Simon Peter

• deliverance by midwayers after Herod killed James

77:8.12Many of the more lit­eral phe­nom­ena as­cribed to an­gels have been per­formed by the sec­ondary mid­way crea­tures. When the early teach­ers of the gospel of Je­sus were thrown into prison by the ig­no­rant re­li­gious lead­ers of that day, an ac­tual “an­gel of the Lord” “by night opened the prison doors and brought them forth.” But in the case of Pe­ter’s de­liv­er­ance af­ter the killing of James by Herod’s or­der, it was a sec­ondary mid­wayer who per­formed the work as­cribed to an an­gel.

• position and achievements › founded and organized Christian church

92:6.18The Chris­tian re­li­gion is the re­li­gion about the life and teach­ings of Christ based upon the the­ol­ogy of Ju­daism, mod­i­fied fur­ther through the as­sim­i­la­tion of cer­tain Zoroas­trian teach­ings and Greek phi­los­o­phy, and for­mu­lated pri­mar­ily by three in­di­vid­u­als: Philo, Pe­ter, and Paul. It has passed through many phases of evo­lu­tion since the time of Paul and has be­come so thor­oughly Oc­ci­den­tal­ized that many non-Eu­ro­pean peo­ples very nat­u­rally look upon Chris­tian­ity as a strange rev­e­la­tion of a strange God and for strangers.

• position and achievements › instigated Gospel by Mark

121:8.31. The Gospel by Mark. John Mark wrote the ear­li­est (ex­cept­ing the notes of An­drew), briefest, and most sim­ple rec­ord of Je­sus’ life. He pre­sented the Mas­ter as a min­is­ter, as man among men. Al­though Mark was a lad lin­ger­ing about many of the scenes which he de­picts, his rec­ord is in re­al­ity the Gospel ac­cord­ing to Si­mon Pe­ter. He was early as­so­ci­ated with Pe­ter; later with Paul. Mark wrote this rec­ord at the in­sti­ga­tion of Pe­ter and on the earnest pe­ti­tion of the church at Rome. Know­ing how con­sis­tently the Mas­ter re­fused to write out his teach­ings when on earth and in the flesh, Mark, like the apos­tles and other lead­ing dis­ci­ples, was hes­i­tant to put them in writ­ing. But Pe­ter felt the church at Rome re­quired the as­sis­tance of such a writ­ten nar­ra­tive, and Mark con­sented to un­der­take its prepa­ra­tion. He made many notes be­fore Pe­ter died in A.D. 67, and in ac­cor­dance with the out­line ap­proved by Pe­ter and for the church at Rome, he be­gan his writ­ing soon af­ter Pe­ter’s death. The Gospel was com­pleted near the end of A.D. 68. Mark wrote en­tirely from his own mem­ory and Pe­ter’s mem­ory. The rec­ord has since been con­sid­er­ably changed, nu­mer­ous pas­sages hav­ing been taken out and some later mat­ter added at the end to re­place the lat­ter one fifth of the orig­i­nal Gospel, which was lost from the first man­u­script be­fore it was ever copied. This rec­ord by Mark, in con­junc­tion with An­drew’s and Mat­thew’s notes, was the writ­ten ba­sis of all sub­se­quent Gospel nar­ra­tives which sought to por­tray the life and teach­ings of Je­sus.

• argument with Gadiah

130:1.3Ga­diah was might­ily moved by Je­sus’ teach­ing, and they talked long into the night by the sea­side, and be­fore they went to their lodg­ings, they prayed to­gether and for each other. This was the same Ga­diah who lis­tened to the later preach­ing of Pe­ter, be­came a pro­found be­liever in Je­sus of Naz­a­reth, and held a mem­o­rable ar­gu­ment with Pe­ter one evening at the home of Dor­cas. And Ga­diah had very much to do with the fi­nal de­ci­sion of Si­mon, the wealthy leather mer­chant, to em­brace Chris­tian­ity.

• Cornelius became believer through

130:2.5Anaxand was might­ily moved by Je­sus’ words. Pres­ently he told his su­pe­rior what Je­sus had said, and that night they both sought Je­sus’ ad­vice as to the wel­fare of their souls. And later on, af­ter the Chris­tian mes­sage had been pro­claimed in Cae­sarea, both of these men, one a Greek and the other a Ro­man, be­lieved Philip’s preach­ing and be­came promi­nent mem­bers of the church which he founded. Later this young Greek was ap­pointed the stew­ard of a Ro­man cen­tu­rion, Cor­nelius, who be­came a be­liever through Pe­ter’s min­istry. Anaxand con­tin­ued to min­is­ter light to those who sat in dark­ness un­til the days of Paul’s im­pris­on­ment at Cae­sarea, when he per­ished, by ac­ci­dent, in the great slaugh­ter of twenty thou­sand Jews while he min­is­tered to the suf­fer­ing and dy­ing.

• position and achievements › choosing and holding of S.P. was paramount factor in rapid spread of Christianity

132:0.61. The choos­ing and hold­ing of Si­mon Pe­ter as an apos­tle.

• surmised Damascus scribe might have been Jesus

132:0.10Many were the times in the years so soon to fol­low that Pe­ter, Paul, and the other Chris­tian teach­ers in Rome heard about this scribe of Da­mas­cus who had pre­ceded them, and who had so ob­vi­ously (and as they sup­posed un­wit­tingly) pre­pared the way for their com­ing with the new gospel. Though Paul never re­ally sur­mised the iden­tity of this scribe of Da­mas­cus, he did, a short time be­fore his death, be­cause of the sim­i­lar­ity of per­sonal de­scrip­tions, reach the con­clu­sion that the “tent­maker of An­ti­och” was also the “scribe of Da­mas­cus.” On one oc­ca­sion, while preach­ing in Rome, Si­mon Pe­ter, on lis­ten­ing to a de­scrip­tion of the Da­mas­cus scribe, sur­mised that this in­di­vid­ual might have been Je­sus but quickly dis­missed the idea, know­ing full well (so he thought) that the Mas­ter had never been in Rome.

• crucified in Rome; wife Perpetua thrown to wild beasts

132:4.7To the speaker at the fo­rum he said: “Your elo­quence is pleas­ing, your logic is ad­mirable, your voice is pleas­ant, but your teach­ing is hardly true. If you could only en­joy the in­spir­ing sat­is­fac­tion of know­ing God as your spir­i­tual Fa­ther, then you might em­ploy your pow­ers of speech to lib­er­ate your fel­lows from the bond­age of dark­ness and from the slav­ery of ig­no­rance.” This was the Mar­cus who heard Pe­ter preach in Rome and be­came his suc­ces­sor. When they cru­ci­fied Si­mon Pe­ter, it was this man who de­fied the Ro­man per­se­cu­tors and boldly con­tin­ued to preach the new gospel.

• one of John the Baptist’s foremost disciples; knew Jesus in Capernaum

137:1.1Dur­ing this Sab­bath two of John’s lead­ing dis­ci­ples spent much time with Je­sus. Of all John’s fol­low­ers one named An­drew was the most pro­foundly im­pressed with Je­sus; he ac­com­pa­nied him on the trip to Pella with the in­jured boy. On the way back to John’s ren­dezvous he asked Je­sus many ques­tions, and just be­fore reach­ing their des­ti­na­tion, the two paused for a short talk, dur­ing which An­drew said: “I have ob­served you ever since you came to Ca­per­naum, and I be­lieve you are the new Teacher, and though I do not un­der­stand all your teach­ing, I have fully made up my mind to fol­low you; I would sit at your feet and learn the whole truth about the new king­dom.” And Je­sus, with hearty as­sur­ance, wel­comed An­drew as the first of his apos­tles, that group of twelve who were to la­bor with him in the work of es­tab­lish­ing the new king­dom of God in the hearts of men.

137:1.2An­drew was a silent ob­server of, and sin­cere be­liever in, John’s work, and he had a very able and en­thu­si­as­tic brother, named Si­mon, who was one of John’s fore­most dis­ci­ples. It would not be amiss to say that Si­mon was one of John’s chief sup­port­ers.

• name changed from Simon to Peter
• personal traits and attitudes › erratic, impulsive, enthusiastic personality

137:1.3Soon af­ter Je­sus and An­drew re­turned to the camp, An­drew sought out his brother, Si­mon, and tak­ing him aside, in­formed him that he had set­tled in his own mind that Je­sus was the great Teacher, and that he had pledged him­self as a dis­ci­ple. He went on to say that Je­sus had ac­cepted his prof­fer of ser­vice and sug­gested that he (Si­mon) like­wise go to Je­sus and of­fer him­self for fel­low­ship in the ser­vice of the new king­dom. Said Si­mon: “Ever since this man came to work in Zeb­e­dee’s shop, I have be­lieved he was sent by God, but what about John? Are we to for­sake him? Is this the right thing to do?” Where­upon they agreed to go at once to con­sult John. John was sad­dened by the thought of los­ing two of his able ad­vis­ers and most promis­ing dis­ci­ples, but he bravely an­swered their in­quiries, say­ing: “This is but the be­gin­ning; pres­ently will my work end, and we shall all be­come his dis­ci­ples.” Then An­drew beck­oned to Je­sus to draw aside while he an­nounced that his brother de­sired to join him­self to the ser­vice of the new king­dom. And in wel­com­ing Si­mon as his sec­ond apos­tle, Je­sus said: “Si­mon, your en­thu­si­asm is com­mend­able, but it is dan­ger­ous to the work of the king­dom. I ad­mon­ish you to be­come more thought­ful in your speech. I would change your name to Pe­ter.”

• personal traits and attitudes › 4 months of waiting especially hard on

137:7.3This pe­riod of wait­ing and teach­ing was es­pe­cially hard on Si­mon Pe­ter. He re­peat­edly sought to per­suade Je­sus to launch forth with the preach­ing of the king­dom in Gal­i­lee while John con­tin­ued to preach in Judea. But Je­sus’ re­ply to Pe­ter ever was: “Be pa­tient, Si­mon. Make prog­ress. We shall be none too ready when the Fa­ther calls.” And An­drew would calm Pe­ter now and then with his more sea­soned and philo­sophic coun­sel. An­drew was tremen­dously im­pressed with the hu­man nat­u­ral­ness of Je­sus. He never grew weary of con­tem­plat­ing how one who could live so near God could be so friendly and con­sid­er­ate of men.

• selected Simon Zelotes

138:2.85. Si­mon Ze­lo­tes was a high of­fi­cer in the pa­tri­otic or­ga­ni­za­tion of the Zealots, a po­si­tion which he gave up to join Je­sus’ apos­tles. Be­fore join­ing the Zealots, Si­mon had been a mer­chant. He was se­lected by Pe­ter.

• position and achievements › assigned as personal aid to Jesus

138:10.32. Pe­ter, James, and John were ap­pointed per­sonal com­pan­ions of Je­sus. They were to at­tend him day and night, to min­is­ter to his phys­i­cal and sundry needs, and to ac­com­pany him on those night vig­ils of prayer and mys­te­ri­ous com­mu­nion with the Fa­ther in heaven.

