Mary Magdalene

• chief spokesman for women’s corps; most effective teacher

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.

• won for kingdom in nefarious resort by Martha sister of Andrew

150:2.2It was at Mag­dala that the women first demon­strated their use­ful­ness and vin­di­cated the wis­dom of their choos­ing. An­drew had im­posed rather strict rules upon his as­so­ciates about do­ing per­sonal work with women, es­pe­cially with those of ques­tion­able char­ac­ter. When the party en­tered Mag­dala, these ten women evan­ge­lists were free to en­ter the evil re­sorts and preach the glad tid­ings di­rectly to all their in­mates. And when vis­it­ing the sick, these women were able to draw very close in their min­istry to their af­flicted sis­ters. As the re­sult of the min­istry of these ten women (af­ter­ward known as the twelve women) at this place, Mary Mag­da­lene was won for the king­dom. Through a suc­ces­sion of mis­for­tunes and in con­se­quence of the at­ti­tude of rep­u­ta­ble so­ci­ety to­ward women who com­mit such er­rors of judg­ment, this woman had found her­self in one of the ne­far­i­ous re­sorts of Mag­dala. It was Martha and Rachel who made plain to Mary that the doors of the king­dom were open to even such as she. Mary be­lieved the good news and was bap­tized by Pe­ter the next day.

• chief spokesman for women’s corps; most effective teacher

150:2.3Mary Mag­da­lene be­came the most ef­fec­tive teacher of the gospel among this group of twelve women evan­ge­lists. She was set apart for such ser­vice, to­gether with Re­becca, at Jo­ta­p­ata about four weeks sub­se­quent to her con­ver­sion. Mary and Re­becca, with the oth­ers of this group, went on through the re­main­der of Je­sus’ life on earth, la­bor­ing faith­fully and ef­fec­tively for the en­light­en­ment and up­lift­ing of their down­trod­den sis­ters; and when the last and tragic episode in the drama of Je­sus’ life was be­ing en­acted, not­with­stand­ing the apos­tles all fled but one, these women were all pres­ent, and not one ei­ther de­nied or be­trayed him.

• witnessed Jesus’ crucifixion

187:3.2Stand­ing near the cross at one time or an­other dur­ing the cru­ci­fix­ion were Mary, Ruth, Jude, John, Sa­lome (John’s mother), and a group of earnest women be­liev­ers in­clud­ing Mary the wife of Clopas and sis­ter of Je­sus’ mother, Mary Mag­da­lene, and Re­becca, one­time of Sep­pho­ris. These and other friends of Je­sus held their peace while they wit­nessed his great pa­tience and for­ti­tude and gazed upon his in­tense suf­fer­ings.

• witnessed Jesus’ crucifixion

187:5.4The sand­storm grew in in­ten­sity and the heav­ens in­creas­ingly dark­ened. Still the sol­diers and the small group of be­liev­ers stood by. The sol­diers crouched near the cross, hud­dled to­gether to pro­tect them­selves from the cut­ting sand. The mother of John and oth­ers watched from a dis­tance where they were some­what shel­tered by an over­hang­ing rock. When the Mas­ter fi­nally breathed his last, there were pres­ent at the foot of his cross John Zeb­e­dee, his brother Jude, his sis­ter Ruth, Mary Mag­da­lene, and Re­becca, one­time of Sep­pho­ris.

• discovered empty tomb

188:1.7While all this was go­ing on, the women were hid­ing near at hand so that they saw it all and ob­served where the Mas­ter had been laid. They thus se­creted them­selves be­cause it was not per­mis­si­ble for women to as­so­ciate with men at such a time. These women did not think Je­sus had been prop­erly pre­pared for burial, and they agreed among them­selves to go back to the home of Joseph, rest over the Sab­bath, make ready spices and oint­ments, and re­turn on Sun­day morn­ing prop­erly to pre­pare the Mas­ter’s body for the death rest. The women who thus tar­ried by the tomb on this Fri­day evening were: Mary Mag­da­lene, Mary the wife of Clopas, Martha an­other sis­ter of Je­sus’ mother, and Re­becca of Sep­pho­ris.

