Beginning the Public Work

141:3.1The Mas­ter and his apos­tles re­mained near Am­athus for al­most three weeks. The apos­tles con­tin­ued to preach twice daily to the mul­ti­tude, and Je­sus preached each Sab­bath af­ter­noon. It be­came im­pos­si­ble to con­tinue the Wednes­day play­time; so An­drew ar­ranged that two apos­tles should rest each day of the six days in the week, while all were on duty dur­ing the Sab­bath ser­vices.

141:3.2Pe­ter, James, and John did most of the pub­lic preach­ing. Philip, Na­than­iel, Thomas, and Si­mon did much of the per­sonal work and con­ducted classes for spe­cial groups of in­quir­ers; the twins con­tin­ued their gen­eral po­lice super­vi­sion, while An­drew, Mat­thew, and Ju­das de­vel­oped into a gen­eral man­age­rial com­mit­tee of three, al­though each of these three also did con­sid­er­able re­li­gious work.

141:3.3An­drew was much oc­cu­pied with the task of ad­just­ing the con­stantly re­cur­ring mis­un­der­stand­ings and dis­agree­ments be­tween the dis­ci­ples of John and the newer dis­ci­ples of Je­sus. Se­ri­ous sit­u­a­tions would arise ev­ery few days, but An­drew, with the as­sis­tance of his apos­tolic as­so­ciates, man­aged to in­duce the con­tend­ing par­ties to come to some sort of agree­ment, at least tem­porar­ily. Je­sus re­fused to par­tic­i­pate in any of these con­fer­ences; nei­ther would he give any ad­vice about the proper ad­just­ment of these dif­fi­cul­ties. He never once of­fered a sug­ges­tion as to how the apos­tles should solve these per­plex­ing prob­lems. When An­drew came to Je­sus with these ques­tions, he would al­ways say: “It is not wise for the host to par­tic­i­pate in the fam­ily trou­bles of his guests; a wise par­ent never takes sides in the petty quar­rels of his own chil­dren.”

141:3.4The Mas­ter dis­played great wis­dom and man­i­fested per­fect fair­ness in all of his deal­ings with his apos­tles and with all of his dis­ci­ples. Je­sus was truly a mas­ter of men; he ex­er­cised great in­flu­ence over his fel­low men be­cause of the com­bined charm and force of his per­son­al­ity. There was a sub­tle com­mand­ing in­flu­ence in his rugged, no­madic, and home­less life. There was in­tel­lec­tual at­trac­tive­ness and spir­i­tual draw­ing power in his au­thor­i­ta­tive man­ner of teach­ing, in his lu­cid logic, his strength of rea­son­ing, his saga­cious in­sight, his alert­ness of mind, his match­less poise, and his sub­lime tol­er­ance. He was sim­ple, manly, hon­est, and fear­less. With all of this phys­i­cal and in­tel­lec­tual in­flu­ence man­i­fest in the Mas­ter’s pres­ence, there were also all those spir­i­tual charms of be­ing which have be­come as­so­ci­ated with his per­son­al­ity—pa­tience, ten­der­ness, meek­ness, gen­tle­ness, and hu­mil­ity.

141:3.5Je­sus of Naz­a­reth was in­deed a strong and force­ful per­son­al­ity; he was an in­tel­lec­tual power and a spir­i­tual stronghold. His per­son­al­ity not only ap­pealed to the spir­i­tu­ally minded women among his fol­low­ers, but also to the ed­u­cated and in­tel­lec­tual Nicode­mus and to the hardy Ro­man sol­dier, the cap­tain sta­tioned on guard at the cross, who, when he had fin­ished watch­ing the Mas­ter die, said, “Truly, this was a Son of God.” And red-blooded, rugged Galilean fish­er­men called him Mas­ter.

141:3.6The pic­tures of Je­sus have been most un­for­tu­nate. These paint­ings of the Christ have ex­erted a dele­te­ri­ous in­flu­ence on youth; the tem­ple mer­chants would hardly have fled be­fore Je­sus if he had been such a man as your artists usu­ally have de­picted. His was a dig­ni­fied man­hood; he was good, but nat­u­ral. Je­sus did not pose as a mild, sweet, gen­tle, and kindly mys­tic. His teach­ing was thrillingly dy­namic. He not only meant well, but he went about ac­tu­ally do­ing good.

141:3.7The Mas­ter never said, “Come to me all you who are in­do­lent and all who are dream­ers.” But he did many times say, “Come to me all you who la­bor, and I will give you rest—spir­i­tual strength.” The Mas­ter’s yoke is, in­deed, easy, but even so, he never im­poses it; ev­ery in­di­vid­ual must take this yoke of his own free will.

141:3.8Je­sus por­trayed con­quest by sac­ri­fice, the sac­ri­fice of pride and self­ish­ness. By show­ing mercy, he meant to por­tray spir­i­tual de­liv­er­ance from all grudges, grievances, anger, and the lust for self­ish power and re­venge. And when he said, “Re­sist not evil,” he later ex­plained that he did not mean to con­done sin or to coun­sel fra­ter­nity with in­iq­uity. He in­tended the more to teach for­give­ness, to “re­sist not evil treat­ment of one’s per­son­al­ity, evil in­jury to one’s feel­ings of per­sonal dig­nity.”