The Twelve Apostles

139:11.1Si­mon Ze­lo­tes, the eleventh apos­tle, was cho­sen by Si­mon Pe­ter. He was an able man of good an­ces­try and lived with his fam­ily at Ca­per­naum. He was twenty-eight years old when he be­came at­tached to the apos­tles. He was a fiery ag­i­ta­tor and was also a man who spoke much with­out think­ing. He had been a mer­chant in Ca­per­naum be­fore he turned his en­tire at­ten­tion to the pa­tri­otic or­ga­ni­za­tion of the Zealots.

139:11.2Si­mon Ze­lo­tes was given charge of the di­ver­sions and re­lax­ation of the apos­tolic group, and he was a very ef­fi­cient or­ga­nizer of the play life and recre­ational ac­tiv­i­ties of the twelve.

139:11.3Si­mon’s strength was his in­spi­ra­tional loy­alty. When the apos­tles found a man or woman who floun­dered in in­de­ci­sion about en­ter­ing the king­dom, they would send for Si­mon. It usu­ally re­quired only about fif­teen min­utes for this en­thu­si­as­tic ad­vo­cate of sal­va­tion through faith in God to set­tle all doubts and re­move all in­de­ci­sion, to see a new soul born into the “lib­erty of faith and the joy of sal­va­tion.”

139:11.4Si­mon’s great weak­ness was his ma­te­rial-mind­ed­ness. He could not quickly change him­self from a Jew­ish na­tion­al­ist to a spir­i­tu­ally minded in­ter­na­tion­al­ist. Four years was too short a time in which to make such an in­tel­lec­tual and emo­tional trans­for­ma­tion, but Je­sus was al­ways pa­tient with him.

139:11.5The one thing about Je­sus which Si­mon so much ad­mired was the Mas­ter’s calm­ness, his as­sur­ance, poise, and in­ex­pli­ca­ble com­po­sure.

139:11.6Al­though Si­mon was a ra­bid rev­o­lu­tion­ist, a fear­less fire­brand of ag­i­ta­tion, he grad­u­ally sub­dued his fiery na­ture un­til he be­came a pow­er­ful and ef­fec­tive preacher of “Peace on earth and good will among men.” Si­mon was a great de­bater; he did like to ar­gue. And when it came to deal­ing with the le­gal­is­tic minds of the ed­u­cated Jews or the in­tel­lec­tual quib­blings of the Greeks, the task was al­ways as­signed to Si­mon.

139:11.7He was a rebel by na­ture and an icon­o­clast by train­ing, but Je­sus won him for the higher con­cepts of the king­dom of heaven. He had al­ways iden­ti­fied him­self with the party of protest, but he now joined the party of prog­ress, un­lim­ited and eter­nal pro­gres­sion of spirit and truth. Si­mon was a man of in­tense loy­al­ties and warm per­sonal de­vo­tions, and he did pro­foundly love Je­sus.

139:11.8Je­sus was not afraid to iden­tify him­self with busi­ness men, la­bor­ing men, op­ti­mists, pes­simists, philoso­phers, skep­tics, pub­li­cans, politi­cians, and pa­tri­ots.

139:11.9The Mas­ter had many talks with Si­mon, but he never fully suc­ceeded in mak­ing an in­ter­na­tion­al­ist out of this ar­dent Jew­ish na­tion­al­ist. Je­sus of­ten told Si­mon that it was proper to want to see the so­cial, eco­nomic, and po­lit­i­cal or­ders im­proved, but he would al­ways add: “That is not the busi­ness of the king­dom of heaven. We must be ded­i­cated to the do­ing of the Fa­ther’s will. Our busi­ness is to be am­bas­sadors of a spir­i­tual gov­ern­ment on high, and we must not im­me­di­ately con­cern our­selves with aught but the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the will and char­ac­ter of the di­vine Fa­ther who stands at the head of the gov­ern­ment whose cre­den­tials we bear.” It was all dif­fi­cult for Si­mon to com­pre­hend, but grad­u­ally he be­gan to grasp some­thing of the mean­ing of the Mas­ter’s teach­ing.

139:11.10Af­ter the dis­per­sion be­cause of the Je­ru­sa­lem per­se­cu­tions, Si­mon went into tem­po­rary re­tire­ment. He was lit­er­ally crushed. As a na­tion­al­ist pa­triot he had sur­ren­dered in def­er­ence to Je­sus’ teach­ings; now all was lost. He was in de­spair, but in a few years he ral­lied his hopes and went forth to pro­claim the gospel of the king­dom.

139:11.11He went to Alexan­dria and, af­ter work­ing up the Nile, pen­e­trated into the heart of Africa, ev­ery­where preach­ing the gospel of Je­sus and bap­tiz­ing be­liev­ers. Thus he la­bored un­til he was an old man and fee­ble. And he died and was buried in the heart of Africa.