Abner

• Abner

147:5.10Many other semipri­vate meet­ings and ban­quets did Je­sus at­tend with the high and the low, the rich and the poor, of Je­ru­sa­lem be­fore he and his apos­tles fi­nally de­parted for Ca­per­naum. And many, in­deed, be­came be­liev­ers in the gospel of the king­dom and were sub­se­quently bap­tized by Ab­ner and his as­so­ciates, who re­mained be­hind to fos­ter the in­ter­ests of the king­dom in Je­ru­sa­lem and there­abouts.

• Abner

152:7.2Je­sus en­tered Je­ru­sa­lem only once dur­ing this Pass­over, and that was on the great day of the feast. Many of the Je­ru­sa­lem be­liev­ers were brought out by Ab­ner to meet Je­sus at Beth­any. Dur­ing this so­journ at Je­ru­sa­lem the twelve learned how bit­ter the feel­ing was be­com­ing to­ward their Mas­ter. They de­parted from Je­ru­sa­lem all be­liev­ing that a cri­sis was im­pend­ing.

162:9.1Through­out the week that fol­lowed the feast of taber­na­cles, scores of be­liev­ers for­gath­ered at Beth­any and re­ceived in­struc­tion from the twelve apos­tles. The San­hedrin made no ef­fort to mo­lest these gath­er­ings since Je­sus was not pres­ent; he was through­out this time work­ing with Ab­ner and his as­so­ciates in Beth­le­hem. The day fol­low­ing the close of the feast, Je­sus had de­parted for Beth­any, and he did not again teach in the tem­ple dur­ing this visit to Je­ru­sa­lem.

162:9.2At this time, Ab­ner was mak­ing his head­quar­ters at Beth­le­hem, and from that cen­ter many work­ers had been sent to the cities of Judea and south­ern Samaria and even to Alexan­dria. Within a few days of his ar­rival, Je­sus and Ab­ner com­pleted the ar­range­ments for the con­sol­i­da­tion of the work of the two groups of apos­tles.

162:9.3Through­out his visit to the feast of taber­na­cles, Je­sus had di­vided his time about equally be­tween Beth­any and Beth­le­hem. At Beth­any he spent con­sid­er­able time with his apos­tles; at Beth­le­hem he gave much in­struc­tion to Ab­ner and the other for­mer apos­tles of John. And it was this in­ti­mate con­tact that fi­nally led them to be­lieve in him. These for­mer apos­tles of John the Bap­tist were in­flu­enced by the cour­age he dis­played in his pub­lic teach­ing in Je­ru­sa­lem as well as by the sym­pa­thetic un­der­stand­ing they ex­pe­ri­enced in his pri­vate teach­ing at Beth­le­hem. These in­flu­ences fi­nally and fully won over each of Ab­ner’s as­so­ciates to a whole­hearted ac­cep­tance of the king­dom and all that such a step im­plied.

162:9.4Be­fore leav­ing Beth­le­hem for the last time, the Mas­ter made ar­range­ments for them all to join him in the united ef­fort which was to pre­cede the end­ing of his earth ca­reer in the flesh. It was agreed that Ab­ner and his as­so­ciates were to join Je­sus and the twelve in the near fu­ture at Ma­g­a­dan Park.

162:9.5In ac­cor­dance with this un­der­stand­ing, early in Novem­ber Ab­ner and his eleven fel­lows cast their lot with Je­sus and the twelve and la­bored with them as one or­ga­ni­za­tion right on down to the cru­ci­fix­ion.

162:9.6In the lat­ter part of Oc­to­ber Je­sus and the twelve with­drew from the im­me­di­ate vicin­ity of Je­ru­sa­lem. On Sun­day, Oc­to­ber 30, Je­sus and his as­so­ciates left the city of Ephraim, where he had been rest­ing in seclu­sion for a few days, and, go­ing by the west Jor­dan high­way di­rectly to Ma­g­a­dan Park, ar­rived late on the af­ter­noon of Wednes­day, Novem­ber 2.

162:9.7The apos­tles were greatly re­lieved to have the Mas­ter back on friendly soil; no more did they urge him to go up to Je­ru­sa­lem to pro­claim the gospel of the king­dom.