• fisher partner of Andrew, sons of Zebedee

139:1.1An­drew, chair­man of the apos­tolic corps of the king­dom, was born in Ca­per­naum. He was the old­est child in a fam­ily of five—him­self, his brother Si­mon, and three sis­ters. His fa­ther, now dead, had been a part­ner of Zeb­e­dee in the fish-dry­ing busi­ness at Beth­saida, the fish­ing har­bor of Ca­per­naum. When he be­came an apos­tle, An­drew was un­mar­ried but made his home with his mar­ried brother, Si­mon Pe­ter. Both were fish­er­men and part­ners of James and John the sons of Zeb­e­dee.

• position and achievements › Pentecost sermon won 2000 souls

139:1.6An­drew and Pe­ter were very un­like in char­ac­ter and tem­per­a­ment, but it must be re­corded ev­er­last­ingly to their credit that they got along to­gether splen­didly. An­drew was never jeal­ous of Pe­ter’s or­a­tor­i­cal abil­ity. Not of­ten will an older man of An­drew’s type be ob­served ex­ert­ing such a pro­found in­flu­ence over a younger and tal­ented brother. An­drew and Pe­ter never seemed to be in the least jeal­ous of each other’s abil­i­ties or achieve­ments. Late on the evening of the day of Pen­te­cost, when, largely through the en­er­getic and in­spir­ing preach­ing of Pe­ter, two thou­sand souls were added to the king­dom, An­drew said to his brother: “I could not do that, but I am glad I have a brother who could.” To which Pe­ter replied: “And but for your bring­ing me to the Mas­ter and by your stead­fast­ness keep­ing me with him, I should not have been here to do this.” An­drew and Pe­ter were the ex­cep­tions to the rule, prov­ing that even broth­ers can live to­gether peace­ably and work to­gether ef­fec­tively.

• fisher partner of Andrew, sons of Zebedee
• married with 3 children; 30 in A.D. 26
• sister Martha; brother Andrew

139:2.1When Si­mon joined the apos­tles, he was thirty years of age. He was mar­ried, had three chil­dren, and lived at Beth­saida, near Ca­per­naum. His brother, An­drew, and his wife’s mother lived with him. Both Pe­ter and An­drew were fisher part­ners of the sons of Zeb­e­dee.

• name changed from Simon to Peter
• personal traits and attitudes › erratic, impulsive, enthusiastic personality

139:2.2The Mas­ter had known Si­mon for some time be­fore An­drew pre­sented him as the sec­ond of the apos­tles. When Je­sus gave Si­mon the name Pe­ter, he did it with a smile; it was to be a sort of nick­name. Si­mon was well known to all his friends as an er­ratic and im­pul­sive fel­low. True, later on, Je­sus did at­tach a new and sig­nif­i­cant im­port to this lightly be­stowed nick­name.

• personal traits and attitudes › erratic, impulsive, enthusiastic personality
• personal traits and attitudes › presumptuous self-confidence caused trouble

139:2.3Si­mon Pe­ter was a man of im­pulse, an op­ti­mist. He had grown up per­mit­ting him­self freely to in­dulge strong feel­ings; he was con­stantly get­ting into dif­fi­cul­ties be­cause he per­sisted in speak­ing with­out think­ing. This sort of thought­less­ness also made in­ces­sant trou­ble for all of his friends and as­so­ciates and was the cause of his re­ceiv­ing many mild re­bukes from his Mas­ter. The only rea­son Pe­ter did not get into more trou­ble be­cause of his thought­less speak­ing was that he very early learned to talk over many of his plans and schemes with his brother, An­drew, be­fore he ven­tured to make pub­lic pro­pos­als.

• night vision on Sea of Galilee
• personal traits and attitudes › eloquent leader, a quick thinker, but not a deep reasoner

139:2.4Pe­ter was a flu­ent speaker, elo­quent and dra­matic. He was also a nat­u­ral and in­spi­ra­tional leader of men, a quick thinker but not a deep rea­soner. He asked many ques­tions, more than all the apos­tles put to­gether, and while the ma­jor­ity of these ques­tions were good and rel­e­vant, many of them were thought­less and fool­ish. Pe­ter did not have a deep mind, but he knew his mind fairly well. He was there­fore a man of quick de­ci­sion and sud­den ac­tion. While oth­ers talked in their as­ton­ish­ment at see­ing Je­sus on the beach, Pe­ter jumped in and swam ashore to meet the Mas­ter.

• personal traits and attitudes › denied Jesus; couldn’t believe himself forgiven

139:2.5The one trait which Pe­ter most ad­mired in Je­sus was his su­per­nal ten­der­ness. Pe­ter never grew weary of con­tem­plat­ing Je­sus’ for­bear­ance. He never for­got the les­son about for­giv­ing the wrong­doer, not only seven times but sev­enty times and seven. He thought much about these im­pres­sions of the Mas­ter’s for­giv­ing char­ac­ter dur­ing those dark and dis­mal days im­me­di­ately fol­low­ing his thought­less and un­in­tended de­nial of Je­sus in the high priest’s court­yard.

• Jesus › washed S.P.’s feet
• personal traits and attitudes › erratic, impulsive, enthusiastic personality
• personal traits and attitudes › faults were of head, not heart
• personal traits and attitudes › superficially brave, but withered before ridicule

139:2.6Si­mon Pe­ter was dis­tress­ingly vac­il­lat­ing; he would sud­denly swing from one ex­treme to the other. First he re­fused to let Je­sus wash his feet and then, on hear­ing the Mas­ter’s re­ply, begged to be washed all over. But, af­ter all, Je­sus knew that Pe­ter’s faults were of the head and not of the heart. He was one of the most in­ex­pli­ca­ble com­bi­na­tions of cour­age and cow­ardice that ever lived on earth. His great strength of char­ac­ter was loy­alty, friend­ship. Pe­ter re­ally and truly loved Je­sus. And yet de­spite this tow­er­ing strength of de­vo­tion he was so un­sta­ble and in­con­stant that he per­mit­ted a ser­vant girl to tease him into deny­ing his Lord and Mas­ter. Pe­ter could with­stand per­se­cu­tion and any other form of di­rect as­sault, but he with­ered and shrank be­fore ridicule. He was a brave sol­dier when fac­ing a frontal at­tack, but he was a fear-cring­ing cow­ard when sur­prised with an as­sault from the rear.

• personal traits and attitudes › defended Philip’s work among Samaritans, Paul’s among gentiles
• position and achievements › worked with Paul

139:2.7Pe­ter was the first of Je­sus’ apos­tles to come for­ward to de­fend the work of Philip among the Samar­i­tans and Paul among the gen­tiles; yet later on at An­ti­och he re­versed him­self when con­fronted by ridi­cul­ing Ju­daiz­ers, tem­porar­ily with­draw­ing from the gen­tiles only to bring down upon his head the fear­less de­nun­ci­a­tion of Paul.

139:2.8He was the first one of the apos­tles to make whole­hearted con­fes­sion of Je­sus’ com­bined hu­man­ity and di­vin­ity and the first—save Ju­das—to deny him. Pe­ter was not so much of a dreamer, but he dis­liked to de­scend from the clouds of ec­stasy and the en­thu­si­asm of dra­matic in­dul­gence to the plain and mat­ter-of-fact world of re­al­ity.

• personal traits and attitudes › followed afar off
• position and achievements › great and saving light to thousands

139:2.9In fol­low­ing Je­sus, lit­er­ally and fig­u­ra­tively, he was ei­ther lead­ing the pro­ces­sion or else trail­ing be­hind—“fol­low­ing afar off.” But he was the out­stand­ing preacher of the twelve; he did more than any other one man, aside from Paul, to es­tab­lish the king­dom and send its mes­sen­gers to the four cor­ners of the earth in one gen­er­a­tion.

139:2.10Af­ter his rash de­nials of the Mas­ter he found him­self, and with An­drew’s sym­pa­thetic and un­der­stand­ing guid­ance he again led the way back to the fish nets while the apos­tles tar­ried to find out what was to hap­pen af­ter the cru­ci­fix­ion. When he was fully as­sured that Je­sus had for­given him and knew he had been re­ceived back into the Mas­ter’s fold, the fires of the king­dom burned so brightly within his soul that he be­came a great and sav­ing light to thou­sands who sat in dark­ness.

• position and achievements › worked with Paul

139:2.11Af­ter leav­ing Je­ru­sa­lem and be­fore Paul be­came the lead­ing spirit among the gen­tile Chris­tian churches, Pe­ter trav­eled ex­ten­sively, vis­it­ing all the churches from Baby­lon to Corinth. He even vis­ited and min­is­tered to many of the churches which had been raised up by Paul. Al­though Pe­ter and Paul dif­fered much in tem­per­a­ment and ed­u­ca­tion, even in the­ol­ogy, they worked to­gether har­mo­niously for the up­build­ing of the churches dur­ing their later years.

• First Epistle altered by disciple of Paul

139:2.12Some­thing of Pe­ter’s style and teach­ing is shown in the ser­mons par­tially re­corded by Luke and in the Gospel of Mark. His vig­or­ous style was bet­ter shown in his let­ter known as the First Epis­tle of Pe­ter; at least this was true be­fore it was sub­se­quently al­tered by a dis­ci­ple of Paul.

139:2.13But Pe­ter per­sisted in mak­ing the mis­take of try­ing to con­vince the Jews that Je­sus was, af­ter all, re­ally and truly the Jew­ish Mes­siah. Right up to the day of his death, Si­mon Pe­ter con­tin­ued to suf­fer con­fu­sion in his mind be­tween the con­cepts of Je­sus as the Jew­ish Mes­siah, Christ as the world’s re­deemer, and the Son of Man as the rev­e­la­tion of God, the lov­ing Fa­ther of all man­kind.

• crucified in Rome; wife Perpetua thrown to wild beasts

139:2.14Pe­ter’s wife was a very able woman. For years she la­bored ac­cept­ably as a mem­ber of the women’s corps, and when Pe­ter was driven out of Je­ru­sa­lem, she ac­com­pa­nied him upon all his jour­neys to the churches as well as on all his mis­sion­ary ex­cur­sions. And the day her il­lus­tri­ous hus­band yielded up his life, she was thrown to the wild beasts in the arena at Rome.

139:2.15And so this man Pe­ter, an in­ti­mate of Je­sus, one of the in­ner cir­cle, went forth from Je­ru­sa­lem pro­claim­ing the glad tid­ings of the king­dom with power and glory un­til the full­ness of his min­istry had been ac­com­plished; and he re­garded him­self as the re­cip­i­ent of high hon­ors when his cap­tors in­formed him that he must die as his Mas­ter had died—on the cross. And thus was Si­mon Pe­ter cru­ci­fied in Rome.

• fisher partner of Andrew, sons of Zebedee

139:3.1James, the older of the two apos­tle sons of Zeb­e­dee, whom Je­sus nick­named “sons of thun­der,” was thirty years old when he be­came an apos­tle. He was mar­ried, had four chil­dren, and lived near his par­ents in the out­skirts of Ca­per­naum, Beth­saida. He was a fish­er­man, ply­ing his call­ing in com­pany with his younger brother John and in as­so­ci­a­tion with An­drew and Si­mon. James and his brother John en­joyed the ad­van­tage of hav­ing known Je­sus longer than any of the other apos­tles.