• discovered empty tomb

189:4.2At the home of Nicode­mus there were gath­ered to­gether, with David Zeb­e­dee and Joseph of Ari­mathea, some twelve or fif­teen of the more promi­nent of the Je­ru­sa­lem dis­ci­ples of Je­sus. At the home of Joseph of Ari­mathea there were some fif­teen or twenty of the lead­ing women be­liev­ers. Only these women abode in Joseph’s house, and they had kept close within dur­ing the hours of the Sab­bath day and the evening af­ter the Sab­bath, so that they were ig­no­rant of the mil­i­tary guard on watch at the tomb; nei­ther did they know that a sec­ond stone had been rolled in front of the tomb, and that both of these stones had been placed un­der the seal of Pi­late.

189:4.3A lit­tle be­fore three o’clock this Sun­day morn­ing, when the first signs of day be­gan to ap­pear in the east, five of the women started out for the tomb of Je­sus. They had pre­pared an abun­dance of spe­cial em­balm­ing lo­tions, and they car­ried many linen ban­dages with them. It was their pur­pose more thor­oughly to give the body of Je­sus its death anoint­ing and more care­fully to wrap it up with the new ban­dages.

189:4.4The women who went on this mis­sion of anoint­ing Je­sus’ body were: Mary Mag­da­lene, Mary the mother of the Al­pheus twins, Sa­lome the mother of the Zeb­e­dee broth­ers, Joanna the wife of Chuza, and Su­sanna the daugh­ter of Ezra of Alexan­dria.

189:4.5It was about half past three o’clock when the five women, laden with their oint­ments, ar­rived be­fore the empty tomb. As they passed out of the Da­mas­cus gate, they en­coun­tered a num­ber of sol­diers flee­ing into the city more or less panic-stricken, and this caused them to pause for a few min­utes; but when noth­ing more de­vel­oped, they re­sumed their jour­ney.

189:4.6They were greatly sur­prised to see the stone rolled away from the en­trance to the tomb, inas­much as they had said among them­selves on the way out, “Who will help us roll away the stone?” They set down their bur­dens and be­gan to look upon one an­other in fear and with great amaze­ment. While they stood there, atrem­ble with fear, Mary Mag­da­lene ven­tured around the smaller stone and dared to en­ter the open sepul­chre. This tomb of Joseph was in his gar­den on the hill­side on the east­ern side of the road, and it also faced to­ward the east. By this hour there was just enough of the dawn of a new day to en­able Mary to look back to the place where the Mas­ter’s body had lain and to dis­cern that it was gone. In the re­cess of stone where they had laid Je­sus, Mary saw only the folded nap­kin where his head had rested and the ban­dages where­with he had been wrapped ly­ing in­tact and as they had rested on the stone be­fore the ce­les­tial hosts re­moved the body. The cov­er­ing sheet lay at the foot of the burial niche.

189:4.7Af­ter Mary had tar­ried in the door­way of the tomb for a few mo­ments (she did not see dis­tinctly when she first en­tered the tomb), she saw that Je­sus’ body was gone and in its place only these grave cloths, and she ut­tered a cry of alarm and an­guish. All the women were ex­ceed­ingly ner­vous; they had been on edge ever since meet­ing the pan­icky sol­diers at the city gate, and when Mary ut­tered this scream of an­guish, they were ter­ror-stricken and fled in great haste. And they did not stop un­til they had run all the way to the Da­mas­cus gate. By this time Joanna was con­science-stricken that they had de­serted Mary; she ral­lied her com­pan­ions, and they started back for the tomb.

189:4.8As they drew near the sepul­chre, the fright­ened Mag­da­lene, who was even more ter­ror­ized when she failed to find her sis­ters wait­ing when she came out of the tomb, now rushed up to them, ex­cit­edly ex­claim­ing: “He is not there—they have taken him away!” And she led them back to the tomb, and they all en­tered and saw that it was empty.

189:4.9All five of the women then sat down on the stone near the en­trance and talked over the sit­u­a­tion. It had not yet oc­curred to them that Je­sus had been res­ur­rected. They had been by them­selves over the Sab­bath, and they con­jec­tured that the body had been moved to an­other rest­ing place. But when they pon­dered such a so­lu­tion of their dilemma, they were at a loss to ac­count for the or­derly ar­range­ment of the grave cloths; how could the body have been re­moved since the very ban­dages in which it was wrapped were left in po­si­tion and ap­par­ently in­tact on the burial shelf?

