Malta

• Malta

130:0.2From Je­ru­sa­lem they went to Cae­sarea by way of Joppa. At Cae­sarea they took a boat for Alexan­dria. From Alexan­dria they sailed for Lasea in Crete. From Crete they sailed for Carthage, touch­ing at Cyrene. At Carthage they took a boat for Naples, stop­ping at Malta, Syra­cuse, and Messina. From Naples they went to Ca­pua, whence they trav­eled by the Ap­pian Way to Rome.

130:8.1The first stop on the way to Italy was at the is­land of Malta. Here Je­sus had a long talk with a down­hearted and dis­cour­aged young man named Claudus. This fel­low had con­tem­plated tak­ing his life, but when he had fin­ished talk­ing with the scribe of Da­mas­cus, he said: “I will face life like a man; I am through play­ing the cow­ard. I will go back to my peo­ple and be­gin all over again.” Shortly he be­came an en­thu­si­as­tic preacher of the Cyn­ics, and still later on he joined hands with Pe­ter in pro­claim­ing Chris­tian­ity in Rome and Naples, and af­ter the death of Pe­ter he went on to Spain preach­ing the gospel. But he never knew that the man who in­spired him in Malta was the Je­sus whom he sub­se­quently pro­claimed the world’s De­liv­erer.

139:8.13Thomas had a try­ing time dur­ing the days of the trial and cru­ci­fix­ion. He was for a sea­son in the depths of de­spair, but he ral­lied his cour­age, stuck to the apos­tles, and was pres­ent with them to wel­come Je­sus on the Sea of Gal­i­lee. For a while he suc­cumbed to his doubt­ing de­pres­sion but even­tu­ally ral­lied his faith and cour­age. He gave wise coun­sel to the apos­tles af­ter Pen­te­cost and, when per­se­cu­tion scat­tered the be­liev­ers, went to Cyprus, Crete, the North African coast, and Sicily, preach­ing the glad tid­ings of the king­dom and bap­tiz­ing be­liev­ers. And Thomas con­tin­ued preach­ing and bap­tiz­ing un­til he was ap­pre­hended by the agents of the Ro­man gov­ern­ment and was put to death in Malta. Just a few weeks be­fore his death he had be­gun the writ­ing of the life and teach­ings of Je­sus.