Lazarus (of Bethany)

• Lazarus (of Bethany)

127:3.5Af­ter the Pass­over sup­per Mary sat down to talk with James while Martha, Laz­a­rus, and Je­sus talked to­gether far into the night. The next day they at­tended the tem­ple ser­vices, and James was re­ceived into the com­mon­wealth of Is­rael. That morn­ing, as they paused on the brow of Oli­vet to view the tem­ple, while James ex­claimed in won­der, Je­sus gazed on Je­ru­sa­lem in si­lence. James could not com­pre­hend his brother’s de­meanor. That night they again re­turned to Beth­any and would have de­parted for home the next day, but James was in­sis­tent on their go­ing back to visit the tem­ple, ex­plain­ing that he wanted to hear the teach­ers. And while this was true, se­cretly in his heart he wanted to hear Je­sus par­tic­i­pate in the dis­cus­sions, as he had heard his mother tell about. Ac­cord­ingly, they went to the tem­ple and heard the dis­cus­sions, but Je­sus asked no ques­tions. It all seemed so puerile and in­signif­i­cant to this awak­en­ing mind of man and God—he could only pity them. James was dis­ap­pointed that Je­sus said noth­ing. To his in­quiries Je­sus only made re­ply, “My hour has not yet come.”

• Lazarus (of Bethany)

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.

• Lazarus (of Bethany)

134:9.2Je­sus and John stopped overnight at Beth­any with Laz­a­rus and his sis­ters, go­ing early the next morn­ing to Je­ru­sa­lem. They spent al­most three weeks in and around the city, at least John did. Many days John went into Je­ru­sa­lem alone while Je­sus walked about over the near-by hills and en­gaged in many sea­sons of spir­i­tual com­mu­nion with his Fa­ther in heaven.

• Lazarus (of Bethany)

152:7.1Sun­day, April 3, Je­sus, ac­com­pa­nied only by the twelve apos­tles, started from Beth­saida on the jour­ney to Je­ru­sa­lem. To avoid the mul­ti­tudes and to at­tract as lit­tle at­ten­tion as pos­si­ble, they jour­neyed by way of Gerasa and Phil­a­del­phia. He for­bade them to do any pub­lic teach­ing on this trip; nei­ther did he per­mit them to teach or preach while so­journ­ing in Je­ru­sa­lem. They ar­rived at Beth­any, near Je­ru­sa­lem, late on Wednes­day evening, April 6. For this one night they stopped at the home of Laz­a­rus, Martha, and Mary, but the next day they sep­a­rated. Je­sus, with John, stayed at the home of a be­liever named Si­mon, near the house of Laz­a­rus in Beth­any. Ju­das Is­car­iot and Si­mon Ze­lo­tes stopped with friends in Je­ru­sa­lem, while the rest of the apos­tles so­journed, two and two, in dif­fer­ent homes.

143:0.1At the end of June, A.D. 27, be­cause of the in­creas­ing op­po­si­tion of the Jew­ish re­li­gious rulers, Je­sus and the twelve de­parted from Je­ru­sa­lem, af­ter send­ing their tents and mea­ger per­sonal ef­fects to be stored at the home of Laz­a­rus at Beth­any. Go­ing north into Samaria, they tar­ried over the Sab­bath at Bethel. Here they preached for sev­eral days to the peo­ple who came from Gophna and Ephraim. A group of cit­i­zens from Ari­mathea and Thamna came over to in­vite Je­sus to visit their vil­lages. The Mas­ter and his apos­tles spent more than two weeks teach­ing the Jews and Samar­i­tans of this re­gion, many of whom came from as far as An­tipa­tris to hear the good news of the king­dom.

191:4.1The tenth mor­ontia man­i­fes­ta­tion of Je­sus to mor­tal rec­og­ni­tion oc­curred a short time af­ter eight o’clock on Tues­day, April 11, at Phil­a­del­phia, where he showed him­self to Ab­ner and Laz­a­rus and some one hun­dred and fifty of their as­so­ciates, in­clud­ing more than fifty of the evan­ge­lis­tic corps of the sev­enty. This ap­pear­ance oc­curred just af­ter the open­ing of a spe­cial meet­ing in the syn­a­gogue which had been called by Ab­ner to dis­cuss the cru­ci­fix­ion of Je­sus and the more re­cent re­port of the res­ur­rec­tion which had been brought by David’s mes­sen­ger. Inas­much as the res­ur­rected Laz­a­rus was now a mem­ber of this group of be­liev­ers, it was not dif­fi­cult for them to be­lieve the re­port that Je­sus had risen from the dead.

