Training Evangelists at Bethsaida

148:2.1In con­nec­tion with the sea­side en­camp­ment, El­man, the Syr­ian physi­cian, with the as­sis­tance of a corps of twenty-five young women and twelve men, or­ga­nized and con­ducted for four months what should be re­garded as the king­dom’s first hos­pi­tal. At this in­fir­mary, lo­cated a short dis­tance to the south of the main tented city, they treated the sick in ac­cor­dance with all known ma­te­rial meth­ods as well as by the spir­i­tual prac­tices of prayer and faith en­cour­age­ment. Je­sus vis­ited the sick of this en­camp­ment not less than three times a week and made per­sonal con­tact with each suf­ferer. As far as we know, no so-called mir­a­cles of super­nat­u­ral heal­ing oc­curred among the one thou­sand af­flicted and ail­ing per­sons who went away from this in­fir­mary im­proved or cured. How­ever, the vast ma­jor­ity of these ben­e­fited in­di­vid­u­als ceased not to pro­claim that Je­sus had healed them.

148:2.2Many of the cures ef­fected by Je­sus in con­nec­tion with his min­istry in be­half of El­man’s pa­tients did, in­deed, ap­pear to re­sem­ble the work­ing of mir­a­cles, but we were in­structed that they were only just such trans­for­ma­tions of mind and spirit as may oc­cur in the ex­pe­ri­ence of ex­pec­tant and faith-dom­i­nated per­sons who are un­der the im­me­di­ate and in­spi­ra­tional in­flu­ence of a strong, pos­i­tive, and benef­i­cent per­son­al­ity whose min­istry ban­ishes fear and de­stroys anx­i­ety.

148:2.3El­man and his as­so­ciates en­deav­ored to teach the truth to these sick ones con­cern­ing the “pos­ses­sion of evil spir­its,” but they met with lit­tle suc­cess. The be­lief that phys­i­cal sick­ness and men­tal de­range­ment could be caused by the dwell­ing of a so-called un­clean spirit in the mind or body of the af­flicted per­son was well-nigh uni­ver­sal.

148:2.4In all his con­tact with the sick and af­flicted, when it came to the tech­nique of treat­ment or the rev­e­la­tion of the un­known causes of dis­ease, Je­sus did not dis­re­gard the in­struc­tions of his Par­a­dise brother, Im­manuel, given ere he em­barked upon the ven­ture of the Uran­tia in­car­na­tion. Not­with­stand­ing this, those who min­is­tered to the sick learned many help­ful lessons by ob­serv­ing the man­ner in which Je­sus in­spired the faith and con­fi­dence of the sick and suf­fer­ing.

148:2.5The camp dis­banded a short time be­fore the sea­son for the in­crease in chills and fever drew on.