Ch. 24, Four Eventful Days at Capernaum

“Son of Man: Urantia,” 2nd edition

Four Eventful Days at Capernaum

Jesus and the apostles arrived in Capernaum Tuesday evening, January 13^th. As usual, they made Zebedee’s house in Bethsaida their headquarters. The news spread quickly around town, and when Mary learned that Jesus had returned she went to Nazareth to tell Joseph. Now that John the Baptist was dead Jesus prepared his apostles for their first open effort preaching to the people in Galilee. He spent the next three days working with the twelve and a few other believers who came to see him with their questions. Andrew in the meantime, received permission for Jesus to speak in the synagogue on Saturday.

Late Friday evening Ruth, Jesus’ baby sister, visited him in secret. They went to the lake, took a small boat off shore, and talked privately for almost an hour. No one except John Zebedee ever knew about Ruth visiting Jesus that night and he was told to never tell anyone. Throughout Jesus time on Earth, Ruth was his main comfort with regard to his family and the trial, rejection, and crucifixion. Little Ruth was the only member of the family that never once in her life waivered in her belief that Jesus was the son of God.

A Full Net of Fish

The morning that Ruth visited Jesus he had been teaching down on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. The gathering had become so large that the crowd pushed Jesus right to the water’s edge. There was a fishing boat not far from shore, and Jesus signaled them to come over. Jesus boarded the boat and the crew held her steady for over two hours as Jesus continued speaking to the people massed on the beach. This boat was named Simon and it used to belong to Simon Peter. Earlier in life Jesus had built this fishing boat with his own hands. But that day David Zebedee and a couple of his friends were using it. They had been out all night with no fish to show for their efforts and they had been mending their nets when Jesus called them over.

After Jesus had finished speaking to the people on the beach and sent them home, he went over to David Zebedee and said “Since you were delayed because you were helping me, now let me help you. Let us go fishing. Drop your nets in that deep hole out there, and we will do well.”

But one of David’s friends, by chance a man also named Simon, said “But Master it is useless. We fished all night and we did not catch a thing.” Simon then caught a look from David indicating that he should agree with Jesus, so he said “But not to worry: we will go back out and drop our nets,” and when they did they caught so many fish they thought their nets would tear. The crew waved to shore for help and they ended up with three boats overloaded with fish to the point of almost sinking. When they were done landing the fish, David’s friend Simon went down to his knees in front of Jesus and said “Leave me, Master, because I am a sinner.” He, David, and the other fishermen involved were amazed at what had happened and from that day on they gave up fishing to follow Jesus.

But this was not a miraculous event. Jesus was a fisherman; he had studied nature and knew the habits of the fish in the Sea of Galilee. Nothing supernatural occurred, just good fishing although everyone else kept thinking it was a miracle.

Afternoon at the Synagogue

Thursday evening in the synagogue Andrew spoke on “The New Way.” Then on Saturday morning Simon Peter taught on “The Kingdom,” and that afternoon Jesus preached on “The Will of the Father in Heaven.” At this point in his mission Jesus had more followers in Capernaum than in any other city on Earth.

Jesus followed Jewish custom and read the first text from the law: from the Book of Exodus he read “And you will serve the Lord your God, and he will bless your bread and your water and all sickness will be taken away from you.” Jesus chose his second text from the Prophets and from Isaiah read “Arise and shine for your light has come and the glory of the Lord has arisen on you. Darkness may cover the Earth and gross darkness the people, but the spirit of the Lord will arise on you and the divine glory will be seen with you. Even the gentiles will come to this light and many distinguished minds will surrender to the brightness of this light.”

In his sermon Jesus tried to emphasize that religion is a personal experience between a son or daughter and their father; it is not a group event. Among other things, Jesus said “You well know that while a kind father loves his family as a whole, it is because he loves each person in that family. No longer go to the Father in heaven as a child of Israel, but rather as a child of God. Yes, as a group you are all the children of Israel, but you are also, each and every one of you, a child of God. I have not come to show the Father to the children of Israel, but to show his love and mercy to each person as their own genuine experience.’

“All of the prophets taught you that Yahweh cares for his people: that God loves Israel. But I am here to tell you a more important truth, one that many of the later prophets understood; that is that God loves you, every one of you, as individuals. For all of your past you have had a national religion based on your race, now I am here to give you a personal religion.’

“But this is not a new idea. Many of you who are more spiritually attuned know this truth and some of the prophets have taught this. Have you not read in the scriptures where the Prophet Jeremiah says ‘In those days they will no more say, the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge. Every man will die for his own crimes; every man who eats sour grapes his teeth will be set on edge. Wait and see, the day will come when I will make a new contract with my people, not the same as the promise that I made with their fathers when I brought them out of the land of Egypt but the new way. I will even write my law in their hearts. I will be their God and they will be my people. In those days they will not say one man to another, do you know the Lord? No! For they will all know me personally from the least to the greatest.’

