Beginning the Public Work

141:4.1While so­journ­ing at Am­athus, Je­sus spent much time with the apos­tles in­struct­ing them in the new con­cept of God; again and again did he im­press upon them that God is a Fa­ther, not a great and su­preme book­keeper who is chiefly en­gaged in mak­ing dam­ag­ing en­tries against his erring chil­dren on earth, record­ings of sin and evil to be used against them when he sub­se­quently sits in judg­ment upon them as the just Judge of all cre­ation. The Jews had long con­ceived of God as a king over all, even as a Fa­ther of the na­tion, but never be­fore had large num­bers of mor­tal men held the idea of God as a lov­ing Fa­ther of the in­di­vid­ual.

141:4.2In an­swer to Thomas’s ques­tion, “Who is this God of the king­dom?” Je­sus replied: “God is your Fa­ther, and re­li­gion—my gospel—is noth­ing more nor less than the be­liev­ing rec­og­ni­tion of the truth that you are his son. And I am here among you in the flesh to make clear both of these ideas in my life and teach­ings.”

141:4.3Je­sus also sought to free the minds of his apos­tles from the idea of of­fer­ing an­i­mal sac­ri­fices as a re­li­gious duty. But these men, trained in the re­li­gion of the daily sac­ri­fice, were slow to com­pre­hend what he meant. Nev­er­the­less, the Mas­ter did not grow weary in his teach­ing. When he failed to reach the minds of all of the apos­tles by means of one il­lus­tra­tion, he would re­state his mes­sage and em­ploy an­other type of para­ble for pur­poses of il­lu­mi­na­tion.

141:4.4At this same time Je­sus be­gan to teach the twelve more fully con­cern­ing their mis­sion “to com­fort the af­flicted and min­is­ter to the sick.” The Mas­ter taught them much about the whole man—the union of body, mind, and spirit to form the in­di­vid­ual man or woman. Je­sus told his as­so­ciates about the three forms of af­flic­tion they would meet and went on to ex­plain how they should min­is­ter to all who suf­fer the sor­rows of hu­man sick­ness. He taught them to rec­og­nize:

141:4.51. Dis­eases of the flesh—those af­flic­tions com­monly re­garded as phys­i­cal sick­ness.

141:4.62. Trou­bled minds—those non­phys­i­cal af­flic­tions which were sub­se­quently looked upon as emo­tional and men­tal dif­fi­cul­ties and dis­tur­bances.

141:4.73. The pos­ses­sion of evil spir­its.

141:4.8Je­sus ex­plained to his apos­tles on sev­eral oc­ca­sions the na­ture, and some­thing con­cern­ing the ori­gin, of these evil spir­its, in that day of­ten also called un­clean spir­its. The Mas­ter well knew the dif­fer­ence be­tween the pos­ses­sion of evil spir­its and in­san­ity, but the apos­tles did not. Nei­ther was it pos­si­ble, in view of their lim­ited knowl­edge of the early his­tory of Uran­tia, for Je­sus to un­der­take to make this mat­ter fully un­der­stand­able. But he many times said to them, al­lud­ing to these evil spir­its: “They shall no more mo­lest men when I shall have as­cended to my Fa­ther in heaven, and af­ter I shall have poured out my spirit upon all flesh in those times when the king­dom will come in great power and spir­i­tual glory.”

141:4.9From week to week and from month to month, through­out this en­tire year, the apos­tles paid more and more at­ten­tion to the heal­ing min­istry of the sick.