The Revolt at Nazareth
Luke 4:21
21 . . . This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.
Elder James E. Talmage said:
“From Samaria our Lord went on to Galilee, and there, in what has been called His home city—though not the place of His birth, yet the town of His youth, Nazareth—He went into the synagogue after He had become thirty years of age, the age at which a Jew was entitled to be heard if He had anything to say, in the synagogue, and He there appeared for the first time so far as we know in what we may call the speaker’s stand, perhaps by invitation. The president of the synagogue handed to Him the roll, the book of Isaiah. Jesus opened to what in our Bible is the sixty-first chapter and read from it as recorded by Luke:
“‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,
“‘To preach the acceptable year of the Lord’ [Luke 4:18–19].
“Possibly there were few if any there who had not heard that scripture quoted aforetime. It was a favorite with speakers and commentators of the day, and it aroused some solemn interest in all who listened to Him, but His words that followed struck to the heart of everyone:
“‘This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears’ [Luke 4:21].
“They were startled. Some began to find fault, and the tumult culminated in their seizing Him and dragging Him to the brow of a nearby hill, intending to cast Him down to His death even at the beginning of His ministry. But His hour had not yet come. It was the present, the individual application, that had stirred their anger. And so with many other incidents in the life and earthly ministry of the Lord Jesus.”
(In Conference Report, Apr. 1932, 101–2.)
Randal S. Chase spent his childhood years in Nephi, Utah, where his father was a dry land wheat farmer and a businessman. In 1959 their family moved to Salt Lake City and settled in the Holladay area. He served a full-time mission in the Central British (England Central) Mission from 1968 to 1970. He returned home and married Deborah Johnsen in 1971. They are the parents of six children—two daughters and four sons—and an ever-expanding number of grandchildren.
He was called to serve as a bishop at the age of 27 in the Sandy Crescent South Stake area of the Salt Lake Valley. He served six years in that capacity, and has since served as a high councilor, a stake executive secretary and clerk, and in many other stake and ward callings. Regardless of whatever other callings he has received over the years, one was nearly constant: He has taught Gospel Doctrine classes in every ward he has ever lived in as an adult—a total of 35 years.
Dr. Chase was a well-known media personality on Salt Lake City radio stations in the 1970s. He left on-air broadcasting in 1978 to develop and market a computer-based management, sales, and music programming system to radio and television stations in the United States, Canada, South America, and Australia. After the business was sold in 1984, he supported his family as a media and business consultant in the Salt Lake City area.
Having a great desire to teach young people of college age, he determined in the late 1980s to pursue his doctorate, and received his Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Utah in 1997. He has taught communication courses at that institution as well as at Salt Lake Community College and Dixie State University for 21 years. He served as Communication Department chair and is currently a full-time professor at Dixie State University in St. George, Utah.
Concurrently with his academic career, Brother Chase has served as a volunteer LDS Institute and Adult Education instructor in the CES system since 1994, both in Salt Lake City and St. George, where he currently teaches a weekly Adult Education class for three stakes in the Washington area. He has also conducted multiple Church History tours and seminars. During these years of gospel teaching, he has developed an extensive library of lesson plans and handouts which are the predecessors to these study guides.
Dr. Chase previously published a thirteen-volume series of study guides on the Book of Mormon, Church History, the Old Testament, and the New Testament. The series, titled Making Precious Things Plain, along with four smaller study guides on Isaiah, Jeremiah, the story of the Nativity, and the final week of our Lord’s atoning sacrifice, are designed to assist teachers and students of the gospel, as well as those who simply want to study on their own. Several of these books are also available in the Spanish language.