“Have you not read these promises? Do you not believe the scriptures? Do you not understand that the prophet’s words are fulfilled in what you see this day? Did not Jeremiah insist that you make religion an affair of the heart; to relate yourselves to God as an individual? Did not the prophet tell you that the God of heaven would search your individual hearts? And were you not warned that the human heart is deceitful above all things and often times desperately wicked?’

“Have you not also read where Ezekiel taught even your fathers that religion must become a reality in your individual experience? No more will you use the proverb that says ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’ ‘As I live,’ says the Lord God, ‘behold all souls are mine; as the soul of the father so also the soul of the son. Only the soul that sins will die.’ And Ezekiel even foresaw today when he spoke on behalf of God saying ‘A new heart I will also give you, and a new spirit I will put in you.’

“No more should you fear that God will punish a nation for the sin of a person; neither will the Father in heaven punish one of his children for the sins of a nation. That said, the individual members of any family many times suffer the material consequences of a family’s group mistakes. Do you not realize that the hope of a better nation—of a better world—resides in the progress and enlightenment of the individual?”

Jesus then said that after people realize their spiritual freedom, God wants them to respond to the divine urge to know God, to seek to be like him, and to begin the eternal ascent to Paradise. This sermon did much to help the apostles, and they all better understood that the gospel of the kingdom is for the individual, not the country. Even though the people of Capernaum were familiar with Jesus’ teaching they were still astonished at this sermon. Jesus was not teaching them like one of the scribes, but rather like a person with authority.

Just as Jesus finished speaking, a young man in the congregation had a violent epileptic attack and cried out loud enough for everyone to hear. When the seizure was over and he was slowly regaining consciousness, he said “What are we going to do with you, Jesus of Nazareth? You are the holy one of God; have you come to destroy us?”

Jesus motioned for the other people to be silent, and then taking the young man by the hand he said “Come out of it” right about the time the man became awake. This person was not possessed by a demon—he had an ordinary case of epilepsy, but he had been taught that he was possessed by an evil spirit. He believed this and behaved accordingly. Everyone at that time believed that sickness was the result of evil spirits, so of course they all believed that Jesus had cast a demon out of this young man.

But Jesus did not, at that time, cure the young man’s epilepsy: it was not until later that day after sunset that he was healed. A long time after the Pentecost the apostle John, who was the last of the apostles to write about Jesus’ life, avoided all reference to these so-called acts of casting out devils. He did this in light of the fact that cases of demon possession never occurred after the Pentecost. News of Jesus supposedly casting a devil out of this man spread quickly throughout the area and many of the people believed the story.

In the Zebedee household, which was fairly large, Simon Peter’s wife and her mother, Amatha did most of the cooking and housework. On the way back from the synagogue, Jesus and some of the others stopped by Peter’s house to visit because Amatha had been sick for several days. As fate would have it, the fever left this woman at the same time that Jesus was holding her hand and encouraging her to get well. Since this occurred right after the event with the epileptic man in the synagogue and everyone still remembered the incident with the wine in Cana, people rushed out of the house to tell everyone they knew before Jesus could stop them.

Peter’s mother-in-law, Amatha was suffering from malaria. Jesus did not heal her at this time. It was not until several hours later after sunset that she was cured in connection with the extraordinary events that were to take place later in Zebedee’s front yard. But that wonder-seeking and miracle-minded generation grasped at anything to say that Jesus had performed another miracle.

The Healing at Sundown

The news of Jesus supposedly healing people spread throughout Capernaum: they were aroused, and their excitement grew to the point that everyone who was sick made themselves ready to go to Zebedee’s house after sundown to ask Jesus for healing. Those who could not make the trip under their own power arranged for their friends to carry them. No one could leave until after sundown, because Jewish law forbid doing anything during the day on the Sabbath, even if it was just trying to improve one’s health.

As soon as the sun dropped below the horizon, people left for Zebedee’s house in Bethsaida. One man with a paralyzed daughter did not even wait that long, leaving as soon as the sun had dropped from his view behind his neighbor’s house. Everything that had occurred throughout the day set the stage for extraordinary events that evening. Jesus was compelling, and he spoke directly to the people’s souls while appealing to their hearts without fancy arguments. He did all of this with a power, with an authority, that none of them had ever before seen. Even the scripture that Jesus had read during his sermon that day suggested that sickness should no longer be part of their lives.

