Training Evangelists at Bethsaida

148:0.1From May 3 to Oc­to­ber 3, A.D. 28, Je­sus and the apos­tolic party were in res­i­dence at the Zeb­e­dee home at Beth­saida. Through­out this five months’ pe­riod of the dry sea­son an enor­mous camp was main­tained by the sea­side near the Zeb­e­dee res­i­dence, which had been greatly en­larged to ac­com­mo­date the grow­ing fam­ily of Je­sus. This sea­side camp, oc­cu­pied by an ever-chang­ing pop­u­la­tion of truth seek­ers, heal­ing can­di­dates, and cu­rios­ity devo­tees, num­bered from five hun­dred to fif­teen hun­dred. This tented city was un­der the gen­eral super­vi­sion of David Zeb­e­dee, as­sisted by the Al­pheus twins. The en­camp­ment was a model in or­der and san­i­ta­tion as well as in its gen­eral ad­min­is­tra­tion. The sick of dif­fer­ent types were seg­re­gated and were un­der the super­vi­sion of a be­liever physi­cian, a Syr­ian named El­man.

148:0.2Through­out this pe­riod the apos­tles would go fish­ing at least one day a week, sell­ing their catch to David for con­sump­tion by the sea­side en­camp­ment. The funds thus re­ceived were turned over to the group trea­sury. The twelve were per­mit­ted to spend one week out of each month with their fam­i­lies or friends.

148:0.3While An­drew con­tin­ued in gen­eral charge of the apos­tolic ac­tiv­i­ties, Pe­ter was in full charge of the school of the evan­ge­lists. The apos­tles all did their share in teach­ing groups of evan­ge­lists each forenoon, and both teach­ers and pupils taught the peo­ple dur­ing the af­ter­noons. Af­ter the evening meal, five nights a week, the apos­tles con­ducted ques­tion classes for the ben­e­fit of the evan­ge­lists. Once a week Je­sus pre­sided at this ques­tion hour, an­swer­ing the holdover ques­tions from pre­vi­ous ses­sions.

148:0.4In five months sev­eral thou­sand came and went at this en­camp­ment. In­ter­ested per­sons from ev­ery part of the Ro­man Em­pire and from the lands east of the Eu­phrates were in fre­quent at­ten­dance. This was the longest set­tled and well-or­ga­nized pe­riod of the Mas­ter’s teach­ing. Je­sus’ im­me­di­ate fam­ily spent most of this time at ei­ther Naz­a­reth or Cana.

148:0.5The en­camp­ment was not con­ducted as a com­mu­nity of com­mon in­ter­ests, as was the apos­tolic fam­ily. David Zeb­e­dee man­aged this large tent city so that it be­came a self-sus­tain­ing en­ter­prise, not­with­stand­ing that no one was ever turned away. This ever-chang­ing camp was an in­dis­pens­able fea­ture of Pe­ter’s evan­ge­lis­tic train­ing school.