• position and achievements › assigned as personal aid to Jesus

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.

• John Zebedee associated with

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.

• laid hands on converts receiving Spirit of Truth

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.

• Jesus › special instructions to S.P.

140:8.1Je­sus well knew that his apos­tles were not fully as­sim­i­lat­ing his teach­ings. He de­cided to give some spe­cial in­struc­tion to Pe­ter, James, and John, hop­ing they would be able to clar­ify the ideas of their as­so­ciates. He saw that, while some fea­tures of the idea of a spir­i­tual king­dom were be­ing grasped by the twelve, they stead­fastly per­sisted in at­tach­ing these new spir­i­tual teach­ings di­rectly onto their old and en­trenched lit­eral con­cepts of the king­dom of heaven as a restora­tion of David’s throne and the re-es­tab­lish­ment of Is­rael as a tem­po­ral power on earth. Ac­cord­ingly, on Thurs­day af­ter­noon Je­sus went out from the shore in a boat with Pe­ter, James, and John to talk over the af­fairs of the king­dom. This was a four hours’ teach­ing con­fer­ence, em­brac­ing scores of ques­tions and an­swers, and may most prof­itably be put in this rec­ord by re­or­ga­niz­ing the sum­mary of this mo­men­tous af­ter­noon as it was given by Si­mon Pe­ter to his brother, An­drew, the fol­low­ing morn­ing:

• position and achievements › much more effective preacher than Jesus

141:3.2Pe­ter, James, and John did most of the pub­lic preach­ing. Philip, Na­than­iel, Thomas, and Si­mon did much of the per­sonal work and con­ducted classes for spe­cial groups of in­quir­ers; the twins con­tin­ued their gen­eral po­lice super­vi­sion, while An­drew, Mat­thew, and Ju­das de­vel­oped into a gen­eral man­age­rial com­mit­tee of three, al­though each of these three also did con­sid­er­able re­li­gious work.

• position and achievements › much more effective preacher than Jesus

141:7.10He an­nounced that he had come to func­tion as a teacher, a teacher sent from heaven to pre­sent spir­i­tual truth to the ma­te­rial mind. And this is ex­actly what he did; he was a teacher, not a preacher. From the hu­man view­point Pe­ter was a much more ef­fec­tive preacher than Je­sus. Je­sus’ preach­ing was so ef­fec­tive be­cause of his unique per­son­al­ity, not so much be­cause of com­pelling or­a­tory or emo­tional ap­peal. Je­sus spoke di­rectly to men’s souls. He was a teacher of man’s spirit, but through the mind. He lived with men.

• Simon Peter

143:3.5When they went up the moun­tain, An­drew’s head was full of prob­lems. John was in­or­di­nately per­plexed in his heart. James was griev­ously trou­bled in his soul. Mat­thew was hard pressed for funds inas­much as they had been so­journ­ing among the gen­tiles. Pe­ter was over­wrought and had re­cently been more tem­per­a­men­tal than usual. Ju­das was suf­fer­ing from a pe­ri­odic at­tack of sen­si­tive­ness and self­ish­ness. Si­mon was un­usu­ally up­set in his ef­forts to rec­on­cile his pa­tri­o­tism with the love of the broth­er­hood of man. Philip was more and more non­plused by the way things were go­ing. Na­than­iel had been less hu­mor­ous since they had come in con­tact with the gen­tile pop­u­la­tions, and Thomas was in the midst of a se­vere sea­son of de­pres­sion. Only the twins were nor­mal and un­per­turbed. All of them were ex­ceed­ingly per­plexed about how to get along peace­ably with John’s dis­ci­ples.

• Simon Peter

144:1.7Dur­ing these Sep­tem­ber weeks they rested, vis­ited, re­counted their ex­pe­ri­ences since Je­sus first called them to ser­vice, and en­gaged in an earnest ef­fort to co-or­di­nate what the Mas­ter had so far taught them. In a mea­sure they all sensed that this would be their last op­por­tu­nity for pro­longed rest. They re­al­ized that their next pub­lic ef­fort in ei­ther Judea or Gal­i­lee would mark the be­gin­ning of the fi­nal procla­ma­tion of the com­ing king­dom, but they had lit­tle or no set­tled idea as to what the king­dom would be when it came. John and An­drew thought the king­dom had al­ready come; Pe­ter and James be­lieved that it was yet to come; Na­than­iel and Thomas frankly con­fessed they were puz­zled; Mat­thew, Philip, and Si­mon Ze­lo­tes were un­cer­tain and con­fused; the twins were bliss­fully ig­no­rant of the con­tro­versy; and Ju­das Is­car­iot was silent, non­com­mit­tal.

• sermons of

145:2.1The next Sab­bath, at the af­ter­noon ser­vice in the syn­a­gogue, Je­sus preached his ser­mon on “The Will of the Fa­ther in Heaven.” In the morn­ing Si­mon Pe­ter had preached on “The King­dom.” At the Thurs­day evening meet­ing of the syn­a­gogue An­drew had taught, his sub­ject be­ing “The New Way.” At this par­tic­u­lar time more peo­ple be­lieved in Je­sus in Ca­per­naum than in any other one city on earth.

• calculated 1000 could have been baptized after healing at sundown

145:5.10The apos­tles were loath to leave the great in­ter­est which had been aroused at Ca­per­naum. Pe­ter cal­cu­lated that no less than one thou­sand be­liev­ers could have been bap­tized into the king­dom. Je­sus lis­tened to them pa­tiently, but he would not con­sent to re­turn. Si­lence pre­vailed for a sea­son, and then Thomas ad­dressed his fel­low apos­tles, say­ing: “Let’s go! The Mas­ter has spo­ken. No mat­ter if we can­not fully com­pre­hend the mys­ter­ies of the king­dom of heaven, of one thing we are cer­tain: We fol­low a teacher who seeks no glory for him­self.” And re­luc­tantly they went forth to preach the good tid­ings in the cities of Gal­i­lee.

• sermons of

146:1.1The small city of Rim­mon had once been ded­i­cated to the wor­ship of a Baby­lo­nian god of the air, Ram­man. Many of the ear­lier Baby­lo­nian and later Zoroas­trian teach­ings were still em­braced in the be­liefs of the Rim­monites; there­fore did Je­sus and the twenty-four de­vote much of their time to the task of mak­ing plain the dif­fer­ence be­tween these older be­liefs and the new gospel of the king­dom. Pe­ter here preached one of the great ser­mons of his early ca­reer on “Aaron and the Golden Calf.”

• position and achievements › in charge of school of evangelists

148:0.3While An­drew con­tin­ued in gen­eral charge of the apos­tolic ac­tiv­i­ties, Pe­ter was in full charge of the school of the evan­ge­lists. The apos­tles all did their share in teach­ing groups of evan­ge­lists each forenoon, and both teach­ers and pupils taught the peo­ple dur­ing the af­ter­noons. Af­ter the evening meal, five nights a week, the apos­tles con­ducted ques­tion classes for the ben­e­fit of the evan­ge­lists. Once a week Je­sus pre­sided at this ques­tion hour, an­swer­ing the holdover ques­tions from pre­vi­ous ses­sions.

• position and achievements › in charge of school of evangelists

148:1.1Pe­ter, James, and An­drew were the com­mit­tee des­ig­nated by Je­sus to pass upon ap­pli­cants for ad­mis­sion to the school of evan­ge­lists. All the races and na­tion­al­i­ties of the Ro­man world and the East, as far as In­dia, were rep­re­sented among the stu­dents in this new school of the proph­ets. This school was con­ducted on the plan of learn­ing and do­ing. What the stu­dents learned dur­ing the forenoon they taught to the as­sem­bly by the sea­side dur­ing the af­ter­noon. Af­ter sup­per they in­for­mally dis­cussed both the learn­ing of the forenoon and the teach­ing of the af­ter­noon.

• Simon Peter

148:9.4And it was about this time that the mes­sen­gers of the San­hedrin ar­rived to bid the six spies re­turn to Je­ru­sa­lem. When they heard this mes­sage, they fell to earnest de­bate among them­selves; and af­ter they had fin­ished their dis­cus­sions, the leader and two of his as­so­ciates re­turned with the mes­sen­gers to Je­ru­sa­lem, while three of the spy­ing Phar­isees con­fessed faith in Je­sus and, go­ing im­me­di­ately to the lake, were bap­tized by Pe­ter and fel­low­shipped by the apos­tles as chil­dren of the king­dom.

• sister Martha; brother Andrew

150:1.1Of all the dar­ing things which Je­sus did in con­nec­tion with his earth ca­reer, the most amaz­ing was his sud­den an­nounce­ment on the evening of Jan­uary 16: “On the mor­row we will set apart ten women for the min­is­ter­ing work of the king­dom.” At the be­gin­ning of the two weeks’ pe­riod dur­ing which the apos­tles and the evan­ge­lists were to be ab­sent from Beth­saida on their fur­lough, Je­sus re­quested David to sum­mon his par­ents back to their home and to dis­patch mes­sen­gers call­ing to Beth­saida ten de­vout women who had served in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the for­mer en­camp­ment and the tented in­fir­mary. These women had all lis­tened to the in­struc­tion given the young evan­ge­lists, but it had never oc­curred to ei­ther them­selves or their teach­ers that Je­sus would dare to com­mis­sion women to teach the gospel of the king­dom and min­is­ter to the sick. These ten women se­lected and com­mis­sioned by Je­sus were: Su­sanna, the daugh­ter of the for­mer chazan of the Naz­a­reth syn­a­gogue; Joanna, the wife of Chuza, the stew­ard of Herod An­tipas; Eliz­a­beth, the daugh­ter of a wealthy Jew of Tiberias and Sep­pho­ris; Martha, the el­der sis­ter of An­drew and Pe­ter; Rachel, the sis­ter-in-law of Jude, the Mas­ter’s brother in the flesh; Nas­anta, the daugh­ter of El­man, the Syr­ian physi­cian; Milcha, a cousin of the Apos­tle Thomas; Ruth, the el­dest daugh­ter of Mat­thew Levi; Celta, the daugh­ter of a Ro­man cen­tu­rion; and Aga­man, a widow of Da­mas­cus. Sub­se­quently, Je­sus added two other women to this group—Mary Mag­da­lene and Re­becca, the daugh­ter of Joseph of Ari­mathea.

• Simon Peter

151:2.1Pe­ter and the group about him came to the con­clu­sion that the para­ble of the sower was an al­le­gory, that each fea­ture had some hid­den mean­ing, and so they de­cided to go to Je­sus and ask for an ex­pla­na­tion. Ac­cord­ingly, Pe­ter ap­proached the Mas­ter, say­ing: “We are not able to pen­e­trate the mean­ing of this para­ble, and we de­sire that you ex­plain it to us since you say it is given us to know the mys­ter­ies of the king­dom.” And when Je­sus heard this, he said to Pe­ter: “My son, I de­sire to with­hold noth­ing from you, but first sup­pose you tell me what you have been talk­ing about; what is your in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the para­ble?”