The excitement surrounding these events was not just confined to Earth. That Saturday the entire universe looked down on Capernaum as the real capital of our universe, Nebadon. This was a momentous day for both Jesus and the cosmos; many more entities than just a handful of Jews in the synagogue heard Jesus’ closing statements when he said “Hate is the shadow of fear; revenge the mask of cowardice” and declared that “People are the sons of God, not the children of the devil.”

It was not long after sundown and Jesus and the apostles were still standing around the dinner table after having eaten when Peter’s wife heard voices in the front yard. Opening the door she saw a large group of sick people gathering in front of the house. When she looked even farther beyond them, she could see that the road to Capernaum was also filled with people on their way there. She immediately went and told her husband, who then told Jesus.

When Jesus stepped outside of Zebedee’s house he was met by almost one thousand people. Most of them had one health problem or another, and those who were not ill had brought those who were. Jesus looked over the mass of sick and broken people, and while doing so he remembered that much of the reason for their suffering was because his own trusted Sons tasked with administering the Earth according to his rule had failed in their duty to humanity. This fact weighed heavily on Jesus’ human heart, and it challenged him to use his creator prerogatives to ease the people’s pain. But Jesus knew he could not build a lasting spiritual movement on miracles, and since the incident at Cana with the wine none of those types of events had again occurred. Still, the suffering he saw pulled at his heart.

Someone out in the crowded mass of people yelled out “Master, speak the word, save our souls, heal our diseases and restore our health.” The instant those words were spoken the universe mobilized: the huge army of seraphim, midwayers, life carriers, and physical controllers that were always at hand for Jesus’ command prepared to meet their Creator’s wish, whatever that would be. But this event was one of those times when Jesus’ divine wisdom was so intertwined with his human compassion that he sought refuge by appealing to his Father’s will.

Then after Peter pleaded with Jesus to help the people, Jesus looked out over the crowd and said “I have come into the world to reveal the Father in heaven and to establish his kingdom. This has been the reason for my life up until now. If it is in our Father’s will and if it does not diminish my dedication to announcing the gospel of the kingdom, I would like to see my children healed, and…” But that was as far as Jesus got, or maybe that was all that anyone heard, because the crowd immediately went wild and his words were lost in the commotion.

Jesus had been stuck between his decision not to use miracles to win over the people, his compassionate side that wanted to ease the suffering in front of him, and his knowledge that it was his creatures who originally failed humanity and hence were responsible for many of its later problems. So Jesus left the decision up to his Father in heaven and evidently God had no problem with the people being healed. As soon as Jesus indicated his desires and God the Father signaled that he had no objection to them, the vast host of celestial beings descended into the motley crew of sick people around Zebedee’s home and in an instant 683 men, women, and children were completely healed. Such a scene had never been witnessed on Earth before that day, nor has it been since. For those who saw this wave of divine healing, mortal and celestial, it was indeed a thrilling experience.

Jesus was more surprised by what occurred than any of the rest of the celestial host gathered around. He had been so focused on the suffering in front of him that he forgot his Personalized Adjuster’s warning just before coming to Earth: the caution that sometimes it was impossible to limit the time-element of a Creator’s prerogative. Jesus had wanted to see his people healed if it was not against his Father’s will. His Personalized Adjuster, who is in essence God the Ultimate in his mind, immediately decided that it was not against his Father’s will and since Jesus had expressed it as his will earlier, that desire, that creative act, was. In other words, what a Creator Son wants, and what his Father wills, is. There is no process; no time involved. Once something is desired and willed, it is. Never again while Jesus was with us did such a mass healing take place.

News of this miracle spread throughout all of Galilee, Judea, and into the lands beyond. The people’s excitement once again aroused Herod’s attention and he sent out spies to learn more about Jesus. Herod wanted to know if Jesus was the man who used to be the carpenter out of Nazareth, or if maybe he was John the Baptist arisen from the dead. These events shifted the focus of Jesus’ time with us and from then on he became as much a physician as a preacher. While his apostles did the public teaching and baptizing, Jesus spent most of his time in personal work caring for the sick and distressed. But in the end this supernatural mass healing of people did nothing to advance the kingdom of heaven. A fewof the people who were healed did benefit spiritually from the experience, but for most of them it was nothing more than a passing boost in their faith.

As said, miracles were not a part of Jesus’ plan for implementing the kingdom of God on Earth. When they happened it was more the result of having a Creator Son with unlimited power so close to so many opportunities for him to show divine mercy and human sympathy. But the publicity and notoriety that Jesus got from these miraculous events did cause him many problems.

The Evening After

All night after this immense outburst of healing the people were ecstatic and overran Zebedee’s house looking for Jesus. For the apostles this was probably the best of the best days they had with the Master. Not before or after did their hopes ever peak to such heights. Jesus had just told them in Samaria that it was time to announce the kingdom with power, and now they had seen that power with their own eyes. Any lingering doubts about Jesus’ divinity were wiped out.

