Paper 149 Overview: The Second Preaching Tour

The second preaching tour of Galilee, extending from October 3 to December 30, constituted a pivotal expansion of Jesus' ministry, as he incorporated 117 newly trained evangelists alongside his twelve apostles to disseminate the gospel of the kingdom throughout numerous Galilean cities and villages. This three-month period witnessed the emergence of a distinctive phenomenon of spontaneous healings: manifestations of restorative power that Jesus attributed to the confluence of human faith, his own inherent divine healing capabilities, and the sovereign will of the Universal Father, rather than to deliberate miraculous intervention. The tour functioned primarily as a practical training ground for the evangelists under apostolic supervision, while Jesus continued his deeper spiritual teachings through intimate evening sessions with believers.

Throughout this period, Jesus' growing popular acclaim as a healer contrasted sharply with the mounting antagonism from religious authorities in Jerusalem, who began actively plotting against him following several high-profile conversions. Jesus delivered profound teachings on spiritual growth and transformation, including discourses on mastering anger, developing balanced character, cultivating genuine contentment, and evolving from the primitive fear of God to mature spiritual love for the Universal Father. The tour concluded with a return to Bethsaida, where, after a brief period of collective rejuvenation, approximately two-thirds of the original evangelists recommitted to the kingdom work, having passed this practical test of ministry experience, while the others departed, unable to withstand the challenges of active service.

The second public preaching tour of Galilee commenced on Sunday, October 3, and continued for almost three months, concluding on December 30. Jesus and his twelve apostles were accompanied by the newly recruited corps of 117 evangelists and numerous other interested individuals as they visited a wide range of cities and villages, including Gadara, Ptolemais, Japhia, Dabaritta, Megiddo, Jezreel, Scythopolis, Tarichea, Hippos, Gamala, Bethsaida-Julias, and many other communities. Prior to their departure, Andrew and Peter requested that Jesus give the final charge to the new evangelists, but the Master declined, stating that this was "not his province to do those things which others could acceptably perform." After deliberation, James Zebedee was selected to administer the charge, following which Jesus briefly addressed the evangelists, promising that when they demonstrated competence and faithfulness, he would ordain them to preach the gospel of the kingdom.

The organizational structure of the tour featured Jesus and John traveling together extensively, while Peter and the other apostles each took approximately one dozen evangelists under their supervision, maintaining close contact as they proclaimed the message of the kingdom. As individuals became ready to enter the kingdom, the apostles would administer baptism to these new believers. Throughout these three months, Jesus and his companions traveled widely, often visiting two cities in a single day to observe the evangelists' work and encourage their efforts to establish the kingdom. Concurrent with the traveling ministry, David Zebedee maintained a permanent headquarters at his father's house in Bethsaida, serving as a clearinghouse for kingdom activities and operating a messenger service with forty to fifty individuals who carried information between workers across Palestine and adjacent regions. The entire enterprise constituted principally an effort to provide practical field experience for the newly trained corps of 117 evangelists.

By the time the encampment at Bethsaida had been disbanded, Jesus' reputation as a healer had permeated all parts of Palestine and extended throughout Syria and surrounding countries. For weeks following their departure from Bethsaida, afflicted individuals continued to arrive seeking the Master, and upon learning from David of Jesus' whereabouts, would pursue him in hopes of healing. Significantly, Jesus did not deliberately perform any designated miracles of healing during this tour; nevertheless, scores of afflicted persons experienced restoration of health and happiness through the reconstructive power of their intense faith. During this mission, a remarkable and unexplained series of healing phenomena began to manifest, a pattern that continued throughout Jesus' remaining time on earth, wherein more than one hundred men, women, and children from various regions benefited from what appeared to be unconscious healing by Jesus, despite his explicit instructions to the beneficiaries to "tell no man."

The nature of these spontaneous healings was never fully revealed to the apostles, except that Jesus occasionally remarked, "I perceive that power has gone forth from me" or, upon being touched by an ailing child, "I perceive that life has gone forth from me." In the absence of direct explanation from the Master regarding these phenomena, the Midwayer Commission offers their perspective, suggesting that these apparent miracles resulted from the convergence of three powerful and associated influences: first, the strong, dominant faith in the heart of the seeker who desired healing primarily for spiritual rather than merely physical benefits; second, the presence of the incarnated Creator Son with his nearly unlimited healing powers and compassionate nature; and third, the alignment with the Father's will, creating a situation wherein "What the Creator Son desires and the eternal Father wills IS." This combination of human faith and divine power allowed Jesus to "suffer men to heal themselves in his presence" through their powerful personal faith, a fact starkly contrasted by examples of those seeking healing for selfish purposes, such as the wealthy widow from Tyre who unsuccessfully attempted to purchase healing with increasing sums of money.

