Elman

150:1.1Of all the dar­ing things which Je­sus did in con­nec­tion with his earth ca­reer, the most amaz­ing was his sud­den an­nounce­ment on the evening of Jan­uary 16: “On the mor­row we will set apart ten women for the min­is­ter­ing work of the king­dom.” At the be­gin­ning of the two weeks’ pe­riod dur­ing which the apos­tles and the evan­ge­lists were to be ab­sent from Beth­saida on their fur­lough, Je­sus re­quested David to sum­mon his par­ents back to their home and to dis­patch mes­sen­gers call­ing to Beth­saida ten de­vout women who had served in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the for­mer en­camp­ment and the tented in­fir­mary. These women had all lis­tened to the in­struc­tion given the young evan­ge­lists, but it had never oc­curred to ei­ther them­selves or their teach­ers that Je­sus would dare to com­mis­sion women to teach the gospel of the king­dom and min­is­ter to the sick. These ten women se­lected and com­mis­sioned by Je­sus were: Su­sanna, the daugh­ter of the for­mer chazan of the Naz­a­reth syn­a­gogue; Joanna, the wife of Chuza, the stew­ard of Herod An­tipas; Eliz­a­beth, the daugh­ter of a wealthy Jew of Tiberias and Sep­pho­ris; Martha, the el­der sis­ter of An­drew and Pe­ter; Rachel, the sis­ter-in-law of Jude, the Mas­ter’s brother in the flesh; Nas­anta, the daugh­ter of El­man, the Syr­ian physi­cian; Milcha, a cousin of the Apos­tle Thomas; Ruth, the el­dest daugh­ter of Mat­thew Levi; Celta, the daugh­ter of a Ro­man cen­tu­rion; and Aga­man, a widow of Da­mas­cus. Sub­se­quently, Je­sus added two other women to this group—Mary Mag­da­lene and Re­becca, the daugh­ter of Joseph of Ari­mathea.

148:0.1From May 3 to Oc­to­ber 3, A.D. 28, Je­sus and the apos­tolic party were in res­i­dence at the Zeb­e­dee home at Beth­saida. Through­out this five months’ pe­riod of the dry sea­son an enor­mous camp was main­tained by the sea­side near the Zeb­e­dee res­i­dence, which had been greatly en­larged to ac­com­mo­date the grow­ing fam­ily of Je­sus. This sea­side camp, oc­cu­pied by an ever-chang­ing pop­u­la­tion of truth seek­ers, heal­ing can­di­dates, and cu­rios­ity devo­tees, num­bered from five hun­dred to fif­teen hun­dred. This tented city was un­der the gen­eral super­vi­sion of David Zeb­e­dee, as­sisted by the Al­pheus twins. The en­camp­ment was a model in or­der and san­i­ta­tion as well as in its gen­eral ad­min­is­tra­tion. The sick of dif­fer­ent types were seg­re­gated and were un­der the super­vi­sion of a be­liever physi­cian, a Syr­ian named El­man.

148:2.1In con­nec­tion with the sea­side en­camp­ment, El­man, the Syr­ian physi­cian, with the as­sis­tance of a corps of twenty-five young women and twelve men, or­ga­nized and con­ducted for four months what should be re­garded as the king­dom’s first hos­pi­tal. At this in­fir­mary, lo­cated a short dis­tance to the south of the main tented city, they treated the sick in ac­cor­dance with all known ma­te­rial meth­ods as well as by the spir­i­tual prac­tices of prayer and faith en­cour­age­ment. Je­sus vis­ited the sick of this en­camp­ment not less than three times a week and made per­sonal con­tact with each suf­ferer. As far as we know, no so-called mir­a­cles of super­nat­u­ral heal­ing oc­curred among the one thou­sand af­flicted and ail­ing per­sons who went away from this in­fir­mary im­proved or cured. How­ever, the vast ma­jor­ity of these ben­e­fited in­di­vid­u­als ceased not to pro­claim that Je­sus had healed them.

148:2.2Many of the cures ef­fected by Je­sus in con­nec­tion with his min­istry in be­half of El­man’s pa­tients did, in­deed, ap­pear to re­sem­ble the work­ing of mir­a­cles, but we were in­structed that they were only just such trans­for­ma­tions of mind and spirit as may oc­cur in the ex­pe­ri­ence of ex­pec­tant and faith-dom­i­nated per­sons who are un­der the im­me­di­ate and in­spi­ra­tional in­flu­ence of a strong, pos­i­tive, and benef­i­cent per­son­al­ity whose min­istry ban­ishes fear and de­stroys anx­i­ety.

148:2.3El­man and his as­so­ciates en­deav­ored to teach the truth to these sick ones con­cern­ing the “pos­ses­sion of evil spir­its,” but they met with lit­tle suc­cess. The be­lief that phys­i­cal sick­ness and men­tal de­range­ment could be caused by the dwell­ing of a so-called un­clean spirit in the mind or body of the af­flicted per­son was well-nigh uni­ver­sal.

148:2.4In all his con­tact with the sick and af­flicted, when it came to the tech­nique of treat­ment or the rev­e­la­tion of the un­known causes of dis­ease, Je­sus did not dis­re­gard the in­struc­tions of his Par­a­dise brother, Im­manuel, given ere he em­barked upon the ven­ture of the Uran­tia in­car­na­tion. Not­with­stand­ing this, those who min­is­tered to the sick learned many help­ful lessons by ob­serv­ing the man­ner in which Je­sus in­spired the faith and con­fi­dence of the sick and suf­fer­ing.

148:2.5The camp dis­banded a short time be­fore the sea­son for the in­crease in chills and fever drew on.