makes food out
of nothing!"

The people were rising to their feet.

"Make him a king!" they started to cry. "Jesus is the man to be king
of the Jews!" they shouted. "We want our king!"

But Jesus was not there any longer. Jesus had gone; he had slipped
away through the crowd and disappeared. Even the disciples did not
know where he was. He stayed alone in the mountains until long after
dark.

Those foolish people! That foolish, foolish crowd! They did not
understand him at all. Did they never think of anything except their
stomachs?

Jesus remembered how the devil had once tempted him in the wilderness.
What was it that the devil had said? "If you are the Messiah, make
these stones into bread."

Yes, all the people would be for him so long as he gave them something
to eat. They would even make him a king, if they thought he was the
man to get rid of the Romans and make the country free and rich and
great. Why, they had offered to make Jesus a king that very day! They
said that he was just the man they had been waiting for!

But that was not what Jesus had come to do. He did not want to be that
kind of king.

It was soon to be Passover time. Many years ago, at Passover time,
Jesus had been a boy at the Temple in Jerusalem, watching as the lambs
were killed for a sacrifice. A year from now it would be Passover
again. And then it would be time to go to Jerusalem once more. He
would go to Jerusalem, and he would be the King of the Jews. Then he
would do what he always knew that he would have to do someday.

* * * * *

When Jesus came back to Capernaum, he gathered his band of disciples
together and took them away again. This time he took them so far away
that no one would follow them. No one wanted very much to follow,
anyway, for the people were hurt and angry because Jesus would not be
their king.

Jesus led the disciples away to the north, into the country near
Caesarea Philippi. Here one of the rivers that flowed into the Jordan
came springing out of a cave in a hill. Here too the Greek people
round about had built temples for their heathen gods.

Jesus wanted to be alone with his disciples, for the time had come to
have an important talk. He said to them: "Who do people say that I
am?"

The disciples answered: "Some people say that you are John the
Baptist, come back from the dead. Others say that you are Elijah, or
Jeremiah, or one of the other prophets come back to ea