Jude

• Jude

127:4.5James and Si­mon grew up try­ing to fol­low Je­sus’ plan of pla­cat­ing their bel­li­cose and some­times irate play­mates by per­sua­sion and non­re­sis­tance, and they were fairly suc­cess­ful; but Joseph and Jude, while as­sent­ing to such teach­ings at home, made haste to de­fend them­selves when as­sailed by their com­rades; in par­tic­u­lar was Jude guilty of vi­o­lat­ing the spirit of these teach­ings. But non­re­sis­tance was not a rule of the fam­ily. No penalty was at­tached to the vi­o­la­tion of per­sonal teach­ings.

• Jude

137:6.1Je­sus’ first pub­lic ap­pear­ance fol­low­ing his bap­tism was in the Ca­per­naum syn­a­gogue on Sab­bath, March 2, A.D. 26. The syn­a­gogue was crowded to over­flow­ing. The story of the bap­tism in the Jor­dan was now aug­mented by the fresh news from Cana about the wa­ter and the wine. Je­sus gave seats of honor to his six apos­tles, and seated with them were his broth­ers in the flesh James and Jude. His mother, hav­ing re­turned to Ca­per­naum with James the evening be­fore, was also pres­ent, be­ing seated in the women’s sec­tion of the syn­a­gogue. The en­tire au­di­ence was on edge; they ex­pected to be­hold some ex­traor­di­nary man­i­fes­ta­tion of super­nat­u­ral power which would be a fit­ting tes­ti­mony to the na­ture and au­thor­ity of him who was that day to speak to them. But they were des­tined to dis­ap­point­ment.

• Jude

137:6.4That af­ter­noon Je­sus and his apos­tles, with James and Jude, en­tered a boat and pulled down the shore a lit­tle way, where they an­chored while he talked to them about the com­ing king­dom. And they un­der­stood more than they had on Thurs­day night.

• Jude

154:5.1May 22 was an event­ful day in the life of Je­sus. On this Sun­day morn­ing, be­fore day­break, one of David’s mes­sen­gers ar­rived in great haste from Tiberias, bring­ing the word that Herod had au­tho­rized, or was about to au­tho­rize, the ar­rest of Je­sus by the of­fi­cers of the San­hedrin. The re­ceipt of the news of this im­pend­ing dan­ger caused David Zeb­e­dee to arouse his mes­sen­gers and send them out to all the lo­cal groups of dis­ci­ples, sum­mon­ing them for an emer­gency coun­cil at seven o’clock that morn­ing. When the sis­ter-in-law of Jude (Je­sus’ brother) heard this alarm­ing re­port, she has­tened word to all of Je­sus’ fam­ily who dwelt near by, sum­mon­ing them forth­with to as­sem­ble at Zeb­e­dee’s house. And in re­sponse to this hasty call, pres­ently there were as­sem­bled Mary, James, Joseph, Jude, and Ruth.

• Jude

157:0.1Be­fore Je­sus took the twelve for a short so­journ in the vicin­ity of Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi, he ar­ranged through the mes­sen­gers of David to go over to Ca­per­naum on Sun­day, Au­gust 7, for the pur­pose of meet­ing his fam­ily. By pre­ar­range­ment this visit was to oc­cur at the Zeb­e­dee boat­shop. David Zeb­e­dee had ar­ranged with Jude, Je­sus’ brother, for the pres­ence of the en­tire Naz­a­reth fam­ily—Mary and all of Je­sus’ broth­ers and sis­ters—and Je­sus went with An­drew and Pe­ter to keep this ap­point­ment. It was cer­tainly the in­ten­tion of Mary and the chil­dren to keep this en­gage­ment, but it so hap­pened that a group of the Phar­isees, know­ing that Je­sus was on the op­po­site side of the lake in Philip’s do­mains, de­cided to call upon Mary to learn what they could of his where­abouts. The ar­rival of these Je­ru­sa­lem emis­saries greatly per­turbed Mary, and not­ing the ten­sion and ner­vous­ness of the en­tire fam­ily, they con­cluded that Je­sus must have been ex­pected to pay them a visit. Ac­cord­ingly they in­stalled them­selves in Mary’s home and, af­ter sum­mon­ing re­in­force­ments, waited pa­tiently for Je­sus’ ar­rival. And this, of course, ef­fec­tively pre­vented any of the fam­ily from at­tempt­ing to keep their ap­point­ment with Je­sus. Sev­eral times dur­ing the day both Jude and Ruth en­deav­ored to elude the vig­i­lance of the Phar­isees in their ef­forts to send word to Je­sus, but it was of no avail.

