Training the Kingdom’s Messengers

138:8.1Af­ter dis­pos­ing of the fish catches of two weeks, Ju­das Is­car­iot, the one cho­sen to act as trea­surer of the twelve, di­vided the apos­tolic funds into six equal por­tions, funds for the care of de­pen­dent fam­i­lies hav­ing been al­ready pro­vided. And then near the mid­dle of Au­gust, in the year A.D. 26, they went forth two and two to the fields of work as­signed by An­drew. The first two weeks Je­sus went out with An­drew and Pe­ter, the sec­ond two weeks with James and John, and so on with the other cou­ples in the or­der of their choos­ing. In this way he was able to go out at least once with each cou­ple be­fore he called them to­gether for the be­gin­ning of their pub­lic min­istry.

138:8.2Je­sus taught them to preach the for­give­ness of sin through faith in God with­out pen­ance or sac­ri­fice, and that the Fa­ther in heaven loves all his chil­dren with the same eter­nal love. He en­joined his apos­tles to re­frain from dis­cussing:

138:8.31. The work and im­pris­on­ment of John the Bap­tist.

138:8.42. The voice at the bap­tism. Said Je­sus: “Only those who heard the voice may re­fer to it. Speak only that which you have heard from me; speak not hearsay.”

138:8.53. The turn­ing of the wa­ter into wine at Cana. Je­sus se­ri­ously charged them, say­ing, “Tell no man about the wa­ter and the wine.”

138:8.6They had won­der­ful times through­out these five or six months dur­ing which they worked as fish­er­men ev­ery al­ter­nate two weeks, thereby earn­ing enough money to sup­port them­selves in the field for each suc­ceed­ing two weeks of mis­sion­ary work for the king­dom.

138:8.7The com­mon peo­ple mar­veled at the teach­ing and min­istry of Je­sus and his apos­tles. The rab­bis had long taught the Jews that the ig­no­rant could not be pi­ous or righ­teous. But Je­sus’ apos­tles were both pi­ous and righ­teous; yet they were cheer­fully ig­no­rant of much of the learn­ing of the rab­bis and the wis­dom of the world.

138:8.8Je­sus made plain to his apos­tles the dif­fer­ence be­tween the re­pen­tance of so-called good works as taught by the Jews and the change of mind by faith—the new birth—which he re­quired as the price of ad­mis­sion to the king­dom. He taught his apos­tles that faith was the only req­ui­site to en­ter­ing the Fa­ther’s king­dom. John had taught them “re­pen­tance—to flee from the wrath to come.” Je­sus taught, “Faith is the open door for en­ter­ing into the pres­ent, per­fect, and eter­nal love of God.” Je­sus did not speak like a prophet, one who comes to de­clare the word of God. He seemed to speak of him­self as one hav­ing au­thor­ity. Je­sus sought to di­vert their minds from mir­a­cle seek­ing to the find­ing of a real and per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence in the sat­is­fac­tion and as­sur­ance of the in­dwelling of God’s spirit of love and sav­ing grace.

138:8.9The dis­ci­ples early learned that the Mas­ter had a pro­found re­spect and sym­pa­thetic re­gard for ev­ery hu­man be­ing he met, and they were tremen­dously im­pressed by this uni­form and un­vary­ing con­sid­er­a­tion which he so con­sis­tently gave to all sorts of men, women, and chil­dren. He would pause in the midst of a pro­found dis­course that he might go out in the road to speak good cheer to a pass­ing woman laden with her bur­den of body and soul. He would in­ter­rupt a se­ri­ous con­fer­ence with his apos­tles to frat­er­nize with an in­trud­ing child. Noth­ing ever seemed so im­por­tant to Je­sus as the in­di­vid­ual hu­man who chanced to be in his im­me­di­ate pres­ence. He was mas­ter and teacher, but he was more—he was also a friend and neigh­bor, an un­der­stand­ing com­rade.

138:8.10Though Je­sus’ pub­lic teach­ing mainly con­sisted in para­bles and short dis­courses, he in­vari­ably taught his apos­tles by ques­tions and an­swers. He would al­ways pause to an­swer sin­cere ques­tions dur­ing his later pub­lic dis­courses.

138:8.11The apos­tles were at first shocked by, but early be­came ac­cus­tomed to, Je­sus’ treat­ment of women; he made it very clear to them that women were to be ac­corded equal rights with men in the king­dom.