191:4.2The meet­ing in the syn­a­gogue was just be­ing opened by Ab­ner and Laz­a­rus, who were stand­ing to­gether in the pul­pit, when the en­tire au­di­ence of be­liev­ers saw the form of the Mas­ter ap­pear sud­denly. He stepped for­ward from where he had ap­peared be­tween Ab­ner and Laz­a­rus, nei­ther of whom had ob­served him, and salut­ing the com­pany, said:

191:4.3“Peace be upon you. You all know that we have one Fa­ther in heaven, and that there is but one gospel of the king­dom—the good news of the gift of eter­nal life which men re­ceive by faith. As you re­joice in your loy­alty to the gospel, pray the Fa­ther of truth to shed abroad in your hearts a new and greater love for your breth­ren. You are to love all men as I have loved you; you are to serve all men as I have served you. With un­der­stand­ing sym­pa­thy and broth­erly af­fec­tion, fel­low­ship all your breth­ren who are ded­i­cated to the procla­ma­tion of the good news, whether they be Jew or gen­tile, Greek or Ro­man, Per­sian or Ethiopian. John pro­claimed the king­dom in ad­vance; you have preached the gospel in power; the Greeks al­ready teach the good news; and I am soon to send forth the Spirit of Truth into the souls of all these, my breth­ren, who have so un­selfishly ded­i­cated their lives to the en­light­en­ment of their fel­lows who sit in spir­i­tual dark­ness. You are all the chil­dren of light; there­fore stum­ble not into the mis­un­der­stand­ing en­tan­gle­ments of mor­tal sus­pi­cion and hu­man in­tol­er­ance. If you are en­no­bled, by the grace of faith, to love un­be­liev­ers, should you not also equally love those who are your fel­low be­liev­ers in the far-spread­ing house­hold of faith? Re­mem­ber, as you love one an­other, all men will know that you are my dis­ci­ples.

191:4.4“Go, then, into all the world pro­claim­ing this gospel of the fa­ther­hood of God and the broth­er­hood of men to all na­tions and races and ever be wise in your choice of meth­ods for pre­sent­ing the good news to the dif­fer­ent races and tribes of man­kind. Freely you have re­ceived this gospel of the king­dom, and you will freely give the good news to all na­tions. Fear not the re­sis­tance of evil, for I am with you al­ways, even to the end of the ages. And my peace I leave with you.”

191:4.5When he had said, “My peace I leave with you,” he van­ished from their sight. With the ex­cep­tion of one of his ap­pear­ances in Gal­i­lee, where up­ward of five hun­dred be­liev­ers saw him at one time, this group in Phil­a­del­phia em­braced the largest num­ber of mor­tals who saw him on any sin­gle oc­ca­sion.

191:4.6Early the next morn­ing, even while the apos­tles tar­ried in Je­ru­sa­lem await­ing the emo­tional re­cov­ery of Thomas, these be­liev­ers at Phil­a­del­phia went forth pro­claim­ing that Je­sus of Naz­a­reth had risen from the dead.

191:4.7The next day, Wednes­day, Je­sus spent with­out in­ter­rup­tion in the so­ci­ety of his mor­ontia as­so­ciates, and dur­ing the midafter­noon hours he re­ceived vis­it­ing mor­ontia del­e­gates from the man­sion worlds of ev­ery lo­cal sys­tem of in­hab­ited spheres through­out the con­stel­la­tion of Nor­la­ti­adek. And they all re­joiced to know their Cre­ator as one of their own or­der of uni­verse in­tel­li­gence.