• Abner

165:1.3Je­sus and the twelve apos­tles de­voted much of their time to the mul­ti­tude as­sem­bled at the Pella camp. The twelve paid lit­tle or no at­ten­tion to the field work, only go­ing out with Je­sus to visit Ab­ner’s as­so­ciates from time to time. Ab­ner was very fa­mil­iar with the Perean dis­trict since this was the field in which his for­mer mas­ter, John the Bap­tist, had done most of his work. Af­ter be­gin­ning the Perean mis­sion, Ab­ner and the sev­enty never re­turned to the Pella camp.

146:3.9The apos­tles con­tin­ued to preach and bap­tize be­liev­ers, while they kept up the prac­tice of vis­it­ing from house to house, com­fort­ing the down­cast and min­is­ter­ing to the sick and af­flicted. The apos­tolic or­ga­ni­za­tion was ex­panded in that each of Je­sus’ apos­tles now had one of John’s as an as­so­ciate; Ab­ner was the as­so­ciate of An­drew; and this plan pre­vailed un­til they went down to Je­ru­sa­lem for the next Pass­over.

191:4.1The tenth mor­ontia man­i­fes­ta­tion of Je­sus to mor­tal rec­og­ni­tion oc­curred a short time af­ter eight o’clock on Tues­day, April 11, at Phil­a­del­phia, where he showed him­self to Ab­ner and Laz­a­rus and some one hun­dred and fifty of their as­so­ciates, in­clud­ing more than fifty of the evan­ge­lis­tic corps of the sev­enty. This ap­pear­ance oc­curred just af­ter the open­ing of a spe­cial meet­ing in the syn­a­gogue which had been called by Ab­ner to dis­cuss the cru­ci­fix­ion of Je­sus and the more re­cent re­port of the res­ur­rec­tion which had been brought by David’s mes­sen­ger. Inas­much as the res­ur­rected Laz­a­rus was now a mem­ber of this group of be­liev­ers, it was not dif­fi­cult for them to be­lieve the re­port that Je­sus had risen from the dead.

191:4.2The meet­ing in the syn­a­gogue was just be­ing opened by Ab­ner and Laz­a­rus, who were stand­ing to­gether in the pul­pit, when the en­tire au­di­ence of be­liev­ers saw the form of the Mas­ter ap­pear sud­denly. He stepped for­ward from where he had ap­peared be­tween Ab­ner and Laz­a­rus, nei­ther of whom had ob­served him, and salut­ing the com­pany, said:

191:4.3“Peace be upon you. You all know that we have one Fa­ther in heaven, and that there is but one gospel of the king­dom—the good news of the gift of eter­nal life which men re­ceive by faith. As you re­joice in your loy­alty to the gospel, pray the Fa­ther of truth to shed abroad in your hearts a new and greater love for your breth­ren. You are to love all men as I have loved you; you are to serve all men as I have served you. With un­der­stand­ing sym­pa­thy and broth­erly af­fec­tion, fel­low­ship all your breth­ren who are ded­i­cated to the procla­ma­tion of the good news, whether they be Jew or gen­tile, Greek or Ro­man, Per­sian or Ethiopian. John pro­claimed the king­dom in ad­vance; you have preached the gospel in power; the Greeks al­ready teach the good news; and I am soon to send forth the Spirit of Truth into the souls of all these, my breth­ren, who have so un­selfishly ded­i­cated their lives to the en­light­en­ment of their fel­lows who sit in spir­i­tual dark­ness. You are all the chil­dren of light; there­fore stum­ble not into the mis­un­der­stand­ing en­tan­gle­ments of mor­tal sus­pi­cion and hu­man in­tol­er­ance. If you are en­no­bled, by the grace of faith, to love un­be­liev­ers, should you not also equally love those who are your fel­low be­liev­ers in the far-spread­ing house­hold of faith? Re­mem­ber, as you love one an­other, all men will know that you are my dis­ci­ples.

191:4.4“Go, then, into all the world pro­claim­ing this gospel of the fa­ther­hood of God and the broth­er­hood of men to all na­tions and races and ever be wise in your choice of meth­ods for pre­sent­ing the good news to the dif­fer­ent races and tribes of man­kind. Freely you have re­ceived this gospel of the king­dom, and you will freely give the good news to all na­tions. Fear not the re­sis­tance of evil, for I am with you al­ways, even to the end of the ages. And my peace I leave with you.”

