Appearances to the Apostles and Other Leaders

191:0.1Res­ur­rec­tion Sun­day was a ter­ri­ble day in the lives of the apos­tles; ten of them spent the larger part of the day in the up­per cham­ber be­hind barred doors. They might have fled from Je­ru­sa­lem, but they were afraid of be­ing ar­rested by the agents of the San­hedrin if they were found abroad. Thomas was brood­ing over his trou­bles alone at Beth­page. He would have fared bet­ter had he re­mained with his fel­low apos­tles, and he would have aided them to di­rect their dis­cus­sions along more help­ful lines.

191:0.2All day long John up­held the idea that Je­sus had risen from the dead. He re­counted no less than five dif­fer­ent times when the Mas­ter had af­firmed he would rise again and at least three times when he al­luded to the third day. John’s at­ti­tude had con­sid­er­able in­flu­ence on them, es­pe­cially on his brother James and on Na­than­iel. John would have in­flu­enced them more if he had not been the young­est mem­ber of the group.

191:0.3Their iso­la­tion had much to do with their trou­bles. John Mark kept them in touch with de­vel­op­ments about the tem­ple and in­formed them as to the many ru­mors gain­ing head­way in the city, but it did not oc­cur to him to gather up news from the dif­fer­ent groups of be­liev­ers to whom Je­sus had al­ready ap­peared. That was the kind of ser­vice which had here­to­fore been ren­dered by the mes­sen­gers of David, but they were all ab­sent on their last as­sign­ment as her­alds of the res­ur­rec­tion to those groups of be­liev­ers who dwelt re­mote from Je­ru­sa­lem. For the first time in all these years the apos­tles re­al­ized how much they had been de­pen­dent on David’s mes­sen­gers for their daily in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing the af­fairs of the king­dom.

191:0.4All this day Pe­ter char­ac­ter­is­ti­cally vac­il­lated emo­tion­ally be­tween faith and doubt con­cern­ing the Mas­ter’s res­ur­rec­tion. Pe­ter could not get away from the sight of the grave cloths rest­ing there in the tomb as if the body of Je­sus had just evap­o­rated from within. “But,” rea­soned Pe­ter, “if he has risen and can show him­self to the women, why does he not show him­self to us, his apos­tles?” Pe­ter would grow sor­row­ful when he thought that maybe Je­sus did not come to them on ac­count of his pres­ence among the apos­tles, be­cause he had de­nied him that night in An­nas’s court­yard. And then would he cheer him­self with the word brought by the women, “Go tell my apos­tles—and Pe­ter.” But to de­rive en­cour­age­ment from this mes­sage im­plied that he must be­lieve that the women had re­ally seen and heard the risen Mas­ter. Thus Pe­ter al­ter­nated be­tween faith and doubt through­out the whole day, un­til a lit­tle af­ter eight o’clock, when he ven­tured out into the court­yard. Pe­ter thought to re­move him­self from among the apos­tles so that he might not pre­vent Je­sus’ com­ing to them be­cause of his de­nial of the Mas­ter.

191:0.5James Zeb­e­dee at first ad­vo­cated that they all go to the tomb; he was strongly in fa­vor of do­ing some­thing to get to the bot­tom of the mys­tery. It was Na­than­iel who pre­vented them from go­ing out in pub­lic in re­sponse to James’s urg­ing, and he did this by re­mind­ing them of Je­sus’ warn­ing against un­duly jeop­ar­diz­ing their lives at this time. By noon­time James had set­tled down with the oth­ers to watch­ful wait­ing. He said lit­tle; he was tremen­dously dis­ap­pointed be­cause Je­sus did not ap­pear to them, and he did not know of the Mas­ter’s many ap­pear­ances to other groups and in­di­vid­u­als.

191:0.6An­drew did much lis­ten­ing this day. He was ex­ceed­ingly per­plexed by the sit­u­a­tion and had more than his share of doubts, but he at least en­joyed a cer­tain sense of free­dom from re­spon­si­bil­ity for the guid­ance of his fel­low apos­tles. He was in­deed grate­ful that the Mas­ter had re­leased him from the bur­dens of lead­er­ship be­fore they fell upon these dis­tract­ing times.