171:1.5David was pres­ent in Je­ru­sa­lem dur­ing the tragic last week, tak­ing his mother back with him to Beth­saida af­ter the cru­ci­fix­ion. While await­ing Je­sus and the apos­tles, David stopped with Laz­a­rus at Beth­any and be­came tremen­dously ag­i­tated by the man­ner in which the Phar­isees had be­gun to per­se­cute and ha­rass him since his res­ur­rec­tion. An­drew had di­rected David to dis­con­tinue the mes­sen­ger ser­vice; and this was con­strued by all as an in­di­ca­tion of the early es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom at Je­ru­sa­lem. David found him­self with­out a job, and he had about de­cided to be­come the self-ap­pointed de­fender of Laz­a­rus when pres­ently the ob­ject of his in­dig­nant so­lic­i­tude fled in haste to Phil­a­del­phia. Ac­cord­ingly, some­time af­ter the res­ur­rec­tion and also af­ter the death of his mother, David be­took him­self to Phil­a­del­phia, hav­ing first as­sisted Martha and Mary in dis­pos­ing of their real es­tate; and there, in as­so­ci­a­tion with Ab­ner and Laz­a­rus, he spent the re­main­der of his life, be­com­ing the fi­nan­cial over­seer of all those large in­ter­ests of the king­dom which had their cen­ter at Phil­a­del­phia dur­ing the life­time of Ab­ner.

168:5.3Soon af­ter this Martha and Mary dis­posed of their lands at Beth­any and joined their brother in Perea. Mean­time, Laz­a­rus had be­come the trea­surer of the church at Phil­a­del­phia. He be­came a strong sup­porter of Ab­ner in his con­tro­versy with Paul and the Je­ru­sa­lem church and ul­ti­mately died, when 67 years old, of the same sick­ness that car­ried him off when he was a younger man at Beth­any.

168:0.4Many friends from near-by ham­lets and oth­ers from Je­ru­sa­lem came over to com­fort the sor­row-stricken sis­ters. Laz­a­rus and his sis­ters were the chil­dren of a well-to-do and hon­or­able Jew, one who had been the lead­ing res­i­dent of the lit­tle vil­lage of Beth­any. And not­with­stand­ing that all three had long been ar­dent fol­low­ers of Je­sus, they were highly re­spected by all who knew them. They had in­her­ited ex­ten­sive vine­yards and olive or­chards in this vicin­ity, and that they were wealthy was fur­ther at­tested by the fact that they could af­ford a pri­vate burial tomb on their own premises. Both of their par­ents had al­ready been laid away in this tomb.

• first meeting; boys were same age

124:6.9On the east­ern slopes of Oli­vet they paused for rest in the bor­ders of a lit­tle vil­lage called Beth­any. The hos­pitable vil­lagers poured forth to min­is­ter to the pil­grims, and it hap­pened that Joseph and his fam­ily had stopped near the house of one Si­mon, who had three chil­dren about the same age as Je­sus—Mary, Martha, and Laz­a­rus. They in­vited the Naz­a­reth fam­ily in for re­fresh­ment, and a life­long friend­ship sprang up be­tween the two fam­i­lies. Many times af­ter­ward, in his event­ful life, Je­sus stopped in this home.

• L. took young Jesus to explore Jerusalem

125:2.5The next day’s ser­vices at the tem­ple were more ac­cept­able to Je­sus and did much to re­lieve the un­pleas­ant mem­o­ries of the pre­vi­ous day. The fol­low­ing morn­ing young Laz­a­rus took Je­sus in hand, and they be­gan a sys­tem­atic ex­plo­ration of Je­ru­sa­lem and its en­vi­rons. Be­fore the day was over, Je­sus dis­cov­ered the var­i­ous places about the tem­ple where teach­ing and ques­tion con­fer­ences were in prog­ress; and aside from a few vis­its to the holy of holies to gaze in won­der as to what re­ally was be­hind the veil of sep­a­ra­tion, he spent most of his time about the tem­ple at these teach­ing con­fer­ences.

• loved L. with fervent affection

125:2.7On Wednes­day of the Pass­over week, Je­sus was per­mit­ted to go home with Laz­a­rus to spend the night at Beth­any. This evening, Laz­a­rus, Martha, and Mary heard Je­sus dis­cuss things tem­po­ral and eter­nal, hu­man and di­vine, and from that night on they all three loved him as if he had been their own brother.

• loved L. with fervent affection

127:6.3Al­though they could hardly af­ford it, Je­sus had a strange long­ing to go up to Je­ru­sa­lem for the Pass­over. His mother, know­ing of his re­cent ex­pe­ri­ence with Re­becca, wisely urged him to make the jour­ney. He was not markedly con­scious of it, but what he most wanted was an op­por­tu­nity to talk with Laz­a­rus and to visit with Martha and Mary. Next to his own fam­ily he loved these three most of all.

