Ordination of the Seventy at Magadan

163:7.1The next few days were busy times in the Pella camp; prepa­ra­tions for the Perean mis­sion were be­ing com­pleted. Je­sus and his as­so­ciates were about to en­ter upon their last mis­sion, the three months’ tour of all Perea, which ter­mi­nated only upon the Mas­ter’s en­ter­ing Je­ru­sa­lem for his fi­nal labors on earth. Through­out this pe­riod the head­quar­ters of Je­sus and the twelve apos­tles was main­tained here at the Pella camp.

163:7.2It was no longer nec­es­sary for Je­sus to go abroad to teach the peo­ple. They now came to him in in­creas­ing num­bers each week and from all parts, not only from Pales­tine but from the whole Ro­man world and from the Near East. Al­though the Mas­ter par­tic­i­pated with the sev­enty in the tour of Perea, he spent much of his time at the Pella camp, teach­ing the mul­ti­tude and in­struct­ing the twelve. Through­out this three months’ pe­riod at least ten of the apos­tles re­mained with Je­sus.

163:7.3The women’s corps also pre­pared to go out, two and two, with the sev­enty to la­bor in the larger cities of Perea. This orig­i­nal group of twelve women had re­cently trained a larger corps of fifty women in the work of home vis­i­ta­tion and in the art of min­is­ter­ing to the sick and the af­flicted. Per­petua, Si­mon Pe­ter’s wife, be­came a mem­ber of this new di­vi­sion of the women’s corps and was in­trusted with the lead­er­ship of the en­larged women’s work un­der Ab­ner. Af­ter Pen­te­cost she re­mained with her il­lus­tri­ous hus­band, ac­com­pa­ny­ing him on all of his mis­sion­ary tours; and on the day Pe­ter was cru­ci­fied in Rome, she was fed to the wild beasts in the arena. This new women’s corps also had as mem­bers the wives of Philip and Mat­thew and the mother of James and John.

163:7.4The work of the king­dom now pre­pared to en­ter upon its ter­mi­nal phase un­der the per­sonal lead­er­ship of Je­sus. And this pres­ent phase was one of spir­i­tual depth in con­trast with the mir­a­cle-minded and won­der-seek­ing mul­ti­tudes who fol­lowed af­ter the Mas­ter dur­ing the for­mer days of pop­u­lar­ity in Gal­i­lee. How­ever, there were still any num­ber of his fol­low­ers who were ma­te­rial-minded, and who failed to grasp the truth that the king­dom of heaven is the spir­i­tual broth­er­hood of man founded on the eter­nal fact of the uni­ver­sal fa­ther­hood of God.