sick, the

141:8.1Through­out the four weeks’ so­journ at Beth­any be­yond Jor­dan, sev­eral times each week An­drew would as­sign apos­tolic cou­ples to go up to Jeri­cho for a day or two. John had many be­liev­ers in Jeri­cho, and the ma­jor­ity of them wel­comed the more ad­vanced teach­ings of Je­sus and his apos­tles. On these Jeri­cho vis­its the apos­tles be­gan more specif­i­cally to carry out Je­sus’ in­struc­tions to min­is­ter to the sick; they vis­ited ev­ery house in the city and sought to com­fort ev­ery af­flicted per­son.

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.

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.

151:0.2Je­sus had not fully re­cov­ered from the sor­row of his re­cent re­jec­tion at Naz­a­reth; the apos­tles were aware of a pe­cu­liar sad­ness min­gled with his usual cheer­ful de­meanor. James and John were with him much of the time, Pe­ter be­ing more than oc­cu­pied with the many re­spon­si­bil­i­ties hav­ing to do with the wel­fare and di­rec­tion of the new corps of evan­ge­lists. This time of wait­ing be­fore start­ing for the Pass­over at Je­ru­sa­lem, the women spent in vis­it­ing from house to house, teach­ing the gospel, and min­is­ter­ing to the sick in Ca­per­naum and the sur­round­ing cities and vil­lages.

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.

90:4.3The more prim­i­tive tribes greatly feared the sick, and for long ages they were care­fully avoided, shame­fully ne­glected. It was a great ad­vance in hu­man­i­tar­i­an­ism when the evo­lu­tion of shaman­craft pro­duced priests and med­i­cine men who con­sented to treat dis­ease. Then it be­came cus­tom­ary for the en­tire clan to crowd into the sick­room to as­sist the shaman in howl­ing the dis­ease ghosts away. It was not un­com­mon for a woman to be the di­ag­nos­ing shaman, while a man would ad­min­is­ter treat­ment. The usual method of di­ag­nos­ing dis­ease was to ex­am­ine the en­trails of an an­i­mal.

163:4.156. Min­istry to the sick. The sev­enty were charged by Pe­ter to search out the sick in mind and body and to do ev­ery­thing in their power to bring about the al­le­vi­a­tion or cure of their mal­adies.

141:8.2The apos­tles did some pub­lic work in Jeri­cho, but their ef­forts were chiefly of a more quiet and per­sonal na­ture. They now made the dis­cov­ery that the good news of the king­dom was very com­fort­ing to the sick; that their mes­sage car­ried heal­ing for the af­flicted. And it was in Jeri­cho that Je­sus’ com­mis­sion to the twelve to preach the glad tid­ings of the king­dom and min­is­ter to the af­flicted was first fully car­ried into ef­fect.

163:1.4“And ev­ery­where you go, preach, say­ing, ‘The king­dom of heaven is at hand,’ and min­is­ter to all who may be sick in ei­ther mind or body. Freely you have re­ceived of the good things of the king­dom; freely give. If the peo­ple of any city re­ceive you, they shall find an abun­dant en­trance into the Fa­ther’s king­dom; but if the peo­ple of any city refuse to re­ceive this gospel, still shall you pro­claim your mes­sage as you de­part from that un­be­liev­ing com­mu­nity, say­ing, even as you leave, to those who re­ject your teach­ing: ‘Not­with­stand­ing you re­ject the truth, it re­mains that the king­dom of God has come near you.’ He who hears you hears me. And he who hears me hears Him who sent me. He who re­jects your gospel mes­sage re­jects me. And he who re­jects me re­jects Him who sent me.”

190:3.1The fifth mor­ontia man­i­fes­ta­tion of Je­sus to the rec­og­ni­tion of mor­tal eyes oc­curred in the pres­ence of some twenty-five women be­liev­ers as­sem­bled at the home of Joseph of Ari­mathea, at about fif­teen min­utes past four o’clock on this same Sun­day af­ter­noon. Mary Mag­da­lene had re­turned to Joseph’s house just a few min­utes be­fore this ap­pear­ance. James, Je­sus’ brother, had re­quested that noth­ing be said to the apos­tles con­cern­ing the Mas­ter’s ap­pear­ance at Beth­any. He had not asked Mary to re­frain from re­port­ing the oc­cur­rence to her sis­ter be­liev­ers. Ac­cord­ingly, af­ter Mary had pledged all the women to se­crecy, she pro­ceeded to re­late what had so re­cently hap­pened while she was with Je­sus’ fam­ily at Beth­any. And she was in the very midst of this thrilling recital when a sud­den and solemn hush fell over them; they be­held in their very midst the fully vis­i­ble form of the risen Je­sus. He greeted them, say­ing: “Peace be upon you. In the fel­low­ship of the king­dom there shall be nei­ther Jew nor gen­tile, rich nor poor, free nor bond, man nor woman. You also are called to pub­lish the good news of the lib­erty of man­kind through the gospel of son­ship with God in the king­dom of heaven. Go to all the world pro­claim­ing this gospel and con­firm­ing be­liev­ers in the faith thereof. And while you do this, for­get not to min­is­ter to the sick and strengthen those who are faint­hearted and fear-rid­den. And I will be with you al­ways, even to the ends of the earth.” And when he had thus spo­ken, he van­ished from their sight, while the women fell on their faces and wor­shiped in si­lence.

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.

163:4.32. While min­is­ter­ing to the sick, re­frain from teach­ing the ex­pec­ta­tion of mir­a­cles.