• first meeting; boys were same age

127:6.5Je­sus passed on through Je­ru­sa­lem, only paus­ing to look upon the tem­ple and the gath­er­ing throngs of vis­i­tors. He had a strange and in­creas­ing aver­sion to this Herod-built tem­ple with its po­lit­i­cally ap­pointed priest­hood. He wanted most of all to see Laz­a­rus, Martha, and Mary. Laz­a­rus was the same age as Je­sus and now head of the house; by the time of this visit Laz­a­rus’s mother had also been laid to rest. Martha was a lit­tle over one year older than Je­sus, while Mary was two years younger. And Je­sus was the idol­ized ideal of all three of them.

• L. visited Jesus twice at the Jordan

141:9.1On Mon­day, the last day of March, Je­sus and the apos­tles be­gan their jour­ney up the hills to­ward Je­ru­sa­lem. Laz­a­rus of Beth­any had been down to the Jor­dan twice to see Je­sus, and ev­ery ar­range­ment had been made for the Mas­ter and his apos­tles to make their head­quar­ters with Laz­a­rus and his sis­ters at Beth­any as long as they might de­sire to stay in Je­ru­sa­lem.

167:4.1Very late on Sun­day night, Febru­ary 26, a run­ner from Beth­any ar­rived at Phil­a­del­phia, bring­ing a mes­sage from Martha and Mary which said, “Lord, he whom you love is very sick.” This mes­sage reached Je­sus at the close of the evening con­fer­ence and just as he was tak­ing leave of the apos­tles for the night. At first Je­sus made no re­ply. There oc­curred one of those strange in­ter­ludes, a time when he ap­peared to be in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with some­thing out­side of, and be­yond, him­self. And then, look­ing up, he ad­dressed the mes­sen­ger in the hear­ing of the apos­tles, say­ing: “This sick­ness is re­ally not to the death. Doubt not that it may be used to glo­rify God and ex­alt the Son.”

• loved L. with fervent affection

167:4.2Je­sus was very fond of Martha, Mary, and their brother, Laz­a­rus; he loved them with a fer­vent af­fec­tion. His first and hu­man thought was to go to their as­sis­tance at once, but an­other idea came into his com­bined mind. He had al­most given up hope that the Jew­ish lead­ers at Je­ru­sa­lem would ever ac­cept the king­dom, but he still loved his peo­ple, and there now oc­curred to him a plan whereby the scribes and Phar­isees of Je­ru­sa­lem might have one more chance to ac­cept his teach­ings; and he de­cided, his Fa­ther will­ing, to make this last ap­peal to Je­ru­sa­lem the most pro­found and stu­pen­dous out­ward work­ing of his en­tire earth ca­reer. The Jews clung to the idea of a won­der-work­ing de­liv­erer. And though he re­fused to stoop to the per­for­mance of ma­te­rial won­ders or to the en­act­ment of tem­po­ral ex­hi­bi­tions of po­lit­i­cal power, he did now ask the Fa­ther’s con­sent for the man­i­fes­ta­tion of his hith­erto un­ex­hib­ited power over life and death.

167:4.3The Jews were in the habit of bury­ing their dead on the day of their demise; this was a nec­es­sary prac­tice in such a warm cli­mate. It of­ten hap­pened that they put in the tomb one who was merely co­matose, so that on the sec­ond or even the third day, such a one would come forth from the tomb. But it was the be­lief of the Jews that, while the spirit or soul might linger near the body for two or three days, it never tar­ried af­ter the third day; that de­cay was well ad­vanced by the fourth day, and that no one ever re­turned from the tomb af­ter the lapse of such a pe­riod. And it was for these rea­sons that Je­sus tar­ried yet two full days in Phil­a­del­phia be­fore he made ready to start for Beth­any.

167:4.4Ac­cord­ingly, early on Wednes­day morn­ing he said to his apos­tles: “Let us pre­pare at once to go into Judea again.” And when the apos­tles heard their Mas­ter say this, they drew off by them­selves for a time to take coun­sel of one an­other. James as­sumed the di­rec­tion of the con­fer­ence, and they all agreed that it was only folly to al­low Je­sus to go again into Judea, and they came back as one man and so in­formed him. Said James: “Mas­ter, you were in Je­ru­sa­lem a few weeks back, and the lead­ers sought your death, while the peo­ple were minded to stone you. At that time you gave these men their chance to re­ceive the truth, and we will not per­mit you to go again into Judea.”