191:0.7More than once dur­ing the long and weary hours of this tragic day, the only sus­tain­ing in­flu­ence of the group was the fre­quent con­tri­bu­tion of Na­than­iel’s char­ac­ter­is­tic philo­sophic coun­sel. He was re­ally the con­trol­ling in­flu­ence among the ten through­out the en­tire day. Never once did he ex­press him­self con­cern­ing ei­ther be­lief or dis­be­lief in the Mas­ter’s res­ur­rec­tion. But as the day wore on, he be­came in­creas­ingly in­clined to­ward be­liev­ing that Je­sus had ful­filled his prom­ise to rise again.

191:0.8Si­mon Ze­lo­tes was too much crushed to par­tic­i­pate in the dis­cus­sions. Most of the time he re­clined on a couch in a cor­ner of the room with his face to the wall; he did not speak half a dozen times through­out the whole day. His con­cept of the king­dom had crashed, and he could not dis­cern that the Mas­ter’s res­ur­rec­tion could ma­te­ri­ally change the sit­u­a­tion. His dis­ap­point­ment was very per­sonal and al­to­gether too keen to be re­cov­ered from on short no­tice, even in the face of such a stu­pen­dous fact as the res­ur­rec­tion.

191:0.9Strange to re­cord, the usu­ally in­ex­pres­sive Philip did much talk­ing through­out the af­ter­noon of this day. Dur­ing the forenoon he had lit­tle to say, but all af­ter­noon he asked ques­tions of the other apos­tles. Pe­ter was of­ten an­noyed by Philip’s ques­tions, but the oth­ers took his in­quiries good-na­turedly. Philip was par­tic­u­larly de­sirous of know­ing, pro­vided Je­sus had re­ally risen from the grave, whether his body would bear the phys­i­cal marks of the cru­ci­fix­ion.

191:0.10Mat­thew was highly con­fused; he lis­tened to the dis­cus­sions of his fel­lows but spent most of the time turn­ing over in his mind the prob­lem of their fu­ture fi­nances. Re­gard­less of Je­sus’ sup­posed res­ur­rec­tion, Ju­das was gone, David had un­cer­e­mo­ni­ously turned the funds over to him, and they were with­out an au­thor­i­ta­tive leader. Be­fore Mat­thew got around to giv­ing se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion to their ar­gu­ments about the res­ur­rec­tion, he had al­ready seen the Mas­ter face to face.

191:0.11The Al­pheus twins took lit­tle part in these se­ri­ous dis­cus­sions; they were fairly busy with their cus­tom­ary min­is­tra­tions. One of them ex­pressed the at­ti­tude of both when he said, in re­ply to a ques­tion asked by Philip: “We do not un­der­stand about the res­ur­rec­tion, but our mother says she talked with the Mas­ter, and we be­lieve her.”

191:0.12Thomas was in the midst of one of his typ­i­cal spells of de­spair­ing de­pres­sion. He slept a por­tion of the day and walked over the hills the rest of the time. He felt the urge to re­join his fel­low apos­tles, but the de­sire to be by him­self was the stronger.

191:0.13The Mas­ter put off the first mor­ontia ap­pear­ance to the apos­tles for a num­ber of rea­sons. First, he wanted them to have time, af­ter they heard of his res­ur­rec­tion, to think well over what he had told them about his death and res­ur­rec­tion when he was still with them in the flesh. The Mas­ter wanted Pe­ter to wres­tle through with some of his pe­cu­liar dif­fi­cul­ties be­fore he man­i­fested him­self to them all. In the sec­ond place, he de­sired that Thomas should be with them at the time of his first ap­pear­ance. John Mark lo­cated Thomas at the home of Si­mon in Beth­page early this Sun­day morn­ing, bring­ing word to that ef­fect to the apos­tles about eleven o’clock. Any time dur­ing this day Thomas would have gone back to them if Na­than­iel or any two of the other apos­tles had gone for him. He re­ally wanted to re­turn, but hav­ing left as he did the evening be­fore, he was too proud to go back of his own ac­cord so soon. By the next day he was so de­pressed that it re­quired al­most a week for him to make up his mind to re­turn. The apos­tles waited for him, and he waited for his breth­ren to seek him out and ask him to come back to them. Thomas thus re­mained away from his as­so­ciates un­til the next Sat­ur­day evening, when, af­ter dark­ness had come on, Pe­ter and John went over to Beth­page and brought him back with them. And this is also the rea­son why they did not go at once to Gal­i­lee af­ter Je­sus first ap­peared to them; they would not go with­out Thomas.