• at Jesus’ appearances

189:4.10As these women sat there in the early hours of the dawn of this new day, they looked to one side and ob­served a silent and mo­tion­less stranger. For a mo­ment they were again fright­ened, but Mary Mag­da­lene, rush­ing to­ward him and ad­dress­ing him as if she thought he might be the care­taker of the gar­den, said, “Where have you taken the Mas­ter? Where have they laid him? Tell us that we may go and get him.” When the stranger did not an­swer Mary, she be­gan to weep. Then spoke Je­sus to them, say­ing, “Whom do you seek?” Mary said: “We seek for Je­sus who was laid to rest in Joseph’s tomb, but he is gone. Do you know where they have taken him?” Then said Je­sus: “Did not this Je­sus tell you, even in Gal­i­lee, that he would die, but that he would rise again?” These words star­tled the women, but the Mas­ter was so changed that they did not yet rec­og­nize him with his back turned to the dim light. And as they pon­dered his words, he ad­dressed the Mag­da­lene with a fa­mil­iar voice, say­ing, “Mary.” And when she heard that word of well-known sym­pa­thy and af­fec­tion­ate greet­ing, she knew it was the voice of the Mas­ter, and she rushed to kneel at his feet while she ex­claimed, “My Lord, and my Mas­ter!” And all of the other women rec­og­nized that it was the Mas­ter who stood be­fore them in glo­ri­fied form, and they quickly knelt be­fore him.

189:4.11These hu­man eyes were en­abled to see the mor­ontia form of Je­sus be­cause of the spe­cial min­istry of the trans­form­ers and the mid­way­ers in as­so­ci­a­tion with cer­tain of the mor­ontia per­son­al­i­ties then ac­com­pa­ny­ing Je­sus.

189:4.12As Mary sought to em­brace his feet, Je­sus said: “Touch me not, Mary, for I am not as you knew me in the flesh. In this form will I tarry with you for a sea­son be­fore I as­cend to the Fa­ther. But go, all of you, now and tell my apos­tles—and Pe­ter—that I have risen, and that you have talked with me.”

189:4.13Af­ter these women had re­cov­ered from the shock of their amaze­ment, they has­tened back to the city and to the home of Eli­jah Mark, where they re­lated to the ten apos­tles all that had hap­pened to them; but the apos­tles were not in­clined to be­lieve them. They thought at first that the women had seen a vi­sion, but when Mary Mag­da­lene re­peated the words which Je­sus had spo­ken to them, and when Pe­ter heard his name, he rushed out of the up­per cham­ber, fol­lowed closely by John, in great haste to reach the tomb and see these things for him­self.

189:4.14The women re­peated the story of talk­ing with Je­sus to the other apos­tles, but they would not be­lieve; and they would not go to find out for them­selves as had Pe­ter and John.

• wept when apostles refused to believe Jesus risen

189:5.3Pe­ter at first sug­gested that the grave had been ri­fled, that en­e­mies had stolen the body, per­haps bribed the guards. But John rea­soned that the grave would hardly have been left so or­derly if the body had been stolen, and he also raised the ques­tion as to how the ban­dages hap­pened to be left be­hind, and so ap­par­ently in­tact. And again they both went back into the tomb more closely to ex­am­ine the grave cloths. As they came out of the tomb the sec­ond time, they found Mary Mag­da­lene re­turned and weep­ing be­fore the en­trance. Mary had gone to the apos­tles be­liev­ing that Je­sus had risen from the grave, but when they all re­fused to be­lieve her re­port, she be­came down­cast and de­spair­ing. She longed to go back near the tomb, where she thought she had heard the fa­mil­iar voice of Je­sus.

• at Jesus’ appearances

189:5.4As Mary lin­gered af­ter Pe­ter and John had gone, the Mas­ter again ap­peared to her, say­ing: “Be not doubt­ing; have the cour­age to be­lieve what you have seen and heard. Go back to my apos­tles and again tell them that I have risen, that I will ap­pear to them, and that pres­ently I will go be­fore them into Gal­i­lee as I prom­ised.”

