What did Jesus Christ do from age 12 to about age 30?

 

                                 Christ will return in red apparel for his "Second Coming."

  

JESUS Christ didn't begin his preaching of the gospel, at least to large groups, until he was about age 30. (At age 12 he had shown in the Temple that he was already an astounding person.) So, what did Christ do for about 18 years?

   The Scriptures don't contain details on that.

  (In fact, I think some accounts were originally in the New Testament on Christ's missing 18 years, but were taken out by corrupt Christians over the centuries.) 

  Elder Bruce R. McConkie stated in his "Mortal Messiah" book series:

"We cannot doubt that the youthful Jesus . . . was himself now beginning to teach and to testify. HIS FORMAL AND LEGAL MINISTRY cannot begin for another eighteen years. For the time being he is to go back to Nazareth and be subject to Joseph and Mary. He is to mature and grow in the Spirit and find favor with God and man. HE IS TO PARTAKE OF THE NORMAL LIFE OF JEWISH MEN, DOING WHAT THEY DID, ENJOYING THE FAMILIAL ASSOCIATIONS THAT WERE PART OF THEIR CULTURAL, and gaining all the experiences he would need for the arduous hours of his formal ministry." (Volume 1, pages 378-379).

  Now according to Alfred Edersheim's, Sketches of Jewish Social life in the Days of Christ, 1876, Elder McConkie writes the following: "Men married at sixteen or seventeen years of age, almost never later than twenty; and women at a somewhat younger age, often when not older than fourteen. THESE AGES APPLIED TO ALL, Joseph and Mary included" (p. 223). 

  So, Jesus undoubtedly got married in his teens. Perhaps raising his family (yes, with children) was his primary focus for those missing years. 

 Joseph Fielding Smith wrote: "The Lord doesn't reveal all His truth to men . . . We are often asked if Christ was married. If you say yes, you get into a heap of trouble. I've got a habit of saying the scriptures don't tell us and let it go at that . They wouldn't understand it if you tried to tell them . . ." (Joseph Fielding Smith, President of the Twelve, An Address to Seminary and Institute Faculty, August 28, 1954, The Origin of Man, p. 23). 

   The Jews would NOT have listened to Christ at all, if he was not married. That was the Jewish way.

  Also, for one who was baptized to fulfill all righteous, does not the command in Genesis to "multiply and replenish the earth" also apply to him?

  Yes, there are key questions remaining -- who were his wife or wives? Who were his children and what happened to them?

  As difficult as a successful marriage can be, it is comforting to know that Jesus was married and had children too. That way he is certainly the ultimate example to us.