Ordination of the Seventy at Magadan

163:5.1Je­sus and the twelve now pre­pared to es­tab­lish their last head­quar­ters in Perea, near Pella, where the Mas­ter was bap­tized in the Jor­dan. The last ten days of Novem­ber were spent in coun­cil at Ma­g­a­dan, and on Tues­day, De­cem­ber 6, the en­tire com­pany of al­most three hun­dred started out at day­break with all their ef­fects to lodge that night near Pella by the river. This was the same site, by the spring, that John the Bap­tist had oc­cu­pied with his camp sev­eral years be­fore.

163:5.2Af­ter the break­ing up of the Ma­g­a­dan Camp, David Zeb­e­dee re­turned to Beth­saida and be­gan im­me­di­ately to cur­tail the mes­sen­ger ser­vice. The king­dom was tak­ing on a new phase. Daily, pil­grims ar­rived from all parts of Pales­tine and even from re­mote re­gions of the Ro­man Em­pire. Be­liev­ers oc­ca­sion­ally came from Mes­o­po­ta­mia and from the lands east of the Tigris. Ac­cord­ingly, on Sun­day, De­cem­ber 18, David, with the help of his mes­sen­ger corps, loaded on to the pack an­i­mals the camp equipage, then stored in his fa­ther’s house, with which he had for­merly con­ducted the camp of Beth­saida by the lake. Bid­ding farewell to Beth­saida for the time be­ing, he pro­ceeded down the lake shore and along the Jor­dan to a point about one-half mile north of the apos­tolic camp; and in less than a week he was pre­pared to of­fer hos­pi­tal­ity to al­most fif­teen hun­dred pil­grim vis­i­tors. The apos­tolic camp could ac­com­mo­date about five hun­dred. This was the rainy sea­son in Pales­tine, and these ac­com­mo­da­tions were re­quired to take care of the ever-in­creas­ing num­ber of in­quir­ers, mostly earnest, who came into Perea to see Je­sus and to hear his teach­ing.

163:5.3David did all this on his own ini­tia­tive, though he had taken coun­sel with Philip and Mat­thew at Ma­g­a­dan. He em­ployed the larger part of his for­mer mes­sen­ger corps as his helpers in con­duct­ing this camp; he now used less than twenty men on reg­u­lar mes­sen­ger duty. Near the end of De­cem­ber and be­fore the re­turn of the sev­enty, al­most eight hun­dred vis­i­tors were gath­ered about the Mas­ter, and they found lodg­ing in David’s camp.