Training the Kingdom’s Messengers

138:5.1Thomas the fish­er­man and Ju­das the wan­derer met Je­sus and the apos­tles at the fisher-boat land­ing at Ta­ri­chea, and Thomas led the party to his near-by home. Philip now pre­sented Thomas as his nom­i­nee for apos­tle­ship and Na­than­iel pre­sented Ju­das Is­car­iot, the Judean, for sim­i­lar hon­ors. Je­sus looked upon Thomas and said: “Thomas, you lack faith; nev­er­the­less, I re­ceive you. Fol­low me.” To Ju­das Is­car­iot the Mas­ter said: “Ju­das, we are all of one flesh, and as I re­ceive you into our midst, I pray that you will al­ways be loyal to your Galilean breth­ren. Fol­low me.”

138:5.2When they had re­freshed them­selves, Je­sus took the twelve apart for a sea­son to pray with them and to in­struct them in the na­ture and work of the Holy Spirit, but again did they largely fail to com­pre­hend the mean­ing of those won­der­ful truths which he en­deav­ored to teach them. One would grasp one point and one would com­pre­hend an­other, but none of them could en­com­pass the whole of his teach­ing. Al­ways would they make the mis­take of try­ing to fit Je­sus’ new gospel into their old forms of re­li­gious be­lief. They could not grasp the idea that Je­sus had come to pro­claim a new gospel of sal­va­tion and to es­tab­lish a new way of find­ing God; they did not per­ceive that he was a new rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther in heaven.

138:5.3The next day Je­sus left his twelve apos­tles quite alone; he wanted them to be­come ac­quainted and de­sired that they be alone to talk over what he had taught them. The Mas­ter re­turned for the evening meal, and dur­ing the af­ter-sup­per hours he talked to them about the min­istry of ser­a­phim, and some of the apos­tles com­pre­hended his teach­ing. They rested for a night and the next day de­parted by boat for Ca­per­naum.

138:5.4Zeb­e­dee and Sa­lome had gone to live with their son David so that their large home could be turned over to Je­sus and his twelve apos­tles. Here Je­sus spent a quiet Sab­bath with his cho­sen mes­sen­gers; he care­fully out­lined the plans for pro­claim­ing the king­dom and fully ex­plained the im­por­tance of avoid­ing any clash with the civil au­thor­i­ties, say­ing: “If the civil rulers are to be re­buked, leave that task to me. See that you make no de­nun­ci­a­tions of Cae­sar or his ser­vants.” It was this same evening that Ju­das Is­car­iot took Je­sus aside to in­quire why noth­ing was done to get John out of prison. And Ju­das was not wholly sat­is­fied with Je­sus’ at­ti­tude.