Father’s business

• time for Jesus to be about

124:6.15On the day be­fore the Pass­over Sab­bath, flood tides of spir­i­tual il­lu­mi­na­tion swept through the mor­tal mind of Je­sus and filled his hu­man heart to over­flow­ing with af­fec­tion­ate pity for the spir­i­tu­ally blind and morally ig­no­rant mul­ti­tudes as­sem­bled for the cel­e­bra­tion of the an­cient Pass­over com­mem­o­ra­tion. This was one of the most ex­traor­di­nary days that the Son of God spent in the flesh; and dur­ing the night, for the first time in his earth ca­reer, there ap­peared to him an as­signed mes­sen­ger from Sal­ving­ton, com­mis­sioned by Im­manuel, who said: “The hour has come. It is time that you be­gan to be about your Fa­ther’s busi­ness.”

• time for Jesus to be about

126:3.5This year Je­sus was much trou­bled with con­fused think­ing. Fam­ily re­spon­si­bil­ity had quite ef­fec­tively re­moved all thought of im­me­di­ately car­ry­ing out any plan for re­spond­ing to the Je­ru­sa­lem vis­i­ta­tion di­rect­ing him to “be about his Fa­ther’s busi­ness.” Je­sus rightly rea­soned that the watch­care of his earthly fa­ther’s fam­ily must take prece­dence of all du­ties; that the sup­port of his fam­ily must be­come his first obli­ga­tion.

• time for Jesus to be about

135:8.3Just be­fore the noon rest, Je­sus laid down his tools, re­moved his work apron, and merely an­nounced to the three work­men in the room with him, “My hour has come.” He went out to his broth­ers James and Jude, re­peat­ing, “My hour has come—let us go to John.” And they started im­me­di­ately for Pella, eat­ing their lunch as they jour­neyed. This was on Sun­day, Jan­uary 13. They tar­ried for the night in the Jor­dan val­ley and ar­rived on the scene of John’s bap­tiz­ing about noon of the next day.