The Twelve Apostles

139:4.1When he be­came an apos­tle, John was twenty-four years old and was the young­est of the twelve. He was un­mar­ried and lived with his par­ents at Beth­saida; he was a fish­er­man and worked with his brother James in part­ner­ship with An­drew and Pe­ter. Both be­fore and af­ter be­com­ing an apos­tle, John func­tioned as the per­sonal agent of Je­sus in deal­ing with the Mas­ter’s fam­ily, and he con­tin­ued to bear this re­spon­si­bil­ity as long as Mary the mother of Je­sus lived.

139:4.2Since John was the young­est of the twelve and so closely as­so­ci­ated with Je­sus in his fam­ily af­fairs, he was very dear to the Mas­ter, but it can­not be truth­fully said that he was “the dis­ci­ple whom Je­sus loved.” You would hardly sus­pect such a mag­nan­i­mous per­son­al­ity as Je­sus to be guilty of show­ing fa­voritism, of lov­ing one of his apos­tles more than the oth­ers. The fact that John was one of the three per­sonal aides of Je­sus lent fur­ther color to this mis­taken idea, not to men­tion that John, along with his brother James, had known Je­sus longer than the oth­ers.

139:4.3Pe­ter, James, and John were as­signed as per­sonal aides to Je­sus soon af­ter they be­came apos­tles. Shortly af­ter the se­lec­tion of the twelve and at the time Je­sus ap­pointed An­drew to act as di­rec­tor of the group, he said to him: “And now I de­sire that you as­sign two or three of your as­so­ciates to be with me and to re­main by my side, to com­fort me and to min­is­ter to my daily needs.” And An­drew thought best to se­lect for this spe­cial duty the next three first-cho­sen apos­tles. He would have liked to vol­un­teer for such a blessed ser­vice him­self, but the Mas­ter had al­ready given him his com­mis­sion; so he im­me­di­ately di­rected that Pe­ter, James, and John at­tach them­selves to Je­sus.

139:4.4John Zeb­e­dee had many lovely traits of char­ac­ter, but one which was not so lovely was his in­or­di­nate but usu­ally well-con­cealed con­ceit. His long as­so­ci­a­tion with Je­sus made many and great changes in his char­ac­ter. This con­ceit was greatly less­ened, but af­ter grow­ing old and be­com­ing more or less child­ish, this self-es­teem reap­peared to a cer­tain ex­tent, so that, when en­gaged in di­rect­ing Nathan in the writ­ing of the Gospel which now bears his name, the aged apos­tle did not hes­i­tate re­peat­edly to re­fer to him­self as the “dis­ci­ple whom Je­sus loved.” In view of the fact that John came nearer to be­ing the chum of Je­sus than any other earth mor­tal, that he was his cho­sen per­sonal rep­re­sen­ta­tive in so many mat­ters, it is not strange that he should have come to re­gard him­self as the “dis­ci­ple whom Je­sus loved” since he most cer­tainly knew he was the dis­ci­ple whom Je­sus so fre­quently trusted.

139:4.5The strong­est trait in John’s char­ac­ter was his de­pend­abil­ity; he was prompt and coura­geous, faith­ful and de­voted. His great­est weak­ness was this char­ac­ter­is­tic con­ceit. He was the young­est mem­ber of his fa­ther’s fam­ily and the young­est of the apos­tolic group. Per­haps he was just a bit spoiled; maybe he had been hu­mored slightly too much. But the John of af­ter years was a very dif­fer­ent type of per­son than the self-ad­mir­ing and ar­bi­trary young man who joined the ranks of Je­sus’ apos­tles when he was twenty-four.

139:4.6Those char­ac­ter­is­tics of Je­sus which John most ap­pre­ci­ated were the Mas­ter’s love and un­selfish­ness; these traits made such an im­pres­sion on him that his whole sub­se­quent life be­came dom­i­nated by the sen­ti­ment of love and broth­erly de­vo­tion. He talked about love and wrote about love. This “son of thun­der” be­came the “apos­tle of love”; and at Eph­esus, when the aged bishop was no longer able to stand in the pul­pit and preach but had to be car­ried to church in a chair, and when at the close of the ser­vice he was asked to say a few words to the be­liev­ers, for years his only ut­ter­ance was, “My lit­tle chil­dren, love one an­other.”

139:4.7John was a man of few words ex­cept when his tem­per was aroused. He thought much but said lit­tle. As he grew older, his tem­per be­came more sub­dued, bet­ter con­trolled, but he never over­came his dis­in­cli­na­tion to talk; he never fully mas­tered this ret­i­cence. But he was gifted with a re­mark­able and cre­ative imag­i­na­tion.

