Training the Kingdom’s Messengers

138:6.1The next week was de­voted to a pro­gram of in­tense train­ing. Each day the six new apos­tles were put in the hands of their re­spec­tive nom­i­na­tors for a thor­ough­go­ing re­view of all they had learned and ex­pe­ri­enced in prepa­ra­tion for the work of the king­dom. The older apos­tles care­fully re­viewed, for the ben­e­fit of the younger six, Je­sus’ teach­ings up to that hour. Evenings they all as­sem­bled in Zeb­e­dee’s gar­den to re­ceive Je­sus’ in­struc­tion.

138:6.2It was at this time that Je­sus es­tab­lished the mid-week hol­i­day for rest and recre­ation. And they pur­sued this plan of re­lax­ation for one day each week through­out the re­main­der of his ma­te­rial life. As a gen­eral rule, they never pros­e­cuted their reg­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties on Wednes­day. On this weekly hol­i­day Je­sus would usu­ally take him­self away from them, say­ing: “My chil­dren, go for a day of play. Rest your­selves from the ar­du­ous labors of the king­dom and en­joy the re­fresh­ment that comes from re­vert­ing to your for­mer vo­ca­tions or from dis­cov­er­ing new sorts of recre­ational ac­tiv­ity.” While Je­sus, at this pe­riod of his earth life, did not ac­tu­ally re­quire this day of rest, he con­formed to this plan be­cause he knew it was best for his hu­man as­so­ciates. Je­sus was the teacher—the Mas­ter; his as­so­ciates were his pupils—dis­ci­ples.

138:6.3Je­sus en­deav­ored to make clear to his apos­tles the dif­fer­ence be­tween his teach­ings and his life among them and the teach­ings which might sub­se­quently spring up about him. Said Je­sus: “My king­dom and the gospel re­lated thereto shall be the bur­den of your mes­sage. Be not side­tracked into preach­ing about me and about my teach­ings. Pro­claim the gospel of the king­dom and por­tray my rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther in heaven but do not be mis­led into the by­paths of cre­at­ing leg­ends and build­ing up a cult hav­ing to do with be­liefs and teach­ings about my be­liefs and teach­ings.” But again they did not un­der­stand why he thus spoke, and no man dared to ask why he so taught them.

138:6.4In these early teach­ings Je­sus sought to avoid con­tro­ver­sies with his apos­tles as far as pos­si­ble ex­cept­ing those in­volv­ing wrong con­cepts of his Fa­ther in heaven. In all such mat­ters he never hes­i­tated to cor­rect er­ro­neous be­liefs. There was just one mo­tive in Je­sus’ post­bap­tismal life on Uran­tia, and that was a bet­ter and truer rev­e­la­tion of his Par­a­dise Fa­ther; he was the pi­o­neer of the new and bet­ter way to God, the way of faith and love. Ever his ex­hor­ta­tion to the apos­tles was: “Go seek for the sin­ners; find the down­hearted and com­fort the anx­ious.”

138:6.5Je­sus had a per­fect grasp of the sit­u­a­tion; he pos­sessed un­lim­ited power, which might have been uti­lized in the fur­ther­ance of his mis­sion, but he was wholly con­tent with means and per­son­al­i­ties which most peo­ple would have re­garded as in­ad­e­quate and would have looked upon as in­signif­i­cant. He was en­gaged in a mis­sion of enor­mous dra­matic pos­si­bil­i­ties, but he in­sisted on go­ing about his Fa­ther’s busi­ness in the most quiet and un­dra­matic man­ner; he stu­diously avoided all dis­play of power. And he now planned to work qui­etly, at least for sev­eral months, with his twelve apos­tles around about the Sea of Gal­i­lee.