151:2.2Af­ter a mo­ment of si­lence, Pe­ter said: “Mas­ter, we have talked much con­cern­ing the para­ble, and this is the in­ter­pre­ta­tion I have de­cided upon: The sower is the gospel preacher; the seed is the word of God. The seed which fell by the way­side rep­re­sents those who do not un­der­stand the gospel teach­ing. The birds which snatched away the seed that fell upon the hard­ened ground rep­re­sent Sa­tan, or the evil one, who steals away that which has been sown in the hearts of these ig­no­rant ones. The seed which fell upon the rocky places, and which sprang up so sud­denly, rep­re­sents those su­per­fi­cial and un­think­ing per­sons who, when they hear the glad tid­ings, re­ceive the mes­sage with joy; but be­cause the truth has no real root in their deeper un­der­stand­ing, their de­vo­tion is short-lived in the face of tribu­la­tion and per­se­cu­tion. When trou­ble comes, these be­liev­ers stum­ble; they fall away when tempted. The seed which fell among thorns rep­re­sents those who hear the word will­ingly, but who al­low the cares of the world and the de­ceit­ful­ness of riches to choke the word of truth so that it be­comes un­fruit­ful. Now the seed which fell on good ground and sprang up to bear, some thirty, some sixty, and some a hun­dred­fold, rep­re­sents those who, when they have heard the truth, re­ceive it with vary­ing de­grees of ap­pre­ci­a­tion—ow­ing to their dif­fer­ing in­tel­lec­tual en­dow­ments—and hence man­i­fest these vary­ing de­grees of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence.”

151:5.1The mul­ti­tude con­tin­ued to in­crease through­out the week. On Sab­bath Je­sus has­tened away to the hills, but when Sun­day morn­ing came, the crowds re­turned. Je­sus spoke to them in the early af­ter­noon af­ter the preach­ing of Pe­ter, and when he had fin­ished, he said to his apos­tles: “I am weary of the throngs; let us cross over to the other side that we may rest for a day.”

151:5.2On the way across the lake they en­coun­tered one of those vi­o­lent and sud­den wind­storms which are char­ac­ter­is­tic of the Sea of Gal­i­lee, es­pe­cially at this sea­son of the year. This body of wa­ter is al­most seven hun­dred feet be­low the level of the sea and is sur­rounded by high banks, es­pe­cially on the west. There are steep gorges lead­ing up from the lake into the hills, and as the heated air rises in a pocket over the lake dur­ing the day, there is a ten­dency af­ter sun­set for the cool­ing air of the gorges to rush down upon the lake. These gales come on quickly and some­times go away just as sud­denly.

151:5.3It was just such an evening gale that caught the boat car­ry­ing Je­sus over to the other side on this Sun­day evening. Three other boats con­tain­ing some of the younger evan­ge­lists were trail­ing af­ter. This tem­pest was se­vere, not­with­stand­ing that it was con­fined to this re­gion of the lake, there be­ing no ev­i­dence of a storm on the west­ern shore. The wind was so strong that the waves be­gan to wash over the boat. The high wind had torn the sail away be­fore the apos­tles could furl it, and they were now en­tirely de­pen­dent on their oars as they la­bo­ri­ously pulled for the shore, a lit­tle more than a mile and a half dis­tant.

151:5.4Mean­while Je­sus lay asleep in the stern of the boat un­der a small over­head shel­ter. The Mas­ter was weary when they left Beth­saida, and it was to se­cure rest that he had di­rected them to sail him across to the other side. These ex-fish­er­men were strong and ex­pe­ri­enced oars­men, but this was one of the worst gales they had ever en­coun­tered. Al­though the wind and the waves tossed their boat about as though it were a toy ship, Je­sus slum­bered on undis­turbed. Pe­ter was at the right-hand oar near the stern. When the boat be­gan to fill with wa­ter, he dropped his oar and, rush­ing over to Je­sus, shook him vig­or­ously in or­der to awaken him, and when he was aroused, Pe­ter said: “Mas­ter, don’t you know we are in a vi­o­lent storm? If you do not save us, we will all per­ish.”

151:5.5As Je­sus came out in the rain, he looked first at Pe­ter, and then peer­ing into the dark­ness at the strug­gling oars­men, he turned his glance back upon Si­mon Pe­ter, who, in his ag­i­ta­tion, had not yet re­turned to his oar, and said: “Why are all of you so filled with fear? Where is your faith? Peace, be quiet.” Je­sus had hardly ut­tered this re­buke to Pe­ter and the other apos­tles, he had hardly bid­den Pe­ter seek peace where­with to quiet his trou­bled soul, when the dis­turbed at­mo­sphere, hav­ing es­tab­lished its equi­lib­rium, set­tled down into a great calm. The an­gry waves al­most im­me­di­ately sub­sided, while the dark clouds, hav­ing spent them­selves in a short shower, van­ished, and the stars of heaven shone over­head. All this was purely co­in­ci­den­tal as far as we can judge; but the apos­tles, par­tic­u­larly Si­mon Pe­ter, never ceased to re­gard the episode as a na­ture mir­a­cle. It was es­pe­cially easy for the men of that day to be­lieve in na­ture mir­a­cles inas­much as they firmly be­lieved that all na­ture was a phe­nom­e­non di­rectly un­der the con­trol of spirit forces and super­nat­u­ral be­ings.

151:5.6Je­sus plainly ex­plained to the twelve that he had spo­ken to their trou­bled spir­its and had ad­dressed him­self to their fear-tossed minds, that he had not com­manded the el­e­ments to obey his word, but it was of no avail. The Mas­ter’s fol­low­ers al­ways per­sisted in plac­ing their own in­ter­pre­ta­tion on all such co­in­ci­den­tal oc­cur­rences. From this day on they in­sisted on re­gard­ing the Mas­ter as hav­ing ab­so­lute power over the nat­u­ral el­e­ments. Pe­ter never grew weary of recit­ing how “even the winds and the waves obey him.”

151:5.7It was late in the evening when Je­sus and his as­so­ciates reached the shore, and since it was a calm and beau­ti­ful night, they all rested in the boats, not go­ing ashore un­til shortly af­ter sun­rise the next morn­ing. When they were gath­ered to­gether, about forty in all, Je­sus said: “Let us go up into yon­der hills and tarry for a few days while we pon­der over the prob­lems of the Fa­ther’s king­dom.”

• personal traits and attitudes › favored proclaiming Jesus king

152:2.5Philip had pro­vided a three days’ sup­ply of food for Je­sus and the twelve, which was in the cus­tody of the Mark lad, their boy of all chores. By af­ter­noon of this, the third day for al­most half of this mul­ti­tude, the food the peo­ple had brought with them was nearly ex­hausted. David Zeb­e­dee had no tented city here to feed and ac­com­mo­date the crowds. Nei­ther had Philip made food pro­vi­sion for such a mul­ti­tude. But the peo­ple, even though they were hun­gry, would not go away. It was be­ing qui­etly whis­pered about that Je­sus, de­sir­ing to avoid trou­ble with both Herod and the Je­ru­sa­lem lead­ers, had cho­sen this quiet spot out­side the ju­ris­dic­tion of all his en­e­mies as the proper place to be crowned king. The en­thu­si­asm of the peo­ple was ris­ing ev­ery hour. Not a word was said to Je­sus, though, of course, he knew all that was go­ing on. Even the twelve apos­tles were still tainted with such no­tions, and es­pe­cially the younger evan­ge­lists. The apos­tles who fa­vored this at­tempt to pro­claim Je­sus king were Pe­ter, John, Si­mon Ze­lo­tes, and Ju­das Is­car­iot. Those op­pos­ing the plan were An­drew, James, Na­than­iel, and Thomas. Mat­thew, Philip, and the Al­pheus twins were non­com­mit­tal. The ringleader of this plot to make him king was Joab, one of the young evan­ge­lists.

152:4.1The apos­tles, with­out their Mas­ter—sent off by them­selves—en­tered the boat and in si­lence be­gan to row to­ward Beth­saida on the west­ern shore of the lake. None of the twelve was so crushed and down­cast as Si­mon Pe­ter. Hardly a word was spo­ken; they were all think­ing of the Mas­ter alone in the hills. Had he for­saken them? He had never be­fore sent them all away and re­fused to go with them. What could all this mean?

152:4.2Dark­ness de­scended upon them, for there had arisen a strong and con­trary wind which made prog­ress al­most im­pos­si­ble. As the hours of dark­ness and hard row­ing passed, Pe­ter grew weary and fell into a deep sleep of ex­haus­tion. An­drew and James put him to rest on the cush­ioned seat in the stern of the boat. While the other apos­tles toiled against the wind and the waves, Pe­ter dreamed a dream; he saw a vi­sion of Je­sus com­ing to them walk­ing on the sea. When the Mas­ter seemed to walk on by the boat, Pe­ter cried out, “Save us, Mas­ter, save us.” And those who were in the rear of the boat heard him say some of these words. As this ap­pari­tion of the night sea­son con­tin­ued in Pe­ter’s mind, he dreamed that he heard Je­sus say: “Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid.” This was like the balm of Gilead to Pe­ter’s dis­turbed soul; it soothed his trou­bled spirit, so that (in his dream) he cried out to the Mas­ter: “Lord, if it re­ally is you, bid me come and walk with you on the wa­ter.” And when Pe­ter started to walk upon the wa­ter, the bois­ter­ous waves fright­ened him, and as he was about to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” And many of the twelve heard him ut­ter this cry. Then Pe­ter dreamed that Je­sus came to the res­cue and, stretch­ing forth his hand, took hold and lifted him up, say­ing: “O, you of lit­tle faith, where­fore did you doubt?”

152:4.3In con­nec­tion with the lat­ter part of his dream Pe­ter arose from the seat whereon he slept and ac­tu­ally stepped over­board and into the wa­ter. And he awak­ened from his dream as An­drew, James, and John reached down and pulled him out of the sea.

152:4.4To Pe­ter this ex­pe­ri­ence was al­ways real. He sin­cerely be­lieved that Je­sus came to them that night. He only par­tially con­vinced John Mark, which ex­plains why Mark left a por­tion of the story out of his nar­ra­tive. Luke, the physi­cian, who made care­ful search into these mat­ters, con­cluded that the episode was a vi­sion of Pe­ter’s and there­fore re­fused to give place to this story in the prepa­ra­tion of his nar­ra­tive.

