es­tab­lish­ing your au­thor­ity and right to teach. Will you agree to such an ar­range­ment?” And when Je­sus heard this, he said: “This faith­less and sign-seek­ing gen­er­a­tion seeks a to­ken, but no sign shall be given you other than that which you al­ready have, and that which you shall see when the Son of Man de­parts from among you.”

153:4.6And when he had fin­ished speak­ing, his apos­tles sur­rounded him and led him from the syn­a­gogue. In si­lence they jour­neyed home with him to Beth­saida. They were all amazed and some­what ter­ror-stricken by the sud­den change in the Mas­ter’s teach­ing tac­tics. They were wholly un­ac­cus­tomed to see­ing him per­form in such a mil­i­tant man­ner.

• Jesus › general revulsion to Jesus in

153:5.2And now, on top of all of these wor­ries, when they reached home, Je­sus re­fused to eat. For hours he iso­lated him­self in one of the up­per rooms. It was al­most mid­night when Joab, the leader of the evan­ge­lists, re­turned and re­ported that about one third of his as­so­ciates had de­serted the cause. All through the evening loyal dis­ci­ples had come and gone, re­port­ing that the re­vul­sion of feel­ing to­ward the Mas­ter was gen­eral in Ca­per­naum. The lead­ers from Je­ru­sa­lem were not slow to feed this feel­ing of dis­af­fec­tion and in ev­ery way pos­si­ble to seek to pro­mote the move­ment away from Je­sus and his teach­ings. Dur­ing these try­ing hours the twelve women were in ses­sion over at Pe­ter’s house. They were tremen­dously up­set, but none of them de­serted.

• Jesus › general revulsion to Jesus in

154:1.2On Fri­day of this week of­fi­cial ac­tion was taken by the rulers of the Ca­per­naum syn­a­gogue clos­ing the house of God to Je­sus and all his fol­low­ers. This ac­tion was taken at the in­sti­ga­tion of the Je­ru­sa­lem Phar­isees. Jairus re­signed as chief ruler and openly aligned him­self with Je­sus.

• Jesus › general revulsion to Jesus in

154:4.1On this same Sat­ur­day night, in Ca­per­naum a group of fifty lead­ing cit­i­zens met at the syn­a­gogue to dis­cuss the mo­men­tous ques­tion: “What shall we do with Je­sus?” They talked and de­bated un­til af­ter mid­night, but they could not find any com­mon ground for agree­ment. Aside from a few per­sons who in­clined to the be­lief that Je­sus might be the Mes­siah, at least a holy man, or per­haps a prophet, the meet­ing was di­vided into four nearly equal groups who held, re­spec­tively, the fol­low­ing views of Je­sus:

• woe upon light-rejecting inhabitants of

163:6.5Then, speak­ing to all the dis­ci­ples, he said: “You have heard how many cities and vil­lages have re­ceived the good news of the king­dom, and how my min­is­ters and teach­ers have been re­ceived by both the Jew and the gen­tile. And blessed in­deed are these com­mu­ni­ties which have elected to be­lieve the gospel of the king­dom. But woe upon the light-re­ject­ing in­hab­i­tants of Cho­ra­zin, Beth­saida-Ju­lias, and Ca­per­naum, the cities which did not well re­ceive these mes­sen­gers. I de­clare that, if the mighty works done in these places had been done in Tyre and Sidon, the peo­ple of these so-called hea­then cities would have long since re­pented in sack­cloth and ashes. It shall in­deed be more tol­er­a­ble for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judg­ment.”

• Jesus › 14th appearance at

192:3.1At noon on Sat­ur­day, April 22, the eleven apos­tles as­sem­bled by ap­point­ment on the hill near Ca­per­naum, and Je­sus ap­peared among them. This meet­ing oc­curred on the very mount where the Mas­ter had set them apart as his apos­tles and as am­bas­sadors of the Fa­ther’s king­dom on earth. And this was the Mas­ter’s four­teenth mor­ontia man­i­fes­ta­tion.