Jesus possessed unprecedented insight into the minds and hearts of humanity, and had his teachings been preserved precisely as he presented them, with only the inspired interpretation afforded by his exemplary life, all nations and religions would have rapidly embraced the gospel of the kingdom. However, the well-intentioned efforts of Jesus' early followers to restate his teachings to enhance their acceptability to particular nations, races, and religions paradoxically rendered them less acceptable to all others, creating barriers that have persisted throughout subsequent history. These adaptations, while aimed at broader appeal, ultimately diluted the universal resonance of Jesus' original message and fragmented its reception across diverse cultural contexts.

The Apostle Paul and other early teachers of Jesus' gospel made two fundamental mistakes that profoundly affected the trajectory of Christianity and obscured the Master's true message. First, they tried to link the gospel message to Jewish theology, especially through the doctrine of atonement by portraying Jesus as a sacrificed Son who satisfied divine justice and calmed divine wrath. While this was meant to make the gospel more acceptable to skeptical Jews, it ended up confusing and distancing many sincere seekers over the generations. Second, they organized Christian teaching excessively around the person of Jesus rather than his transformative message, an overemphasis that obscured his actual teachings and made it increasingly difficult for Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and other Eastern religionists to accept Jesus' spiritual insights. Teachers of Jesus' religion should approach other faiths by recognizing shared truths, many derived directly or indirectly from Jesus' message, while refraining from emphasizing differences, thereby fostering unity rather than division in spiritual understanding and facilitating the universal appeal of Jesus' teachings on the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of humanity.

Despite Jesus' favorable reception among the common people, the religious authorities in Jerusalem became increasingly alarmed and antagonistic toward him as his ministry expanded. A fundamental contrast in teaching methodologies underscored this growing divide: the Pharisees had formulated a systematic and dogmatic theology, while Jesus taught situationally, drawing lessons from life itself and employing parables rather than rigid doctrinal formulations. When utilizing parables to illustrate his message, Jesus typically designed them to emphasize just one specific feature for his teaching purpose, and many subsequent misinterpretations have resulted from attempts to construct elaborate allegories from these simple illustrative stories, thus complicating what was intended as straightforward spiritual instruction.

The religious leaders in Jerusalem were approaching a state of frenzy due to recent developments, particularly the conversion of young Abraham and the desertion of three spies who had been baptized by Peter and were now actively participating in the evangelistic tour of Galilee. Fear and prejudice increasingly blinded these Jewish leaders, hardening their hearts through continued rejection of the appealing truths contained in the gospel of the kingdom. Jesus had earlier explained to the evangelists at the Bethsaida camp that while humans react individually in body and mind (emotionally), the indwelling spirit represents the only uniform element, and that despite variations in experience, divine spirits respond uniformly to spiritual appeals, making possible the attainment of unity and brotherhood through this spiritual connection. Unfortunately, many Jewish leaders had closed their hearts to such spiritual appeals, and from this point forward, they ceased not to plan and plot for Jesus' destruction, having convinced themselves that he must be apprehended, convicted, and executed as a religious offender who violated the cardinal teachings of Jewish sacred law.

During this preaching tour, Jesus conducted limited public teaching but held numerous evening classes with believers in most cities and villages where he, James, and John sojourned. In one such evening session, a younger evangelist inquired about the nature of anger, prompting Jesus to deliver a profound response that characterized anger as "a material manifestation which represents, in a general way, the measure of the failure of the spiritual nature to gain control of the combined intellectual and physical natures." This insightful definition identified anger as evidence of deficient brotherly love and inadequate self-control, with Jesus citing numerous scriptural references about anger's detrimental effects on health, mind, and spiritual development. He concluded his teaching on this subject by emphasizing that hearts dominated by love enable the spirit guide to more easily deliver individuals from "those outbursts of animal anger which are inconsistent with the status of divine sonship."

During this same gathering, Jesus discussed the importance of developing well-balanced character, acknowledging that while most individuals necessarily devote themselves to mastering specific vocations, they should avoid overspecialization and narrow-mindedness in life's activities. He warned that any virtue, when carried to extremes, can transform into vice, and consistently advocated temperance and proportionate adjustment in addressing life's problems. Jesus cautioned that excessive sympathy might degenerate into serious emotional instability, enthusiasm could evolve into fanaticism, and even courage and faith might lead unthinking souls toward recklessness and presumption if not balanced with prudence and discretion. What most impressed his associates, however, was not merely the content of Jesus' teaching on balanced character but the eloquent exemplification of these principles in his own life. He maintained perfect equilibrium amid stress and conflict, never wavering when enemies laid snares or attempted to entrap him in debate, consistently providing answers that were enlightening, dignified, and conclusive without ever resorting to ignoble tactics, even when confronted with continuous pressure from adversaries who employed every sort of false, unfair, and unrighteous mode of attack.

