Titus of Capernaum

146:5.1The apos­tolic party was greatly cheered when Je­sus an­nounced, “To­mor­row we go to Cana.” They knew they would have a sym­pa­thetic hear­ing at Cana, for Je­sus was well known there. They were do­ing well with their work of bring­ing peo­ple into the king­dom when, on the third day, there ar­rived in Cana a cer­tain promi­nent cit­i­zen of Ca­per­naum, Ti­tus, who was a par­tial be­liever, and whose son was crit­i­cally ill. He heard that Je­sus was at Cana; so he has­tened over to see him. The be­liev­ers at Ca­per­naum thought Je­sus could heal any sick­ness.

146:5.2When this no­ble­man had lo­cated Je­sus in Cana, he be­sought him to hurry over to Ca­per­naum and heal his af­flicted son. While the apos­tles stood by in breath­less ex­pectancy, Je­sus, look­ing at the fa­ther of the sick boy, said: “How long shall I bear with you? The power of God is in your midst, but ex­cept you see signs and be­hold won­ders, you refuse to be­lieve.” But the no­ble­man pleaded with Je­sus, say­ing: “My Lord, I do be­lieve, but come ere my child per­ishes, for when I left him he was even then at the point of death.” And when Je­sus had bowed his head a mo­ment in silent med­i­ta­tion, he sud­denly spoke, “Re­turn to your home; your son will live.” Ti­tus be­lieved the word of Je­sus and has­tened back to Ca­per­naum. And as he was re­turn­ing, his ser­vants came out to meet him, say­ing, “Re­joice, for your son is im­proved—he lives.” Then Ti­tus in­quired of them at what hour the boy be­gan to mend, and when the ser­vants an­swered “yes­ter­day about the sev­enth hour the fever left him,” the fa­ther re­called that it was about that hour when Je­sus had said, “Your son will live.” And Ti­tus hence­forth be­lieved with a whole heart, and all his fam­ily also be­lieved. This son be­came a mighty min­is­ter of the king­dom and later yielded up his life with those who suf­fered in Rome. Though the en­tire house­hold of Ti­tus, their friends, and even the apos­tles re­garded this episode as a mir­a­cle, it was not. At least this was not a mir­a­cle of cur­ing phys­i­cal dis­ease. It was merely a case of pre­knowl­edge con­cern­ing the course of nat­u­ral law, just such knowl­edge as Je­sus fre­quently re­sorted to sub­se­quent to his bap­tism.

146:5.3Again was Je­sus com­pelled to has­ten away from Cana be­cause of the un­due at­ten­tion at­tracted by the sec­ond episode of this sort to at­tend his min­istry in this vil­lage. The towns­peo­ple re­mem­bered the wa­ter and the wine, and now that he was sup­posed to have healed the no­ble­man’s son at so great a dis­tance, they came to him, not only bring­ing the sick and af­flicted but also send­ing mes­sen­gers re­quest­ing that he heal suf­fer­ers at a dis­tance. And when Je­sus saw that the whole coun­try­side was aroused, he said, “Let us go to Nain.”

148:1.4These evan­ge­lists, though they taught and preached the gospel, did not bap­tize be­liev­ers un­til af­ter they were later or­dained and com­mis­sioned by Je­sus as the sev­enty mes­sen­gers of the king­dom. Only seven of the large num­ber healed at the sun­down scene at this place were to be found among these evan­ge­lis­tic stu­dents. The no­ble­man’s son of Ca­per­naum was one of those trained for gospel ser­vice in Pe­ter’s school.