• dream delivered S.P. from fear of uncleanness

153:3.6The Phar­i­saic com­mis­sion­ers of the Je­ru­sa­lem San­hedrin were now al­most con­vinced that Je­sus must be ap­pre­hended on a charge of blas­phemy or on one of flout­ing the sa­cred law of the Jews; where­fore their ef­forts to in­volve him in the dis­cus­sion of, and pos­si­ble at­tack upon, some of the tra­di­tions of the el­ders, or so-called oral laws of the na­tion. No mat­ter how scarce wa­ter might be, these tra­di­tion­ally en­slaved Jews would never fail to go through with the re­quired cer­e­mo­nial wash­ing of the hands be­fore ev­ery meal. It was their be­lief that “it is bet­ter to die than to transgress the com­mand­ments of the el­ders.” The spies asked this ques­tion be­cause it had been re­ported that Je­sus had said, “Sal­va­tion is a mat­ter of clean hearts rather than of clean hands.” But such be­liefs, when they once be­come a part of one’s re­li­gion, are hard to get away from. Even many years af­ter this day the Apos­tle Pe­ter was still held in the bond­age of fear to many of these tra­di­tions about things clean and un­clean, only be­ing fi­nally de­liv­ered by ex­pe­ri­enc­ing an ex­traor­di­nary and vivid dream. All of this can the bet­ter be un­der­stood when it is re­called that these Jews looked upon eat­ing with un­washed hands in the same light as com­merce with a har­lot, and both were equally pun­ish­able by ex­com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

• personal traits and attitudes › erratic, impulsive, enthusiastic personality

155:3.2The so­journ at Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi was a real test to the eleven apos­tles; it was a dif­fi­cult two weeks for them to live through. They were well-nigh de­pressed, and they missed the pe­ri­odic stim­u­la­tion of Pe­ter’s en­thu­si­as­tic per­son­al­ity. In these times it was truly a great and test­ing ad­ven­ture to be­lieve in Je­sus and go forth to fol­low af­ter him. Though they made few con­verts dur­ing these two weeks, they did learn much that was highly prof­itable from their daily con­fer­ences with the Mas­ter.

• questions of

155:4.2While paus­ing for lunch un­der the shadow of an over­hang­ing ledge of rock, near Luz, Je­sus de­liv­ered one of the most re­mark­able ad­dresses which his apos­tles ever lis­tened to through­out all their years of as­so­ci­a­tion with him. No sooner had they seated them­selves to break bread than Si­mon Pe­ter asked Je­sus: “Mas­ter, since the Fa­ther in heaven knows all things, and since his spirit is our sup­port in the es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom of heaven on earth, why is it that we flee from the threats of our en­e­mies? Why do we refuse to con­front the foes of truth?” But be­fore Je­sus had be­gun to an­swer Pe­ter’s ques­tion, Thomas broke in, ask­ing: “Mas­ter, I should re­ally like to know just what is wrong with the re­li­gion of our en­e­mies at Je­ru­sa­lem. What is the real dif­fer­ence be­tween their re­li­gion and ours? Why is it we are at such di­ver­sity of be­lief when we all pro­fess to serve the same God?” And when Thomas had fin­ished, Je­sus said: “While I would not ig­nore Pe­ter’s ques­tion, know­ing full well how easy it would be to mis­un­der­stand my rea­sons for avoid­ing an open clash with the rulers of the Jews at just this time, still it will prove more help­ful to all of you if I choose rather to an­swer Thomas’s ques­tion. And that I will pro­ceed to do when you have fin­ished your lunch.”

• personal traits and attitudes › attempted to dissuade Norana

156:1.3When No­rana ar­rived with her daugh­ter, the Al­pheus twins ex­plained through an in­ter­preter that the Mas­ter was rest­ing and could not be dis­turbed; where­upon No­rana replied that she and the child would re­main right there un­til the Mas­ter had fin­ished his rest. Pe­ter also en­deav­ored to rea­son with her and to per­suade her to go home. He ex­plained that Je­sus was weary with much teach­ing and heal­ing, and that he had come to Phoeni­cia for a pe­riod of quiet and rest. But it was fu­tile; No­rana would not leave. To Pe­ter’s en­treaties she replied only: “I will not de­part un­til I have seen your Mas­ter. I know he can cast the de­mon out of my child, and I will not go un­til the healer has looked upon my daugh­ter.”

• promised to pay temple tax

157:1.1As Je­sus, with An­drew and Pe­ter, tar­ried by the lake near the boat­shop, a tem­ple-tax col­lec­tor came upon them and, rec­og­niz­ing Je­sus, called Pe­ter to one side and said: “Does not your Mas­ter pay the tem­ple tax?” Pe­ter was in­clined to show in­dig­na­tion at the sug­ges­tion that Je­sus should be ex­pected to con­tribute to the main­te­nance of the re­li­gious ac­tiv­i­ties of his sworn en­e­mies, but, not­ing a pe­cu­liar ex­pres­sion on the face of the tax col­lec­tor, he rightly sur­mised that it was the pur­pose to en­trap them in the act of re­fus­ing to pay the cus­tom­ary half shekel for the sup­port of the tem­ple ser­vices at Je­ru­sa­lem. Ac­cord­ingly, Pe­ter replied: “Why of course the Mas­ter pays the tem­ple tax. You wait by the gate, and I will pres­ently re­turn with the tax.”

157:3.1Early Tues­day morn­ing Je­sus and the twelve apos­tles left Ma­g­a­dan Park for Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi, the cap­i­tal of the Tetrarch Philip’s do­main. Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi was sit­u­ated in a re­gion of won­drous beauty. It nes­tled in a charm­ing val­ley be­tween scenic hills where the Jor­dan poured forth from an un­der­ground cave. The heights of Mount Her­mon were in full view to the north, while from the hills just to the south a mag­nif­i­cent view was had of the up­per Jor­dan and the Sea of Gal­i­lee.

157:3.2Je­sus had gone to Mount Her­mon in his early ex­pe­ri­ence with the af­fairs of the king­dom, and now that he was en­ter­ing upon the fi­nal epoch of his work, he de­sired to re­turn to this mount of trial and tri­umph, where he hoped the apos­tles might gain a new vi­sion of their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and ac­quire new strength for the try­ing times just ahead. As they jour­neyed along the way, about the time of pass­ing south of the Wa­ters of Merom, the apos­tles fell to talk­ing among them­selves about their re­cent ex­pe­ri­ences in Phoeni­cia and else­where and to re­count­ing how their mes­sage had been re­ceived, and how the dif­fer­ent peo­ples re­garded their Mas­ter.

157:3.3As they paused for lunch, Je­sus sud­denly con­fronted the twelve with the first ques­tion he had ever ad­dressed to them con­cern­ing him­self. He asked this sur­pris­ing ques­tion, “Who do men say that I am?”

157:3.4Je­sus had spent long months in train­ing these apos­tles as to the na­ture and char­ac­ter of the king­dom of heaven, and he well knew the time had come when he must be­gin to teach them more about his own na­ture and his per­sonal re­la­tion­ship to the king­dom. And now, as they were seated un­der the mul­berry trees, the Mas­ter made ready to hold one of the most mo­men­tous ses­sions of his long as­so­ci­a­tion with the cho­sen apos­tles.

157:3.5More than half the apos­tles par­tic­i­pated in an­swer­ing Je­sus’ ques­tion. They told him that he was re­garded as a prophet or as an ex­traor­di­nary man by all who knew him; that even his en­e­mies greatly feared him, ac­count­ing for his pow­ers by the in­dict­ment that he was in league with the prince of dev­ils. They told him that some in Judea and Samaria who had not met him per­son­ally be­lieved he was John the Bap­tist risen from the dead. Pe­ter ex­plained that he had been, at sundry times and by var­i­ous per­sons, com­pared with Moses, Eli­jah, Isa­iah, and Jeremiah. When Je­sus had lis­tened to this re­port, he drew him­self upon his feet, and look­ing down upon the twelve sit­ting about him in a semi­cir­cle, with startling em­pha­sis he pointed to them with a sweep­ing ges­ture of his hand and asked, “But who say you that I am?” There was a mo­ment of tense si­lence. The twelve never took their eyes off the Mas­ter, and then Si­mon Pe­ter, spring­ing to his feet, ex­claimed: “You are the De­liv­erer, the Son of the liv­ing God.” And the eleven sit­ting apos­tles arose to their feet with one ac­cord, thereby in­di­cat­ing that Pe­ter had spo­ken for all of them.

157:3.6When Je­sus had beck­oned them again to be seated, and while still stand­ing be­fore them, he said: “This has been re­vealed to you by my Fa­ther. The hour has come when you should know the truth about me. But for the time be­ing I charge you that you tell this to no man. Let us go hence.”

157:3.7And so they re­sumed their jour­ney to Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi, ar­riv­ing late that evening and stop­ping at the home of Cel­sus, who was ex­pect­ing them. The apos­tles slept lit­tle that night; they seemed to sense that a great event in their lives and in the work of the king­dom had tran­spired.

157:4.1Since the oc­ca­sions of Je­sus’ bap­tism by John and the turn­ing of the wa­ter into wine at Cana, the apos­tles had, at var­i­ous times, vir­tu­ally ac­cepted him as the Mes­siah. For short pe­ri­ods some of them had truly be­lieved that he was the ex­pected De­liv­erer. But hardly would such hopes spring up in their hearts than the Mas­ter would dash them to pieces by some crush­ing word or dis­ap­point­ing deed. They had long been in a state of tur­moil due to con­flict be­tween the con­cepts of the ex­pected Mes­siah which they held in their minds and the ex­pe­ri­ence of their ex­traor­di­nary as­so­ci­a­tion with this ex­traor­di­nary man which they held in their hearts.

• position and achievements › chief preacher and recognized head of Jesus’ apostles

157:4.2It was late forenoon on this Wednes­day when the apos­tles as­sem­bled in Cel­sus’ gar­den for their noon­time meal. Dur­ing most of the night and since they had arisen that morn­ing, Si­mon Pe­ter and Si­mon Ze­lo­tes had been earnestly la­bor­ing with their breth­ren to bring them all to the point of the whole­hearted ac­cep­tance of the Mas­ter, not merely as the Mes­siah, but also as the di­vine Son of the liv­ing God. The two Si­mons were well-nigh agreed in their es­ti­mate of Je­sus, and they la­bored dili­gently to bring their breth­ren around to the full ac­cep­tance of their views. While An­drew con­tin­ued as the di­rec­tor-gen­eral of the apos­tolic corps, his brother, Si­mon Pe­ter, was be­com­ing, in­creas­ingly and by com­mon con­sent, the spokesman for the twelve.

157:4.3They were all seated in the gar­den at just about noon when the Mas­ter ap­peared. They wore ex­pres­sions of dig­ni­fied solem­nity, and all arose to their feet as he ap­proached them. Je­sus re­lieved the ten­sion by that friendly and fra­ter­nal smile which was so char­ac­ter­is­tic of him when his fol­low­ers took them­selves, or some hap­pen­ing re­lated to them­selves, too se­ri­ously. With a com­mand­ing ges­ture he in­di­cated that they should be seated. Never again did the twelve greet their Mas­ter by aris­ing when he came into their pres­ence. They saw that he did not ap­prove of such an out­ward show of re­spect.

