Beginning the Public Work

141:8.1Through­out the four weeks’ so­journ at Beth­any be­yond Jor­dan, sev­eral times each week An­drew would as­sign apos­tolic cou­ples to go up to Jeri­cho for a day or two. John had many be­liev­ers in Jeri­cho, and the ma­jor­ity of them wel­comed the more ad­vanced teach­ings of Je­sus and his apos­tles. On these Jeri­cho vis­its the apos­tles be­gan more specif­i­cally to carry out Je­sus’ in­struc­tions to min­is­ter to the sick; they vis­ited ev­ery house in the city and sought to com­fort ev­ery af­flicted per­son.

141:8.2The apos­tles did some pub­lic work in Jeri­cho, but their ef­forts were chiefly of a more quiet and per­sonal na­ture. They now made the dis­cov­ery that the good news of the king­dom was very com­fort­ing to the sick; that their mes­sage car­ried heal­ing for the af­flicted. And it was in Jeri­cho that Je­sus’ com­mis­sion to the twelve to preach the glad tid­ings of the king­dom and min­is­ter to the af­flicted was first fully car­ried into ef­fect.

141:8.3They stopped in Jeri­cho on the way up to Je­ru­sa­lem and were over­taken by a del­e­ga­tion from Mes­o­po­ta­mia that had come to con­fer with Je­sus. The apos­tles had planned to spend but a day here, but when these truth seek­ers from the East ar­rived, Je­sus spent three days with them, and they re­turned to their var­i­ous homes along the Eu­phrates happy in the knowl­edge of the new truths of the king­dom of heaven.