• Jude

183:4.7It was shortly af­ter day­light and just af­ter Pe­ter had been sent to join his brother, that Jude, Je­sus’ brother in the flesh, ar­rived in the camp, al­most breath­less and in ad­vance of the rest of Je­sus’ fam­ily, only to learn that the Mas­ter had al­ready been placed un­der ar­rest; and he has­tened back down the Jeri­cho road to carry this in­for­ma­tion to his mother and to his broth­ers and sis­ters. David Zeb­e­dee sent word to Je­sus’ fam­ily, by Jude, to for­gather at the house of Martha and Mary in Beth­any and there await news which his mes­sen­gers would reg­u­larly bring them.

• Jude

188:3.3Mary the mother of Je­sus, with Ruth and Jude, re­turned to Beth­any to join their fam­ily this Sat­ur­day evening just be­fore sun­set. David Zeb­e­dee re­mained at the home of Nicode­mus, where he had ar­ranged for his mes­sen­gers to as­sem­ble early Sun­day morn­ing. The women of Gal­i­lee, who pre­pared spices for the fur­ther em­balm­ing of Je­sus’ body, tar­ried at the home of Joseph of Ari­mathea.

128:6.4They went up to Je­ru­sa­lem and re­turned by the same route, the Jor­dan val­ley, as Je­sus feared trou­ble if he took his young brother through Samaria. Al­ready at Naz­a­reth Jude had got into slight trou­ble sev­eral times be­cause of his hasty dis­po­si­tion, cou­pled with his strong pa­tri­otic sen­ti­ments.

128:6.5They ar­rived at Je­ru­sa­lem in due time and were on their way for a first visit to the tem­ple, the very sight of which had stirred and thrilled Jude to the very depths of his soul, when they chanced to meet Laz­a­rus of Beth­any. While Je­sus talked with Laz­a­rus and sought to ar­range for their joint cel­e­bra­tion of the Pass­over, Jude started up real trou­ble for them all. Close at hand stood a Ro­man guard who made some im­proper re­marks re­gard­ing a Jew­ish girl who was pass­ing. Jude flushed with fiery in­dig­na­tion and was not slow in ex­press­ing his re­sent­ment of such an im­pro­pri­ety di­rectly to and within hear­ing of the sol­dier. Now the Ro­man le­gion­naires were very sen­si­tive to any­thing bor­der­ing on Jew­ish dis­re­spect; so the guard promptly placed Jude un­der ar­rest. This was too much for the young pa­triot, and be­fore Je­sus could cau­tion him by a warn­ing glance, he had de­liv­ered him­self of a vol­u­ble de­nun­ci­a­tion of pent-up anti-Ro­man feel­ings, all of which only made a bad mat­ter worse. Jude, with Je­sus by his side, was taken at once to the mil­i­tary prison.

128:6.6Je­sus en­deav­ored to ob­tain ei­ther an im­me­di­ate hear­ing for Jude or else his re­lease in time for the Pass­over cel­e­bra­tion that evening, but he failed in these at­tempts. Since the next day was a “holy con­vo­ca­tion” in Je­ru­sa­lem, even the Ro­mans would not pre­sume to hear charges against a Jew. Ac­cord­ingly, Jude re­mained in con­fine­ment un­til the morn­ing of the sec­ond day af­ter his ar­rest, and Je­sus stayed at the prison with him. They were not pres­ent in the tem­ple at the cer­e­mony of re­ceiv­ing the sons of the law into the full cit­i­zen­ship of Is­rael. Jude did not pass through this for­mal cer­e­mony for sev­eral years, un­til he was next in Je­ru­sa­lem at a Pass­over and in con­nec­tion with his pro­pa­ganda work in be­half of the Zealots, the pa­tri­otic or­ga­ni­za­tion to which he be­longed and in which he was very ac­tive.

