Training Evangelists at Bethsaida

148:8.1The last week of the so­journ at Beth­saida the Je­ru­sa­lem spies be­came much di­vided in their at­ti­tude to­ward Je­sus and his teach­ings. Three of these Phar­isees were tremen­dously im­pressed by what they had seen and heard. Mean­while, at Je­ru­sa­lem, Abra­ham, a young and in­flu­en­tial mem­ber of the San­hedrin, pub­licly es­poused the teach­ings of Je­sus and was bap­tized in the pool of Siloam by Ab­ner. All Je­ru­sa­lem was agog over this event, and mes­sen­gers were im­me­di­ately dis­patched to Beth­saida re­call­ing the six spy­ing Phar­isees.

148:8.2The Greek philoso­pher who had been won for the king­dom on the pre­vi­ous tour of Gal­i­lee re­turned with cer­tain wealthy Jews of Alexan­dria, and once more they in­vited Je­sus to come to their city for the pur­pose of es­tab­lish­ing a joint school of phi­los­o­phy and re­li­gion as well as an in­fir­mary for the sick. But Je­sus cour­te­ously de­clined the in­vi­ta­tion.

148:8.3About this time there ar­rived at the Beth­saida en­camp­ment a trance prophet from Bag­dad, one Kirmeth. This sup­posed prophet had pe­cu­liar vi­sions when in trance and dreamed fan­tas­tic dreams when his sleep was dis­turbed. He cre­ated a con­sid­er­able dis­tur­bance at the camp, and Si­mon Ze­lo­tes was in fa­vor of deal­ing rather roughly with the self-de­ceived pre­tender, but Je­sus in­ter­vened and al­lowed him en­tire free­dom of ac­tion for a few days. All who heard his preach­ing soon rec­og­nized that his teach­ing was not sound as judged by the gospel of the king­dom. He shortly re­turned to Bag­dad, tak­ing with him only a half dozen un­sta­ble and er­ratic souls. But be­fore Je­sus in­ter­ceded for the Bag­dad prophet, David Zeb­e­dee, with the as­sis­tance of a self-ap­pointed com­mit­tee, had taken Kirmeth out into the lake and, af­ter re­peat­edly plung­ing him into the wa­ter, had ad­vised him to de­part hence—to or­ga­nize and build a camp of his own.

148:8.4On this same day, Beth-Mar­ion, a Phoeni­cian woman, be­came so fa­nat­i­cal that she went out of her head and, af­ter al­most drown­ing from try­ing to walk on the wa­ter, was sent away by her friends.

148:8.5The new Je­ru­sa­lem con­vert, Abra­ham the Phar­isee, gave all of his worldly goods to the apos­tolic trea­sury, and this con­tri­bu­tion did much to make pos­si­ble the im­me­di­ate send­ing forth of the one hun­dred newly trained evan­ge­lists. An­drew had al­ready an­nounced the clos­ing of the en­camp­ment, and ev­ery­body pre­pared ei­ther to go home or else to fol­low the evan­ge­lists into Gal­i­lee.