Chorazin

• Chorazin

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.

• Chorazin

152:7.3On Sun­day, April 24, Je­sus and the apos­tles left Je­ru­sa­lem for Beth­saida, go­ing by way of the coast cities of Joppa, Cae­sarea, and Ptole­mais. Thence, over­land they went by Ramah and Cho­ra­zin to Beth­saida, ar­riv­ing on Fri­day, April 29. Im­me­di­ately on reach­ing home, Je­sus dis­patched An­drew to ask of the ruler of the syn­a­gogue per­mis­sion to speak the next day, that be­ing the Sab­bath, at the af­ter­noon ser­vice. And Je­sus well knew that that would be the last time he would ever be per­mit­ted to speak in the Ca­per­naum syn­a­gogue.

146:4.6From Iron they went to Gis­chala, spend­ing two days pro­claim­ing the gospel, and then de­parted for Cho­ra­zin, where they spent al­most a week preach­ing the good news; but they were un­able to win many be­liev­ers for the king­dom in Cho­ra­zin. In no place where Je­sus had taught had he met with such a gen­eral re­jec­tion of his mes­sage. The so­journ at Cho­ra­zin was very de­press­ing to most of the apos­tles, and An­drew and Ab­ner had much dif­fi­culty in up­hold­ing the cour­age of their as­so­ciates. And so, pass­ing qui­etly through Ca­per­naum, they went on to the vil­lage of Madon, where they fared lit­tle bet­ter. There pre­vailed in the minds of most of the apos­tles the idea that their fail­ure to meet with suc­cess in these towns so re­cently vis­ited was due to Je­sus’ in­sis­tence that they re­frain, in their teach­ing and preach­ing, from re­fer­ring to him as a healer. How they wished he would cleanse an­other leper or in some other man­ner so man­i­fest his power as to at­tract the at­ten­tion of the peo­ple! But the Mas­ter was un­moved by their earnest urg­ing.

155:2.1On Mon­day morn­ing, May 23, Je­sus di­rected Pe­ter to go over to Cho­ra­zin with the twelve evan­ge­lists while he, with the eleven, de­parted for Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi, go­ing by way of the Jor­dan to the Da­mas­cus-Ca­per­naum road, thence north­east to the junc­tion with the road to Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi, and then on into that city, where they tar­ried and taught for two weeks. They ar­rived dur­ing the af­ter­noon of Tues­day, May 24.

155:2.2Pe­ter and the evan­ge­lists so­journed in Cho­ra­zin for two weeks, preach­ing the gospel of the king­dom to a small but earnest com­pany of be­liev­ers. But they were not able to win many new con­verts. No city of all Gal­i­lee yielded so few souls for the king­dom as Cho­ra­zin. In ac­cor­dance with Pe­ter’s in­struc­tions the twelve evan­ge­lists had less to say about heal­ing—things phys­i­cal—while they preached and taught with in­creased vigor the spir­i­tual truths of the heav­enly king­dom. These two weeks at Cho­ra­zin con­sti­tuted a ver­i­ta­ble bap­tism of ad­ver­sity for the twelve evan­ge­lists in that it was the most dif­fi­cult and un­pro­duc­tive pe­riod in their ca­reers up to this time. Be­ing thus de­prived of the sat­is­fac­tion of win­ning souls for the king­dom, each of them the more earnestly and hon­estly took stock of his own soul and its prog­ress in the spir­i­tual paths of the new life.

155:2.3When it ap­peared that no more peo­ple were minded to seek en­trance into the king­dom, Pe­ter, on Tues­day, June 7, called his as­so­ciates to­gether and de­parted for Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi to join Je­sus and the apos­tles. They ar­rived about noon­time on Wednes­day and spent the en­tire evening in re­hears­ing their ex­pe­ri­ences among the un­be­liev­ers of Cho­ra­zin. Dur­ing the dis­cus­sions of this evening Je­sus made fur­ther ref­er­ence to the para­ble of the sower and taught them much about the mean­ing of the ap­par­ent fail­ure of life un­der­tak­ings.

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.”