128:6.7The morn­ing fol­low­ing their sec­ond day in prison Je­sus ap­peared be­fore the mil­i­tary mag­is­trate in be­half of Jude. By mak­ing apolo­gies for his brother’s youth and by a fur­ther ex­plana­tory but ju­di­cious state­ment with ref­er­ence to the provoca­tive na­ture of the episode which had led up to the ar­rest of his brother, Je­sus so han­dled the case that the mag­is­trate ex­pressed the opin­ion that the young Jew might have had some pos­si­ble ex­cuse for his vi­o­lent out­burst. Af­ter warn­ing Jude not to al­low him­self again to be guilty of such rash­ness, he said to Je­sus in dis­miss­ing them: “You had bet­ter keep your eye on the lad; he’s li­able to make a lot of trou­ble for all of you.” And the Ro­man judge spoke the truth. Jude did make con­sid­er­able trou­ble for Je­sus, and al­ways was the trou­ble of this same na­ture—clashes with the civil au­thor­i­ties be­cause of his thought­less and un­wise pa­tri­otic out­bursts.

190:2.6And David did not long wait, for the fourth ap­pear­ance of Je­sus to mor­tal rec­og­ni­tion oc­curred shortly be­fore two o’clock in this very home of Martha and Mary, when he ap­peared vis­i­bly be­fore his earthly fam­ily and their friends, twenty in all. The Mas­ter ap­peared in the open back door, say­ing: “Peace be upon you. Greet­ings to those once near me in the flesh and fel­low­ship for my broth­ers and sis­ters in the king­dom of heaven. How could you doubt? Why have you lin­gered so long be­fore choos­ing to fol­low the light of truth with a whole heart? Come, there­fore, all of you into the fel­low­ship of the Spirit of Truth in the Fa­ther’s king­dom.” As they be­gan to re­cover from the first shock of their amaze­ment and to move to­ward him as if to em­brace him, he van­ished from their sight.

• friction with Jesus

124:4.3From this time on he be­came more suc­cess­ful in get­ting along with his broth­ers and sis­ters. He was in­creas­ingly tact­ful, al­ways com­pas­sion­ate and con­sid­er­ate of their wel­fare and hap­pi­ness, and en­joyed good re­la­tions with them up to the be­gin­ning of his pub­lic min­istry. To be more ex­plicit: He got along with James, Miriam, and the two younger (as yet un­born) chil­dren, Amos and Ruth, most ex­cel­lently. He al­ways got along with Martha fairly well. What trou­ble he had at home largely arose out of fric­tion with Joseph and Jude, par­tic­u­larly the lat­ter.

• firebrand; highest of ideals, but unstable in temperament

127:4.7James was grow­ing up to be a well-bal­anced and even-tem­pered youth, but he was not so spir­i­tu­ally in­clined as Je­sus. He was a much bet­ter stu­dent than Joseph, who, while a faith­ful worker, was even less spir­i­tu­ally minded. Joseph was a plod­der and not up to the in­tel­lec­tual level of the other chil­dren. Si­mon was a well-mean­ing boy but too much of a dreamer. He was slow in get­ting set­tled down in life and was the cause of con­sid­er­able anx­i­ety to Je­sus and Mary. But he was al­ways a good and well-in­ten­tioned lad. Jude was a fire­brand. He had the high­est of ide­als, but he was un­sta­ble in tem­per­a­ment. He had all and more of his mother’s de­ter­mi­na­tion and ag­gres­sive­ness, but he lacked much of her sense of pro­por­tion and dis­cre­tion.

