sand

123:4.5The only real ac­ci­dent Je­sus had up to this time was a fall down the back-yard stone stairs which led up to the can­vas-roofed bed­room. It hap­pened dur­ing an un­ex­pected July sand­storm from the east. The hot winds, car­ry­ing blasts of fine sand, usu­ally blew dur­ing the rainy sea­son, es­pe­cially in March and April. It was ex­traor­di­nary to have such a storm in July. When the storm came up, Je­sus was on the house­top play­ing, as was his habit, for dur­ing much of the dry sea­son this was his ac­cus­tomed play­room. He was blinded by the sand when de­scend­ing the stairs and fell. Af­ter this ac­ci­dent Joseph built a balustrade up both sides of the stair­way.

123:4.6There was no way in which this ac­ci­dent could have been pre­vented. It was not charge­able to ne­glect by the mid­way tem­po­ral guard­i­ans, one pri­mary and one sec­ondary mid­wayer hav­ing been as­signed to the watch­care of the lad; nei­ther was it charge­able to the guard­ian ser­a­phim. It sim­ply could not have been avoided. But this slight ac­ci­dent, oc­cur­ring while Joseph was ab­sent in En­dor, caused such great anx­i­ety to de­velop in Mary’s mind that she un­wisely tried to keep Je­sus very close to her side for some months.

123:4.7Ma­te­rial ac­ci­dents, com­mon­place oc­cur­rences of a phys­i­cal na­ture, are not ar­bi­trar­ily in­ter­fered with by ce­les­tial per­son­al­i­ties. Un­der or­di­nary cir­cum­stances only mid­way crea­tures can in­ter­vene in ma­te­rial con­di­tions to safe­guard the per­sons of men and women of des­tiny, and even in spe­cial sit­u­a­tions these be­ings can so act only in obe­di­ence to the spe­cific man­dates of their su­pe­ri­ors.

123:4.8And this was but one of a num­ber of such mi­nor ac­ci­dents which sub­se­quently be­fell this in­quis­i­tive and ad­ven­tur­ous youth. If you en­vis­age the av­er­age child­hood and youth of an ag­gres­sive boy, you will have a fairly good idea of the youth­ful ca­reer of Je­sus, and you will be able to imag­ine just about how much anx­i­ety he caused his par­ents, par­tic­u­larly his mother.

162:3.5Je­sus, look­ing over the crowd, saw her hus­band stand­ing be­hind the oth­ers. He knew what sort of man he was and per­ceived that he was a party to the de­spi­ca­ble trans­ac­tion. Je­sus first walked around to near where this de­gen­er­ate hus­band stood and wrote upon the sand a few words which caused him to de­part in haste. Then he came back be­fore the woman and wrote again upon the ground for the ben­e­fit of her would-be ac­cusers; and when they read his words, they, too, went away, one by one. And when the Mas­ter had writ­ten in the sand the third time, the woman’s com­pan­ion in evil took his de­par­ture, so that, when the Mas­ter raised him­self up from this writ­ing, he be­held the woman stand­ing alone be­fore him. Je­sus said: “Woman, where are your ac­cusers? did no man re­main to stone you?” And the woman, lift­ing up her eyes, an­swered, “No man, Lord.” And then said Je­sus: “I know about you; nei­ther do I con­demn you. Go your way in peace.” And this woman, Hildana, for­sook her wicked hus­band and joined her­self to the dis­ci­ples of the king­dom.

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.

187:5.2Shortly af­ter one o’clock, amidst the in­creas­ing dark­ness of the fierce sand­storm, Je­sus be­gan to fail in hu­man con­scious­ness. His last words of mercy, for­give­ness, and ad­mo­ni­tion had been spo­ken. His last wish—con­cern­ing the care of his mother—had been ex­pressed. Dur­ing this hour of ap­proach­ing death the hu­man mind of Je­sus re­sorted to the rep­e­ti­tion of many pas­sages in the He­brew scrip­tures, par­tic­u­larly the Psalms. The last con­scious thought of the hu­man Je­sus was con­cerned with the rep­e­ti­tion in his mind of a por­tion of the Book of Psalms now known as the twen­ti­eth, twenty-first, and twenty-sec­ond Psalms. While his lips would of­ten move, he was too weak to ut­ter the words as these pas­sages, which he so well knew by heart, would pass through his mind. Only a few times did those stand­ing by catch some ut­ter­ance, such as, “I know the Lord will save his anointed,” “Your hand shall find out all my en­e­mies,” and “My God, my God, why have you for­saken me?” Je­sus did not for one mo­ment en­ter­tain the slight­est doubt that he had lived in ac­cor­dance with the Fa­ther’s will; and he never doubted that he was now lay­ing down his life in the flesh in ac­cor­dance with his Fa­ther’s will. He did not feel that the Fa­ther had for­saken him; he was merely recit­ing in his van­ish­ing con­scious­ness many Scrip­tures, among them this twenty-sec­ond Psalm, which be­gins with “My God, my God, why have you for­saken me?” And this hap­pened to be one of the three pas­sages which were spo­ken with suf­fi­cient clear­ness to be heard by those stand­ing by.

187:5.3The last re­quest which the mor­tal Je­sus made of his fel­lows was about half past one o’clock when, a sec­ond time, he said, “I thirst,” and the same cap­tain of the guard again moist­ened his lips with the same sponge wet in the sour wine, in those days com­monly called vine­gar.

187:5.4The sand­storm grew in in­ten­sity and the heav­ens in­creas­ingly dark­ened. Still the sol­diers and the small group of be­liev­ers stood by. The sol­diers crouched near the cross, hud­dled to­gether to pro­tect them­selves from the cut­ting sand. The mother of John and oth­ers watched from a dis­tance where they were some­what shel­tered by an over­hang­ing rock. When the Mas­ter fi­nally breathed his last, there were pres­ent at the foot of his cross John Zeb­e­dee, his brother Jude, his sis­ter Ruth, Mary Mag­da­lene, and Re­becca, one­time of Sep­pho­ris.