191:4.5When he had said, “My peace I leave with you,” he van­ished from their sight. With the ex­cep­tion of one of his ap­pear­ances in Gal­i­lee, where up­ward of five hun­dred be­liev­ers saw him at one time, this group in Phil­a­del­phia em­braced the largest num­ber of mor­tals who saw him on any sin­gle oc­ca­sion.

191:4.6Early the next morn­ing, even while the apos­tles tar­ried in Je­ru­sa­lem await­ing the emo­tional re­cov­ery of Thomas, these be­liev­ers at Phil­a­del­phia went forth pro­claim­ing that Je­sus of Naz­a­reth had risen from the dead.

191:4.7The next day, Wednes­day, Je­sus spent with­out in­ter­rup­tion in the so­ci­ety of his mor­ontia as­so­ciates, and dur­ing the midafter­noon hours he re­ceived vis­it­ing mor­ontia del­e­gates from the man­sion worlds of ev­ery lo­cal sys­tem of in­hab­ited spheres through­out the con­stel­la­tion of Nor­la­ti­adek. And they all re­joiced to know their Cre­ator as one of their own or­der of uni­verse in­tel­li­gence.

166:5.4It was the ap­par­ent mis­for­tune of Ab­ner to be at vari­ance with all of the lead­ers of the early Chris­tian church. He fell out with Pe­ter and James (Je­sus’ brother) over ques­tions of ad­min­is­tra­tion and the ju­ris­dic­tion of the Je­ru­sa­lem church; he parted com­pany with Paul over dif­fer­ences of phi­los­o­phy and the­ol­ogy. Ab­ner was more Baby­lo­nian than Hel­lenic in his phi­los­o­phy, and he stub­bornly re­sisted all at­tempts of Paul to re­make the teach­ings of Je­sus so as to pre­sent less that was ob­jec­tion­able, first to the Jews, then to the Greco-Ro­man be­liev­ers in the mys­ter­ies.

166:5.5Thus was Ab­ner com­pelled to live a life of iso­la­tion. He was head of a church which was with­out stand­ing at Je­ru­sa­lem. He had dared to defy James the Lord’s brother, who was sub­se­quently sup­ported by Pe­ter. Such con­duct ef­fec­tively sep­a­rated him from all his for­mer as­so­ciates. Then he dared to with­stand Paul. Al­though he was wholly sym­pa­thetic with Paul in his mis­sion to the gen­tiles, and though he sup­ported him in his con­tentions with the church at Je­ru­sa­lem, he bit­terly op­posed the ver­sion of Je­sus’ teach­ings which Paul elected to preach. In his last years Ab­ner de­nounced Paul as the “clever cor­rupter of the life teach­ings of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth, the Son of the liv­ing God.”

148:8.1The last week of the so­journ at Beth­saida the Je­ru­sa­lem spies be­came much di­vided in their at­ti­tude to­ward Je­sus and his teach­ings. Three of these Phar­isees were tremen­dously im­pressed by what they had seen and heard. Mean­while, at Je­ru­sa­lem, Abra­ham, a young and in­flu­en­tial mem­ber of the San­hedrin, pub­licly es­poused the teach­ings of Je­sus and was bap­tized in the pool of Siloam by Ab­ner. All Je­ru­sa­lem was agog over this event, and mes­sen­gers were im­me­di­ately dis­patched to Beth­saida re­call­ing the six spy­ing Phar­isees.

144:6.1Around the first of Oc­to­ber, Philip and some of his fel­low apos­tles were in a near-by vil­lage buy­ing food when they met some of the apos­tles of John the Bap­tist. As a re­sult of this chance meet­ing in the mar­ket place there came about a three weeks’ con­fer­ence at the Gil­boa camp be­tween the apos­tles of Je­sus and the apos­tles of John, for John had re­cently ap­pointed twelve of his lead­ers to be apos­tles, fol­low­ing the prece­dent of Je­sus. John had done this in re­sponse to the urg­ing of Ab­ner, the chief of his loyal sup­port­ers. Je­sus was pres­ent at the Gil­boa camp through­out the first week of this joint con­fer­ence but ab­sented him­self the last two weeks.