• firebrand; highest of ideals, but unstable in temperament

128:7.3All this year the fam­ily af­fairs ran smoothly ex­cept for Jude. For years James had trou­ble with his young­est brother, who was not in­clined to set­tle down to work nor was he to be de­pended upon for his share of the home ex­penses. While he would live at home, he was not con­sci­en­tious about earn­ing his share of the fam­ily up­keep.

128:7.4Je­sus was a man of peace, and ever and anon was he em­bar­rassed by Jude’s bel­liger­ent ex­ploits and nu­mer­ous pa­tri­otic out­bursts. James and Joseph were in fa­vor of cast­ing him out, but Je­sus would not con­sent. When their pa­tience would be severely tried, Je­sus would only coun­sel: “Be pa­tient. Be wise in your coun­sel and elo­quent in your lives, that your young brother may first know the bet­ter way and then be con­strained to fol­low you in it.” The wise and lov­ing coun­sel of Je­sus pre­vented a break in the fam­ily; they re­mained to­gether. But Jude never was brought to his sober senses un­til af­ter his mar­riage.

• became firm believer in Jesus

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.

• became firm believer in Jesus

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.

• Jesus’ failure to select J. as apostle caused gulf with family

138:0.1Af­ter preach­ing the ser­mon on “The King­dom,” Je­sus called the six apos­tles to­gether that af­ter­noon and be­gan to dis­close his plans for vis­it­ing the cities around and about the Sea of Gal­i­lee. His broth­ers James and Jude were very much hurt be­cause they were not called to this con­fer­ence. Up to this time they had re­garded them­selves as be­long­ing to Je­sus’ in­ner cir­cle of as­so­ciates. But Je­sus planned to have no close rel­a­tives as mem­bers of this corps of apos­tolic di­rec­tors of the king­dom. This fail­ure to in­clude James and Jude among the cho­sen few, to­gether with his ap­par­ent aloof­ness from his mother ever since the ex­pe­ri­ence at Cana, was the start­ing point of an ever-widen­ing gulf be­tween Je­sus and his fam­ily. This sit­u­a­tion con­tin­ued through­out his pub­lic min­istry—they very nearly re­jected him—and these dif­fer­ences were not fully re­moved un­til af­ter his death and res­ur­rec­tion. His mother con­stantly wa­vered be­tween at­ti­tudes of fluc­tu­at­ing faith and hope, and in­creas­ing emo­tions of dis­ap­point­ment, hu­mil­i­a­tion, and de­spair. Only Ruth, the young­est, re­mained unswerv­ingly loyal to her fa­ther-brother.

• feared for his safety

154:6.2On the way to Zeb­e­dee’s house they talked these things over and agreed among them­selves to try to per­suade Je­sus to come home with them, for, said Mary: “I know I could in­flu­ence my son if he would only come home and lis­ten to me.” James and Jude had heard ru­mors con­cern­ing the plans to ar­rest Je­sus and take him to Je­ru­sa­lem for trial. They also feared for their own safety. As long as Je­sus was a pop­u­lar fig­ure in the pub­lic eye, his fam­ily al­lowed mat­ters to drift along, but now that the peo­ple of Ca­per­naum and the lead­ers at Je­ru­sa­lem had sud­denly turned against him, they be­gan keenly to feel the pres­sure of the sup­posed dis­grace of their em­bar­rass­ing po­si­tion.

• believed Jesus had risen

190:2.2The third ap­pear­ance oc­curred about noon of this Sun­day at Beth­any. Shortly af­ter noon­tide, Je­sus’ old­est brother, James, was stand­ing in the gar­den of Laz­a­rus be­fore the empty tomb of the res­ur­rected brother of Martha and Mary, turn­ing over in his mind the news brought to them about one hour pre­vi­ously by the mes­sen­ger of David. James had al­ways in­clined to be­lieve in his el­dest brother’s mis­sion on earth, but he had long since lost con­tact with Je­sus’ work and had drifted into grave doubt­ing re­gard­ing the later claims of the apos­tles that Je­sus was the Mes­siah. The whole fam­ily was star­tled and well-nigh con­founded by the news brought by the mes­sen­ger. Even as James stood be­fore Laz­a­rus’s empty tomb, Mary Mag­da­lene ar­rived on the scene and was ex­cit­edly re­lat­ing to the fam­ily her ex­pe­ri­ences of the early morn­ing hours at the tomb of Joseph. Be­fore she had fin­ished, David Zeb­e­dee and his mother ar­rived. Ruth, of course, be­lieved the re­port, and so did Jude af­ter he had talked with David and Sa­lome.

