apostles of John the Baptist

• apostles of John the Baptist

135:9.1When John re­turned to his dis­ci­ples (he now had some twenty-five or thirty who abode with him con­stantly), he found them in earnest con­fer­ence, dis­cussing what had just hap­pened in con­nec­tion with Je­sus’ bap­tism. They were all the more as­ton­ished when John now made known to them the story of the Ga­briel vis­i­ta­tion to Mary be­fore Je­sus was born, and also that Je­sus spoke no word to him even af­ter he had told him about this. There was no rain that evening, and this group of thirty or more talked long into the star­lit night. They won­dered where Je­sus had gone, and when they would see him again.

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.

150:0.2Among the many mat­ters con­sid­ered by this joint con­fer­ence was the prac­tice of anoint­ing the sick with cer­tain forms of oil in con­nec­tion with prayers for heal­ing. Again did Je­sus de­cline to par­tic­i­pate in their dis­cus­sions or to ex­press him­self re­gard­ing their con­clu­sions. The apos­tles of John had al­ways used the anoint­ing oil in their min­istry to the sick and af­flicted, and they sought to es­tab­lish this as a uni­form prac­tice for both groups, but the apos­tles of Je­sus re­fused to bind them­selves by such a reg­u­la­tion.

144:7.2Je­sus did lit­tle pub­lic teach­ing on this mis­sion to the cities of the De­capo­lis. He spent con­sid­er­able time teach­ing the twenty-four and had many spe­cial ses­sions with John’s twelve apos­tles. In time they be­came more un­der­stand­ing as to why Je­sus did not go to visit John in prison, and why he made no ef­fort to se­cure his re­lease. But they never could un­der­stand why Je­sus did no mar­velous works, why he re­fused to pro­duce out­ward signs of his di­vine au­thor­ity. Be­fore com­ing to the Gil­boa camp, they had be­lieved in Je­sus mostly be­cause of John’s tes­ti­mony, but soon they were be­gin­ning to be­lieve as a re­sult of their own con­tact with the Mas­ter and his teach­ings.

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.

135:6.8John con­ducted classes for his dis­ci­ples, in the course of which he in­structed them in the de­tails of their new life and en­deav­ored to an­swer their many ques­tions. He coun­seled the teach­ers to in­struct in the spirit as well as the let­ter of the law. He in­structed the rich to feed the poor; to the tax gath­er­ers he said: “Ex­tort no more than that which is as­signed you.” To the sol­diers he said: “Do no vi­o­lence and ex­act noth­ing wrong­fully—be con­tent with your wages.” While he coun­seled all: “Make ready for the end of the age—the king­dom of heaven is at hand.”

141:3.3An­drew was much oc­cu­pied with the task of ad­just­ing the con­stantly re­cur­ring mis­un­der­stand­ings and dis­agree­ments be­tween the dis­ci­ples of John and the newer dis­ci­ples of Je­sus. Se­ri­ous sit­u­a­tions would arise ev­ery few days, but An­drew, with the as­sis­tance of his apos­tolic as­so­ciates, man­aged to in­duce the con­tend­ing par­ties to come to some sort of agree­ment, at least tem­porar­ily. Je­sus re­fused to par­tic­i­pate in any of these con­fer­ences; nei­ther would he give any ad­vice about the proper ad­just­ment of these dif­fi­cul­ties. He never once of­fered a sug­ges­tion as to how the apos­tles should solve these per­plex­ing prob­lems. When An­drew came to Je­sus with these ques­tions, he would al­ways say: “It is not wise for the host to par­tic­i­pate in the fam­ily trou­bles of his guests; a wise par­ent never takes sides in the petty quar­rels of his own chil­dren.”

141:1.4Many of those who came from Perea and Judea had been bap­tized by John and were in­ter­ested in find­ing out more about Je­sus’ teach­ings. The apos­tles made much prog­ress in teach­ing the dis­ci­ples of John inas­much as they did not in any way de­tract from John’s preach­ing, and since they did not at this time even bap­tize their new dis­ci­ples. But it was al­ways a stum­bling stone to John’s fol­low­ers that Je­sus, if he were all that John had an­nounced, did noth­ing to get him out of prison. John’s dis­ci­ples never could un­der­stand why Je­sus did not pre­vent the cruel death of their beloved leader.

