healing at sundown

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.

• 683 healed

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.

• unintended by Jesus

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.

• majority not permanently spiritually benefited

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.

• only 7 of the 683 enrolled at school for evangelists

148:1.4These evan­ge­lists, though they taught and preached the gospel, did not bap­tize be­liev­ers un­til af­ter they were later or­dained and com­mis­sioned by Je­sus as the sev­enty mes­sen­gers of the king­dom. Only seven of the large num­ber healed at the sun­down scene at this place were to be found among these evan­ge­lis­tic stu­dents. The no­ble­man’s son of Ca­per­naum was one of those trained for gospel ser­vice in Pe­ter’s school.