Ordination of the Seventy at Magadan

163:2.1Over fifty dis­ci­ples who sought or­di­na­tion and ap­point­ment to mem­ber­ship in the sev­enty were re­jected by the com­mit­tee ap­pointed by Je­sus to se­lect these can­di­dates. This com­mit­tee con­sisted of An­drew, Ab­ner, and the act­ing head of the evan­ge­lis­tic corps. In all cases where this com­mit­tee of three were not unan­i­mous in agree­ment, they brought the can­di­date to Je­sus, and while the Mas­ter never re­jected a sin­gle per­son who craved or­di­na­tion as a gospel mes­sen­ger, there were more than a dozen who, when they had talked with Je­sus, no more de­sired to be­come gospel mes­sen­gers.

163:2.2One earnest dis­ci­ple came to Je­sus, say­ing: “Mas­ter, I would be one of your new apos­tles, but my fa­ther is very old and near death; could I be per­mit­ted to re­turn home to bury him?” To this man Je­sus said: “My son, the foxes have holes, and the birds of heaven have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. You are a faith­ful dis­ci­ple, and you can re­main such while you re­turn home to min­is­ter to your loved ones, but not so with my gospel mes­sen­gers. They have for­saken all to fol­low me and pro­claim the king­dom. If you would be an or­dained teacher, you must let oth­ers bury the dead while you go forth to pub­lish the good news.” And this man went away in great dis­ap­point­ment.

163:2.3An­other dis­ci­ple came to the Mas­ter and said: “I would be­come an or­dained mes­sen­ger, but I would like to go to my home for a short while to com­fort my fam­ily.” And Je­sus replied: “If you would be or­dained, you must be will­ing to for­sake all. The gospel mes­sen­gers can­not have di­vided af­fec­tions. No man, hav­ing put his hand to the plough, if he turns back, is wor­thy to be­come a mes­sen­ger of the king­dom.”

163:2.4Then An­drew brought to Je­sus a cer­tain rich young man who was a de­vout be­liever, and who de­sired to re­ceive or­di­na­tion. This young man, Mata­dor­mus, was a mem­ber of the Je­ru­sa­lem San­hedrin; he had heard Je­sus teach and had been sub­se­quently in­structed in the gospel of the king­dom by Pe­ter and the other apos­tles. Je­sus talked with Mata­dor­mus con­cern­ing the re­quire­ments of or­di­na­tion and re­quested that he de­fer de­ci­sion un­til af­ter he had thought more fully about the mat­ter. Early the next morn­ing, as Je­sus was go­ing for a walk, this young man ac­costed him and said: “Mas­ter, I would know from you the as­sur­ances of eter­nal life. See­ing that I have ob­served all the com­mand­ments from my youth, I would like to know what more I must do to gain eter­nal life?” In an­swer to this ques­tion Je­sus said: “If you keep all the com­mand­ments—do not com­mit adul­tery, do not kill, do not steal, do not bear false wit­ness, do not de­fraud, honor your par­ents—you do well, but sal­va­tion is the re­ward of faith, not merely of works. Do you be­lieve this gospel of the king­dom?” And Mata­dor­mus an­swered: “Yes, Mas­ter, I do be­lieve ev­ery­thing you and your apos­tles have taught me.” And Je­sus said, “Then are you in­deed my dis­ci­ple and a child of the king­dom.”

163:2.5Then said the young man: “But, Mas­ter, I am not con­tent to be your dis­ci­ple; I would be one of your new mes­sen­gers.” When Je­sus heard this, he looked down upon him with a great love and said: “I will have you to be one of my mes­sen­gers if you are will­ing to pay the price, if you will sup­ply the one thing which you lack.” Mata­dor­mus replied: “Mas­ter, I will do any­thing if I may be al­lowed to fol­low you.” Je­sus, kiss­ing the kneel­ing young man on the fore­head, said: “If you would be my mes­sen­ger, go and sell all that you have and, when you have be­stowed the pro­ceeds upon the poor or upon your breth­ren, come and fol­low me, and you shall have trea­sure in the king­dom of heaven.”