157:4.4Af­ter they had par­taken of their meal and were en­gaged in dis­cussing plans for the forth­com­ing tour of the De­capo­lis, Je­sus sud­denly looked up into their faces and said: “Now that a full day has passed since you as­sented to Si­mon Pe­ter’s dec­la­ra­tion re­gard­ing the iden­tity of the Son of Man, I would ask if you still hold to your de­ci­sion?” On hear­ing this, the twelve stood upon their feet, and Si­mon Pe­ter, step­ping a few paces for­ward to­ward Je­sus, said: “Yes, Mas­ter, we do. We be­lieve that you are the Son of the liv­ing God.” And Pe­ter sat down with his breth­ren.

157:4.5Je­sus, still stand­ing, then said to the twelve: “You are my cho­sen am­bas­sadors, but I know that, in the cir­cum­stances, you could not en­ter­tain this be­lief as a re­sult of mere hu­man knowl­edge. This is a rev­e­la­tion of the spirit of my Fa­ther to your in­most souls. And when, there­fore, you make this con­fes­sion by the in­sight of the spirit of my Fa­ther which dwells within you, I am led to de­clare that upon this foun­da­tion will I build the broth­er­hood of the king­dom of heaven. Upon this rock of spir­i­tual re­al­ity will I build the liv­ing tem­ple of spir­i­tual fel­low­ship in the eter­nal re­al­i­ties of my Fa­ther’s king­dom. All the forces of evil and the hosts of sin shall not pre­vail against this hu­man fra­ter­nity of the di­vine spirit. And while my Fa­ther’s spirit shall ever be the di­vine guide and men­tor of all who en­ter the bonds of this spirit fel­low­ship, to you and your suc­ces­sors I now de­liver the keys of the out­ward king­dom—the au­thor­ity over things tem­po­ral—the so­cial and eco­nomic fea­tures of this as­so­ci­a­tion of men and women as fel­lows of the king­dom.” And again he charged them, for the time be­ing, that they should tell no man that he was the Son of God.

157:4.6Je­sus was be­gin­ning to have faith in the loy­alty and in­tegrity of his apos­tles. The Mas­ter con­ceived that a faith which could stand what his cho­sen rep­re­sen­ta­tives had re­cently passed through would un­doubt­edly en­dure the fiery tri­als which were just ahead and emerge from the ap­par­ent wreck­age of all their hopes into the new light of a new dis­pen­sa­tion and thereby be able to go forth to en­lighten a world sit­ting in dark­ness. On this day the Mas­ter be­gan to be­lieve in the faith of his apos­tles, save one.

157:4.7And ever since that day this same Je­sus has been build­ing that liv­ing tem­ple upon that same eter­nal foun­da­tion of his di­vine son­ship, and those who thereby be­come self-con­scious sons of God are the hu­man stones which con­sti­tute this liv­ing tem­ple of son­ship erect­ing to the glory and honor of the wis­dom and love of the eter­nal Fa­ther of spir­its.

157:4.8And when Je­sus had thus spo­ken, he di­rected the twelve to go apart by them­selves in the hills to seek wis­dom, strength, and spir­i­tual guid­ance un­til the time of the evening meal. And they did as the Mas­ter ad­mon­ished them.

157:5.1The new and vi­tal fea­ture of Pe­ter’s con­fes­sion was the clear-cut rec­og­ni­tion that Je­sus was the Son of God, of his un­ques­tioned di­vin­ity. Ever since his bap­tism and the wed­ding at Cana these apos­tles had var­i­ously re­garded him as the Mes­siah, but it was not a part of the Jew­ish con­cept of the na­tional de­liv­erer that he should be di­vine. The Jews had not taught that the Mes­siah would spring from di­vin­ity; he was to be the “anointed one,” but hardly had they con­tem­plated him as be­ing “the Son of God.” In the sec­ond con­fes­sion more em­pha­sis was placed upon the com­bined na­ture, the su­per­nal fact that he was the Son of Man and the Son of God, and it was upon this great truth of the union of the hu­man na­ture with the di­vine na­ture that Je­sus de­clared he would build the king­dom of heaven.

157:5.2Je­sus had sought to live his life on earth and com­plete his be­stowal mis­sion as the Son of Man. His fol­low­ers were dis­posed to re­gard him as the ex­pected Mes­siah. Know­ing that he could never ful­fill their Mes­sianic ex­pec­ta­tions, he en­deav­ored to ef­fect such a mod­i­fi­ca­tion of their con­cept of the Mes­siah as would en­able him par­tially to meet their ex­pec­ta­tions. But he now rec­og­nized that such a plan could hardly be car­ried through suc­cess­fully. He there­fore elected boldly to dis­close the third plan—openly to an­nounce his di­vin­ity, ac­knowl­edge the truth­ful­ness of Pe­ter’s con­fes­sion, and di­rectly pro­claim to the twelve that he was a Son of God.

157:5.3For three years Je­sus had been pro­claim­ing that he was the “Son of Man,” while for these same three years the apos­tles had been in­creas­ingly in­sis­tent that he was the ex­pected Jew­ish Mes­siah. He now dis­closed that he was the Son of God, and upon the con­cept of the com­bined na­ture of the Son of Man and the Son of God, he de­ter­mined to build the king­dom of heaven. He had de­cided to re­frain from fur­ther ef­forts to con­vince them that he was not the Mes­siah. He now pro­posed boldly to re­veal to them what he is, and then to ig­nore their de­ter­mi­na­tion to per­sist in re­gard­ing him as the Mes­siah.

• at transfiguration

158:0.2In a gen­eral way, Je­sus knew be­fore­hand what was to tran­spire on the moun­tain, and he much de­sired that all his apos­tles might share this ex­pe­ri­ence. It was to fit them for this rev­e­la­tion of him­self that he tar­ried with them at the foot of the moun­tain. But they could not at­tain those spir­i­tual lev­els which would jus­tify their ex­po­sure to the full ex­pe­ri­ence of the vis­i­ta­tion of the ce­les­tial be­ings so soon to ap­pear on earth. And since he could not take all of his as­so­ciates with him, he de­cided to take only the three who were in the habit of ac­com­pa­ny­ing him on such spe­cial vig­ils. Ac­cord­ingly, only Pe­ter, James, and John shared even a part of this unique ex­pe­ri­ence with the Mas­ter.

• Simon Peter

158:1.9The three apos­tles were so badly fright­ened that they were slow in col­lect­ing their wits, but Pe­ter, who was first to re­cover him­self, said, as the daz­zling vi­sion faded from be­fore them and they ob­served Je­sus stand­ing alone: “Je­sus, Mas­ter, it is good to have been here. We re­joice to see this glory. We are loath to go back down to the in­glo­ri­ous world. If you are will­ing, let us abide here, and we will erect three tents, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Eli­jah.” And Pe­ter said this be­cause of his con­fu­sion, and be­cause noth­ing else came into his mind at just that mo­ment.

• personal traits and attitudes › erratic, impulsive, enthusiastic personality
• questions of

158:2.2Pe­ter shud­dered at the thought of the Mas­ter’s dy­ing—it was too dis­agree­able an idea to en­ter­tain—and fear­ing that James or John might ask some ques­tion rel­a­tive to this state­ment, he thought best to start up a di­vert­ing con­ver­sa­tion and, not know­ing what else to talk about, gave ex­pres­sion to the first thought com­ing into his mind, which was: “Mas­ter, why is it that the scribes say that Eli­jah must first come be­fore the Mes­siah shall ap­pear?” And Je­sus, know­ing that Pe­ter sought to avoid ref­er­ence to his death and res­ur­rec­tion, an­swered: “Eli­jah in­deed comes first to pre­pare the way for the Son of Man, who must suf­fer many things and fi­nally be re­jected. But I tell you that Eli­jah has al­ready come, and they re­ceived him not but did to him what­so­ever they willed.” And then did the three apos­tles per­ceive that he re­ferred to John the Bap­tist as Eli­jah. Je­sus knew that, if they in­sisted on re­gard­ing him as the Mes­siah, then must John be the Eli­jah of the prophecy.

• at transfiguration

158:2.5Je­sus did not take Pe­ter, James, and John with him up to the mount of the trans­fig­u­ra­tion be­cause they were in any sense bet­ter pre­pared than the other apos­tles to wit­ness what hap­pened, or be­cause they were spir­i­tu­ally more fit to en­joy such a rare priv­i­lege. Not at all. He well knew that none of the twelve were spir­i­tu­ally qual­i­fied for this ex­pe­ri­ence; there­fore did he take with him only the three apos­tles who were as­signed to ac­com­pany him at those times when he de­sired to be alone to en­joy soli­tary com­mu­nion.

158:7.1Early this Wednes­day morn­ing Je­sus and the twelve de­parted from Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi for Ma­g­a­dan Park near Beth­saida-Ju­lias. The apos­tles had slept very lit­tle that night, so they were up early and ready to go. Even the stolid Al­pheus twins had been shocked by this talk about the death of Je­sus. As they jour­neyed south, just be­yond the Wa­ters of Merom they came to the Da­mas­cus road, and de­sir­ing to avoid the scribes and oth­ers whom Je­sus knew would pres­ently be com­ing along af­ter them, he di­rected that they go on to Ca­per­naum by the Da­mas­cus road which passes through Gal­i­lee. And he did this be­cause he knew that those who fol­lowed af­ter him would go on down over the east Jor­dan road since they reck­oned that Je­sus and the apos­tles would fear to pass through the ter­ri­tory of Herod An­tipas. Je­sus sought to elude his crit­ics and the crowd which fol­lowed him that he might be alone with his apos­tles this day.

158:7.2They trav­eled on through Gal­i­lee un­til well past the time for their lunch, when they stopped in the shade to re­fresh them­selves. And af­ter they had par­taken of food, An­drew, speak­ing to Je­sus, said: “Mas­ter, my breth­ren do not com­pre­hend your deep say­ings. We have come fully to be­lieve that you are the Son of God, and now we hear these strange words about leav­ing us, about dy­ing. We do not un­der­stand your teach­ing. Are you speak­ing to us in para­bles? We pray you to speak to us di­rectly and in undis­guised form.”

158:7.3In an­swer to An­drew, Je­sus said: “My breth­ren, it is be­cause you have con­fessed that I am the Son of God that I am con­strained to be­gin to un­fold to you the truth about the end of the be­stowal of the Son of Man on earth. You in­sist on cling­ing to the be­lief that I am the Mes­siah, and you will not aban­don the idea that the Mes­siah must sit upon a throne in Je­ru­sa­lem; where­fore do I per­sist in telling you that the Son of Man must pres­ently go to Je­ru­sa­lem, suf­fer many things, be re­jected by the scribes, the el­ders, and the chief priests, and af­ter all this be killed and raised from the dead. And I speak not a para­ble to you; I speak the truth to you that you may be pre­pared for these events when they sud­denly come upon us.” And while he was yet speak­ing, Si­mon Pe­ter, rush­ing im­petu­ously to­ward him, laid his hand upon the Mas­ter’s shoul­der and said: “Mas­ter, be it far from us to con­tend with you, but I de­clare that these things shall never hap­pen to you.”