167:4.5Then said Je­sus: “But do you not un­der­stand that there are twelve hours of the day in which work may safely be done? If a man walks in the day, he does not stum­ble inas­much as he has light. If a man walks in the night, he is li­able to stum­ble since he is with­out light. As long as my day lasts, I fear not to en­ter Judea. I would do one more mighty work for these Jews; I would give them one more chance to be­lieve, even on their own terms—con­di­tions of out­ward glory and the vis­i­ble man­i­fes­ta­tion of the power of the Fa­ther and the love of the Son. Be­sides, do you not re­al­ize that our friend Laz­a­rus has fallen asleep, and I would go to awake him out of this sleep!”

167:4.6Then said one of the apos­tles: “Mas­ter, if Laz­a­rus has fallen asleep, then will he the more surely re­cover.” It was the cus­tom of the Jews at that time to speak of death as a form of sleep, but as the apos­tles did not un­der­stand that Je­sus meant that Laz­a­rus had de­parted from this world, he now said plainly: “Laz­a­rus is dead. And I am glad for your sakes, even if the oth­ers are not thereby saved, that I was not there, to the end that you shall now have new cause to be­lieve in me; and by that which you will wit­ness, you should all be strength­ened in prepa­ra­tion for that day when I shall take leave of you and go to the Fa­ther.”

167:4.7When they could not per­suade him to re­frain from go­ing into Judea, and when some of the apos­tles were loath even to ac­com­pany him, Thomas ad­dressed his fel­lows, say­ing: “We have told the Mas­ter our fears, but he is de­ter­mined to go to Beth­any. I am sat­is­fied it means the end; they will surely kill him, but if that is the Mas­ter’s choice, then let us ac­quit our­selves like men of cour­age; let us go also that we may die with him.” And it was ever so; in mat­ters re­quir­ing de­lib­er­ate and sus­tained cour­age, Thomas was al­ways the main­stay of the twelve apos­tles.

168:1.1Af­ter Je­sus had spent a few mo­ments in com­fort­ing Martha and Mary, apart from the mourn­ers, he asked them, “Where have you laid him?” Then Martha said, “Come and see.” And as the Mas­ter fol­lowed on in si­lence with the two sor­row­ing sis­ters, he wept. When the friendly Jews who fol­lowed af­ter them saw his tears, one of them said: “Be­hold how he loved him. Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind have kept this man from dy­ing?” By this time they were stand­ing be­fore the fam­ily tomb, a small nat­u­ral cave, or de­cliv­ity, in the ledge of rock which rose up some thirty feet at the far end of the gar­den plot.

168:1.2It is dif­fi­cult to ex­plain to hu­man minds just why Je­sus wept. While we have ac­cess to the reg­is­tra­tion of the com­bined hu­man emo­tions and di­vine thoughts, as of rec­ord in the mind of the Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster, we are not al­to­gether cer­tain about the real cause of these emo­tional man­i­fes­ta­tions. We are in­clined to be­lieve that Je­sus wept be­cause of a num­ber of thoughts and feel­ings which were go­ing through his mind at this time, such as:

168:1.31. He felt a gen­uine and sor­row­ful sym­pa­thy for Martha and Mary; he had a real and deep hu­man af­fec­tion for these sis­ters who had lost their brother.

168:1.42. He was per­turbed in his mind by the pres­ence of the crowd of mourn­ers, some sin­cere and some merely pre­tenders. He al­ways re­sented these out­ward ex­hi­bi­tions of mourn­ing. He knew the sis­ters loved their brother and had faith in the sur­vival of be­liev­ers. These con­flict­ing emo­tions may pos­si­bly ex­plain why he groaned as they came near the tomb.

168:1.53. He truly hes­i­tated about bring­ing Laz­a­rus back to the mor­tal life. His sis­ters re­ally needed him, but Je­sus re­gret­ted hav­ing to sum­mon his friend back to ex­pe­ri­ence the bit­ter per­se­cu­tion which he well knew Laz­a­rus would have to en­dure as a re­sult of be­ing the sub­ject of the great­est of all demon­stra­tions of the di­vine power of the Son of Man.