139:4.8There was an­other side to John that one would not ex­pect to find in this quiet and in­tro­spec­tive type. He was some­what big­oted and in­or­di­nately in­tol­er­ant. In this re­spect he and James were much alike—they both wanted to call down fire from heaven on the heads of the dis­re­spect­ful Samar­i­tans. When John en­coun­tered some strangers teach­ing in Je­sus’ name, he promptly for­bade them. But he was not the only one of the twelve who was tainted with this kind of self-es­teem and su­pe­ri­or­ity con­scious­ness.

139:4.9John’s life was tremen­dously in­flu­enced by the sight of Je­sus’ go­ing about with­out a home as he knew how faith­fully he had made pro­vi­sion for the care of his mother and fam­ily. John also deeply sym­pa­thized with Je­sus be­cause of his fam­ily’s fail­ure to un­der­stand him, be­ing aware that they were grad­u­ally with­draw­ing from him. This en­tire sit­u­a­tion, to­gether with Je­sus’ ever de­fer­ring his slight­est wish to the will of the Fa­ther in heaven and his daily life of im­plicit trust, made such a pro­found im­pres­sion on John that it pro­duced marked and per­ma­nent changes in his char­ac­ter, changes which man­i­fested them­selves through­out his en­tire sub­se­quent life.

139:4.10John had a cool and dar­ing cour­age which few of the other apos­tles pos­sessed. He was the one apos­tle who fol­lowed right along with Je­sus the night of his ar­rest and dared to ac­com­pany his Mas­ter into the very jaws of death. He was pres­ent and near at hand right up to the last earthly hour and was found faith­fully car­ry­ing out his trust with re­gard to Je­sus’ mother and ready to re­ceive such ad­di­tional in­struc­tions as might be given dur­ing the last mo­ments of the Mas­ter’s mor­tal ex­is­tence. One thing is cer­tain, John was thor­oughly de­pend­able. John usu­ally sat on Je­sus’ right hand when the twelve were at meat. He was the first of the twelve re­ally and fully to be­lieve in the res­ur­rec­tion, and he was the first to rec­og­nize the Mas­ter when he came to them on the seashore af­ter his res­ur­rec­tion.

139:4.11This son of Zeb­e­dee was very closely as­so­ci­ated with Pe­ter in the early ac­tiv­i­ties of the Chris­tian move­ment, be­com­ing one of the chief sup­port­ers of the Je­ru­sa­lem church. He was the right-hand sup­port of Pe­ter on the day of Pen­te­cost.

139:4.12Sev­eral years af­ter the mar­tyr­dom of James, John mar­ried his brother’s widow. The last twenty years of his life he was cared for by a lov­ing grand­daugh­ter.

139:4.13John was in prison sev­eral times and was ban­ished to the Isle of Pat­mos for a pe­riod of four years un­til an­other em­peror came to power in Rome. Had not John been tact­ful and saga­cious, he would un­doubt­edly have been killed as was his more out­spo­ken brother James. As the years passed, John, to­gether with James the Lord’s brother, learned to prac­tice wise con­cil­i­a­tion when they ap­peared be­fore the civil mag­is­trates. They found that a “soft an­swer turns away wrath.” They also learned to rep­re­sent the church as a “spir­i­tual broth­er­hood de­voted to the so­cial ser­vice of man­kind” rather than as “the king­dom of heaven.” They taught lov­ing ser­vice rather than rul­ing power—king­dom and king.

139:4.14When in tem­po­rary ex­ile on Pat­mos, John wrote the Book of Rev­e­la­tion, which you now have in greatly abridged and dis­torted form. This Book of Rev­e­la­tion con­tains the sur­viv­ing frag­ments of a great rev­e­la­tion, large por­tions of which were lost, other por­tions of which were re­moved, sub­se­quent to John’s writ­ing. It is pre­served in only frag­men­tary and adul­ter­ated form.

139:4.15John trav­eled much, la­bored in­ces­santly, and af­ter be­com­ing bishop of the Asia churches, set­tled down at Eph­esus. He di­rected his as­so­ciate, Nathan, in the writ­ing of the so-called “Gospel ac­cord­ing to John,” at Eph­esus, when he was ninety-nine years old. Of all the twelve apos­tles, John Zeb­e­dee even­tu­ally be­came the out­stand­ing the­olo­gian. He died a nat­u­ral death at Eph­esus in A.D. 103 when he was one hun­dred and one years of age.