158:7.4Pe­ter spoke thus be­cause he loved Je­sus; but the Mas­ter’s hu­man na­ture rec­og­nized in these words of well-meant af­fec­tion the sub­tle sug­ges­tion of temp­ta­tion that he change his pol­icy of pur­su­ing to the end his earth be­stowal in ac­cor­dance with the will of his Par­a­dise Fa­ther. And it was be­cause he de­tected the dan­ger of per­mit­ting the sug­ges­tions of even his af­fec­tion­ate and loyal friends to dis­suade him, that he turned upon Pe­ter and the other apos­tles, say­ing: “Get you be­hind me. You sa­vor of the spirit of the ad­ver­sary, the tempter. When you talk in this man­ner, you are not on my side but rather on the side of our en­emy. In this way do you make your love for me a stum­bling block to my do­ing the Fa­ther’s will. Mind not the ways of men but rather the will of God.”

158:7.5Af­ter they had re­cov­ered from the first shock of Je­sus’ sting­ing re­buke, and be­fore they re­sumed their jour­ney, the Mas­ter spoke fur­ther: “If any man would come af­ter me, let him dis­re­gard him­self, take up his re­spon­si­bil­i­ties daily, and fol­low me. For whoso­ever would save his life self­ishly, shall lose it, but whoso­ever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s, shall save it. What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul? What would a man give in ex­change for eter­nal life? Be not ashamed of me and my words in this sin­ful and hyp­o­crit­i­cal gen­er­a­tion, even as I will not be ashamed to ac­knowl­edge you when in glory I ap­pear be­fore my Fa­ther in the pres­ence of all the ce­les­tial hosts. Nev­er­the­less, many of you now stand­ing be­fore me shall not taste death till you see this king­dom of God come with power.”

158:7.6And thus did Je­sus make plain to the twelve the painful and con­flict­ing path which they must tread if they would fol­low him. What a shock these words were to these Galilean fish­er­men who per­sisted in dream­ing of an earthly king­dom with po­si­tions of honor for them­selves! But their loyal hearts were stirred by this coura­geous ap­peal, and not one of them was minded to for­sake him. Je­sus was not send­ing them alone into the con­flict; he was lead­ing them. He asked only that they bravely fol­low.

158:7.7Slowly the twelve were grasp­ing the idea that Je­sus was telling them some­thing about the pos­si­bil­ity of his dy­ing. They only vaguely com­pre­hended what he said about his death, while his state­ment about ris­ing from the dead ut­terly failed to reg­is­ter in their minds. As the days passed, Pe­ter, James, and John, re­call­ing their ex­pe­ri­ence upon the mount of the trans­fig­u­ra­tion, ar­rived at a fuller un­der­stand­ing of cer­tain of these mat­ters.

158:7.8In all the as­so­ci­a­tion of the twelve with their Mas­ter, only a few times did they see that flash­ing eye and hear such swift words of re­buke as were ad­min­is­tered to Pe­ter and the rest of them on this oc­ca­sion. Je­sus had al­ways been pa­tient with their hu­man short­com­ings, but not so when faced by an im­pend­ing threat against the pro­gram of im­plic­itly car­ry­ing out his Fa­ther’s will re­gard­ing the re­main­der of his earth ca­reer. The apos­tles were lit­er­ally stunned; they were amazed and hor­ri­fied. They could not find words to ex­press their sor­row. Slowly they be­gan to re­al­ize what the Mas­ter must en­dure, and that they must go through these ex­pe­ri­ences with him, but they did not awaken to the re­al­ity of these com­ing events un­til long af­ter these early hints of the im­pend­ing tragedy of his lat­ter days.

158:7.9In si­lence Je­sus and the twelve started for their camp at Ma­g­a­dan Park, go­ing by way of Ca­per­naum. As the af­ter­noon wore on, though they did not con­verse with Je­sus, they talked much among them­selves while An­drew talked with the Mas­ter.

158:8.1En­ter­ing Ca­per­naum at twi­light, they went by un­fre­quented thor­ough­fares di­rectly to the home of Si­mon Pe­ter for their evening meal. While David Zeb­e­dee made ready to take them across the lake, they lin­gered at Si­mon’s house, and Je­sus, look­ing up at Pe­ter and the other apos­tles, asked: “As you walked along to­gether this af­ter­noon, what was it that you talked about so earnestly among your­selves?” The apos­tles held their peace be­cause many of them had con­tin­ued the dis­cus­sion be­gun at Mount Her­mon as to what po­si­tions they were to have in the com­ing king­dom; who should be the great­est, and so on. Je­sus, know­ing what it was that oc­cu­pied their thoughts that day, beck­oned to one of Pe­ter’s lit­tle ones and, set­ting the child down among them, said: “Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you, ex­cept you turn about and be­come more like this child, you will make lit­tle prog­ress in the king­dom of heaven. Whoso­ever shall hum­ble him­self and be­come as this lit­tle one, the same shall be­come great­est in the king­dom of heaven. And whoso re­ceives such a lit­tle one re­ceives me. And they who re­ceive me re­ceive also Him who sent me. If you would be first in the king­dom, seek to min­is­ter these good truths to your breth­ren in the flesh. But whoso­ever causes one of these lit­tle ones to stum­ble, it would be bet­ter for him if a mill­stone were hanged about his neck and he were cast into the sea. If the things you do with your hands, or the things you see with your eyes give of­fense in the prog­ress of the king­dom, sac­ri­fice these cher­ished idols, for it is bet­ter to en­ter the king­dom mi­nus many of the beloved things of life rather than to cling to these idols and find your­self shut out of the king­dom. But most of all, see that you de­spise not one of these lit­tle ones, for their an­gels do al­ways be­hold the faces of the heav­enly hosts.”

158:8.2When Je­sus had fin­ished speak­ing, they en­tered the boat and sailed across to Ma­g­a­dan.

• questions of

159:1.4Si­mon Pe­ter was the apos­tle in charge of the work­ers at Hip­pos, and when he heard Je­sus thus speak, he asked: “Lord, how of­ten shall my brother sin against me, and I for­give him? Un­til seven times?” And Je­sus an­swered Pe­ter: “Not only seven times but even to sev­enty times and seven. There­fore may the king­dom of heaven be likened to a cer­tain king who or­dered a fi­nan­cial reck­on­ing with his stew­ards. And when they had be­gun to con­duct this ex­am­i­na­tion of ac­counts, one of his chief re­tain­ers was brought be­fore him con­fess­ing that he owed his king ten thou­sand tal­ents. Now this of­fi­cer of the king’s court pleaded that hard times had come upon him, and that he did not have where­with to pay this obli­ga­tion. And so the king com­manded that his prop­erty be con­fis­cated, and that his chil­dren be sold to pay his debt. When this chief stew­ard heard this stern de­cree, he fell down on his face be­fore the king and im­plored him to have mercy and grant him more time, say­ing, ‘Lord, have a lit­tle more pa­tience with me, and I will pay you all.’ And when the king looked upon this neg­li­gent ser­vant and his fam­ily, he was moved with com­pas­sion. He or­dered that he should be re­leased, and that the loan should be wholly for­given.

• position and achievements › in charge of school of evangelists

163:0.2Je­sus gave a talk to this com­pany each morn­ing. Pe­ter taught meth­ods of pub­lic preach­ing; Na­than­iel in­structed them in the art of teach­ing; Thomas ex­plained how to an­swer ques­tions; while Mat­thew di­rected the or­ga­ni­za­tion of their group fi­nances. The other apos­tles also par­tic­i­pated in this train­ing in ac­cor­dance with their spe­cial ex­pe­ri­ence and nat­u­ral tal­ents.

• questions of

163:3.2When Pe­ter and the apos­tles heard these words, they were as­ton­ished ex­ceed­ingly, so much so that Pe­ter said: “Who then, Lord, can be saved? Shall all who have riches be kept out of the king­dom?” And Je­sus replied: “No, Pe­ter, but all who put their trust in riches shall hardly en­ter into the spir­i­tual life that leads to eter­nal prog­ress. But even then, much which is im­pos­si­ble to man is not be­yond the reach of the Fa­ther in heaven; rather should we rec­og­nize that with God all things are pos­si­ble.”

163:3.3As they went off by them­selves, Je­sus was grieved that Mata­dor­mus did not re­main with them, for he greatly loved him. And when they had walked down by the lake, they sat there be­side the wa­ter, and Pe­ter, speak­ing for the twelve (who were all pres­ent by this time), said: “We are trou­bled by your words to the rich young man. Shall we re­quire those who would fol­low you to give up all their worldly goods?” And Je­sus said: “No, Pe­ter, only those who would be­come apos­tles, and who de­sire to live with me as you do and as one fam­ily. But the Fa­ther re­quires that the af­fec­tions of his chil­dren be pure and un­di­vided. What­ever thing or per­son comes be­tween you and the love of the truths of the king­dom, must be sur­ren­dered. If one’s wealth does not in­vade the precincts of the soul, it is of no con­se­quence in the spir­i­tual life of those who would en­ter the king­dom.”

163:3.4And then said Pe­ter, “But, Mas­ter, we have left ev­ery­thing to fol­low you, what then shall we have?” And Je­sus spoke to all of the twelve: “Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you, there is no man who has left wealth, home, wife, breth­ren, par­ents, or chil­dren for my sake and for the sake of the king­dom of heaven who shall not re­ceive man­i­fold more in this world, per­haps with some per­se­cu­tions, and in the world to come eter­nal life. But many who are first shall be last, while the last shall of­ten be first. The Fa­ther deals with his crea­tures in ac­cor­dance with their needs and in obe­di­ence to his just laws of mer­ci­ful and lov­ing con­sid­er­a­tion for the wel­fare of a uni­verse.

• ordination sermon to the 70

163:4.9When Je­sus had talked thus to the sev­enty in the pres­ence of all the apos­tles and dis­ci­ples, Si­mon Pe­ter took them off by them­selves and preached to them their or­di­na­tion ser­mon, which was an elab­o­ra­tion of the Mas­ter’s charge given at the time he laid his hands upon them and set them apart as mes­sen­gers of the king­dom. Pe­ter ex­horted the sev­enty to cher­ish in their ex­pe­ri­ence the fol­low­ing virtues:

163:4.101. Con­se­crated de­vo­tion. To pray al­ways for more la­bor­ers to be sent forth into the gospel har­vest. He ex­plained that, when one so prays, he will the more likely say, “Here am I; send me.” He ad­mon­ished them to ne­glect not their daily wor­ship.

163:4.112. True cour­age. He warned them that they would en­counter hos­til­ity and be cer­tain to meet with per­se­cu­tion. Pe­ter told them their mis­sion was no un­der­tak­ing for cow­ards and ad­vised those who were afraid to step out be­fore they started. But none with­drew.

163:4.123. Faith and trust. They must go forth on this short mis­sion wholly un­pro­vided for; they must trust the Fa­ther for food and shel­ter and all other things need­ful.

163:4.134. Zeal and ini­tia­tive. They must be pos­sessed with zeal and in­tel­li­gent en­thu­si­asm; they must at­tend strictly to their Mas­ter’s busi­ness. Ori­en­tal salu­ta­tion was a lengthy and elab­o­rate cer­e­mony; there­fore had they been in­structed to “salute no man by the way,” which was a com­mon method of ex­hort­ing one to go about his busi­ness with­out the waste of time. It had noth­ing to do with the mat­ter of friendly greet­ing.

