Training Evangelists at Bethsaida

148:3.1Through­out this pe­riod Je­sus con­ducted pub­lic ser­vices at the en­camp­ment less than a dozen times and spoke only once in the Ca­per­naum syn­a­gogue, the sec­ond Sab­bath be­fore their de­par­ture with the newly trained evan­ge­lists upon their sec­ond pub­lic preach­ing tour of Gal­i­lee.

148:3.2Not since his bap­tism had the Mas­ter been so much alone as dur­ing this pe­riod of the evan­ge­lists’ train­ing en­camp­ment at Beth­saida. When­ever any one of the apos­tles ven­tured to ask Je­sus why he was ab­sent so much from their midst, he would in­vari­ably an­swer that he was “about the Fa­ther’s busi­ness.”

148:3.3Dur­ing these pe­ri­ods of ab­sence, Je­sus was ac­com­pa­nied by only two of the apos­tles. He had re­leased Pe­ter, James, and John tem­porar­ily from their as­sign­ment as his per­sonal com­pan­ions that they might also par­tic­i­pate in the work of train­ing the new evan­ge­lis­tic can­di­dates, num­ber­ing more than one hun­dred. When the Mas­ter de­sired to go to the hills about the Fa­ther’s busi­ness, he would sum­mon to ac­com­pany him any two of the apos­tles who might be at lib­erty. In this way each of the twelve en­joyed an op­por­tu­nity for close as­so­ci­a­tion and in­ti­mate con­tact with Je­sus.

148:3.4It has not been re­vealed for the pur­poses of this rec­ord, but we have been led to in­fer that the Mas­ter, dur­ing many of these soli­tary sea­sons in the hills, was in di­rect and ex­ec­u­tive as­so­ci­a­tion with many of his chief di­rec­tors of uni­verse af­fairs. Ever since about the time of his bap­tism this in­car­nated Sov­er­eign of our uni­verse had be­come in­creas­ingly and con­sciously ac­tive in the di­rec­tion of cer­tain phases of uni­verse ad­min­is­tra­tion. And we have al­ways held the opin­ion that, in some way not re­vealed to his im­me­di­ate as­so­ciates, dur­ing these weeks of de­creased par­tic­i­pa­tion in the af­fairs of earth he was en­gaged in the di­rec­tion of those high spirit in­tel­li­gences who were charged with the run­ning of a vast uni­verse, and that the hu­man Je­sus chose to des­ig­nate such ac­tiv­i­ties on his part as be­ing “about his Fa­ther’s busi­ness.”

148:3.5Many times, when Je­sus was alone for hours, but when two of his apos­tles were near by, they ob­served his fea­tures un­dergo rapid and mul­ti­tudi­nous changes, al­though they heard him speak no words. Nei­ther did they ob­serve any vis­i­ble man­i­fes­ta­tion of ce­les­tial be­ings who might have been in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with their Mas­ter, such as some of them did wit­ness on a sub­se­quent oc­ca­sion.