At Gilboa and in the Decapolis

144:6.1Around the first of Oc­to­ber, Philip and some of his fel­low apos­tles were in a near-by vil­lage buy­ing food when they met some of the apos­tles of John the Bap­tist. As a re­sult of this chance meet­ing in the mar­ket place there came about a three weeks’ con­fer­ence at the Gil­boa camp be­tween the apos­tles of Je­sus and the apos­tles of John, for John had re­cently ap­pointed twelve of his lead­ers to be apos­tles, fol­low­ing the prece­dent of Je­sus. John had done this in re­sponse to the urg­ing of Ab­ner, the chief of his loyal sup­port­ers. Je­sus was pres­ent at the Gil­boa camp through­out the first week of this joint con­fer­ence but ab­sented him­self the last two weeks.

144:6.2By the be­gin­ning of the sec­ond week of this month, Ab­ner had as­sem­bled all of his as­so­ciates at the Gil­boa camp and was pre­pared to go into coun­cil with the apos­tles of Je­sus. For three weeks these twenty-four men were in ses­sion three times a day and for six days each week. The first week Je­sus min­gled with them be­tween their forenoon, af­ter­noon, and evening ses­sions. They wanted the Mas­ter to meet with them and pre­side over their joint de­lib­er­a­tions, but he stead­fastly re­fused to par­tic­i­pate in their dis­cus­sions, though he did con­sent to speak to them on three oc­ca­sions. These talks by Je­sus to the twenty-four were on sym­pa­thy, co-op­er­a­tion, and tol­er­ance.

144:6.3An­drew and Ab­ner al­ter­nated in pre­sid­ing over these joint meet­ings of the two apos­tolic groups. These men had many dif­fi­cul­ties to dis­cuss and nu­mer­ous prob­lems to solve. Again and again would they take their trou­bles to Je­sus, only to hear him say: “I am con­cerned only with your per­sonal and purely re­li­gious prob­lems. I am the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Fa­ther to the in­di­vid­ual, not to the group. If you are in per­sonal dif­fi­culty in your re­la­tions with God, come to me, and I will hear you and coun­sel you in the so­lu­tion of your prob­lem. But when you en­ter upon the co-or­di­na­tion of di­ver­gent hu­man in­ter­pre­ta­tions of re­li­gious ques­tions and upon the so­cial­iza­tion of re­li­gion, you are des­tined to solve all such prob­lems by your own de­ci­sions. Al­beit, I am ever sym­pa­thetic and al­ways in­ter­ested, and when you ar­rive at your con­clu­sions touch­ing these mat­ters of non­spir­i­tual im­port, pro­vided you are all agreed, then I pledge in ad­vance my full ap­proval and hearty co-op­er­a­tion. And now, in or­der to leave you un­ham­pered in your de­lib­er­a­tions, I am leav­ing you for two weeks. Be not anx­ious about me, for I will re­turn to you. I will be about my Fa­ther’s busi­ness, for we have other realms be­sides this one.”

144:6.4Af­ter thus speak­ing, Je­sus went down the moun­tain­side, and they saw him no more for two full weeks. And they never knew where he went or what he did dur­ing these days. It was some time be­fore the twenty-four could set­tle down to the se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion of their prob­lems, they were so dis­con­certed by the ab­sence of the Mas­ter. How­ever, within a week they were again in the heart of their dis­cus­sions, and they could not go to Je­sus for help.

144:6.5The first item the group agreed upon was the adop­tion of the prayer which Je­sus had so re­cently taught them. It was unan­i­mously voted to ac­cept this prayer as the one to be taught be­liev­ers by both groups of apos­tles.

144:6.6They next de­cided that, as long as John lived, whether in prison or out, both groups of twelve apos­tles would go on with their work, and that joint meet­ings for one week would be held ev­ery three months at places to be agreed upon from time to time.

144:6.7But the most se­ri­ous of all their prob­lems was the ques­tion of bap­tism. Their dif­fi­cul­ties were all the more ag­gra­vated be­cause Je­sus had re­fused to make any pro­nounce­ment upon the sub­ject. They fi­nally agreed: As long as John lived, or un­til they might jointly mod­ify this de­ci­sion, only the apos­tles of John would bap­tize be­liev­ers, and only the apos­tles of Je­sus would fi­nally in­struct the new dis­ci­ples. Ac­cord­ingly, from that time un­til af­ter the death of John, two of the apos­tles of John ac­com­pa­nied Je­sus and his apos­tles to bap­tize be­liev­ers, for the joint coun­cil had unan­i­mously voted that bap­tism was to be­come the ini­tial step in the out­ward al­liance with the af­fairs of the king­dom.

144:6.8It was next agreed, in case of the death of John, that the apos­tles of John would pre­sent them­selves to Je­sus and be­come sub­ject to his di­rec­tion, and that they would bap­tize no more un­less au­tho­rized by Je­sus or his apos­tles.

144:6.9And then was it voted that, in case of John’s death, the apos­tles of Je­sus would be­gin to bap­tize with wa­ter as the em­blem of the bap­tism of the di­vine Spirit. As to whether or not re­pen­tance should be at­tached to the preach­ing of bap­tism was left op­tional; no de­ci­sion was made bind­ing upon the group. John’s apos­tles preached, “Re­pent and be bap­tized.” Je­sus’ apos­tles pro­claimed, “Be­lieve and be bap­tized.”

144:6.10And this is the story of the first at­tempt of Je­sus’ fol­low­ers to co-or­di­nate di­ver­gent ef­forts, com­pose dif­fer­ences of opin­ion, or­ga­nize group un­der­tak­ings, leg­is­late on out­ward ob­ser­vances, and so­cial­ize per­sonal re­li­gious prac­tices.

144:6.11Many other mi­nor mat­ters were con­sid­ered and their so­lu­tions unan­i­mously agreed upon. These twenty-four men had a truly re­mark­able ex­pe­ri­ence these two weeks when they were com­pelled to face prob­lems and com­pose dif­fi­cul­ties with­out Je­sus. They learned to dif­fer, to de­bate, to con­tend, to pray, and to com­pro­mise, and through­out it all to re­main sym­pa­thetic with the other per­son’s view­point and to main­tain at least some de­gree of tol­er­ance for his hon­est opin­ions.

144:6.12On the af­ter­noon of their fi­nal dis­cus­sion of fi­nan­cial ques­tions, Je­sus re­turned, heard of their de­lib­er­a­tions, lis­tened to their de­ci­sions, and said: “These, then, are your con­clu­sions, and I shall help you each to carry out the spirit of your united de­ci­sions.”

144:6.13Two months and a half from this time John was ex­e­cuted, and through­out this pe­riod the apos­tles of John re­mained with Je­sus and the twelve. They all worked to­gether and bap­tized be­liev­ers dur­ing this sea­son of la­bor in the cities of the De­capo­lis. The Gil­boa camp was bro­ken up on Novem­ber 2, A.D. 27.