168:1.6And now we may re­late an in­ter­est­ing and in­struc­tive fact: Al­though this nar­ra­tive un­folds as an ap­par­ently nat­u­ral and nor­mal event in hu­man af­fairs, it has some very in­ter­est­ing side lights. While the mes­sen­ger went to Je­sus on Sun­day, telling him of Laz­a­rus’s ill­ness, and while Je­sus sent word that it was “not to the death,” at the same time he went in per­son up to Beth­any and even asked the sis­ters, “Where have you laid him?” Even though all of this seems to in­di­cate that the Mas­ter was pro­ceed­ing af­ter the man­ner of this life and in ac­cor­dance with the lim­ited knowl­edge of the hu­man mind, nev­er­the­less, the rec­ords of the uni­verse re­veal that Je­sus’ Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster is­sued or­ders for the in­def­i­nite de­ten­tion of Laz­a­rus’s Thought Ad­juster on the planet sub­se­quent to Laz­a­rus’s death, and that this or­der was made of rec­ord just fif­teen min­utes be­fore Laz­a­rus breathed his last.

168:1.7Did the di­vine mind of Je­sus know, even be­fore Laz­a­rus died, that he would raise him from the dead? We do not know. We know only what we are here­with plac­ing on rec­ord.

168:1.8Many of Je­sus’ en­e­mies were in­clined to sneer at his man­i­fes­ta­tions of af­fec­tion, and they said among them­selves: “If he thought so much of this man, why did he tarry so long be­fore com­ing to Beth­any? If he is what they claim, why did he not save his dear friend? What is the good of heal­ing strangers in Gal­i­lee if he can­not save those whom he loves?” And in many other ways they mocked and made light of the teach­ings and works of Je­sus.

168:1.9And so, on this Thurs­day af­ter­noon at about half past two o’clock, was the stage all set in this lit­tle ham­let of Beth­any for the en­act­ment of the great­est of all works con­nected with the earth min­istry of Mi­chael of Neb­a­don, the great­est man­i­fes­ta­tion of di­vine power dur­ing his in­car­na­tion in the flesh, since his own res­ur­rec­tion oc­curred af­ter he had been lib­er­ated from the bonds of mor­tal habi­ta­tion.

168:1.10The small group as­sem­bled be­fore Laz­a­rus’s tomb lit­tle re­al­ized the pres­ence near at hand of a vast con­course of all or­ders of ce­les­tial be­ings as­sem­bled un­der the lead­er­ship of Ga­briel and now in wait­ing, by di­rec­tion of the Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster of Je­sus, vi­brat­ing with ex­pectancy and ready to ex­e­cute the bid­ding of their beloved Sov­er­eign.

168:1.11When Je­sus spoke those words of com­mand, “Take away the stone,” the as­sem­bled ce­les­tial hosts made ready to en­act the drama of the res­ur­rec­tion of Laz­a­rus in the like­ness of his mor­tal flesh. Such a form of res­ur­rec­tion in­volves dif­fi­cul­ties of ex­e­cu­tion which far tran­scend the usual tech­nique of the res­ur­rec­tion of mor­tal crea­tures in mor­ontia form and re­quires far more ce­les­tial per­son­al­i­ties and a far greater or­ga­ni­za­tion of uni­verse fa­cil­i­ties.

168:1.12When Martha and Mary heard this com­mand of Je­sus di­rect­ing that the stone in front of the tomb be rolled away, they were filled with con­flict­ing emo­tions. Mary hoped that Laz­a­rus was to be raised from the dead, but Martha, while to some ex­tent shar­ing her sis­ter’s faith, was more ex­er­cised by the fear that Laz­a­rus would not be pre­sentable, in his ap­pear­ance, to Je­sus, the apos­tles, and their friends. Said Martha: “Must we roll away the stone? My brother has now been dead four days, so that by this time de­cay of the body has be­gun.” Martha also said this be­cause she was not cer­tain as to why the Mas­ter had re­quested that the stone be re­moved; she thought maybe Je­sus wanted only to take one last look at Laz­a­rus. She was not set­tled and con­stant in her at­ti­tude. As they hes­i­tated to roll away the stone, Je­sus said: “Did I not tell you at the first that this sick­ness was not to the death? Have I not come to ful­fill my prom­ise? And af­ter I came to you, did I not say that, if you would only be­lieve, you should see the glory of God? Where­fore do you doubt? How long be­fore you will be­lieve and obey?”