144:6.2By the be­gin­ning of the sec­ond week of this month, Ab­ner had as­sem­bled all of his as­so­ciates at the Gil­boa camp and was pre­pared to go into coun­cil with the apos­tles of Je­sus. For three weeks these twenty-four men were in ses­sion three times a day and for six days each week. The first week Je­sus min­gled with them be­tween their forenoon, af­ter­noon, and evening ses­sions. They wanted the Mas­ter to meet with them and pre­side over their joint de­lib­er­a­tions, but he stead­fastly re­fused to par­tic­i­pate in their dis­cus­sions, though he did con­sent to speak to them on three oc­ca­sions. These talks by Je­sus to the twenty-four were on sym­pa­thy, co-op­er­a­tion, and tol­er­ance.

144:6.3An­drew and Ab­ner al­ter­nated in pre­sid­ing over these joint meet­ings of the two apos­tolic groups. These men had many dif­fi­cul­ties to dis­cuss and nu­mer­ous prob­lems to solve. Again and again would they take their trou­bles to Je­sus, only to hear him say: “I am con­cerned only with your per­sonal and purely re­li­gious prob­lems. I am the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Fa­ther to the in­di­vid­ual, not to the group. If you are in per­sonal dif­fi­culty in your re­la­tions with God, come to me, and I will hear you and coun­sel you in the so­lu­tion of your prob­lem. But when you en­ter upon the co-or­di­na­tion of di­ver­gent hu­man in­ter­pre­ta­tions of re­li­gious ques­tions and upon the so­cial­iza­tion of re­li­gion, you are des­tined to solve all such prob­lems by your own de­ci­sions. Al­beit, I am ever sym­pa­thetic and al­ways in­ter­ested, and when you ar­rive at your con­clu­sions touch­ing these mat­ters of non­spir­i­tual im­port, pro­vided you are all agreed, then I pledge in ad­vance my full ap­proval and hearty co-op­er­a­tion. And now, in or­der to leave you un­ham­pered in your de­lib­er­a­tions, I am leav­ing you for two weeks. Be not anx­ious about me, for I will re­turn to you. I will be about my Fa­ther’s busi­ness, for we have other realms be­sides this one.”

162:1.6The ef­forts of Ab­ner and his as­so­ciates through­out Judea had also done much to con­sol­i­date sen­ti­ment fa­vor­able to the king­dom, so much so that the en­e­mies of Je­sus dared not be too out­spo­ken in their op­po­si­tion. This was one of the rea­sons why Je­sus could pub­licly visit Je­ru­sa­lem and live to go away. One or two months be­fore this he would cer­tainly have been put to death.

166:5.7Ab­ner lived to be 89 years old, dy­ing at Phil­a­del­phia on the 21^st day of Novem­ber, A.D. 74. And to the very end he was a faith­ful be­liever in, and teacher of, the gospel of the heav­enly king­dom.

171:3.2Je­sus met Ab­ner at Hes­h­bon, and An­drew di­rected that the labors of the sev­enty should not be in­ter­rupted by the Pass­over feast; Je­sus ad­vised that the mes­sen­gers should go for­ward with their work in com­plete dis­re­gard of what was about to hap­pen at Je­ru­sa­lem. He also coun­seled Ab­ner to per­mit the women’s corps, at least such as de­sired, to go to Je­ru­sa­lem for the Pass­over. And this was the last time Ab­ner ever saw Je­sus in the flesh. His farewell to Ab­ner was: “My son, I know you will be true to the king­dom, and I pray the Fa­ther to grant you wis­dom that you may love and un­der­stand your breth­ren.”

