The Twelve Apostles

139:5.1Philip was the fifth apos­tle to be cho­sen, be­ing called when Je­sus and his first four apos­tles were on their way from John’s ren­dezvous on the Jor­dan to Cana of Gal­i­lee. Since he lived at Beth­saida, Philip had for some time known of Je­sus, but it had not oc­curred to him that Je­sus was a re­ally great man un­til that day in the Jor­dan val­ley when he said, “Fol­low me.” Philip was also some­what in­flu­enced by the fact that An­drew, Pe­ter, James, and John had ac­cepted Je­sus as the De­liv­erer.

139:5.2Philip was twenty-seven years of age when he joined the apos­tles; he had re­cently been mar­ried, but he had no chil­dren at this time. The nick­name which the apos­tles gave him sig­ni­fied “cu­rios­ity.” Philip was al­ways want­ing to be shown. He never seemed to see very far into any propo­si­tion. He was not nec­es­sar­ily dull, but he lacked imag­i­na­tion. This lack of imag­i­na­tion was the great weak­ness of his char­ac­ter. He was a com­mon­place and mat­ter-of-fact in­di­vid­ual.

139:5.3When the apos­tles were or­ga­nized for ser­vice, Philip was made stew­ard; it was his duty to see that they were at all times sup­plied with pro­vi­sions. And he was a good stew­ard. His strong­est char­ac­ter­is­tic was his me­thod­i­cal thor­ough­ness; he was both math­e­mat­i­cal and sys­tem­atic.

139:5.4Philip came from a fam­ily of seven, three boys and four girls. He was next to the old­est, and af­ter the res­ur­rec­tion he bap­tized his en­tire fam­ily into the king­dom. Philip’s peo­ple were fish­er­folk. His fa­ther was a very able man, a deep thinker, but his mother was of a very mediocre fam­ily. Philip was not a man who could be ex­pected to do big things, but he was a man who could do lit­tle things in a big way, do them well and ac­cept­ably. Only a few times in four years did he fail to have food on hand to sat­isfy the needs of all. Even the many emer­gency de­mands at­ten­dant upon the life they lived sel­dom found him un­pre­pared. The com­mis­sary de­part­ment of the apos­tolic fam­ily was in­tel­li­gently and ef­fi­ciently man­aged.

139:5.5The strong point about Philip was his me­thod­i­cal re­li­a­bil­ity; the weak point in his make-up was his ut­ter lack of imag­i­na­tion, the ab­sence of the abil­ity to put two and two to­gether to ob­tain four. He was math­e­mat­i­cal in the ab­stract but not con­struc­tive in his imag­i­na­tion. He was al­most en­tirely lack­ing in cer­tain types of imag­i­na­tion. He was the typ­i­cal ev­ery­day and com­mon­place av­er­age man. There were a great many such men and women among the mul­ti­tudes who came to hear Je­sus teach and preach, and they de­rived great com­fort from ob­serv­ing one like them­selves el­e­vated to an hon­ored po­si­tion in the coun­cils of the Mas­ter; they de­rived cour­age from the fact that one like them­selves had al­ready found a high place in the af­fairs of the king­dom. And Je­sus learned much about the way some hu­man minds func­tion as he so pa­tiently lis­tened to Philip’s fool­ish ques­tions and so many times com­plied with his stew­ard’s re­quest to “be shown.”

139:5.6The one qual­ity about Je­sus which Philip so con­tin­u­ously ad­mired was the Mas­ter’s un­fail­ing gen­eros­ity. Never could Philip find any­thing in Je­sus which was small, nig­gardly, or stingy, and he wor­shiped this ever-pres­ent and un­fail­ing lib­er­al­ity.

