physicians

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.

121:8.83. The Gospel by Luke. Luke, the physi­cian of An­ti­och in Pi­sidia, was a gen­tile con­vert of Paul, and he wrote quite a dif­fer­ent story of the Mas­ter’s life. He be­gan to fol­low Paul and learn of the life and teach­ings of Je­sus in A.D. 47. Luke pre­serves much of the “grace of the Lord Je­sus Christ” in his rec­ord as he gath­ered up these facts from Paul and oth­ers. Luke pre­sents the Mas­ter as “the friend of pub­li­cans and sin­ners.” He did not for­mu­late his many notes into the Gospel un­til af­ter Paul’s death. Luke wrote in the year 82 in Achaia. He planned three books deal­ing with the his­tory of Christ and Chris­tian­ity but died in A.D. 90 just be­fore he fin­ished the sec­ond of these works, the “Acts of the Apos­tles.”

164:3.153. But Je­sus had a third rea­son for re­sort­ing to these ma­te­rial means in con­nec­tion with this unique trans­ac­tion: This was a mir­a­cle wrought purely in obe­di­ence to his own choos­ing, and thereby he de­sired to teach his fol­low­ers of that day and all sub­se­quent ages to re­frain from de­spis­ing or ne­glect­ing ma­te­rial means in the heal­ing of the sick. He wanted to teach them that they must cease to re­gard mir­a­cles as the only method of cur­ing hu­man dis­eases.

152:0.2As Je­sus went along with Jairus, the large crowd which had heard the fa­ther’s re­quest fol­lowed on to see what would hap­pen. Shortly be­fore they reached the ruler’s house, as they has­tened through a nar­row street and as the throng jos­tled him, Je­sus sud­denly stopped, ex­claim­ing, “Some­one touched me.” And when those who were near him de­nied that they had touched him, Pe­ter spoke up: “Mas­ter, you can see that this crowd presses you, threat­en­ing to crush us, and yet you say ‘some­one has touched me.’ What do you mean?” Then Je­sus said: “I asked who touched me, for I per­ceived that liv­ing en­ergy had gone forth from me.” As Je­sus looked about him, his eyes fell upon a near-by woman, who, com­ing for­ward, knelt at his feet and said: “For years I have been af­flicted with a scourg­ing hem­or­rhage. I have suf­fered many things from many physi­cians; I have spent all my sub­stance, but none could cure me. Then I heard of you, and I thought if I may but touch the hem of his gar­ment, I shall cer­tainly be made whole. And so I pressed for­ward with the crowd as it moved along un­til, stand­ing near you, Mas­ter, I touched the bor­der of your gar­ment, and I was made whole; I know that I have been healed of my af­flic­tion.”