Jesus wanting to teach His disciples about what was about to come to pass and prepare them for His death, burial, and resurrection chose to teach them without any hinderance through crowds of people or demonic distractions did not let anyone know where they were. Yet, the disciples lacked and did not have understanding to what Jesus meant by His predictions and were afraid to even ask about it maybe due to being rebuked at Jesus’s first prediction of His death, burial, and resurrection or maybe because they were still under their own understanding of the purpose and plan of the Messiah establishing an earthly kingdom that included them as His disciples/leaders, which is confirmed in the next section of Mark’s Gospel. ​