182:2.5Af­ter the eight apos­tles had fi­nally gone to their tents, and while Pe­ter, James, and John were stand­ing by to re­ceive the Mas­ter’s or­ders, Je­sus called to David Zeb­e­dee, “Send to me your most fleet and trust­wor­thy mes­sen­ger.” When David brought to the Mas­ter one Ja­cob, once a run­ner on the overnight mes­sen­ger ser­vice be­tween Je­ru­sa­lem and Beth­saida, Je­sus, ad­dress­ing him, said: “In all haste, go to Ab­ner at Phil­a­del­phia and say: ‘The Mas­ter sends greet­ings of peace to you and says that the hour has come when he will be de­liv­ered into the hands of his en­e­mies, who will put him to death, but that he will rise from the dead and ap­pear to you shortly, be­fore he goes to the Fa­ther, and that he will then give you guid­ance to the time when the new teacher shall come to live in your hearts.’” And when Ja­cob had re­hearsed this mes­sage to the Mas­ter’s sat­is­fac­tion, Je­sus sent him on his way, say­ing: “Fear not what any man may do to you, Ja­cob, for this night an un­seen mes­sen­ger will run by your side.”

135:2.4As time passed, John re­turned less of­ten to He­bron, while he made more fre­quent vis­its to En­gedi. He was so en­tirely dif­fer­ent from the ma­jor­ity of the Nazarites that he found it very dif­fi­cult fully to frat­er­nize with the broth­er­hood. But he was very fond of Ab­ner, the ac­knowl­edged leader and head of the En­gedi colony.

142:8.1By the end of April the op­po­si­tion to Je­sus among the Phar­isees and Sad­ducees had be­come so pro­nounced that the Mas­ter and his apos­tles de­cided to leave Je­ru­sa­lem for a while, go­ing south to work in Beth­le­hem and He­bron. The en­tire month of May was spent in do­ing per­sonal work in these cities and among the peo­ple of the sur­round­ing vil­lages. No pub­lic preach­ing was done on this trip, only house-to-house vis­i­ta­tion. A part of this time, while the apos­tles taught the gospel and min­is­tered to the sick, Je­sus and Ab­ner spent at En­gedi, vis­it­ing the Nazarite colony. John the Bap­tist had gone forth from this place, and Ab­ner had been head of this group. Many of the Nazarite broth­er­hood be­came be­liev­ers in Je­sus, but the ma­jor­ity of these as­cetic and ec­cen­tric men re­fused to ac­cept him as a teacher sent from heaven be­cause he did not teach fast­ing and other forms of self-de­nial.

165:0.1On Tues­day, Jan­uary 3, A.D. 30, Ab­ner, the for­mer chief of the twelve apos­tles of John the Bap­tist, a Nazarite and one­time head of the Nazarite school at En­gedi, now chief of the sev­enty mes­sen­gers of the king­dom, called his as­so­ciates to­gether and gave them fi­nal in­struc­tions be­fore send­ing them on a mis­sion to all of the cities and vil­lages of Perea. This Perean mis­sion con­tin­ued for al­most three months and was the last min­istry of the Mas­ter. From these labors Je­sus went di­rectly to Je­ru­sa­lem to pass through his fi­nal ex­pe­ri­ences in the flesh. The sev­enty, sup­ple­mented by the pe­ri­odic labors of Je­sus and the twelve apos­tles, worked in the fol­low­ing cities and towns and some fifty ad­di­tional vil­lages: Za­phon, Gadara, Macad, Ar­bela, Ra­math, Edrei, Bosora, Caspin, Mis­peh, Gerasa, Ragaba, Suc­coth, Am­athus, Adam, Penuel, Capi­to­lias, Dion, Hatita, Gadda, Phil­a­del­phia, Jog­be­hah, Gilead, Beth-Nim­rah, Tyrus, Elealah, Livias, Hes­h­bon, Cal­lir­rhoe, Beth-Peor, Shit­tim, Sibmah, Medeba, Beth-Meon, Are­opo­lis, and Aroer.

166:5.1Je­sus and the twelve were on their way to visit Ab­ner and his as­so­ciates, who were preach­ing and teach­ing in Phil­a­del­phia. Of all the cities of Perea, in Phil­a­del­phia the largest group of Jews and gen­tiles, rich and poor, learned and un­learned, em­braced the teach­ings of the sev­enty, thereby en­ter­ing into the king­dom of heaven. The syn­a­gogue of Phil­a­del­phia had never been sub­ject to the super­vi­sion of the San­hedrin at Je­ru­sa­lem and there­fore had never been closed to the teach­ings of Je­sus and his as­so­ciates. At this very time, Ab­ner was teach­ing three times a day in the Phil­a­del­phia syn­a­gogue.

