At Gilboa and in the Decapolis

144:7.1Through­out the months of Novem­ber and De­cem­ber, Je­sus and the twenty-four worked qui­etly in the Greek cities of the De­capo­lis, chiefly in Scythopo­lis, Gerasa, Abila, and Gadara. This was re­ally the end of that pre­lim­i­nary pe­riod of tak­ing over John’s work and or­ga­ni­za­tion. Al­ways does the so­cial­ized re­li­gion of a new rev­e­la­tion pay the price of com­pro­mise with the es­tab­lished forms and us­ages of the pre­ced­ing re­li­gion which it seeks to sal­vage. Bap­tism was the price which the fol­low­ers of Je­sus paid in or­der to carry with them, as a so­cial­ized re­li­gious group, the fol­low­ers of John the Bap­tist. John’s fol­low­ers, in join­ing Je­sus’ fol­low­ers, gave up just about ev­ery­thing ex­cept wa­ter bap­tism.

144:7.2Je­sus did lit­tle pub­lic teach­ing on this mis­sion to the cities of the De­capo­lis. He spent con­sid­er­able time teach­ing the twenty-four and had many spe­cial ses­sions with John’s twelve apos­tles. In time they be­came more un­der­stand­ing as to why Je­sus did not go to visit John in prison, and why he made no ef­fort to se­cure his re­lease. But they never could un­der­stand why Je­sus did no mar­velous works, why he re­fused to pro­duce out­ward signs of his di­vine au­thor­ity. Be­fore com­ing to the Gil­boa camp, they had be­lieved in Je­sus mostly be­cause of John’s tes­ti­mony, but soon they were be­gin­ning to be­lieve as a re­sult of their own con­tact with the Mas­ter and his teach­ings.

144:7.3For these two months the group worked most of the time in pairs, one of Je­sus’ apos­tles go­ing out with one of John’s. The apos­tle of John bap­tized, the apos­tle of Je­sus in­structed, while they both preached the gospel of the king­dom as they un­der­stood it. And they won many souls among these gen­tiles and apos­tate Jews.

144:7.4Ab­ner, the chief of John’s apos­tles, be­came a de­vout be­liever in Je­sus and was later on made the head of a group of sev­enty teach­ers whom the Mas­ter com­mis­sioned to preach the gospel.