The Decapolis Tour

159:6.1The mis­sion of four weeks in the De­capo­lis was mod­er­ately suc­cess­ful. Hun­dreds of souls were re­ceived into the king­dom, and the apos­tles and evan­ge­lists had a valu­able ex­pe­ri­ence in car­ry­ing on their work with­out the in­spi­ra­tion of the im­me­di­ate per­sonal pres­ence of Je­sus.

159:6.2On Fri­day, Septem­ber 16, the en­tire corps of work­ers as­sem­bled by pre­ar­range­ment at Ma­g­a­dan Park. On the Sab­bath day a coun­cil of more than one hun­dred be­liev­ers was held at which the fu­ture plans for ex­tend­ing the work of the king­dom were fully con­sid­ered. The mes­sen­gers of David were pres­ent and made re­ports con­cern­ing the wel­fare of the be­liev­ers through­out Judea, Samaria, Gal­i­lee, and ad­join­ing dis­tricts.

159:6.3Few of Je­sus’ fol­low­ers at this time fully ap­pre­ci­ated the great value of the ser­vices of the mes­sen­ger corps. Not only did the mes­sen­gers keep the be­liev­ers through­out Pales­tine in touch with each other and with Je­sus and the apos­tles, but dur­ing these dark days they also served as col­lec­tors of funds, not only for the sus­te­nance of Je­sus and his as­so­ciates, but also for the sup­port of the fam­i­lies of the twelve apos­tles and the twelve evan­ge­lists.

159:6.4About this time Ab­ner moved his base of op­er­a­tions from He­bron to Beth­le­hem, and this lat­ter place was also the head­quar­ters in Judea for David’s mes­sen­gers. David main­tained an overnight re­lay mes­sen­ger ser­vice be­tween Je­ru­sa­lem and Beth­saida. These run­ners left Je­ru­sa­lem each evening, re­lay­ing at Sy­char and Scythopo­lis, ar­riv­ing in Beth­saida by break­fast time the next morn­ing.

159:6.5Je­sus and his as­so­ciates now pre­pared to take a week’s rest be­fore they made ready to start upon the last epoch of their labors in be­half of the king­dom. This was their last rest, for the Perean mis­sion de­vel­oped into a cam­paign of preach­ing and teach­ing which ex­tended right on down to the time of their ar­rival at Je­ru­sa­lem and of the en­act­ment of the clos­ing episodes of Je­sus’ earth ca­reer.