166:5.2This very syn­a­gogue later on be­came a Chris­tian church and was the mis­sion­ary head­quar­ters for the pro­mul­ga­tion of the gospel through the re­gions to the east. It was long a stronghold of the Mas­ter’s teach­ings and stood alone in this re­gion as a cen­ter of Chris­tian learn­ing for cen­turies.

166:5.3The Jews at Je­ru­sa­lem had al­ways had trou­ble with the Jews of Phil­a­del­phia. And af­ter the death and res­ur­rec­tion of Je­sus the Je­ru­sa­lem church, of which James the Lord’s brother was head, be­gan to have se­ri­ous dif­fi­cul­ties with the Phil­a­del­phia con­gre­ga­tion of be­liev­ers. Ab­ner be­came the head of the Phil­a­del­phia church, con­tin­u­ing as such un­til his death. And this es­trange­ment with Je­ru­sa­lem ex­plains why noth­ing is heard of Ab­ner and his work in the Gospel rec­ords of the New Tes­ta­ment. This feud be­tween Je­ru­sa­lem and Phil­a­del­phia lasted through­out the life­times of James and Ab­ner and con­tin­ued for some time af­ter the de­struc­tion of Je­ru­sa­lem. Phil­a­del­phia was re­ally the head­quar­ters of the early church in the south and east as An­ti­och was in the north and west.

166:5.6Dur­ing the later years of Ab­ner and for some time there­after, the be­liev­ers at Phil­a­del­phia held more strictly to the re­li­gion of Je­sus, as he lived and taught, than any other group on earth.

168:5.3Soon af­ter this Martha and Mary dis­posed of their lands at Beth­any and joined their brother in Perea. Mean­time, Laz­a­rus had be­come the trea­surer of the church at Phil­a­del­phia. He be­came a strong sup­porter of Ab­ner in his con­tro­versy with Paul and the Je­ru­sa­lem church and ul­ti­mately died, when 67 years old, of the same sick­ness that car­ried him off when he was a younger man at Beth­any.

159:6.4About this time Ab­ner moved his base of op­er­a­tions from He­bron to Beth­le­hem, and this lat­ter place was also the head­quar­ters in Judea for David’s mes­sen­gers. David main­tained an overnight re­lay mes­sen­ger ser­vice be­tween Je­ru­sa­lem and Beth­saida. These run­ners left Je­ru­sa­lem each evening, re­lay­ing at Sy­char and Scythopo­lis, ar­riv­ing in Beth­saida by break­fast time the next morn­ing.

144:9.1John the Bap­tist was ex­e­cuted by or­der of Herod An­tipas on the evening of Jan­uary 10, A.D. 28. The next day a few of John’s dis­ci­ples who had gone to Machaerus heard of his ex­e­cu­tion and, go­ing to Herod, made re­quest for his body, which they put in a tomb, later giv­ing it burial at Se­baste, the home of Ab­ner. The fol­low­ing day, Jan­uary 12, they started north to the camp of John’s and Je­sus’ apos­tles near Pella, and they told Je­sus about the death of John. When Je­sus heard their re­port, he dis­missed the mul­ti­tude and, call­ing the twenty-four to­gether, said: “John is dead. Herod has be­headed him. Tonight go into joint coun­cil and ar­range your af­fairs ac­cord­ingly. There shall be de­lay no longer. The hour has come to pro­claim the king­dom openly and with power. To­mor­row we go into Gal­i­lee.”

144:7.4Ab­ner, the chief of John’s apos­tles, be­came a de­vout be­liever in Je­sus and was later on made the head of a group of sev­enty teach­ers whom the Mas­ter com­mis­sioned to preach the gospel.

163:1.1The sev­enty were or­dained by Je­sus on Sab­bath af­ter­noon, Novem­ber 19, at the Ma­g­a­dan Camp, and Ab­ner was placed at the head of these gospel preach­ers and teach­ers. This corps of sev­enty con­sisted of Ab­ner and ten of the for­mer apos­tles of John, fifty-one of the ear­lier evan­ge­lists, and eight other dis­ci­ples who had dis­tin­guished them­selves in the ser­vice of the king­dom.

