The Twelve Apostles

139:8.1Thomas was the eighth apos­tle, and he was cho­sen by Philip. In later times he has be­come known as “doubt­ing Thomas,” but his fel­low apos­tles hardly looked upon him as a chronic doubter. True, his was a log­i­cal, skep­ti­cal type of mind, but he had a form of coura­geous loy­alty which for­bade those who knew him in­ti­mately to re­gard him as a tri­fling skep­tic.

139:8.2When Thomas joined the apos­tles, he was twenty-nine years old, was mar­ried, and had four chil­dren. For­merly he had been a car­pen­ter and stone ma­son, but lat­terly he had be­come a fish­er­man and resided at Ta­ri­chea, sit­u­ated on the west bank of the Jor­dan where it flows out of the Sea of Gal­i­lee, and he was re­garded as the lead­ing cit­i­zen of this lit­tle vil­lage. He had lit­tle ed­u­ca­tion, but he pos­sessed a keen, rea­son­ing mind and was the son of ex­cel­lent par­ents, who lived at Tiberias. Thomas had the one truly an­a­lyt­i­cal mind of the twelve; he was the real sci­en­tist of the apos­tolic group.

139:8.3The early home life of Thomas had been un­for­tu­nate; his par­ents were not al­to­gether happy in their mar­ried life, and this was re­flected in Thomas’s adult ex­pe­ri­ence. He grew up hav­ing a very dis­agree­able and quar­rel­some dis­po­si­tion. Even his wife was glad to see him join the apos­tles; she was re­lieved by the thought that her pes­simistic hus­band would be away from home most of the time. Thomas also had a streak of sus­pi­cion which made it very dif­fi­cult to get along peace­ably with him. Pe­ter was very much up­set by Thomas at first, com­plain­ing to his brother, An­drew, that Thomas was “mean, ugly, and al­ways sus­pi­cious.” But the bet­ter his as­so­ciates knew Thomas, the more they liked him. They found he was su­perbly hon­est and un­flinch­ingly loyal. He was per­fectly sin­cere and un­ques­tion­ably truth­ful, but he was a nat­u­ral-born fault­finder and had grown up to be­come a real pes­simist. His an­a­lyt­i­cal mind had be­come cursed with sus­pi­cion. He was rapidly los­ing faith in his fel­low men when he be­came as­so­ci­ated with the twelve and thus came in con­tact with the no­ble char­ac­ter of Je­sus. This as­so­ci­a­tion with the Mas­ter be­gan at once to trans­form Thomas’s whole dis­po­si­tion and to ef­fect great changes in his men­tal re­ac­tions to his fel­low men.

139:8.4Thomas’s great strength was his su­perb an­a­lyt­i­cal mind cou­pled with his un­flinch­ing cour­age—when he had once made up his mind. His great weak­ness was his sus­pi­cious doubt­ing, which he never fully over­came through­out his whole life­time in the flesh.

139:8.5In the or­ga­ni­za­tion of the twelve Thomas was as­signed to ar­range and man­age the itin­er­ary, and he was an able di­rec­tor of the work and move­ments of the apos­tolic corps. He was a good ex­ec­u­tive, an ex­cel­lent busi­ness­man, but he was hand­i­capped by his many moods; he was one man one day and an­other man the next. He was in­clined to­ward melan­cholic brood­ing when he joined the apos­tles, but con­tact with Je­sus and the apos­tles largely cured him of this mor­bid in­tro­spec­tion.

139:8.6Je­sus en­joyed Thomas very much and had many long, per­sonal talks with him. His pres­ence among the apos­tles was a great com­fort to all hon­est doubters and en­cour­aged many trou­bled minds to come into the king­dom, even if they could not wholly un­der­stand ev­ery­thing about the spir­i­tual and philo­sophic phases of the teach­ings of Je­sus. Thomas’s mem­ber­ship in the twelve was a stand­ing dec­la­ra­tion that Je­sus loved even hon­est doubters.

139:8.7The other apos­tles held Je­sus in rev­er­ence be­cause of some spe­cial and out­stand­ing trait of his re­plete per­son­al­ity, but Thomas revered his Mas­ter be­cause of his su­perbly bal­anced char­ac­ter. In­creas­ingly Thomas ad­mired and hon­ored one who was so lov­ingly mer­ci­ful yet so in­flex­i­bly just and fair; so firm but never ob­sti­nate; so calm but never in­dif­fer­ent; so help­ful and so sym­pa­thetic but never med­dle­some or dic­ta­to­rial; so strong but at the same time so gen­tle; so pos­i­tive but never rough or rude; so ten­der but never vac­il­lat­ing; so pure and in­no­cent but at the same time so vir­ile, ag­gres­sive, and force­ful; so truly coura­geous but never rash or fool­hardy; such a lover of na­ture but so free from all ten­dency to re­vere na­ture; so hu­mor­ous and so play­ful, but so free from lev­ity and frivolity. It was this match­less sym­me­try of per­son­al­ity that so charmed Thomas. He prob­a­bly en­joyed the high­est in­tel­lec­tual un­der­stand­ing and per­son­al­ity ap­pre­ci­a­tion of Je­sus of any of the twelve.