163:2.6When Mata­dor­mus heard this, his coun­te­nance fell. He arose and went away sor­row­ful, for he had great pos­ses­sions. This wealthy young Phar­isee had been raised to be­lieve that wealth was the to­ken of God’s fa­vor. Je­sus knew that he was not free from the love of him­self and his riches. The Mas­ter wanted to de­liver him from the love of wealth, not nec­es­sar­ily from the wealth. While the dis­ci­ples of Je­sus did not part with all their worldly goods, the apos­tles and the sev­enty did. Mata­dor­mus de­sired to be one of the sev­enty new mes­sen­gers, and that was the rea­son for Je­sus’ re­quir­ing him to part with all of his tem­po­ral pos­ses­sions.

163:2.7Al­most ev­ery hu­man be­ing has some one thing which is held on to as a pet evil, and which the en­trance into the king­dom of heaven re­quires as a part of the price of ad­mis­sion. If Mata­dor­mus had parted with his wealth, it prob­a­bly would have been put right back into his hands for ad­min­is­tra­tion as trea­surer of the sev­enty. For later on, af­ter the es­tab­lish­ment of the church at Je­ru­sa­lem, he did obey the Mas­ter’s in­junc­tion, al­though it was then too late to en­joy mem­ber­ship in the sev­enty, and he be­came the trea­surer of the Je­ru­sa­lem church, of which James the Lord’s brother in the flesh was the head.

163:2.8Thus al­ways it was and for­ever will be: Men must ar­rive at their own de­ci­sions. There is a cer­tain range of the free­dom of choice which mor­tals may ex­er­cise. The forces of the spir­i­tual world will not co­erce man; they al­low him to go the way of his own choos­ing.

163:2.9Je­sus fore­saw that Mata­dor­mus, with his riches, could not pos­si­bly be­come an or­dained as­so­ciate of men who had for­saken all for the gospel; at the same time, he saw that, with­out his riches, he would be­come the ul­ti­mate leader of all of them. But, like Je­sus’ own breth­ren, he never be­came great in the king­dom be­cause he de­prived him­self of that in­ti­mate and per­sonal as­so­ci­a­tion with the Mas­ter which might have been his ex­pe­ri­ence had he been will­ing to do at this time the very thing which Je­sus asked, and which, sev­eral years sub­se­quently, he ac­tu­ally did.

163:2.10Riches have noth­ing di­rectly to do with en­trance into the king­dom of heaven, but the love of wealth does. The spir­i­tual loy­al­ties of the king­dom are in­com­pat­i­ble with ser­vil­ity to ma­te­ri­al­is­tic mam­mon. Man may not share his su­preme loy­alty to a spir­i­tual ideal with a ma­te­rial de­vo­tion.

163:2.11Je­sus never taught that it was wrong to have wealth. He re­quired only the twelve and the sev­enty to ded­i­cate all of their worldly pos­ses­sions to the com­mon cause. Even then, he pro­vided for the prof­itable liq­ui­da­tion of their prop­erty, as in the case of the Apos­tle Mat­thew. Je­sus many times ad­vised his well-to-do dis­ci­ples as he taught the rich man of Rome. The Mas­ter re­garded the wise in­vest­ment of ex­cess earn­ings as a le­git­i­mate form of in­sur­ance against fu­ture and un­avoid­able ad­ver­sity. When the apos­tolic trea­sury was over­flow­ing, Ju­das put funds on de­posit to be used sub­se­quently when they might suf­fer greatly from a diminu­tion of in­come. This Ju­das did af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with An­drew. Je­sus never per­son­ally had any­thing to do with the apos­tolic fi­nances ex­cept in the dis­burse­ment of alms. But there was one eco­nomic abuse which he many times con­demned, and that was the un­fair ex­ploita­tion of the weak, un­learned, and less for­tu­nate of men by their strong, keen, and more in­tel­li­gent fel­lows. Je­sus de­clared that such in­hu­man treat­ment of men, women, and chil­dren was in­com­pat­i­ble with the ide­als of the broth­er­hood of the king­dom of heaven.