women’s corps

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.

150:1.2Je­sus au­tho­rized these women to ef­fect their own or­ga­ni­za­tion and di­rected Ju­das to pro­vide funds for their equip­ment and for pack an­i­mals. The ten elected Su­sanna as their chief and Joanna as their trea­surer. From this time on they fur­nished their own funds; never again did they draw upon Ju­das for sup­port.

150:1.3It was most as­tound­ing in that day, when women were not even al­lowed on the main floor of the syn­a­gogue (be­ing con­fined to the women’s gallery), to be­hold them be­ing rec­og­nized as au­tho­rized teach­ers of the new gospel of the king­dom. The charge which Je­sus gave these ten women as he set them apart for gospel teach­ing and min­istry was the eman­ci­pa­tion procla­ma­tion which set free all women and for all time; no more was man to look upon woman as his spir­i­tual in­fe­rior. This was a de­cided shock to even the twelve apos­tles. Not­with­stand­ing they had many times heard the Mas­ter say that “in the king­dom of heaven there is nei­ther rich nor poor, free nor bond, male nor fe­male, all are equally the sons and daugh­ters of God,” they were lit­er­ally stunned when he pro­posed for­mally to com­mis­sion these ten women as re­li­gious teach­ers and even to per­mit their trav­el­ing about with them. The whole coun­try was stirred up by this pro­ceed­ing, the en­e­mies of Je­sus mak­ing great cap­i­tal out of this move, but ev­ery­where the women be­liev­ers in the good news stood stanchly be­hind their cho­sen sis­ters and voiced no un­cer­tain ap­proval of this tardy ac­knowl­edg­ment of woman’s place in re­li­gious work. And this lib­er­a­tion of women, giv­ing them due rec­og­ni­tion, was prac­ticed by the apos­tles im­me­di­ately af­ter the Mas­ter’s de­par­ture, al­beit they fell back to the olden cus­toms in sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions. Through­out the early days of the Chris­tian church women teach­ers and min­is­ters were called dea­conesses and were ac­corded gen­eral rec­og­ni­tion. But Paul, de­spite the fact that he con­ceded all this in the­ory, never re­ally in­cor­po­rated it into his own at­ti­tude and per­son­ally found it dif­fi­cult to carry out in prac­tice.

• women’s corps

159:0.1When Je­sus and the twelve ar­rived at Ma­g­a­dan Park, they found await­ing them a group of al­most one hun­dred evan­ge­lists and dis­ci­ples, in­clud­ing the women’s corps, and they were ready im­me­di­ately to be­gin the teach­ing and preach­ing tour of the cities of the De­capo­lis.

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.

190:1.2When the apos­tles re­fused to be­lieve the re­port of the five women who rep­re­sented that they had seen Je­sus and talked with him, Mary Mag­da­lene re­turned to the tomb, and the oth­ers went back to Joseph’s house, where they re­lated their ex­pe­ri­ences to his daugh­ter and the other women. And the women be­lieved their re­port. Shortly af­ter six o’clock the daugh­ter of Joseph of Ari­mathea and the four women who had seen Je­sus went over to the home of Nicode­mus, where they re­lated all these hap­pen­ings to Joseph, Nicode­mus, David Zeb­e­dee, and the other men there as­sem­bled. Nicode­mus and the oth­ers doubted their story, doubted that Je­sus had risen from the dead; they con­jec­tured that the Jews had re­moved the body. Joseph and David were dis­posed to be­lieve the re­port, so much so that they hur­ried out to in­spect the tomb, and they found ev­ery­thing just as the women had de­scribed. And they were the last to so view the sepul­chre, for the high priest sent the cap­tain of the tem­ple guards to the tomb at half past seven o’clock to re­move the grave cloths. The cap­tain wrapped them all up in the linen sheet and threw them over a near-by cliff.

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.

139:5.11Philip’s wife, who was an ef­fi­cient mem­ber of the women’s corps, be­came ac­tively as­so­ci­ated with her hus­band in his evan­ge­lis­tic work af­ter their flight from the Je­ru­sa­lem per­se­cu­tions. His wife was a fear­less woman. She stood at the foot of Philip’s cross en­cour­ag­ing him to pro­claim the glad tid­ings even to his mur­der­ers, and when his strength failed, she be­gan the recital of the story of sal­va­tion by faith in Je­sus and was si­lenced only when the irate Jews rushed upon her and stoned her to death. Their el­dest daugh­ter, Leah, con­tin­ued their work, later on be­com­ing the renowned prophet­ess of Hi­er­apo­lis.

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.

172:3.8As the pro­ces­sion started out from Beth­any, there was great en­thu­si­asm among the fes­tive crowd of dis­ci­ples, be­liev­ers, and vis­it­ing pil­grims, many hail­ing from Gal­i­lee and Perea. Just be­fore they started, the twelve women of the orig­i­nal women’s corps, ac­com­pa­nied by some of their as­so­ciates, ar­rived on the scene and joined this unique pro­ces­sion as it moved on joy­ously to­ward the city.

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.

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.

153:5.2And now, on top of all of these wor­ries, when they reached home, Je­sus re­fused to eat. For hours he iso­lated him­self in one of the up­per rooms. It was al­most mid­night when Joab, the leader of the evan­ge­lists, re­turned and re­ported that about one third of his as­so­ciates had de­serted the cause. All through the evening loyal dis­ci­ples had come and gone, re­port­ing that the re­vul­sion of feel­ing to­ward the Mas­ter was gen­eral in Ca­per­naum. The lead­ers from Je­ru­sa­lem were not slow to feed this feel­ing of dis­af­fec­tion and in ev­ery way pos­si­ble to seek to pro­mote the move­ment away from Je­sus and his teach­ings. Dur­ing these try­ing hours the twelve women were in ses­sion over at Pe­ter’s house. They were tremen­dously up­set, but none of them de­serted.

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.

165:0.2Through­out this tour of Perea the women’s corps, now num­ber­ing sixty-two, took over most of the work of min­is­tra­tion to the sick. This was the fi­nal pe­riod of the de­vel­op­ment of the higher spir­i­tual as­pects of the gospel of the king­dom, and there was, ac­cord­ingly, an ab­sence of mir­a­cle work­ing. No other part of Pales­tine was so thor­oughly worked by the apos­tles and dis­ci­ples of Je­sus, and in no other re­gion did the bet­ter classes of cit­i­zens so gen­er­ally ac­cept the Mas­ter’s teach­ing.