168:1.13When Je­sus had fin­ished speak­ing, his apos­tles, with the as­sis­tance of will­ing neigh­bors, laid hold upon the stone and rolled it away from the en­trance to the tomb.

168:1.14It was the com­mon be­lief of the Jews that the drop of gall on the point of the sword of the an­gel of death be­gan to work by the end of the third day, so that it was tak­ing full ef­fect on the fourth day. They al­lowed that the soul of man might linger about the tomb un­til the end of the third day, seek­ing to re­an­i­mate the dead body; but they firmly be­lieved that such a soul had gone on to the abode of de­parted spir­its ere the fourth day had dawned.

168:1.15These be­liefs and opin­ions re­gard­ing the dead and the de­par­ture of the spir­its of the dead served to make sure, in the minds of all who were now pres­ent at Laz­a­rus’s tomb and sub­se­quently to all who might hear of what was about to oc­cur, that this was re­ally and truly a case of the rais­ing of the dead by the per­sonal work­ing of one who de­clared he was “the res­ur­rec­tion and the life.”

• directed L. to flee

172:2.4Af­ter the con­fer­ence with the apos­tles Je­sus held con­verse with Laz­a­rus and in­structed him to avoid the sac­ri­fice of his life to the venge­ful­ness of the San­hedrin. It was in obe­di­ence to this ad­mo­ni­tion that Laz­a­rus, a few days later, fled to Phil­a­del­phia when the of­fi­cers of the San­hedrin sent men to ar­rest him.

• directed L. to flee

174:0.1About seven o’clock on this Tues­day morn­ing Je­sus met the apos­tles, the women’s corps, and some two dozen other promi­nent dis­ci­ples at the home of Si­mon. At this meet­ing he said farewell to Laz­a­rus, giv­ing him that in­struc­tion which led him so soon to flee to Phil­a­del­phia in Perea, where he later be­came con­nected with the mis­sion­ary move­ment hav­ing its head­quar­ters in that city. Je­sus also said good-bye to the aged Si­mon, and gave his part­ing ad­vice to the women’s corps, as he never again for­mally ad­dressed them.

• directed L. to flee

178:2.2By noon of this day all the apos­tles and dis­ci­ples had learned about the hasty flight of Laz­a­rus from Beth­any. They be­gan to sense the grim de­ter­mi­na­tion of the Jew­ish rulers to ex­ter­mi­nate Je­sus and his teach­ings.

• directed L. to flee

178:3.3“You look down on yon­der city in sor­row, for you have heard my words telling of the end of Je­ru­sa­lem. I have fore­warned you lest you should per­ish in her de­struc­tion and so de­lay the procla­ma­tion of the gospel of the king­dom. Like­wise do I warn you to take heed lest you need­lessly ex­pose your­selves to peril when they come to take the Son of Man. I must go, but you are to re­main to wit­ness to this gospel when I have gone, even as I di­rected that Laz­a­rus flee from the wrath of man that he might live to make known the glory of God. If it is the Fa­ther’s will that I de­part, noth­ing you may do can frus­trate the di­vine plan. Take heed to your­selves lest they kill you also. Let your souls be valiant in de­fense of the gospel by spirit power but be not mis­led into any fool­ish at­tempt to de­fend the Son of Man. I need no de­fense by the hand of man; the armies of heaven are even now near at hand; but I am de­ter­mined to do the will of my Fa­ther in heaven, and there­fore must we sub­mit to that which is so soon to come upon us.

190:1.9When David had taken leave of his breth­ren, he went over to the home of Joseph for his mother, and they then went out to Beth­any to join the wait­ing fam­ily of Je­sus. David abode there in Beth­any with Martha and Mary un­til af­ter they had dis­posed of their earthly pos­ses­sions, and he ac­com­pa­nied them on their jour­ney to join their brother, Laz­a­rus, at Phil­a­del­phia.

