Ordination of the Seventy at Magadan

163:4.1It was a stir­ring time about the Ma­g­a­dan Camp the day the sev­enty went forth on their first mis­sion. Early that morn­ing, in his last talk with the sev­enty, Je­sus placed em­pha­sis on the fol­low­ing:

163:4.21. The gospel of the king­dom must be pro­claimed to all the world, to gen­tile as well as to Jew.

163:4.32. While min­is­ter­ing to the sick, re­frain from teach­ing the ex­pec­ta­tion of mir­a­cles.

163:4.43. Pro­claim a spir­i­tual broth­er­hood of the sons of God, not an out­ward king­dom of worldly power and ma­te­rial glory.

163:4.54. Avoid loss of time through over­much so­cial vis­it­ing and other triv­i­al­i­ties which might de­tract from whole­hearted de­vo­tion to preach­ing the gospel.

163:4.65. If the first house to be se­lected for a head­quar­ters proves to be a wor­thy home, abide there through­out the so­journ in that city.

163:4.76. Make clear to all faith­ful be­liev­ers that the time for an open break with the re­li­gious lead­ers of the Jews at Je­ru­sa­lem has now come.

163:4.87. Teach that man’s whole duty is summed up in this one com­mand­ment: Love the Lord your God with all your mind and soul and your neigh­bor as your­self. (This they were to teach as man’s whole duty in place of the 613 rules of liv­ing ex­pounded by the Phar­isees.)

163:4.9When Je­sus had talked thus to the sev­enty in the pres­ence of all the apos­tles and dis­ci­ples, Si­mon Pe­ter took them off by them­selves and preached to them their or­di­na­tion ser­mon, which was an elab­o­ra­tion of the Mas­ter’s charge given at the time he laid his hands upon them and set them apart as mes­sen­gers of the king­dom. Pe­ter ex­horted the sev­enty to cher­ish in their ex­pe­ri­ence the fol­low­ing virtues:

163:4.101. Con­se­crated de­vo­tion. To pray al­ways for more la­bor­ers to be sent forth into the gospel har­vest. He ex­plained that, when one so prays, he will the more likely say, “Here am I; send me.” He ad­mon­ished them to ne­glect not their daily wor­ship.

163:4.112. True cour­age. He warned them that they would en­counter hos­til­ity and be cer­tain to meet with per­se­cu­tion. Pe­ter told them their mis­sion was no un­der­tak­ing for cow­ards and ad­vised those who were afraid to step out be­fore they started. But none with­drew.

163:4.123. Faith and trust. They must go forth on this short mis­sion wholly un­pro­vided for; they must trust the Fa­ther for food and shel­ter and all other things need­ful.

163:4.134. Zeal and ini­tia­tive. They must be pos­sessed with zeal and in­tel­li­gent en­thu­si­asm; they must at­tend strictly to their Mas­ter’s busi­ness. Ori­en­tal salu­ta­tion was a lengthy and elab­o­rate cer­e­mony; there­fore had they been in­structed to “salute no man by the way,” which was a com­mon method of ex­hort­ing one to go about his busi­ness with­out the waste of time. It had noth­ing to do with the mat­ter of friendly greet­ing.

163:4.145. Kind­ness and cour­tesy. The Mas­ter had in­structed them to avoid un­nec­es­sary waste of time in so­cial cer­e­monies, but he en­joined cour­tesy to­ward all with whom they should come in con­tact. They were to show ev­ery kind­ness to those who might en­ter­tain them in their homes. They were strictly warned against leav­ing a mod­est home to be en­ter­tained in a more com­fort­able or in­flu­en­tial one.

163:4.156. Min­istry to the sick. The sev­enty were charged by Pe­ter to search out the sick in mind and body and to do ev­ery­thing in their power to bring about the al­le­vi­a­tion or cure of their mal­adies.

163:4.16And when they had been thus charged and in­structed, they started out, two and two, on their mis­sion in Gal­i­lee, Samaria, and Judea.

163:4.17Al­though the Jews had a pe­cu­liar re­gard for the num­ber sev­enty, some­times con­sid­er­ing the na­tions of hea­then­dom as be­ing sev­enty in num­ber, and al­though these sev­enty mes­sen­gers were to go with the gospel to all peo­ples, still as far as we can dis­cern, it was only co­in­ci­den­tal that this group hap­pened to num­ber just sev­enty. Cer­tain it was that Je­sus would have ac­cepted no less than half a dozen oth­ers, but they were un­will­ing to pay the price of for­sak­ing wealth and fam­i­lies.