Jairus

• Jairus

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.”

152:1.1Jairus was, of course, ter­ri­bly im­pa­tient of this de­lay in reach­ing his home; so they now has­tened on at quick­ened pace. Even be­fore they en­tered the ruler’s yard, one of his ser­vants came out, say­ing: “Trou­ble not the Mas­ter; your daugh­ter is dead.” But Je­sus seemed not to heed the ser­vant’s words, for, tak­ing with him Pe­ter, James, and John, he turned and said to the grief-stricken fa­ther: “Fear not; only be­lieve.” When he en­tered the house, he found the flute-play­ers al­ready there with the mourn­ers, who were mak­ing an un­seemly tu­mult; al­ready were the rel­a­tives en­gaged in weep­ing and wail­ing. And when he had put all the mourn­ers out of the room, he went in with the fa­ther and mother and his three apos­tles. He had told the mourn­ers that the damsel was not dead, but they laughed him to scorn. Je­sus now turned to the mother, say­ing: “Your daugh­ter is not dead; she is only asleep.” And when the house had qui­eted down, Je­sus, go­ing up to where the child lay, took her by the hand and said, “Daugh­ter, I say to you, awake and arise!” And when the girl heard these words, she im­me­di­ately rose up and walked across the room. And pres­ently, af­ter she had re­cov­ered from her daze, Je­sus di­rected that they should give her some­thing to eat, for she had been a long time with­out food.

152:1.2Since there was much ag­i­ta­tion in Ca­per­naum against Je­sus, he called the fam­ily to­gether and ex­plained that the maiden had been in a state of coma fol­low­ing a long fever, and that he had merely aroused her, that he had not raised her from the dead. He like­wise ex­plained all this to his apos­tles, but it was fu­tile; they all be­lieved he had raised the lit­tle girl from the dead. What Je­sus said in ex­pla­na­tion of many of these ap­par­ent mir­a­cles had lit­tle ef­fect on his fol­low­ers. They were mir­a­cle-minded and lost no op­por­tu­nity to as­cribe an­other won­der to Je­sus. Je­sus and the apos­tles re­turned to Beth­saida af­ter he had specif­i­cally charged all of them that they should tell no man.

152:1.3When he came out of Jairus’s house, two blind men led by a dumb boy fol­lowed him and cried out for heal­ing. About this time Je­sus’ rep­u­ta­tion as a healer was at its very height. Ev­ery­where he went the sick and the af­flicted were wait­ing for him. The Mas­ter now looked much worn, and all of his friends were be­com­ing con­cerned lest he con­tinue his work of teach­ing and heal­ing to the point of ac­tual col­lapse.

152:1.4Je­sus’ apos­tles, let alone the com­mon peo­ple, could not un­der­stand the na­ture and at­tri­butes of this God-man. Nei­ther has any sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tion been able to eval­u­ate what took place on earth in the per­son of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth. And there can never oc­cur an op­por­tu­nity for ei­ther sci­ence or re­li­gion to check up on these re­mark­able events for the sim­ple rea­son that such an ex­traor­di­nary sit­u­a­tion can never again oc­cur, ei­ther on this world or on any other world in Neb­a­don. Never again, on any world in this en­tire uni­verse, will a be­ing ap­pear in the like­ness of mor­tal flesh, at the same time em­body­ing all the at­tri­butes of cre­ative en­ergy com­bined with spir­i­tual en­dow­ments which tran­scend time and most other ma­te­rial lim­i­ta­tions.

152:1.5Never be­fore Je­sus was on earth, nor since, has it been pos­si­ble so di­rectly and graph­i­cally to se­cure the re­sults at­ten­dant upon the strong and liv­ing faith of mor­tal men and women. To re­peat these phe­nom­ena, we would have to go into the im­me­di­ate pres­ence of Mi­chael, the Cre­ator, and find him as he was in those days—the Son of Man. Like­wise, to­day, while his ab­sence pre­vents such ma­te­rial man­i­fes­ta­tions, you should re­frain from plac­ing any sort of lim­i­ta­tion on the pos­si­ble ex­hi­bi­tion of his spir­i­tual power. Though the Mas­ter is ab­sent as a ma­te­rial be­ing, he is pres­ent as a spir­i­tual in­flu­ence in the hearts of men. By go­ing away from the world, Je­sus made it pos­si­ble for his spirit to live along­side that of his Fa­ther which in­dwells the minds of all man­kind.

153:1.7On Fri­day evening, and again on Sab­bath morn­ing, the Je­ru­sa­lem lead­ers had la­bored long and earnestly with Jairus to pre­vent Je­sus’ speak­ing in the syn­a­gogue, but it was of no avail. Jairus’s only re­ply to all this plead­ing was: “I have granted this re­quest, and I will not vi­o­late my word.”

153:1.1A dis­tin­guished con­gre­ga­tion greeted Je­sus at three o’clock on this ex­qui­site Sab­bath af­ter­noon in the new Ca­per­naum syn­a­gogue. Jairus pre­sided and handed Je­sus the Scrip­tures to read. The day be­fore, fifty-three Phar­isees and Sad­ducees had ar­rived from Je­ru­sa­lem; more than thirty of the lead­ers and rulers of the neigh­bor­ing syn­a­gogues were also pres­ent. These Jew­ish re­li­gious lead­ers were act­ing di­rectly un­der or­ders from the San­hedrin at Je­ru­sa­lem, and they con­sti­tuted the or­tho­dox van­guard which had come to in­au­gu­rate open war­fare on Je­sus and his dis­ci­ples. Sit­ting by the side of these Jew­ish lead­ers, in the syn­a­gogue seats of honor, were the of­fi­cial ob­servers of Herod An­tipas, who had been di­rected to as­cer­tain the truth con­cern­ing the dis­turb­ing re­ports that an at­tempt had been made by the pop­u­lace to pro­claim Je­sus the king of the Jews, over in the do­mains of his brother Philip.

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.