The Visit to Philadelphia

167:0.1Through­out this pe­riod of the Perean min­istry, when men­tion is made of Je­sus and the apos­tles vis­it­ing the var­i­ous lo­cal­i­ties where the sev­enty were at work, it should be re­called that, as a rule, only ten were with him since it was the prac­tice to leave at least two of the apos­tles at Pella to in­struct the mul­ti­tude. As Je­sus pre­pared to go on to Phil­a­del­phia, Si­mon Pe­ter and his brother, An­drew, re­turned to the Pella en­camp­ment to teach the crowds there as­sem­bled. When the Mas­ter left the camp at Pella to visit about Perea, it was not un­com­mon for from three to five hun­dred of the campers to fol­low him. When he ar­rived at Phil­a­del­phia, he was ac­com­pa­nied by over six hun­dred fol­low­ers.

167:0.2No mir­a­cles had at­tended the re­cent preach­ing tour through the De­capo­lis, and, ex­cept­ing the cleans­ing of the ten lep­ers, thus far there had been no mir­a­cles on this Perean mis­sion. This was a pe­riod when the gospel was pro­claimed with power, with­out mir­a­cles, and most of the time with­out the per­sonal pres­ence of Je­sus or even of his apos­tles.

167:0.3Je­sus and the ten apos­tles ar­rived at Phil­a­del­phia on Wednes­day, Febru­ary 22, and spent Thurs­day and Fri­day rest­ing from their re­cent trav­els and labors. That Fri­day night James spoke in the syn­a­gogue, and a gen­eral coun­cil was called for the fol­low­ing evening. They were much re­joiced over the prog­ress of the gospel at Phil­a­del­phia and among the near-by vil­lages. The mes­sen­gers of David also brought word of the fur­ther ad­vance­ment of the king­dom through­out Pales­tine, as well as good news from Alexan­dria and Da­mas­cus.