189:5.5Mary hur­ried back to the Mark home and told the apos­tles she had again talked with Je­sus, but they would not be­lieve her. But when Pe­ter and John re­turned, they ceased to ridicule and be­came filled with fear and ap­pre­hen­sion.

• chief spokesman for women’s corps; most effective teacher

190:0.5In view­ing the promi­nent part which Mary Mag­da­lene took in pro­claim­ing the Mas­ter’s res­ur­rec­tion, it should be re­corded that Mary was the chief spokesman for the women’s corps, as was Pe­ter for the apos­tles. Mary was not chief of the women work­ers, but she was their chief teacher and pub­lic spokesman. Mary had be­come a woman of great cir­cum­spec­tion, so that her bold­ness in speak­ing to a man whom she con­sid­ered to be the care­taker of Joseph’s gar­den only in­di­cates how hor­ri­fied she was to find the tomb empty. It was the depth and agony of her love, the full­ness of her de­vo­tion, that caused her to for­get, for a mo­ment, the con­ven­tional re­straints of a Jew­ish woman’s ap­proach to a strange man.

• discovered empty tomb

190:2.2The third ap­pear­ance oc­curred about noon of this Sun­day at Beth­any. Shortly af­ter noon­tide, Je­sus’ old­est brother, James, was stand­ing in the gar­den of Laz­a­rus be­fore the empty tomb of the res­ur­rected brother of Martha and Mary, turn­ing over in his mind the news brought to them about one hour pre­vi­ously by the mes­sen­ger of David. James had al­ways in­clined to be­lieve in his el­dest brother’s mis­sion on earth, but he had long since lost con­tact with Je­sus’ work and had drifted into grave doubt­ing re­gard­ing the later claims of the apos­tles that Je­sus was the Mes­siah. The whole fam­ily was star­tled and well-nigh con­founded by the news brought by the mes­sen­ger. Even as James stood be­fore Laz­a­rus’s empty tomb, Mary Mag­da­lene ar­rived on the scene and was ex­cit­edly re­lat­ing to the fam­ily her ex­pe­ri­ences of the early morn­ing hours at the tomb of Joseph. Be­fore she had fin­ished, David Zeb­e­dee and his mother ar­rived. Ruth, of course, be­lieved the re­port, and so did Jude af­ter he had talked with David and Sa­lome.

• at Jesus’ appearances

190:2.6And David did not long wait, for the fourth ap­pear­ance of Je­sus to mor­tal rec­og­ni­tion oc­curred shortly be­fore two o’clock in this very home of Martha and Mary, when he ap­peared vis­i­bly be­fore his earthly fam­ily and their friends, twenty in all. The Mas­ter ap­peared in the open back door, say­ing: “Peace be upon you. Greet­ings to those once near me in the flesh and fel­low­ship for my broth­ers and sis­ters in the king­dom of heaven. How could you doubt? Why have you lin­gered so long be­fore choos­ing to fol­low the light of truth with a whole heart? Come, there­fore, all of you into the fel­low­ship of the Spirit of Truth in the Fa­ther’s king­dom.” As they be­gan to re­cover from the first shock of their amaze­ment and to move to­ward him as if to em­brace him, he van­ished from their sight.

• at Jesus’ appearances

190:3.2Of the five mor­ontia ap­pear­ances of Je­sus oc­cur­ring up to this time, Mary Mag­da­lene had wit­nessed four.

193:0.1The six­teenth mor­ontia man­i­fes­ta­tion of Je­sus oc­curred on Fri­day, May 5, in the court­yard of Nicode­mus, about nine o’clock at night. On this evening the Je­ru­sa­lem be­liev­ers had made their first at­tempt to get to­gether since the res­ur­rec­tion. As­sem­bled here at this time were the eleven apos­tles, the women’s corps and their as­so­ciates, and about fifty other lead­ing dis­ci­ples of the Mas­ter, in­clud­ing a num­ber of the Greeks. This com­pany of be­liev­ers had been vis­it­ing in­for­mally for more than half an hour when, sud­denly, the mor­ontia Mas­ter ap­peared in full view and im­me­di­ately be­gan to in­struct them. Said Je­sus:

193:0.2“Peace be upon you. This is the most rep­re­sen­ta­tive group of be­liev­ers—apos­tles and dis­ci­ples, both men and women—to which I have ap­peared since the time of my de­liv­er­ance from the flesh. I now call you to wit­ness that I told you be­fore­hand that my so­journ among you must come to an end; I told you that pres­ently I must re­turn to the Fa­ther. And then I plainly told you how the chief priests and the rulers of the Jews would de­liver me up to be put to death, and that I would rise from the grave. Why, then, did you al­low your­selves to be­come so dis­con­certed by all this when it came to pass? and why were you so sur­prised when I rose from the tomb on the third day? You failed to be­lieve me be­cause you heard my words with­out com­pre­hend­ing the mean­ing thereof.