124:3.4On Wednes­day evening, June 24, A.D. 5, Jude was born. Com­pli­ca­tions at­tended the birth of this, the sev­enth child. Mary was so very ill for sev­eral weeks that Joseph re­mained at home. Je­sus was very much oc­cu­pied with er­rands for his fa­ther and with many du­ties oc­ca­sioned by his mother’s se­ri­ous ill­ness. Never again did this youth find it pos­si­ble to re­turn to the child­like at­ti­tude of his ear­lier years. From the time of his mother’s ill­ness—just be­fore he was eleven years old—he was com­pelled to as­sume the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of the first-born son and to do all this one or two full years be­fore these bur­dens should nor­mally have fallen on his shoul­ders.

128:7.11James and his bride, Esta, moved into a neat lit­tle home on the west side of town, the gift of her fa­ther. While James con­tin­ued his sup­port of his mother’s home, his quota was cut in half be­cause of his mar­riage, and Joseph was for­mally in­stalled by Je­sus as head of the fam­ily. Jude was now very faith­fully send­ing his share of funds home each month. The wed­dings of James and Miriam had a very ben­e­fi­cial in­flu­ence on Jude, and when he left for the fish­ing grounds, the day af­ter the dou­ble wed­ding, he as­sured Joseph that he could de­pend on him “to do my full duty, and more if it is needed.” And he kept his prom­ise.

135:8.2Je­sus’ broth­ers James and Jude had talked about go­ing down to John for bap­tism; and now that Jude had come over to Ca­per­naum for the Sab­bath ser­vices, both he and James, af­ter lis­ten­ing to Je­sus’ dis­course in the syn­a­gogue, de­cided to take coun­sel with him con­cern­ing their plans. This was on Sat­ur­day night, Jan­uary 12, A.D. 26. Je­sus re­quested that they post­pone the dis­cus­sion un­til the fol­low­ing day, when he would give them his an­swer. He slept very lit­tle that night, be­ing in close com­mu­nion with the Fa­ther in heaven. He had ar­ranged to have noon­time lunch with his broth­ers and to ad­vise them con­cern­ing bap­tism by John. That Sun­day morn­ing Je­sus was work­ing as usual in the boat­shop. James and Jude had ar­rived with the lunch and were wait­ing in the lum­ber room for him, as it was not yet time for the mid­day re­cess, and they knew that Je­sus was very reg­u­lar about such mat­ters.

135:8.6There was a tone of fi­nal­ity and au­thor­ity in Je­sus’ voice. John was atrem­ble with emo­tion as he made ready to bap­tize Je­sus of Naz­a­reth in the Jor­dan at noon on Mon­day, Jan­uary 14, A.D. 26. Thus did John bap­tize Je­sus and his two broth­ers James and Jude. And when John had bap­tized these three, he dis­missed the oth­ers for the day, an­nounc­ing that he would re­sume bap­tisms at noon the next day. As the peo­ple were de­part­ing, the four men still stand­ing in the wa­ter heard a strange sound, and pres­ently there ap­peared for a mo­ment an ap­pari­tion im­me­di­ately over the head of Je­sus, and they heard a voice say­ing, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” A great change came over the coun­te­nance of Je­sus, and com­ing up out of the wa­ter in si­lence he took leave of them, go­ing to­ward the hills to the east. And no man saw Je­sus again for forty days.