135:9.5These forty days were a dif­fi­cult pe­riod for John and his dis­ci­ples. What was to be the re­la­tion of John to Je­sus? A hun­dred ques­tions came up for dis­cus­sion. Pol­i­tics and self­ish prefer­ment be­gan to make their ap­pear­ance. In­tense dis­cus­sions grew up around the var­i­ous ideas and con­cepts of the Mes­siah. Would he be­come a mil­i­tary leader and a Da­vidic king? Would he smite the Ro­man armies as Joshua had the Ca­naan­ites? Or would he come to es­tab­lish a spir­i­tual king­dom? John rather de­cided, with the mi­nor­ity, that Je­sus had come to es­tab­lish the king­dom of heaven, al­though he was not al­to­gether clear in his own mind as to just what was to be em­braced within this mis­sion of the es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom of heaven.

141:6.5The apos­tles made great prog­ress dur­ing the so­journ at Am­athus. But they were very much dis­ap­pointed that Je­sus would give them no sug­ges­tions about deal­ing with John’s dis­ci­ples. Even in the im­por­tant mat­ter of bap­tism, all that Je­sus said was: “John did in­deed bap­tize with wa­ter, but when you en­ter the king­dom of heaven, you shall be bap­tized with the Spirit.”

143:3.1About this time a state of great ner­vous and emo­tional ten­sion de­vel­oped among the apos­tles and their im­me­di­ate dis­ci­ple as­so­ciates. They had hardly be­come ac­cus­tomed to liv­ing and work­ing to­gether. They were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing in­creas­ing dif­fi­cul­ties in main­tain­ing har­mo­nious re­la­tions with John’s dis­ci­ples. The con­tact with the gen­tiles and the Samar­i­tans was a great trial to these Jews. And be­sides all this, the re­cent ut­ter­ances of Je­sus had aug­mented their dis­turbed state of mind. An­drew was al­most be­side him­self; he did not know what next to do, and so he went to the Mas­ter with his prob­lems and per­plex­i­ties. When Je­sus had lis­tened to the apos­tolic chief re­late his trou­bles, he said: “An­drew, you can­not talk men out of their per­plex­i­ties when they reach such a stage of in­volve­ment, and when so many per­sons with strong feel­ings are con­cerned. I can­not do what you ask of me—I will not par­tic­i­pate in these per­sonal so­cial dif­fi­cul­ties—but I will join you in the en­joy­ment of a three-day pe­riod of rest and re­lax­ation. Go to your breth­ren and an­nounce that all of you are to go with me up on Mount Sartaba, where I de­sire to rest for a day or two.

143:3.5When they went up the moun­tain, An­drew’s head was full of prob­lems. John was in­or­di­nately per­plexed in his heart. James was griev­ously trou­bled in his soul. Mat­thew was hard pressed for funds inas­much as they had been so­journ­ing among the gen­tiles. Pe­ter was over­wrought and had re­cently been more tem­per­a­men­tal than usual. Ju­das was suf­fer­ing from a pe­ri­odic at­tack of sen­si­tive­ness and self­ish­ness. Si­mon was un­usu­ally up­set in his ef­forts to rec­on­cile his pa­tri­o­tism with the love of the broth­er­hood of man. Philip was more and more non­plused by the way things were go­ing. Na­than­iel had been less hu­mor­ous since they had come in con­tact with the gen­tile pop­u­la­tions, and Thomas was in the midst of a se­vere sea­son of de­pres­sion. Only the twins were nor­mal and un­per­turbed. All of them were ex­ceed­ingly per­plexed about how to get along peace­ably with John’s dis­ci­ples.