Jesus, though, was bothered by what had occurred and he went off by himself for the evening. When the apostles looked for him they could not find him. They were confused as to why Jesus was secluding himself, and if not for his absence their experience would have been perfect. When Jesus did return that night it was late and almost all of the people had left. Jesus refused any honor for the healing and just said “Do not be happy that my Father is powerful enough to heal the body, but rather that he is mighty enough to save your soul. Go and get some rest everyone, because tomorrow we have to return to our Father’s business.”

The only ones to sleep much that night were the twins, as usual. The other ten apostles were all perplexed and disappointed. One moment Jesus would do something to cheer their souls and the next minute he would dash their hopes to pieces. They had but one thought going through their minds, “I do not understand him: what is this all mean?”

Early Sunday Morning

Jesus was restless that night: he was concerned that in a world with so much sickness that he would get distracted healing people’s physical bodies instead of bringing them into the spiritual kingdom of heaven. Because his mind was filled with thoughts, Jesus rose well before dawn and went out in the hills to his favorite spot to pray since there were no private rooms suitable for him to do so in the house. Jesus asked for greater wisdom and judgement so he would not let his divine mercy and human sympathy cause him to spend too much time healing the physical and neglecting the spiritual. This is not to say that he did not want to do any physical healing, just that he did not want it to divert him too much from his primary mission.

Peter could not sleep that night either, and he got up shortly after Jesus left. He woke up John and James and the three of them went out looking for Jesus. They found him an hour or so later when he was praying. They wanted to know why he was so depressed after healing all of the people when they and the crowds were so excited? Jesus spent over four hours explaining to his three apostles what had happened at Zebedee’s house, and why a spiritual kingdom cannot be built with miracles and healings. He told them that he was praying for guidance, but again they did not understand most of what he said.

Meanwhile, as the morning progressed a crowd of people, some sick and some just curious, gathered at Zebedee’s house. They all wanted to see Jesus. The apostles did not know what to do, so they decided that while Simon Zelotes spoke to them Andrew and some of the others would go to find Jesus and bring him back to Zebedee’s house. When Andrew found Jesus with Peter, John, and James he said “Master, why did you leave us alone with the people? Everyone is looking for you. We have never had so many people wanting your teaching. Right now the house is surrounded with people from far and near because of your miracles. Will not you come back with us and heal them?”

Jesus said “Andrew, have I not taught you and these others that my mission on Earth is to reveal the Father and that my message is announcing the kingdom of heaven? How is it then that you would have me turn aside from my work just to gratify the curious and those looking for signs and wonders? We have been with these people for months, but have they flocked to us in droves to hear the good news of the kingdom? Why are they all here now? Is it not to heal their physical bodies rather than to save their souls? When people are impressed with miracles they come to us for help with their material difficulties; not for truth and salvation.’

“The whole time I have been in Capernaum, both in the synagogue and by the seaside, I have spread the good news of the kingdom to everyone who had the ears to hear and the hearts to receive the truth. It is not my Father’s will that I return with you to cater to these curious ones and busy myself with fixing physical things and not those spiritual. I have ordained you to preach the gospel and minister to the sick, but I cannot become engrossed with healing to the exclusion of teaching. No Andrew, I am not going back with you. Go and tell the people to believe in what we have taught them and to rejoice in the liberty of being the sons of God. Then get ready to go out to the other cities of Galilee. They have already been prepared for the preaching of the good tidings of the kingdom and that is why I came forth from the Father. Go then, and get everyone ready to leave immediately and I will wait here for you to get back.”

Andrew and the other apostles, all of them now depressed, returned to Zebedee’s house. They sent the crowd home and quickly prepared for the journey ahead. On Sunday afternoon January 18, A.D. 28 Jesus and the apostles embarked on their first public preaching tour of the cities of Galilee, though for whatever reason Jesus decided not to visit Nazareth. A few hours after Jesus and his apostles had left for Rimmon, Jesus’ brothers Jude and James arrived at Zebedee’s house to visit him. About noon that day Jude had insisted that they go and see Jesus, but by the time James agreed to go Jesus and the others had already left.

The apostles were not happy leaving behind all of the excited people in Capernaum. Peter guessed that no less than one thousand believers could have been baptized into the kingdom. Jesus listened to them patiently, but he would not give in and go back. After that tense discussion everyone was silent for a while until Thomas said “Come on! Let’s go! The Master has spoken. We may not understand all of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but there is one thing we can be certain of: we were following a teacher who seeks no glory for himself.” Then reluctantly they went forth to preach the good tidings in the cities of Galilee.

Bob