The Ordination of the Twelve

140:7.1Af­ter a few hours’ sleep, when the twelve were as­sem­bled for a late break­fast with Je­sus, he said: “Now must you be­gin your work of preach­ing the glad tid­ings and in­struct­ing be­liev­ers. Make ready to go to Je­ru­sa­lem.” Af­ter Je­sus had spo­ken, Thomas mus­tered up cour­age to say: “I know, Mas­ter, that we should now be ready to en­ter upon the work, but I fear we are not yet able to ac­com­plish this great un­der­tak­ing. Would you con­sent for us to stay here­abouts for just a few days more be­fore we be­gin the work of the king­dom?” And when Je­sus saw that all of his apos­tles were pos­sessed by this same fear, he said: “It shall be as you have re­quested; we will re­main here over the Sab­bath day.”

140:7.2For weeks and weeks small groups of earnest truth seek­ers, to­gether with cu­ri­ous spec­ta­tors, had been com­ing to Beth­saida to see Je­sus. Al­ready word about him had spread over the coun­try­side; in­quir­ing groups had come from cities as far away as Tyre, Sidon, Da­mas­cus, Cae­sarea, and Je­ru­sa­lem. Here­to­fore, Je­sus had greeted these peo­ple and taught them con­cern­ing the king­dom, but the Mas­ter now turned this work over to the twelve. An­drew would se­lect one of the apos­tles and as­sign him to a group of vis­i­tors, and some­times all twelve of them were so en­gaged.

140:7.3For two days they worked, teach­ing by day and hold­ing pri­vate con­fer­ences late into the night. On the third day Je­sus vis­ited with Zeb­e­dee and Sa­lome while he sent his apos­tles off to “go fish­ing, seek care­free change, or per­chance visit your fam­i­lies.” On Thurs­day they re­turned for three more days of teach­ing.

140:7.4Dur­ing this week of re­hears­ing, Je­sus many times re­peated to his apos­tles the two great mo­tives of his post­bap­tismal mis­sion on earth:

140:7.51. To re­veal the Fa­ther to man.

140:7.62. To lead men to be­come son-con­scious—to faith-re­al­ize that they are the chil­dren of the Most High.

140:7.7One week of this var­ied ex­pe­ri­ence did much for the twelve; some even be­came over self-con­fi­dent. At the last con­fer­ence, the night af­ter the Sab­bath, Pe­ter and James came to Je­sus, say­ing, “We are ready—let us now go forth to take the king­dom.” To which Je­sus replied, “May your wis­dom equal your zeal and your cour­age atone for your ig­no­rance.”

140:7.8Though the apos­tles failed to com­pre­hend much of his teach­ing, they did not fail to grasp the sig­nif­i­cance of the charm­ingly beau­ti­ful life he lived with them.