While visiting the group of evangelists working under Simon Zelotes' supervision, Jesus was asked during an evening conference why some persons experienced greater happiness and contentment than others, and whether contentment was fundamentally a matter of religious experience. In his comprehensive response, Jesus acknowledged that natural temperament plays a role in happiness, stating, "Some persons are naturally more happy than others," but emphasized that the primary determinant is "the willingness of man to be led and directed by the Father's spirit which lives within him." Drawing from scripture, Jesus quoted extensively from wisdom literature about finding satisfaction from within rather than from external circumstances, including passages describing how "the spirit of man is the candle of the Lord," how "a good man shall be satisfied from within himself," and how "a merry heart makes a cheerful countenance and is a continual feast." These references established the spiritual foundation for authentic contentment as contrasted with materialistic pursuits of happiness.

Jesus further explained that much human sorrow originates from disappointed ambitions and wounded pride, reflecting the internal soil from which discontent grows rather than external conditions. While acknowledging that individuals have a duty to make the best of their lives on earth through sincere exertion, he counseled that once having done so, they should "cheerfully accept their lot and exercise ingenuity in making the most of that which has fallen to their hands." He cautioned against seeking "false peace and transient joy," directing his followers instead toward "the assurance of faith and the sureties of divine sonship which yield composure, contentment, and supreme joy in the spirit." Jesus' perspective on earthly existence diverged significantly from the prevailing pessimistic view of the world as a "vale of tears"; instead, he regarded it as the birth sphere of eternal and immortal spirits, "the vale of soul making," where character is developed through meaningful engagement with life's challenges rather than through detachment or ascetic withdrawal from worldly experience.

At Gamala, during an evening conference, Philip approached Jesus with a profound theological question regarding the apparent contradiction between scriptural instructions to "fear the Lord" and Jesus' teaching about approaching the Father without fear. The Master's response illuminated the evolutionary nature of religious understanding, explaining, "In the beginning it was only through fear that man could learn reverence, but I have come to reveal the Father's love so that you will be attracted to the worship of the Eternal by the drawing of a son's affectionate recognition and reciprocation of the Father's profound and perfect love." Jesus sought to liberate his followers from the "bondage of driving yourselves through slavish fear to the irksome service of a jealous and wrathful King-God" and instead instruct them in the father-son relationship that leads to "sublime and supernal free worship of a loving, just, and merciful Father-God."

Jesus articulated how the concept of "fear of the Lord" had undergone a profound evolution throughout religious history, progressing from primitive fear through stages of anguish and dread to eventually reach awe and reverence. His mission involved leading humanity further along this spiritual trajectory, advancing from reverence through recognition, realization, and appreciation to genuine love, transforming the fundamental relationship between humans and God. He contrasted the developmental stages of this relationship using the parent-child analogy: just as intelligent children do not fear their father to receive gifts but rather love him in recognition of his affection, spiritually mature individuals worship God not out of dread but through appreciation of his loving nature. Jesus emphasized that ancient forebears feared God because of his might and mystery, but his followers should adore God for his "magnificent in love, plenteous in mercy, and glorious in truth." This evolutionary perspective culminated in Jesus' declaration that "In the kingdom of heaven, which I have come to declare, there is no high and mighty king; this kingdom is a divine family," transforming the understanding of God from a distant sovereign to be feared into a loving Father to be embraced in a relationship of spiritual kinship.

Following Jesus' instructions and with Andrew's approval, David at Bethsaida dispatched messengers to the various preaching groups with directions to terminate the tour and return to Bethsaida by Thursday, December 30. By suppertime on that rainy day, all members of the apostolic party and the teaching evangelists had converged at the Zebedee home, bringing the formal tour to its conclusion. The entire group remained together over the Sabbath, finding accommodation in homes throughout Bethsaida and nearby Capernaum, after which they were granted a two-week recess to visit their families, reconnect with friends, or engage in fishing—providing a well-deserved respite after their intensive ministry efforts. The brief days they spent together in Bethsaida proved exhilarating and inspiring for all participants, particularly for the more experienced teachers who found themselves edified by listening to the younger preachers narrate their experiences in the field.

The tour served as a rigorous practical examination of the evangelists' commitment and aptitude for kingdom service, with only about seventy-five of the original 117 participants successfully completing this test of actual experience and returning for reassignment at the conclusion of the two-week break. The attrition of approximately one-third of the evangelistic corps highlighted the challenges inherent in transitioning from theoretical understanding to practical ministry in often difficult circumstances. During this interim period between tours, Jesus remained at the Zebedee home along with Andrew, Peter, James, and John, engaging in extensive conferences concerning the welfare and extension of the kingdom. These strategic planning sessions allowed the core leadership to evaluate the recently completed tour, integrate lessons learned from this practical experience, and develop refined approaches for the continuing expansion of their ministry throughout Palestine, laying the groundwork for the subsequent phases of Jesus' public work and the progressive training of his apostles and evangelists.