Final Appearances and Ascension

193:6.1Act­ing upon the in­struc­tion of Pe­ter, John Mark and oth­ers went forth to call the lead­ing dis­ci­ples to­gether at the home of Mary Mark. By ten thirty, one hun­dred and twenty of the fore­most dis­ci­ples of Je­sus liv­ing in Je­ru­sa­lem had for­gath­ered to hear the re­port of the farewell mes­sage of the Mas­ter and to learn of his as­cen­sion. Among this com­pany was Mary the mother of Je­sus. She had re­turned to Je­ru­sa­lem with John Zeb­e­dee when the apos­tles came back from their re­cent so­journ in Gal­i­lee. Soon af­ter Pen­te­cost she re­turned to the home of Sa­lome at Beth­saida. James the brother of Je­sus was also pres­ent at this meet­ing, the first con­fer­ence of the Mas­ter’s dis­ci­ples to be called af­ter the ter­mi­na­tion of his plan­e­tary ca­reer.

193:6.2Si­mon Pe­ter took it upon him­self to speak for his fel­low apos­tles and made a thrilling re­port of the last meet­ing of the eleven with their Mas­ter and most touch­ingly por­trayed the Mas­ter’s fi­nal farewell and his as­cen­sion dis­ap­pear­ance. It was a meet­ing the like of which had never be­fore oc­curred on this world. This part of the meet­ing lasted not quite one hour. Pe­ter then ex­plained that they had de­cided to choose a suc­ces­sor to Ju­das Is­car­iot, and that a re­cess would be granted to en­able the apos­tles to de­cide be­tween the two men who had been sug­gested for this po­si­tion, Matthias and Jus­tus.

193:6.3The eleven apos­tles then went down­stairs, where they agreed to cast lots in or­der to de­ter­mine which of these men should be­come an apos­tle to serve in Ju­das’s place. The lot fell on Matthias, and he was de­clared to be the new apos­tle. He was duly in­ducted into his of­fice and then ap­pointed trea­surer. But Matthias had lit­tle part in the sub­se­quent ac­tiv­i­ties of the apos­tles.

193:6.4Soon af­ter Pen­te­cost the twins re­turned to their homes in Gal­i­lee. Si­mon Ze­lo­tes was in re­tire­ment for some time be­fore he went forth preach­ing the gospel. Thomas wor­ried for a shorter pe­riod and then re­sumed his teach­ing. Na­than­iel dif­fered in­creas­ingly with Pe­ter re­gard­ing preach­ing about Je­sus in the place of pro­claim­ing the for­mer gospel of the king­dom. This dis­agree­ment be­came so acute by the mid­dle of the fol­low­ing month that Na­than­iel with­drew, go­ing to Phil­a­del­phia to visit Ab­ner and Laz­a­rus; and af­ter tar­ry­ing there for more than a year, he went on into the lands be­yond Mes­o­po­ta­mia preach­ing the gospel as he un­der­stood it.

193:6.5This left but six of the orig­i­nal twelve apos­tles to be­come ac­tors on the stage of the early procla­ma­tion of the gospel in Je­ru­sa­lem: Pe­ter, An­drew, James, John, Philip, and Mat­thew.

193:6.6Just about noon the apos­tles re­turned to their breth­ren in the up­per cham­ber and an­nounced that Matthias had been cho­sen as the new apos­tle. And then Pe­ter called all of the be­liev­ers to en­gage in prayer, prayer that they might be pre­pared to re­ceive the gift of the spirit which the Mas­ter had prom­ised to send.