Training the Kingdom’s Messengers

138:9.1This some­what monotonous pe­riod of al­ter­nate fish­ing and per­sonal work proved to be a gru­el­ing ex­pe­ri­ence for the twelve apos­tles, but they en­dured the test. With all of their grum­blings, doubts, and tran­sient dis­sat­is­fac­tions they re­mained true to their vows of de­vo­tion and loy­alty to the Mas­ter. It was their per­sonal as­so­ci­a­tion with Je­sus dur­ing these months of test­ing that so en­deared him to them that they all (save Ju­das Is­car­iot) re­mained loyal and true to him even in the dark hours of the trial and cru­ci­fix­ion. Real men sim­ply could not ac­tu­ally desert a revered teacher who had lived so close to them and had been so de­voted to them as had Je­sus. Through the dark hours of the Mas­ter’s death, in the hearts of these apos­tles all rea­son, judg­ment, and logic were set aside in def­er­ence to just one ex­traor­di­nary hu­man emo­tion—the su­preme sen­ti­ment of friend­ship-loy­alty. These five months of work with Je­sus led these apos­tles, each one of them, to re­gard him as the best friend he had in all the world. And it was this hu­man sen­ti­ment, and not his su­perb teach­ings or mar­velous do­ings, that held them to­gether un­til af­ter the res­ur­rec­tion and the re­newal of the procla­ma­tion of the gospel of the king­dom.

138:9.2Not only were these months of quiet work a great test to the apos­tles, a test which they sur­vived, but this sea­son of pub­lic in­ac­tiv­ity was a great trial to Je­sus’ fam­ily. By the time Je­sus was pre­pared to launch forth on his pub­lic work, his en­tire fam­ily (ex­cept Ruth) had prac­ti­cally de­serted him. On only a few oc­ca­sions did they at­tempt to make sub­se­quent con­tact with him, and then it was to per­suade him to re­turn home with them, for they came near to be­liev­ing that he was be­side him­self. They sim­ply could not fathom his phi­los­o­phy nor grasp his teach­ing; it was all too much for those of his own flesh and blood.

138:9.3The apos­tles car­ried on their per­sonal work in Ca­per­naum, Beth­saida-Ju­lias, Cho­ra­zin, Gerasa, Hip­pos, Mag­dala, Cana, Beth­le­hem of Gal­i­lee, Jo­ta­p­ata, Ramah, Safed, Gis­chala, Gadara, and Abila. Be­sides these towns they la­bored in many vil­lages as well as in the coun­try­side. By the end of this pe­riod the twelve had worked out fairly sat­is­fac­tory plans for the care of their re­spec­tive fam­i­lies. Most of the apos­tles were mar­ried, some had sev­eral chil­dren, but they had made such ar­range­ments for the sup­port of their home folks that, with some lit­tle as­sis­tance from the apos­tolic funds, they could de­vote their en­tire en­er­gies to the Mas­ter’s work with­out hav­ing to worry about the fi­nan­cial wel­fare of their fam­i­lies.