139:5.7There was lit­tle about Philip’s per­son­al­ity that was im­pres­sive. He was of­ten spo­ken of as “Philip of Beth­saida, the town where An­drew and Pe­ter live.” He was al­most with­out dis­cern­ing vi­sion; he was un­able to grasp the dra­matic pos­si­bil­i­ties of a given sit­u­a­tion. He was not pes­simistic; he was sim­ply pro­saic. He was also greatly lack­ing in spir­i­tual in­sight. He would not hes­i­tate to in­ter­rupt Je­sus in the midst of one of the Mas­ter’s most pro­found dis­courses to ask an ap­par­ently fool­ish ques­tion. But Je­sus never rep­ri­manded him for such thought­less­ness; he was pa­tient with him and con­sid­er­ate of his in­abil­ity to grasp the deeper mean­ings of the teach­ing. Je­sus well knew that, if he once re­buked Philip for ask­ing these an­noy­ing ques­tions, he would not only wound this hon­est soul, but such a rep­ri­mand would so hurt Philip that he would never again feel free to ask ques­tions. Je­sus knew that on his worlds of space there were un­told bil­lions of sim­i­lar slow-think­ing mor­tals, and he wanted to en­cour­age them all to look to him and al­ways to feel free to come to him with their ques­tions and prob­lems. Af­ter all, Je­sus was re­ally more in­ter­ested in Philip’s fool­ish ques­tions than in the ser­mon he might be preach­ing. Je­sus was su­premely in­ter­ested in men, all kinds of men.

139:5.8The apos­tolic stew­ard was not a good pub­lic speaker, but he was a very per­sua­sive and suc­cess­ful per­sonal worker. He was not eas­ily dis­cour­aged; he was a plod­der and very tena­cious in any­thing he un­der­took. He had that great and rare gift of say­ing, “Come.” When his first con­vert, Na­than­iel, wanted to ar­gue about the mer­its and de­mer­its of Je­sus and Naz­a­reth, Philip’s ef­fec­tive re­ply was, “Come and see.” He was not a dog­matic preacher who ex­horted his hear­ers to “Go”—do this and do that. He met all sit­u­a­tions as they arose in his work with “Come”—“come with me; I will show you the way.” And that is al­ways the ef­fec­tive tech­nique in all forms and phases of teach­ing. Even par­ents may learn from Philip the bet­ter way of say­ing to their chil­dren not “Go do this and go do that,” but rather, “Come with us while we show and share with you the bet­ter way.”

139:5.9The in­abil­ity of Philip to adapt him­self to a new sit­u­a­tion was well shown when the Greeks came to him at Je­ru­sa­lem, say­ing: “Sir, we de­sire to see Je­sus.” Now Philip would have said to any Jew ask­ing such a ques­tion, “Come.” But these men were for­eign­ers, and Philip could re­mem­ber no in­struc­tions from his su­pe­ri­ors re­gard­ing such mat­ters; so the only thing he could think to do was to con­sult the chief, An­drew, and then they both es­corted the in­quir­ing Greeks to Je­sus. Like­wise, when he went into Samaria preach­ing and bap­tiz­ing be­liev­ers, as he had been in­structed by his Mas­ter, he re­frained from lay­ing hands on his con­verts in to­ken of their hav­ing re­ceived the Spirit of Truth. This was done by Pe­ter and John, who pres­ently came down from Je­ru­sa­lem to ob­serve his work in be­half of the mother church.

139:5.10Philip went on through the try­ing times of the Mas­ter’s death, par­tic­i­pated in the re­or­ga­ni­za­tion of the twelve, and was the first to go forth to win souls for the king­dom out­side of the im­me­di­ate Jew­ish ranks, be­ing most suc­cess­ful in his work for the Samar­i­tans and in all his sub­se­quent labors in be­half of the gospel.

139:5.11Philip’s wife, who was an ef­fi­cient mem­ber of the women’s corps, be­came ac­tively as­so­ci­ated with her hus­band in his evan­ge­lis­tic work af­ter their flight from the Je­ru­sa­lem per­se­cu­tions. His wife was a fear­less woman. She stood at the foot of Philip’s cross en­cour­ag­ing him to pro­claim the glad tid­ings even to his mur­der­ers, and when his strength failed, she be­gan the recital of the story of sal­va­tion by faith in Je­sus and was si­lenced only when the irate Jews rushed upon her and stoned her to death. Their el­dest daugh­ter, Leah, con­tin­ued their work, later on be­com­ing the renowned prophet­ess of Hi­er­apo­lis.

139:5.12Philip, the one­time stew­ard of the twelve, was a mighty man in the king­dom, win­ning souls wher­ever he went; and he was fi­nally cru­ci­fied for his faith and buried at Hi­er­apo­lis.