Establishing The Kingdom's First Hospital 

The kingdom's first hospital was a temporary one set up in tents not far from a large training camp at Bethsaida in Galilee during the summer of 28 CE. It was supervised by Elman, a Syrian physician, with the help of thirty-seven men and women. During the months that the hospital was in operation, Elman and his staff treated approximately one thousand sick and afflicted individuals. Jesus often visited the hospital to minister to the patients.

From May 3 to October 3 of 28 CE, Jesus and his apostles resided at the Zebedee home in Bethsaida on the northwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee. Camped nearby were Jesus’ evangelists and followers, numbering between five and fifteen hundred during this five-month period. He and the apostles would instruct the evangelists each day.

Some of the camp’s visitors came to be healed rather than to be taught. They were segregated and put under the supervision of a believer-physician, a Syrian named Elman. Noting his skills and the large number of the sick coming to the camp, Jesus asked Elman to establish a care facility. Twenty-five young women and twelve men volunteered to assist Elman. For four months, they organized and operated the kingdom’s first hospital.

This infirmary was located a short distance south of the main tented city where the evangelists were staying and being taught. Elman and his staff treated the sick according to the methods of the day and by spiritual practices of prayer and faith encouragement. Jesus visited the sick at this encampment not less than three times a week and made personal contact with each sufferer.

No so-called miracles or supernatural healing occurred among the one thousand who came and went away, improved or cured. However, the vast majority proclaimed that Jesus had healed them. Many of the cures did, indeed, appear to resemble the working of miracles, but they were only transformations of mind and spirit that occur in faith-dominated people under the inspirational influence of a strong, positive, and beneficent personality whose ministry banishes fear and destroys anxiety. 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.

Elman 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 were caused by unclean spirits was almost universal. Many of those cured believed that Jesus cast out these imagined spirits.

The camp disbanded in early October, a short time before the winter season arrived.