143:3.7Their re­turn from this hol­i­day marked the be­gin­ning of a pe­riod of greatly im­proved re­la­tions with the fol­low­ers of John. Many of the twelve re­ally gave way to mirth when they noted the changed state of ev­ery­body’s mind and ob­served the free­dom from ner­vous ir­ri­tabil­ity which had come to them as a re­sult of their three days’ va­ca­tion from the rou­tine du­ties of life. There is al­ways dan­ger that mo­not­ony of hu­man con­tact will greatly mul­ti­ply per­plex­i­ties and mag­nify dif­fi­cul­ties.

144:0.2There were a num­ber of rea­sons why Je­sus and his apos­tles were in re­tire­ment at this time on the bor­ders of Samaria and the De­capo­lis. The Je­ru­sa­lem re­li­gious rulers were very an­tag­o­nis­tic; Herod An­tipas still held John in prison, fear­ing ei­ther to re­lease or ex­e­cute him, while he con­tin­ued to en­ter­tain sus­pi­cions that John and Je­sus were in some way as­so­ci­ated. These con­di­tions made it un­wise to plan for ag­gres­sive work in ei­ther Judea or Gal­i­lee. There was a third rea­son: the slowly aug­ment­ing ten­sion be­tween the lead­ers of John’s dis­ci­ples and the apos­tles of Je­sus, which grew worse with the in­creas­ing num­ber of be­liev­ers.

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.”

144:6.4Af­ter thus speak­ing, Je­sus went down the moun­tain­side, and they saw him no more for two full weeks. And they never knew where he went or what he did dur­ing these days. It was some time be­fore the twenty-four could set­tle down to the se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion of their prob­lems, they were so dis­con­certed by the ab­sence of the Mas­ter. How­ever, within a week they were again in the heart of their dis­cus­sions, and they could not go to Je­sus for help.

144:6.5The first item the group agreed upon was the adop­tion of the prayer which Je­sus had so re­cently taught them. It was unan­i­mously voted to ac­cept this prayer as the one to be taught be­liev­ers by both groups of apos­tles.

144:6.6They next de­cided that, as long as John lived, whether in prison or out, both groups of twelve apos­tles would go on with their work, and that joint meet­ings for one week would be held ev­ery three months at places to be agreed upon from time to time.

144:6.7But the most se­ri­ous of all their prob­lems was the ques­tion of bap­tism. Their dif­fi­cul­ties were all the more ag­gra­vated be­cause Je­sus had re­fused to make any pro­nounce­ment upon the sub­ject. They fi­nally agreed: As long as John lived, or un­til they might jointly mod­ify this de­ci­sion, only the apos­tles of John would bap­tize be­liev­ers, and only the apos­tles of Je­sus would fi­nally in­struct the new dis­ci­ples. Ac­cord­ingly, from that time un­til af­ter the death of John, two of the apos­tles of John ac­com­pa­nied Je­sus and his apos­tles to bap­tize be­liev­ers, for the joint coun­cil had unan­i­mously voted that bap­tism was to be­come the ini­tial step in the out­ward al­liance with the af­fairs of the king­dom.

144:6.8It was next agreed, in case of the death of John, that the apos­tles of John would pre­sent them­selves to Je­sus and be­come sub­ject to his di­rec­tion, and that they would bap­tize no more un­less au­tho­rized by Je­sus or his apos­tles.

144:6.9And then was it voted that, in case of John’s death, the apos­tles of Je­sus would be­gin to bap­tize with wa­ter as the em­blem of the bap­tism of the di­vine Spirit. As to whether or not re­pen­tance should be at­tached to the preach­ing of bap­tism was left op­tional; no de­ci­sion was made bind­ing upon the group. John’s apos­tles preached, “Re­pent and be bap­tized.” Je­sus’ apos­tles pro­claimed, “Be­lieve and be bap­tized.”

144:6.10And this is the story of the first at­tempt of Je­sus’ fol­low­ers to co-or­di­nate di­ver­gent ef­forts, com­pose dif­fer­ences of opin­ion, or­ga­nize group un­der­tak­ings, leg­is­late on out­ward ob­ser­vances, and so­cial­ize per­sonal re­li­gious prac­tices.

