CHRIST JESUS, when struggling with the burden of the world's woe in the garden of Gethsemane, told his disciples, who were soon to desert him, that after he was risen again he would go before them into Galilee. When the two Marys went to the sepulcher, the angel said to them, "Go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead; and, behold, he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see him." And as they departed from the sepulcher, Jesus himself met them and said, "Tell my brethren that they go into Galilee, and there shall they see me." It will be remembered, likewise, that although Joseph was a citizen of Judea and had previously gone to Bethlehem to be taxed, as Luke tells us in the second chapter of his gospel, when he and Mary returned from Egypt with the young child Jesus, they went, not into Judea, but to Nazareth of Galilee.
Why does Galilee thus stand out so prominently in the life of Christ Jesus that he was called the Galilean Prophet? There he spent his childhood; there he performed his first miracle, the turning of water into wine; and there many more of his miracles were performed. The majority of the disciples were Galileans, and the faithful women who followed him to Calvary were likewise Galileans. We read in Matthew, "And many women were there. . .which followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering unto him."
A study of the four gospels makes clear that the Galileans were more receptive to the great truths taught by Jesus than were the people of Judea. There was not the resistance to his healing works in Galilee that there was in Judea. Judea was the seat of the ecclesiastical authority of the Judaic hierarchy; and it was this hierarchy, jealous of its powers and privileges, which stirred and poisoned the people against Jesus and his works. The mentality of the people of Judea was also less receptive to Jesus' teachings. He wisely began his work in the locality of least resistance; and from that base the leaven of the truths he uttered, and the healings he accomplished, radiated in every direction.