193:0.3“And now you should give ear to my words lest you again make the mis­take of hear­ing my teach­ing with the mind while in your hearts you fail to com­pre­hend the mean­ing. From the be­gin­ning of my so­journ as one of you, I taught you that my one pur­pose was to re­veal my Fa­ther in heaven to his chil­dren on earth. I have lived the God-re­veal­ing be­stowal that you might ex­pe­ri­ence the God-know­ing ca­reer. I have re­vealed God as your Fa­ther in heaven; I have re­vealed you as the sons of God on earth. It is a fact that God loves you, his sons. By faith in my word this fact be­comes an eter­nal and liv­ing truth in your hearts. When, by liv­ing faith, you be­come di­vinely God-con­scious, you are then born of the spirit as chil­dren of light and life, even the eter­nal life where­with you shall as­cend the uni­verse of uni­verses and at­tain the ex­pe­ri­ence of find­ing God the Fa­ther on Par­a­dise.

193:0.4“I ad­mon­ish you ever to re­mem­ber that your mis­sion among men is to pro­claim the gospel of the king­dom—the re­al­ity of the fa­ther­hood of God and the truth of the son­ship of man. Pro­claim the whole truth of the good news, not just a part of the sav­ing gospel. Your mes­sage is not changed by my res­ur­rec­tion ex­pe­ri­ence. Son­ship with God, by faith, is still the sav­ing truth of the gospel of the king­dom. You are to go forth preach­ing the love of God and the ser­vice of man. That which the world needs most to know is: Men are the sons of God, and through faith they can ac­tu­ally re­al­ize, and daily ex­pe­ri­ence, this en­nobling truth. My be­stowal should help all men to know that they are the chil­dren of God, but such knowl­edge will not suf­fice if they fail per­son­ally to faith-grasp the sav­ing truth that they are the liv­ing spirit sons of the eter­nal Fa­ther. The gospel of the king­dom is con­cerned with the love of the Fa­ther and the ser­vice of his chil­dren on earth.

193:0.5“Among your­selves, here, you share the knowl­edge that I have risen from the dead, but that is not strange. I have the power to lay down my life and to take it up again; the Fa­ther gives such power to his Par­a­dise Sons. You should the rather be stirred in your hearts by the knowl­edge that the dead of an age en­tered upon the eter­nal as­cent soon af­ter I left Joseph’s new tomb. I lived my life in the flesh to show how you can, through lov­ing ser­vice, be­come God-re­veal­ing to your fel­low men even as, by lov­ing you and serv­ing you, I have be­come God-re­veal­ing to you. I have lived among you as the Son of Man that you, and all other men, might know that you are all in­deed the sons of God. There­fore, go you now into all the world preach­ing this gospel of the king­dom of heaven to all men. Love all men as I have loved you; serve your fel­low mor­tals as I have served you. Freely you have re­ceived, freely give. Only tarry here in Je­ru­sa­lem while I go to the Fa­ther, and un­til I send you the Spirit of Truth. He shall lead you into the en­larged truth, and I will go with you into all the world. I am with you al­ways, and my peace I leave with you.”

193:0.6When the Mas­ter had spo­ken to them, he van­ished from their sight. It was near day­break be­fore these be­liev­ers dis­persed; all night they re­mained to­gether, earnestly dis­cussing the Mas­ter’s ad­mo­ni­tions and con­tem­plat­ing all that had be­fallen them. James Zeb­e­dee and oth­ers of the apos­tles also told them of their ex­pe­ri­ences with the mor­ontia Mas­ter in Gal­i­lee and re­cited how he had three times ap­peared to them.