127:4.10This year Jude started to school, and it was nec­es­sary for Je­sus to sell his harp in or­der to de­fray these ex­penses. Thus dis­ap­peared the last of his recre­ational plea­sures. He much loved to play the harp when tired in mind and weary in body, but he com­forted him­self with the thought that at least the harp was safe from seizure by the tax col­lec­tor.

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.

134:1.4Both Si­mon and Jude had for some time wanted to get mar­ried, but they had dis­liked to do this with­out Je­sus’ con­sent; ac­cord­ingly they had post­poned these events, hop­ing for their el­dest brother’s re­turn. Though they all re­garded James as the head of the fam­ily in most mat­ters, when it came to get­ting mar­ried, they wanted the bless­ing of Je­sus. So Si­mon and Jude were mar­ried at a dou­ble wed­ding in early March of this year, A.D. 24. All the older chil­dren were now mar­ried; only Ruth, the young­est, re­mained at home with Mary.

129:1.13Fre­quently Jude came over on the Sab­bath to hear Je­sus talk in the syn­a­gogue and would tarry to visit with him. And the more Jude saw of his el­dest brother, the more he be­came con­vinced that Je­sus was a truly great man.

127:4.3Je­sus be­gan wise dis­ci­pline upon his broth­ers and sis­ters at such an early age that lit­tle or no pun­ish­ment was ever re­quired to se­cure their prompt and whole­hearted obe­di­ence. The only ex­cep­tion was Jude, upon whom on sundry oc­ca­sions Je­sus found it nec­es­sary to im­pose penal­ties for his in­frac­tions of the rules of the home. On three oc­ca­sions when it was deemed wise to pun­ish Jude for self-con­fessed and de­lib­er­ate vi­o­la­tions of the fam­ily rules of con­duct, his pun­ish­ment was fixed by the unan­i­mous de­cree of the older chil­dren and was as­sented to by Jude him­self be­fore it was in­flicted.

128:7.8Je­sus spent a great deal of time this year with the in­di­vid­ual mem­bers of his fam­ily. He would take them for long and fre­quent strolls up the hill and through the coun­try­side. Be­fore har­vest he took Jude to the farmer un­cle south of Naz­a­reth, but Jude did not re­main long af­ter the har­vest. He ran away, and Si­mon later found him with the fish­er­men at the lake. When Si­mon brought him back home, Je­sus talked things over with the run­away lad and, since he wanted to be a fish­er­man, went over to Mag­dala with him and put him in the care of a rel­a­tive, a fish­er­man; and Jude worked fairly well and reg­u­larly from that time on un­til his mar­riage, and he con­tin­ued as a fish­er­man af­ter his mar­riage.

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.

150:1.1Of all the dar­ing things which Je­sus did in con­nec­tion with his earth ca­reer, the most amaz­ing was his sud­den an­nounce­ment on the evening of Jan­uary 16: “On the mor­row we will set apart ten women for the min­is­ter­ing work of the king­dom.” At the be­gin­ning of the two weeks’ pe­riod dur­ing which the apos­tles and the evan­ge­lists were to be ab­sent from Beth­saida on their fur­lough, Je­sus re­quested David to sum­mon his par­ents back to their home and to dis­patch mes­sen­gers call­ing to Beth­saida ten de­vout women who had served in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the for­mer en­camp­ment and the tented in­fir­mary. These women had all lis­tened to the in­struc­tion given the young evan­ge­lists, but it had never oc­curred to ei­ther them­selves or their teach­ers that Je­sus would dare to com­mis­sion women to teach the gospel of the king­dom and min­is­ter to the sick. These ten women se­lected and com­mis­sioned by Je­sus were: Su­sanna, the daugh­ter of the for­mer chazan of the Naz­a­reth syn­a­gogue; Joanna, the wife of Chuza, the stew­ard of Herod An­tipas; Eliz­a­beth, the daugh­ter of a wealthy Jew of Tiberias and Sep­pho­ris; Martha, the el­der sis­ter of An­drew and Pe­ter; Rachel, the sis­ter-in-law of Jude, the Mas­ter’s brother in the flesh; Nas­anta, the daugh­ter of El­man, the Syr­ian physi­cian; Milcha, a cousin of the Apos­tle Thomas; Ruth, the el­dest daugh­ter of Mat­thew Levi; Celta, the daugh­ter of a Ro­man cen­tu­rion; and Aga­man, a widow of Da­mas­cus. Sub­se­quently, Je­sus added two other women to this group—Mary Mag­da­lene and Re­becca, the daugh­ter of Joseph of Ari­mathea.

