Ordination of the Seventy at Magadan

163:6.1On Fri­day, De­cem­ber 30, while Je­sus was away in the near-by hills with Pe­ter, James, and John, the sev­enty mes­sen­gers were ar­riv­ing by cou­ples, ac­com­pa­nied by nu­mer­ous be­liev­ers, at the Pella head­quar­ters. All sev­enty were as­sem­bled at the teach­ing site about five o’clock when Je­sus re­turned to the camp. The evening meal was de­layed for more than an hour while these en­thu­si­asts for the gospel of the king­dom re­lated their ex­pe­ri­ences. David’s mes­sen­gers had brought much of this news to the apos­tles dur­ing pre­vi­ous weeks, but it was truly in­spir­ing to hear these newly or­dained teach­ers of the gospel per­son­ally tell how their mes­sage had been re­ceived by hun­gry Jews and gen­tiles. At last Je­sus was able to see men go­ing out to spread the good news with­out his per­sonal pres­ence. The Mas­ter now knew that he could leave this world with­out se­ri­ously hin­der­ing the prog­ress of the king­dom.

163:6.2When the sev­enty re­lated how “even the dev­ils were sub­ject” to them, they re­ferred to the won­der­ful cures they had wrought in the cases of vic­tims of ner­vous dis­or­ders. Nev­er­the­less, there had been a few cases of real spirit pos­ses­sion re­lieved by these min­is­ters, and re­fer­ring to these, Je­sus said: “It is not strange that these dis­obe­di­ent mi­nor spir­its should be sub­ject to you, see­ing that I be­held Sa­tan falling as light­ning from heaven. But re­joice not so much over this, for I de­clare to you that, as soon as I re­turn to my Fa­ther, we will send forth our spir­its into the very minds of men so that no more can these few lost spir­its en­ter the minds of un­for­tu­nate mor­tals. I re­joice with you that you have power with men, but be not lifted up be­cause of this ex­pe­ri­ence but the rather re­joice that your names are writ­ten on the rolls of heaven, and that you are thus to go for­ward in an end­less ca­reer of spir­i­tual con­quest.”

163:6.3And it was at this time, just be­fore par­tak­ing of the evening meal, that Je­sus ex­pe­ri­enced one of those rare mo­ments of emo­tional ec­stasy which his fol­low­ers had oc­ca­sion­ally wit­nessed. He said: “I thank you, my Fa­ther, Lord of heaven and earth, that, while this won­der­ful gospel was hid­den from the wise and self-righ­teous, the spirit has re­vealed these spir­i­tual glo­ries to these chil­dren of the king­dom. Yes, my Fa­ther, it must have been pleas­ing in your sight to do this, and I re­joice to know that the good news will spread to all the world even af­ter I shall have re­turned to you and the work which you have given me to per­form. I am might­ily moved as I re­al­ize you are about to de­liver all au­thor­ity into my hands, that only you re­ally know who I am, and that only I re­ally know you, and those to whom I have re­vealed you. And when I have fin­ished this rev­e­la­tion to my breth­ren in the flesh, I will con­tinue the rev­e­la­tion to your crea­tures on high.”

163:6.4When Je­sus had thus spo­ken to the Fa­ther, he turned aside to speak to his apos­tles and min­is­ters: “Blessed are the eyes which see and the ears which hear these things. Let me say to you that many proph­ets and many of the great men of the past ages have de­sired to be­hold what you now see, but it was not granted them. And many gen­er­a­tions of the chil­dren of light yet to come will, when they hear of these things, envy you who have heard and seen them.”

163:6.5Then, speak­ing to all the dis­ci­ples, he said: “You have heard how many cities and vil­lages have re­ceived the good news of the king­dom, and how my min­is­ters and teach­ers have been re­ceived by both the Jew and the gen­tile. And blessed in­deed are these com­mu­ni­ties which have elected to be­lieve the gospel of the king­dom. But woe upon the light-re­ject­ing in­hab­i­tants of Cho­ra­zin, Beth­saida-Ju­lias, and Ca­per­naum, the cities which did not well re­ceive these mes­sen­gers. I de­clare that, if the mighty works done in these places had been done in Tyre and Sidon, the peo­ple of these so-called hea­then cities would have long since re­pented in sack­cloth and ashes. It shall in­deed be more tol­er­a­ble for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judg­ment.”

163:6.6The next day be­ing the Sab­bath, Je­sus went apart with the sev­enty and said to them: “I did in­deed re­joice with you when you came back bear­ing the good tid­ings of the re­cep­tion of the gospel of the king­dom by so many peo­ple scat­tered through­out Gal­i­lee, Samaria, and Judea. But why were you so sur­pris­ingly elated? Did you not ex­pect that your mes­sage would man­i­fest power in its de­liv­ery? Did you go forth with so lit­tle faith in this gospel that you come back in sur­prise at its ef­fec­tive­ness? And now, while I would not quench your spirit of re­joic­ing, I would sternly warn you against the sub­tleties of pride, spir­i­tual pride. If you could un­der­stand the down­fall of Lu­cifer, the in­iq­ui­tous one, you would solemnly shun all forms of spir­i­tual pride.

163:6.7“You have en­tered upon this great work of teach­ing mor­tal man that he is a son of God. I have shown you the way; go forth to do your duty and be not weary in well do­ing. To you and to all who shall fol­low in your steps down through the ages, let me say: I al­ways stand near, and my in­vi­ta­tion-call is, and ever shall be, Come to me all you who la­bor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am true and loyal, and you shall find spir­i­tual rest for your souls.”

163:6.8And they found the Mas­ter’s words to be true when they put his promises to the test. And since that day count­less thou­sands also have tested and proved the surety of these same promises.