168:5.1Laz­a­rus re­mained at the Beth­any home, be­ing the cen­ter of great in­ter­est to many sin­cere be­liev­ers and to nu­mer­ous cu­ri­ous in­di­vid­u­als, un­til the days of the cru­ci­fix­ion of Je­sus, when he re­ceived warn­ing that the San­hedrin had de­creed his death. The rulers of the Jews were de­ter­mined to put a stop to the fur­ther spread of the teach­ings of Je­sus, and they well judged that it would be use­less to put Je­sus to death if they per­mit­ted Laz­a­rus, who rep­re­sented the very peak of his won­der-work­ing, to live and bear tes­ti­mony to the fact that Je­sus had raised him from the dead. Al­ready had Laz­a­rus suf­fered bit­ter per­se­cu­tion from them.

172:1.1Pil­grims from out­side of Judea, as well as the Jew­ish au­thor­i­ties, had all been ask­ing: “What do you think? will Je­sus come up to the feast?” There­fore, when the peo­ple heard that Je­sus was at Beth­any, they were glad, but the chief priests and Phar­isees were some­what per­plexed. They were pleased to have him un­der their ju­ris­dic­tion, but they were a tri­fle dis­con­certed by his bold­ness; they re­mem­bered that on his pre­vi­ous visit to Beth­any, Laz­a­rus had been raised from the dead, and Laz­a­rus was be­com­ing a big prob­lem to the en­e­mies of Je­sus.

172:1.9When the chief priests heard of this din­ner in Beth­any for Je­sus and Laz­a­rus, they be­gan to take coun­sel among them­selves as to what should be done with Laz­a­rus. And pres­ently they de­cided that Laz­a­rus must also die. They rightly con­cluded that it would be use­less to put Je­sus to death if they per­mit­ted Laz­a­rus, whom he had raised from the dead, to live.

175:3.1At eight o’clock on this Tues­day evening the fate­ful meet­ing of the San­hedrin was called to or­der. On many pre­vi­ous oc­ca­sions had this su­preme court of the Jew­ish na­tion in­for­mally de­creed the death of Je­sus. Many times had this au­gust rul­ing body de­ter­mined to put a stop to his work, but never be­fore had they re­solved to place him un­der ar­rest and to bring about his death at any and all costs. It was just be­fore mid­night on this Tues­day, April 4, A.D. 30, that the San­hedrin, as then con­sti­tuted, of­fi­cially and unan­i­mously voted to im­pose the death sen­tence upon both Je­sus and Laz­a­rus. This was the an­swer to the Mas­ter’s last ap­peal to the rulers of the Jews which he had made in the tem­ple only a few hours be­fore, and it rep­re­sented their re­ac­tion of bit­ter re­sent­ment to­ward Je­sus’ last and vig­or­ous in­dict­ment of these same chief priests and im­pen­i­tent Sad­ducees and Phar­isees. The pass­ing of death sen­tence (even be­fore his trial) upon the Son of God was the San­hedrin’s re­ply to the last of­fer of heav­enly mercy ever to be ex­tended to the Jew­ish na­tion, as such.

168:3.4The fol­low­ing week Laz­a­rus and his sis­ters were sum­moned to ap­pear be­fore the San­hedrin. When their tes­ti­mony had been heard, no doubt could be en­ter­tained that Laz­a­rus had been raised from the dead. Though the trans­ac­tions of the San­hedrin vir­tu­ally ad­mit­ted the res­ur­rec­tion of Laz­a­rus, the rec­ord car­ried a res­o­lu­tion at­tribut­ing this and all other won­ders worked by Je­sus to the power of the prince of dev­ils, with whom Je­sus was de­clared to be in league.

172:1.7It was be­cause of this re­buke, which he took as a per­sonal re­proof, that Ju­das Is­car­iot fi­nally made up his mind to seek re­venge for his hurt feel­ings. Many times had he en­ter­tained such ideas sub­con­sciously, but now he dared to think such wicked thoughts in his open and con­scious mind. And many oth­ers en­cour­aged him in this at­ti­tude since the cost of this oint­ment was a sum equal to the earn­ings of one man for one year—enough to pro­vide bread for five thou­sand per­sons. But Mary loved Je­sus; she had pro­vided this pre­cious oint­ment with which to em­balm his body in death, for she be­lieved his words when he fore­warned them that he must die, and it was not to be de­nied her if she changed her mind and chose to be­stow this of­fer­ing upon the Mas­ter while he yet lived.