Training Evangelists at Bethsaida

148:1.1Pe­ter, James, and An­drew were the com­mit­tee des­ig­nated by Je­sus to pass upon ap­pli­cants for ad­mis­sion to the school of evan­ge­lists. All the races and na­tion­al­i­ties of the Ro­man world and the East, as far as In­dia, were rep­re­sented among the stu­dents in this new school of the proph­ets. This school was con­ducted on the plan of learn­ing and do­ing. What the stu­dents learned dur­ing the forenoon they taught to the as­sem­bly by the sea­side dur­ing the af­ter­noon. Af­ter sup­per they in­for­mally dis­cussed both the learn­ing of the forenoon and the teach­ing of the af­ter­noon.

148:1.2Each of the apos­tolic teach­ers taught his own view of the gospel of the king­dom. They made no ef­fort to teach just alike; there was no stan­dard­ized or dog­matic for­mu­la­tion of the­o­logic doc­trines. Though they all taught the same truth, each apos­tle pre­sented his own per­sonal in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the Mas­ter’s teach­ing. And Je­sus up­held this pre­sen­ta­tion of the di­ver­sity of per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence in the things of the king­dom, un­fail­ingly har­mo­niz­ing and co-or­di­nat­ing these many and di­ver­gent views of the gospel at his weekly ques­tion hours. Not­with­stand­ing this great de­gree of per­sonal lib­erty in mat­ters of teach­ing, Si­mon Pe­ter tended to dom­i­nate the the­ol­ogy of the school of evan­ge­lists. Next to Pe­ter, James Zeb­e­dee ex­erted the great­est per­sonal in­flu­ence.

148:1.3The one hun­dred and more evan­ge­lists trained dur­ing this five months by the sea­side rep­re­sented the ma­te­rial from which (ex­cept­ing Ab­ner and John’s apos­tles) the later sev­enty gospel teach­ers and preach­ers were drawn. The school of evan­ge­lists did not have ev­ery­thing in com­mon to the same de­gree as did the twelve.

148:1.4These evan­ge­lists, though they taught and preached the gospel, did not bap­tize be­liev­ers un­til af­ter they were later or­dained and com­mis­sioned by Je­sus as the sev­enty mes­sen­gers of the king­dom. Only seven of the large num­ber healed at the sun­down scene at this place were to be found among these evan­ge­lis­tic stu­dents. The no­ble­man’s son of Ca­per­naum was one of those trained for gospel ser­vice in Pe­ter’s school.