163:2.1Over fifty dis­ci­ples who sought or­di­na­tion and ap­point­ment to mem­ber­ship in the sev­enty were re­jected by the com­mit­tee ap­pointed by Je­sus to se­lect these can­di­dates. This com­mit­tee con­sisted of An­drew, Ab­ner, and the act­ing head of the evan­ge­lis­tic corps. In all cases where this com­mit­tee of three were not unan­i­mous in agree­ment, they brought the can­di­date to Je­sus, and while the Mas­ter never re­jected a sin­gle per­son who craved or­di­na­tion as a gospel mes­sen­ger, there were more than a dozen who, when they had talked with Je­sus, no more de­sired to be­come gospel mes­sen­gers.

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.

178:2.4This con­ver­sa­tion with David was in­ter­rupted by the ar­rival of a mes­sen­ger from Phil­a­del­phia bring­ing word that Ab­ner had heard of the plot to kill Je­sus and ask­ing if he should de­part for Je­ru­sa­lem. This run­ner has­tened off for Phil­a­del­phia with this word for Ab­ner: “Go on with your work. If I de­part from you in the flesh, it is only that I may re­turn in the spirit. I will not for­sake you. I will be with you to the end.”

193:6.4Soon af­ter Pen­te­cost the twins re­turned to their homes in Gal­i­lee. Si­mon Ze­lo­tes was in re­tire­ment for some time be­fore he went forth preach­ing the gospel. Thomas wor­ried for a shorter pe­riod and then re­sumed his teach­ing. Na­than­iel dif­fered in­creas­ingly with Pe­ter re­gard­ing preach­ing about Je­sus in the place of pro­claim­ing the for­mer gospel of the king­dom. This dis­agree­ment be­came so acute by the mid­dle of the fol­low­ing month that Na­than­iel with­drew, go­ing to Phil­a­del­phia to visit Ab­ner and Laz­a­rus; and af­ter tar­ry­ing there for more than a year, he went on into the lands be­yond Mes­o­po­ta­mia preach­ing the gospel as he un­der­stood it.

134:6.14Af­ter the death of Cym­boy­ton, his sons en­coun­tered great dif­fi­cul­ties in main­tain­ing a peace­ful fac­ulty. The reper­cus­sions of Je­sus’ teach­ings would have been much greater if the later Chris­tian teach­ers who joined the Ur­mia fac­ulty had ex­hib­ited more wis­dom and ex­er­cised more tol­er­ance.

134:6.15Cym­boy­ton’s el­dest son had ap­pealed to Ab­ner at Phil­a­del­phia for help, but Ab­ner’s choice of teach­ers was most un­for­tu­nate in that they turned out to be un­yield­ing and un­com­pro­mis­ing. These teach­ers sought to make their re­li­gion dom­i­nant over the other be­liefs. They never sus­pected that the oft-re­ferred-to lec­tures of the car­a­van con­duc­tor had been de­liv­ered by Je­sus him­self.

156:6.7The man­date to close the syn­a­gogues of all Jewry to the teach­ings of Je­sus and all his fol­low­ers had worked ad­versely upon the scribes and Phar­isees. Im­me­di­ately upon Je­sus’ re­mov­ing him­self as an ob­ject of con­tro­versy, there oc­curred a re­ac­tion among the en­tire Jew­ish peo­ple; there was gen­eral re­sent­ment against the Phar­isees and the San­hedrin lead­ers at Je­ru­sa­lem. Many of the rulers of the syn­a­gogues be­gan sur­rep­ti­tiously to open their syn­a­gogues to Ab­ner and his as­so­ciates, claim­ing that these teach­ers were fol­low­ers of John and not dis­ci­ples of Je­sus.

195:1.11The East­ern ver­sion of the mes­sage of Je­sus, not­with­stand­ing that it re­mained more true to his teach­ings, con­tin­ued to fol­low the un­com­pro­mis­ing at­ti­tude of Ab­ner. It never pro­gressed as did the Hel­le­nized ver­sion and was even­tu­ally lost in the Is­lamic move­ment.