144:6.11Many other mi­nor mat­ters were con­sid­ered and their so­lu­tions unan­i­mously agreed upon. These twenty-four men had a truly re­mark­able ex­pe­ri­ence these two weeks when they were com­pelled to face prob­lems and com­pose dif­fi­cul­ties with­out Je­sus. They learned to dif­fer, to de­bate, to con­tend, to pray, and to com­pro­mise, and through­out it all to re­main sym­pa­thetic with the other per­son’s view­point and to main­tain at least some de­gree of tol­er­ance for his hon­est opin­ions.

144:6.12On the af­ter­noon of their fi­nal dis­cus­sion of fi­nan­cial ques­tions, Je­sus re­turned, heard of their de­lib­er­a­tions, lis­tened to their de­ci­sions, and said: “These, then, are your con­clu­sions, and I shall help you each to carry out the spirit of your united de­ci­sions.”

144:6.13Two months and a half from this time John was ex­e­cuted, and through­out this pe­riod the apos­tles of John re­mained with Je­sus and the twelve. They all worked to­gether and bap­tized be­liev­ers dur­ing this sea­son of la­bor in the cities of the De­capo­lis. The Gil­boa camp was bro­ken up on Novem­ber 2, A.D. 27.

144:7.1Through­out the months of Novem­ber and De­cem­ber, Je­sus and the twenty-four worked qui­etly in the Greek cities of the De­capo­lis, chiefly in Scythopo­lis, Gerasa, Abila, and Gadara. This was re­ally the end of that pre­lim­i­nary pe­riod of tak­ing over John’s work and or­ga­ni­za­tion. Al­ways does the so­cial­ized re­li­gion of a new rev­e­la­tion pay the price of com­pro­mise with the es­tab­lished forms and us­ages of the pre­ced­ing re­li­gion which it seeks to sal­vage. Bap­tism was the price which the fol­low­ers of Je­sus paid in or­der to carry with them, as a so­cial­ized re­li­gious group, the fol­low­ers of John the Bap­tist. John’s fol­low­ers, in join­ing Je­sus’ fol­low­ers, gave up just about ev­ery­thing ex­cept wa­ter bap­tism.

144:7.3For these two months the group worked most of the time in pairs, one of Je­sus’ apos­tles go­ing out with one of John’s. The apos­tle of John bap­tized, the apos­tle of Je­sus in­structed, while they both preached the gospel of the king­dom as they un­der­stood it. And they won many souls among these gen­tiles and apos­tate Jews.

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.

146:0.1The first pub­lic preach­ing tour of Gal­i­lee be­gan on Sun­day, Jan­uary 18, A.D. 28, and con­tin­ued for about two months, end­ing with the re­turn to Ca­per­naum on March 17. On this tour Je­sus and the twelve apos­tles, as­sisted by the for­mer apos­tles of John, preached the gospel and bap­tized be­liev­ers in Rim­mon, Jo­ta­p­ata, Ramah, Ze­bu­lun, Iron, Gis­chala, Cho­ra­zin, Madon, Cana, Nain, and En­dor. In these cities they tar­ried and taught, while in many other smaller towns they pro­claimed the gospel of the king­dom as they passed through.

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.

147:2.4When Je­sus and the twelve de­parted for Ca­per­naum, the apos­tles of John did not re­turn with them. Un­der the di­rec­tion of Ab­ner they re­mained in Je­ru­sa­lem and the sur­round­ing coun­try, qui­etly la­bor­ing for the ex­ten­sion of the king­dom, while Je­sus and the twelve re­turned to work in Gal­i­lee. Never again were the twenty-four all to­gether un­til a short time be­fore the com­mis­sion­ing and send­ing forth of the sev­enty evan­ge­lists. But the two groups were co-op­er­a­tive, and not­with­stand­ing their dif­fer­ences of opin­ion, the best of feel­ings pre­vailed.