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The Desire of Ages
suffering. Must their glowing expectations of the Messiah’s kingdom
be relinquished? Were they not to see their Lord exalted to the throne
of David? Could it be that Christ was to live a humble, homeless
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wanderer, to be despised, rejected, and put to death? Sadness oppressed
their hearts, for they loved their Master. Doubt also harassed their
minds, for it seemed incomprehensible that the Son of God should be
subjected to such cruel humiliation. They questioned why He should
voluntarily go to Jerusalem to meet the treatment which He had told
them He was there to receive. How could He resign Himself to such a
fate, and leave them in greater darkness than that in which they were
groping before He revealed Himself to them?
In the region of Caesarea Philippi, Christ was out of the reach of
Herod and Caiaphas, the disciples reasoned. He had nothing to fear
from the hatred of the Jews or from the power of the Romans. Why
not work there, at a distance from the Pharisees? Why need He give
Himself up to death? If He was to die, how was it that His kingdom
was to be established so firmly that the gates of hell should not prevail
against it? To the disciples this was indeed a mystery.
They were even now journeying along the shores of the Sea of
Galilee toward the city where all their hopes were to be crushed. They
dared not remonstrate with Christ, but they talked together in low,
sorrowful tones in regard to what the future would be. Even amid
their questionings they clung to the thought that some unforeseen
circumstance might avert the doom which seemed to await their Lord.
Thus they sorrowed and doubted, hoped and feared, for six long,
gloomy days.
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