128:6.3The fam­ily fi­nances were in the best con­di­tion since the dis­ap­pear­ance of Joseph’s es­tate. The fi­nal pay­ments had been made on the car­a­van re­pair shop; they owed no man and for the first time in years had some funds ahead. This be­ing true, and since he had taken his other broth­ers to Je­ru­sa­lem for their first Pass­over cer­e­monies, Je­sus de­cided to ac­com­pany Jude (who had just grad­u­ated from the syn­a­gogue school) on his first visit to the tem­ple.

128:6.8Je­sus and Jude walked over to Beth­any for the night, ex­plain­ing why they had failed to keep their ap­point­ment for the Pass­over sup­per, and set out for Naz­a­reth the fol­low­ing day. Je­sus did not tell the fam­ily about his young brother’s ar­rest at Je­ru­sa­lem, but he had a long talk with Jude about this episode some three weeks af­ter their re­turn. Af­ter this talk with Je­sus Jude him­self told the fam­ily. He never for­got the pa­tience and for­bear­ance his brother-fa­ther man­i­fested through­out the whole of this try­ing ex­pe­ri­ence.

186:0.3When Mary the mother of Je­sus started out with John to go to her son, his sis­ter Ruth re­fused to re­main be­hind with the rest of the fam­ily. Since she was de­ter­mined to ac­com­pany her mother, her brother Jude went with her. The rest of the Mas­ter’s fam­ily re­mained in Beth­any un­der the di­rec­tion of James, and al­most ev­ery hour the mes­sen­gers of David Zeb­e­dee brought them re­ports con­cern­ing the prog­ress of that ter­ri­ble busi­ness of putting to death their el­dest brother, Je­sus of Naz­a­reth.

187:2.7The Apos­tle John, with Mary the mother of Je­sus, Ruth, and Jude, ar­rived on the scene just af­ter Je­sus had been hoisted to his po­si­tion on the cross, and just as the cap­tain was nail­ing the ti­tle above the Mas­ter’s head. John was the only one of the eleven apos­tles to wit­ness the cru­ci­fix­ion, and even he was not pres­ent all of the time since he ran into Je­ru­sa­lem to bring back his mother and her friends soon af­ter he had brought Je­sus’ mother to the scene.

187:3.2Stand­ing near the cross at one time or an­other dur­ing the cru­ci­fix­ion were Mary, Ruth, Jude, John, Sa­lome (John’s mother), and a group of earnest women be­liev­ers in­clud­ing Mary the wife of Clopas and sis­ter of Je­sus’ mother, Mary Mag­da­lene, and Re­becca, one­time of Sep­pho­ris. These and other friends of Je­sus held their peace while they wit­nessed his great pa­tience and for­ti­tude and gazed upon his in­tense suf­fer­ings.

187:5.1Al­though it was early in the sea­son for such a phe­nom­e­non, shortly af­ter twelve o’clock the sky dark­ened by rea­son of the fine sand in the air. The peo­ple of Je­ru­sa­lem knew that this meant the com­ing of one of those hot-wind sand­storms from the Ara­bian Desert. Be­fore one o’clock the sky was so dark the sun was hid, and the re­main­der of the crowd has­tened back to the city. When the Mas­ter gave up his life shortly af­ter this hour, less than thirty peo­ple were pres­ent, only the thir­teen Ro­man sol­diers and a group of about fif­teen be­liev­ers. These be­liev­ers were all women ex­cept two, Jude, Je­sus’ brother, and John Zeb­e­dee, who re­turned to the scene just be­fore the Mas­ter ex­pired.