139:8.8In the coun­cils of the twelve Thomas was al­ways cau­tious, ad­vo­cat­ing a pol­icy of safety first, but if his con­ser­vatism was voted down or over­ruled, he was al­ways the first fear­lessly to move out in ex­e­cu­tion of the pro­gram de­cided upon. Again and again would he stand out against some project as be­ing fool­hardy and pre­sump­tu­ous; he would de­bate to the bit­ter end, but when An­drew would put the propo­si­tion to a vote, and af­ter the twelve would elect to do that which he had so stren­u­ously op­posed, Thomas was the first to say, “Let’s go!” He was a good loser. He did not hold grudges nor nurse wounded feel­ings. Time and again did he op­pose let­ting Je­sus ex­pose him­self to dan­ger, but when the Mas­ter would de­cide to take such risks, al­ways was it Thomas who ral­lied the apos­tles with his coura­geous words, “Come on, com­rades, let’s go and die with him.”

139:8.9Thomas was in some re­spects like Philip; he also wanted “to be shown,” but his out­ward ex­pres­sions of doubt were based on en­tirely dif­fer­ent in­tel­lec­tual op­er­a­tions. Thomas was an­a­lyt­i­cal, not merely skep­ti­cal. As far as per­sonal phys­i­cal cour­age was con­cerned, he was one of the bravest among the twelve.

139:8.10Thomas had some very bad days; he was blue and down­cast at times. The loss of his twin sis­ter when he was nine years old had oc­ca­sioned him much youth­ful sor­row and had added to his tem­per­a­men­tal prob­lems of later life. When Thomas would be­come de­spon­dent, some­times it was Na­than­iel who helped him to re­cover, some­times Pe­ter, and not in­fre­quently one of the Al­pheus twins. When he was most de­pressed, un­for­tu­nately he al­ways tried to avoid com­ing in di­rect con­tact with Je­sus. But the Mas­ter knew all about this and had an un­der­stand­ing sym­pa­thy for his apos­tle when he was thus af­flicted with de­pres­sion and ha­rassed by doubts.

139:8.11Some­times Thomas would get per­mis­sion from An­drew to go off by him­self for a day or two. But he soon learned that such a course was not wise; he early found that it was best, when he was down­hearted, to stick close to his work and to re­main near his as­so­ciates. But no mat­ter what hap­pened in his emo­tional life, he kept right on be­ing an apos­tle. When the time ac­tu­ally came to move for­ward, it was al­ways Thomas who said, “Let’s go!”

139:8.12Thomas is the great ex­am­ple of a hu­man be­ing who has doubts, faces them, and wins. He had a great mind; he was no carp­ing critic. He was a log­i­cal thinker; he was the acid test of Je­sus and his fel­low apos­tles. If Je­sus and his work had not been gen­uine, it could not have held a man like Thomas from the start to the fin­ish. He had a keen and sure sense of fact. At the first ap­pear­ance of fraud or de­cep­tion Thomas would have for­saken them all. Sci­en­tists may not fully un­der­stand all about Je­sus and his work on earth, but there lived and worked with the Mas­ter and his hu­man as­so­ciates a man whose mind was that of a true sci­en­tist—Thomas Didy­mus—and he be­lieved in Je­sus of Naz­a­reth.

139:8.13Thomas had a try­ing time dur­ing the days of the trial and cru­ci­fix­ion. He was for a sea­son in the depths of de­spair, but he ral­lied his cour­age, stuck to the apos­tles, and was pres­ent with them to wel­come Je­sus on the Sea of Gal­i­lee. For a while he suc­cumbed to his doubt­ing de­pres­sion but even­tu­ally ral­lied his faith and cour­age. He gave wise coun­sel to the apos­tles af­ter Pen­te­cost and, when per­se­cu­tion scat­tered the be­liev­ers, went to Cyprus, Crete, the North African coast, and Sicily, preach­ing the glad tid­ings of the king­dom and bap­tiz­ing be­liev­ers. And Thomas con­tin­ued preach­ing and bap­tiz­ing un­til he was ap­pre­hended by the agents of the Ro­man gov­ern­ment and was put to death in Malta. Just a few weeks be­fore his death he had be­gun the writ­ing of the life and teach­ings of Je­sus.