The Twelve Apostles

139:1.1An­drew, chair­man of the apos­tolic corps of the king­dom, was born in Ca­per­naum. He was the old­est child in a fam­ily of five—him­self, his brother Si­mon, and three sis­ters. His fa­ther, now dead, had been a part­ner of Zeb­e­dee in the fish-dry­ing busi­ness at Beth­saida, the fish­ing har­bor of Ca­per­naum. When he be­came an apos­tle, An­drew was un­mar­ried but made his home with his mar­ried brother, Si­mon Pe­ter. Both were fish­er­men and part­ners of James and John the sons of Zeb­e­dee.

139:1.2In A.D. 26, the year he was cho­sen as an apos­tle, An­drew was 33, a full year older than Je­sus and the old­est of the apos­tles. He sprang from an ex­cel­lent line of an­ces­tors and was the ablest man of the twelve. Ex­cept­ing or­a­tory, he was the peer of his as­so­ciates in al­most ev­ery imag­in­able abil­ity. Je­sus never gave An­drew a nick­name, a fra­ter­nal des­ig­na­tion. But even as the apos­tles soon be­gan to call Je­sus Mas­ter, so they also des­ig­nated An­drew by a term the equiv­a­lent of Chief.

139:1.3An­drew was a good or­ga­nizer but a bet­ter ad­min­is­tra­tor. He was one of the in­ner cir­cle of four apos­tles, but his ap­point­ment by Je­sus as the head of the apos­tolic group made it nec­es­sary for him to re­main on duty with his breth­ren while the other three en­joyed very close com­mu­nion with the Mas­ter. To the very end An­drew re­mained dean of the apos­tolic corps.

139:1.4Al­though An­drew was never an ef­fec­tive preacher, he was an ef­fi­cient per­sonal worker, be­ing the pi­o­neer mis­sion­ary of the king­dom in that, as the first cho­sen apos­tle, he im­me­di­ately brought to Je­sus his brother, Si­mon, who sub­se­quently be­came one of the great­est preach­ers of the king­dom. An­drew was the chief sup­porter of Je­sus’ pol­icy of uti­liz­ing the pro­gram of per­sonal work as a means of train­ing the twelve as mes­sen­gers of the king­dom.

139:1.5Whether Je­sus pri­vately taught the apos­tles or preached to the mul­ti­tude, An­drew was usu­ally con­ver­sant with what was go­ing on; he was an un­der­stand­ing ex­ec­u­tive and an ef­fi­cient ad­min­is­tra­tor. He ren­dered a prompt de­ci­sion on ev­ery mat­ter brought to his no­tice un­less he deemed the prob­lem one be­yond the do­main of his au­thor­ity, in which event he would take it straight to Je­sus.

139:1.6An­drew and Pe­ter were very un­like in char­ac­ter and tem­per­a­ment, but it must be re­corded ev­er­last­ingly to their credit that they got along to­gether splen­didly. An­drew was never jeal­ous of Pe­ter’s or­a­tor­i­cal abil­ity. Not of­ten will an older man of An­drew’s type be ob­served ex­ert­ing such a pro­found in­flu­ence over a younger and tal­ented brother. An­drew and Pe­ter never seemed to be in the least jeal­ous of each other’s abil­i­ties or achieve­ments. Late on the evening of the day of Pen­te­cost, when, largely through the en­er­getic and in­spir­ing preach­ing of Pe­ter, two thou­sand souls were added to the king­dom, An­drew said to his brother: “I could not do that, but I am glad I have a brother who could.” To which Pe­ter replied: “And but for your bring­ing me to the Mas­ter and by your stead­fast­ness keep­ing me with him, I should not have been here to do this.” An­drew and Pe­ter were the ex­cep­tions to the rule, prov­ing that even broth­ers can live to­gether peace­ably and work to­gether ef­fec­tively.

139:1.7Af­ter Pen­te­cost Pe­ter was fa­mous, but it never ir­ri­tated the older An­drew to spend the rest of his life be­ing in­tro­duced as “Si­mon Pe­ter’s brother.”

139:1.8Of all the apos­tles, An­drew was the best judge of men. He knew that trou­ble was brew­ing in the heart of Ju­das Is­car­iot even when none of the oth­ers sus­pected that any­thing was wrong with their trea­surer; but he told none of them his fears. An­drew’s great ser­vice to the king­dom was in ad­vis­ing Pe­ter, James, and John con­cern­ing the choice of the first mis­sion­ar­ies who were sent out to pro­claim the gospel, and also in coun­sel­ing these early lead­ers about the or­ga­ni­za­tion of the ad­min­is­tra­tive af­fairs of the king­dom. An­drew had a great gift for dis­cov­er­ing the hid­den re­sources and la­tent tal­ents of young peo­ple.

139:1.9Very soon af­ter Je­sus’ as­cen­sion on high, An­drew be­gan the writ­ing of a per­sonal rec­ord of many of the say­ings and do­ings of his de­parted Mas­ter. Af­ter An­drew’s death other copies of this pri­vate rec­ord were made and cir­cu­lated freely among the early teach­ers of the Chris­tian church. These in­for­mal notes of An­drew’s were sub­se­quently edited, amended, al­tered, and added to un­til they made up a fairly con­sec­u­tive nar­ra­tive of the Mas­ter’s life on earth. The last of these few al­tered and amended copies was de­stroyed by fire at Alexan­dria about one hun­dred years af­ter the orig­i­nal was writ­ten by the first cho­sen of the twelve apos­tles.

139:1.10An­drew was a man of clear in­sight, log­i­cal thought, and firm de­ci­sion, whose great strength of char­ac­ter con­sisted in his su­perb sta­bil­ity. His tem­per­a­men­tal hand­i­cap was his lack of en­thu­si­asm; he many times failed to en­cour­age his as­so­ciates by ju­di­cious com­men­da­tion. And this ret­i­cence to praise the wor­thy ac­com­plish­ments of his friends grew out of his ab­hor­rence of flat­tery and in­sin­cer­ity. An­drew was one of those all-round, even-tem­pered, self-made, and suc­cess­ful men of mod­est af­fairs.

139:1.11Ev­ery one of the apos­tles loved Je­sus, but it re­mains true that each of the twelve was drawn to­ward him be­cause of some cer­tain trait of per­son­al­ity which made a spe­cial ap­peal to the in­di­vid­ual apos­tle. An­drew ad­mired Je­sus be­cause of his con­sis­tent sin­cer­ity, his un­af­fected dig­nity. When men once knew Je­sus, they were pos­sessed with the urge to share him with their friends; they re­ally wanted all the world to know him.

139:1.12When the later per­se­cu­tions fi­nally scat­tered the apos­tles from Je­ru­sa­lem, An­drew jour­neyed through Ar­me­nia, Asia Mi­nor, and Mace­do­nia and, af­ter bring­ing many thou­sands into the king­dom, was fi­nally ap­pre­hended and cru­ci­fied in Pa­trae in Achaia. It was two full days be­fore this ro­bust man ex­pired on the cross, and through­out these tragic hours he con­tin­ued ef­fec­tively to pro­claim the glad tid­ings of the sal­va­tion of the king­dom of heaven.