The disciples, therefore, were not obviously unfaithful to the teachings of Jesus if after He had been taken from them they continued to minister only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. If He had told them to make disciples of all the nations, He had not told them upon what terms the disciples were to be received or at what moment of time the specifically Gentile work should begin. Perhaps the divine economy required that Israel should first be brought to an acknowledgment of her Lord, or at least her obduracy established beyond peradventure, in accordance with the mysterious prophecy of Jesus in the parable of the Wicked Husbandmen,[5] before the Gentiles should be gathered in. At any rate, there is evidence that whatever was revolutionary in the life and teaching of Jesus was less evident among His disciples, in the early days of the Jerusalem Church. Even the Pharisees, and at any rate the people as a whole, could find nothing to object to in the attitude of the apostles and their followers. The disciples continued to observe the Jewish fasts and feasts. Outwardly they were simply loyal Jews. Evidently Gentile freedom, and the abolition of special Jewish privileges, had not been clearly established by the words of the Master. There was therefore still need for the epoch-making work of Paul. [5] Matt. xxi. 41, and parallels. This verse can perhaps hardly be held to refer exclusively to the rejection of Jesus by the rulers; it seems also to apply to a rejection by the people as a whole. But the full implications of so mysterious an utterance may well have been lost sight of in the early Jerusalem Church.