swords

171:4.1On Wednes­day evening, March 29, Je­sus and his fol­low­ers en­camped at Livias on their way to Je­ru­sa­lem, af­ter hav­ing com­pleted their tour of the cities of south­ern Perea. It was dur­ing this night at Livias that Si­mon Ze­lo­tes and Si­mon Pe­ter, hav­ing con­spired to have de­liv­ered into their hands at this place more than one hun­dred swords, re­ceived and dis­tributed these arms to all who would ac­cept them and wear them con­cealed be­neath their cloaks. Si­mon Pe­ter was still wear­ing his sword on the night of the Mas­ter’s be­trayal in the gar­den.

172:0.3The chief priests were in­formed that Je­sus lodged at Beth­any, but they thought best not to at­tempt to seize him among his friends; they de­cided to await his com­ing on into Je­ru­sa­lem. Je­sus knew about all this, but he was ma­jes­ti­cally calm; his friends had never seen him more com­posed and con­ge­nial; even the apos­tles were as­tounded that he should be so un­con­cerned when the San­hedrin had called upon all Jewry to de­liver him into their hands. While the Mas­ter slept that night, the apos­tles watched over him by twos, and many of them were girded with swords. Early the next morn­ing they were awak­ened by hun­dreds of pil­grims who came out from Je­ru­sa­lem, even on the Sab­bath day, to see Je­sus and Laz­a­rus, whom he had raised from the dead.

172:2.1On this Sun­day morn­ing, in Si­mon’s beau­ti­ful gar­den, the Mas­ter called his twelve apos­tles around him and gave them their fi­nal in­struc­tions prepara­tory to en­ter­ing Je­ru­sa­lem. He told them that he would prob­a­bly de­liver many ad­dresses and teach many lessons be­fore re­turn­ing to the Fa­ther but ad­vised the apos­tles to re­frain from do­ing any pub­lic work dur­ing this Pass­over so­journ in Je­ru­sa­lem. He in­structed them to re­main near him and to “watch and pray.” Je­sus knew that many of his apos­tles and im­me­di­ate fol­low­ers even then car­ried swords con­cealed on their per­sons, but he made no ref­er­ence to this fact.

172:5.2An­drew was thor­oughly be­wil­dered, well-nigh con­fused. He was the one apos­tle who did not se­ri­ously un­der­take to eval­u­ate the pop­u­lar out­burst of ac­claim. He was too pre­oc­cu­pied with the thought of his re­spon­si­bil­ity as chief of the apos­tolic corps to give se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion to the mean­ing or sig­nif­i­cance of the loud hosan­nas of the mul­ti­tude. An­drew was busy watch­ing some of his as­so­ciates who he feared might be led away by their emo­tions dur­ing the ex­cite­ment, par­tic­u­larly Pe­ter, James, John, and Si­mon Ze­lo­tes. Through­out this day and those which im­me­di­ately fol­lowed, An­drew was trou­bled with se­ri­ous doubts, but he never ex­pressed any of these mis­giv­ings to his apos­tolic as­so­ciates. He was con­cerned about the at­ti­tude of some of the twelve who he knew were armed with swords; but he did not know that his own brother, Pe­ter, was car­ry­ing such a weapon. And so the pro­ces­sion into Je­ru­sa­lem made a com­par­a­tively su­per­fi­cial im­pres­sion upon An­drew; he was too busy with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of his of­fice to be oth­er­wise af­fected.

183:2.2Ju­das was much per­turbed by this fail­ure to find Je­sus at the Mark res­i­dence and in the com­pany of eleven men, only two of whom were armed for re­sis­tance. He hap­pened to know that, in the af­ter­noon when they had left camp, only Si­mon Pe­ter and Si­mon Ze­lo­tes were girded with swords; Ju­das had hoped to take Je­sus when the city was quiet, and when there was lit­tle chance of re­sis­tance. The be­trayer feared that, if he waited for them to re­turn to their camp, more than three­score of de­voted dis­ci­ples would be en­coun­tered, and he also knew that Si­mon Ze­lo­tes had an am­ple store of arms in his pos­ses­sion. Ju­das was be­com­ing in­creas­ingly ner­vous as he med­i­tated how the eleven loyal apos­tles would de­test him, and he feared they would all seek to de­stroy him. He was not only dis­loyal, but he was a real cow­ard at heart.

183:3.7Je­sus was ready to go back to Je­ru­sa­lem with the guards, and the cap­tain of the sol­diers was al­to­gether will­ing to al­low the three apos­tles and their as­so­ciates to go their way in peace. But be­fore they were able to get started, as Je­sus stood there await­ing the cap­tain’s or­ders, one Malchus, the Syr­ian body­guard of the high priest, stepped up to Je­sus and made ready to bind his hands be­hind his back, al­though the Ro­man cap­tain had not di­rected that Je­sus should be thus bound. When Pe­ter and his as­so­ciates saw their Mas­ter be­ing sub­jected to this in­dig­nity, they were no longer able to re­strain them­selves. Pe­ter drew his sword and with the oth­ers rushed for­ward to smite Malchus. But be­fore the sol­diers could come to the de­fense of the high priest’s ser­vant, Je­sus raised a for­bid­ding hand to Pe­ter and, speak­ing sternly, said: “Pe­ter, put up your sword. They who take the sword shall per­ish by the sword. Do you not un­der­stand that it is the Fa­ther’s will that I drink this cup? And do you not fur­ther know that I could even now com­mand more than twelve le­gions of an­gels and their as­so­ciates, who would de­liver me from the hands of these few men?”

69:3.9The early spe­cial­ists in in­dus­try were the flint flak­ers and stone ma­sons; next came the smiths. Sub­se­quently group spe­cial­iza­tion de­vel­oped; whole fam­i­lies and clans ded­i­cated them­selves to cer­tain sorts of la­bor. The ori­gin of one of the ear­li­est castes of priests, apart from the tribal med­i­cine men, was due to the su­per­sti­tious ex­al­ta­tion of a fam­ily of ex­pert sword­mak­ers.

181:2.11“And now, Si­mon, when you do fi­nally see all of this, and af­ter you have shaken off your de­pres­sion and have gone forth pro­claim­ing this gospel in great power, never for­get that I was with you even through all of your sea­son of dis­cour­age­ment, and that I will go on with you to the very end. You shall al­ways be my apos­tle, and af­ter you be­come will­ing to see by the eye of the spirit and more fully to yield your will to the will of the Fa­ther in heaven, then will you re­turn to la­bor as my am­bas­sador, and no one shall take away from you the au­thor­ity which I have con­ferred upon you, be­cause of your slow­ness of com­pre­hend­ing the truths I have taught you. And so, Si­mon, once more I warn you that they who fight with the sword per­ish with the sword, while they who la­bor in the spirit achieve life ev­er­last­ing in the king­dom to come with joy and peace in the king­dom which now is. And when the work given into your hands is fin­ished on earth, you, Si­mon, shall sit down with me in my king­dom over there. You shall re­ally see the king­dom you have longed for, but not in this life. Con­tinue to be­lieve in me and in that which I have re­vealed to you, and you shall re­ceive the gift of eter­nal life.”