163:4.145. Kind­ness and cour­tesy. The Mas­ter had in­structed them to avoid un­nec­es­sary waste of time in so­cial cer­e­monies, but he en­joined cour­tesy to­ward all with whom they should come in con­tact. They were to show ev­ery kind­ness to those who might en­ter­tain them in their homes. They were strictly warned against leav­ing a mod­est home to be en­ter­tained in a more com­fort­able or in­flu­en­tial one.

163:4.156. Min­istry to the sick. The sev­enty were charged by Pe­ter to search out the sick in mind and body and to do ev­ery­thing in their power to bring about the al­le­vi­a­tion or cure of their mal­adies.

• questions of

165:6.1As they sat think­ing, Si­mon Pe­ter asked: “Do you speak this para­ble to us, your apos­tles, or is it for all the dis­ci­ples?” And Je­sus an­swered:

• personal traits and attitudes › estranged from Abner

166:5.4It was the ap­par­ent mis­for­tune of Ab­ner to be at vari­ance with all of the lead­ers of the early Chris­tian church. He fell out with Pe­ter and James (Je­sus’ brother) over ques­tions of ad­min­is­tra­tion and the ju­ris­dic­tion of the Je­ru­sa­lem church; he parted com­pany with Paul over dif­fer­ences of phi­los­o­phy and the­ol­ogy. Ab­ner was more Baby­lo­nian than Hel­lenic in his phi­los­o­phy, and he stub­bornly re­sisted all at­tempts of Paul to re­make the teach­ings of Je­sus so as to pre­sent less that was ob­jec­tion­able, first to the Jews, then to the Greco-Ro­man be­liev­ers in the mys­ter­ies.

• position and achievements › supported James brother of Jesus

166:5.5Thus was Ab­ner com­pelled to live a life of iso­la­tion. He was head of a church which was with­out stand­ing at Je­ru­sa­lem. He had dared to defy James the Lord’s brother, who was sub­se­quently sup­ported by Pe­ter. Such con­duct ef­fec­tively sep­a­rated him from all his for­mer as­so­ciates. Then he dared to with­stand Paul. Al­though he was wholly sym­pa­thetic with Paul in his mis­sion to the gen­tiles, and though he sup­ported him in his con­tentions with the church at Je­ru­sa­lem, he bit­terly op­posed the ver­sion of Je­sus’ teach­ings which Paul elected to preach. In his last years Ab­ner de­nounced Paul as the “clever cor­rupter of the life teach­ings of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth, the Son of the liv­ing God.”

• Simon Peter

167:0.1Through­out this pe­riod of the Perean min­istry, when men­tion is made of Je­sus and the apos­tles vis­it­ing the var­i­ous lo­cal­i­ties where the sev­enty were at work, it should be re­called that, as a rule, only ten were with him since it was the prac­tice to leave at least two of the apos­tles at Pella to in­struct the mul­ti­tude. As Je­sus pre­pared to go on to Phil­a­del­phia, Si­mon Pe­ter and his brother, An­drew, re­turned to the Pella en­camp­ment to teach the crowds there as­sem­bled. When the Mas­ter left the camp at Pella to visit about Perea, it was not un­com­mon for from three to five hun­dred of the campers to fol­low him. When he ar­rived at Phil­a­del­phia, he was ac­com­pa­nied by over six hun­dred fol­low­ers.

169:3.1When the meet­ing be­came too noisy, Si­mon Pe­ter, stand­ing up, took charge, say­ing: “Men and breth­ren, it is not seemly thus to dis­pute among your­selves. The Mas­ter has spo­ken, and you do well to pon­der his words. And this is no new doc­trine which he pro­claimed to you. Have you not also heard the al­le­gory of the Nazarites con­cern­ing the rich man and the beg­gar? Some of us heard John the Bap­tist thun­der this para­ble of warn­ing to those who love riches and covet dis­hon­est wealth. And while this olden para­ble is not ac­cord­ing to the gospel we preach, you would all do well to heed its lessons un­til such a time as you com­pre­hend the new light of the king­dom of heaven. The story as John told it was like this:

169:3.2“There was a cer­tain rich man named Dives, who, be­ing clothed in pur­ple and fine linen, lived in mirth and splen­dor ev­ery day. And there was a cer­tain beg­gar named Laz­a­rus, who was laid at this rich man’s gate, cov­ered with sores and de­sir­ing to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s ta­ble; yes, even the dogs came and licked his sores. And it came to pass that the beg­gar died and was car­ried away by the an­gels to rest in Abra­ham’s bo­som. And then, pres­ently, this rich man also died and was buried with great pomp and re­gal splen­dor. When the rich man de­parted from this world, he waked up in Hades, and find­ing him­self in tor­ment, he lifted up his eyes and be­held Abra­ham afar off and Laz­a­rus in his bo­som. And then Dives cried aloud: ‘Fa­ther Abra­ham, have mercy on me and send over Laz­a­rus that he may dip the tip of his fin­ger in wa­ter to cool my tongue, for I am in great an­guish be­cause of my pun­ish­ment.’ And then Abra­ham replied: ‘My son, you should re­mem­ber that in your life­time you en­joyed the good things while Laz­a­rus in like man­ner suf­fered the evil. But now all this is changed, see­ing that Laz­a­rus is com­forted while you are tor­mented. And be­sides, be­tween us and you there is a great gulf so that we can­not go to you, nei­ther can you come over to us.’ Then said Dives to Abra­ham: ‘I pray you send Laz­a­rus back to my fa­ther’s house, inas­much as I have five broth­ers, that he may so tes­tify as to pre­vent my broth­ers from com­ing to this place of tor­ment.’ But Abra­ham said: ‘My son, they have Moses and the proph­ets; let them hear them.’ And then an­swered Dives: ‘No, No, Fa­ther Abra­ham! but if one go to them from the dead, they will re­pent.’ And then said Abra­ham: ‘If they hear not Moses and the proph­ets, nei­ther will they be per­suaded even if one were to rise from the dead.’”

169:3.3Af­ter Pe­ter had re­cited this an­cient para­ble of the Nazarite broth­er­hood, and since the crowd had qui­eted down, An­drew arose and dis­missed them for the night. Al­though both the apos­tles and his dis­ci­ples fre­quently asked Je­sus ques­tions about the para­ble of Dives and Laz­a­rus, he never con­sented to make com­ment thereon.

• armed with sword

171:4.1On Wednes­day evening, March 29, Je­sus and his fol­low­ers en­camped at Livias on their way to Je­ru­sa­lem, af­ter hav­ing com­pleted their tour of the cities of south­ern Perea. It was dur­ing this night at Livias that Si­mon Ze­lo­tes and Si­mon Pe­ter, hav­ing con­spired to have de­liv­ered into their hands at this place more than one hun­dred swords, re­ceived and dis­tributed these arms to all who would ac­cept them and wear them con­cealed be­neath their cloaks. Si­mon Pe­ter was still wear­ing his sword on the night of the Mas­ter’s be­trayal in the gar­den.

• armed with sword

172:0.3The chief priests were in­formed that Je­sus lodged at Beth­any, but they thought best not to at­tempt to seize him among his friends; they de­cided to await his com­ing on into Je­ru­sa­lem. Je­sus knew about all this, but he was ma­jes­ti­cally calm; his friends had never seen him more com­posed and con­ge­nial; even the apos­tles were as­tounded that he should be so un­con­cerned when the San­hedrin had called upon all Jewry to de­liver him into their hands. While the Mas­ter slept that night, the apos­tles watched over him by twos, and many of them were girded with swords. Early the next morn­ing they were awak­ened by hun­dreds of pil­grims who came out from Je­ru­sa­lem, even on the Sab­bath day, to see Je­sus and Laz­a­rus, whom he had raised from the dead.

• armed with sword

172:2.1On this Sun­day morn­ing, in Si­mon’s beau­ti­ful gar­den, the Mas­ter called his twelve apos­tles around him and gave them their fi­nal in­struc­tions prepara­tory to en­ter­ing Je­ru­sa­lem. He told them that he would prob­a­bly de­liver many ad­dresses and teach many lessons be­fore re­turn­ing to the Fa­ther but ad­vised the apos­tles to re­frain from do­ing any pub­lic work dur­ing this Pass­over so­journ in Je­ru­sa­lem. He in­structed them to re­main near him and to “watch and pray.” Je­sus knew that many of his apos­tles and im­me­di­ate fol­low­ers even then car­ried swords con­cealed on their per­sons, but he made no ref­er­ence to this fact.

• collected donkey for Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem

172:3.6Je­sus had long tried by di­rect teach­ing to im­press upon his apos­tles and his dis­ci­ples that his king­dom was not of this world, that it was a purely spir­i­tual mat­ter; but he had not suc­ceeded in this ef­fort. Now, what he had failed to do by plain and per­sonal teach­ing, he would at­tempt to ac­com­plish by a sym­bolic ap­peal. Ac­cord­ingly, right af­ter the noon lunch, Je­sus called Pe­ter and John, and af­ter di­rect­ing them to go over to Beth­page, a neigh­bor­ing vil­lage a lit­tle off the main road and a short dis­tance north­west of Beth­any, he fur­ther said: “Go to Beth­page, and when you come to the junc­tion of the roads, you will find the colt of an ass tied there. Loose the colt and bring it back with you. If any­one asks you why you do this, merely say, ‘The Mas­ter has need of him.’” And when the two apos­tles had gone into Beth­page as the Mas­ter had di­rected, they found the colt tied near his mother in the open street and close to a house on the cor­ner. As Pe­ter be­gan to un­tie the colt, the owner came over and asked why they did this, and when Pe­ter an­swered him as Je­sus had di­rected, the man said: “If your Mas­ter is Je­sus from Gal­i­lee, let him have the colt.” And so they re­turned bring­ing the colt with them.

• armed with sword

172:5.2An­drew was thor­oughly be­wil­dered, well-nigh con­fused. He was the one apos­tle who did not se­ri­ously un­der­take to eval­u­ate the pop­u­lar out­burst of ac­claim. He was too pre­oc­cu­pied with the thought of his re­spon­si­bil­ity as chief of the apos­tolic corps to give se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion to the mean­ing or sig­nif­i­cance of the loud hosan­nas of the mul­ti­tude. An­drew was busy watch­ing some of his as­so­ciates who he feared might be led away by their emo­tions dur­ing the ex­cite­ment, par­tic­u­larly Pe­ter, James, John, and Si­mon Ze­lo­tes. Through­out this day and those which im­me­di­ately fol­lowed, An­drew was trou­bled with se­ri­ous doubts, but he never ex­pressed any of these mis­giv­ings to his apos­tolic as­so­ciates. He was con­cerned about the at­ti­tude of some of the twelve who he knew were armed with swords; but he did not know that his own brother, Pe­ter, was car­ry­ing such a weapon. And so the pro­ces­sion into Je­ru­sa­lem made a com­par­a­tively su­per­fi­cial im­pres­sion upon An­drew; he was too busy with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of his of­fice to be oth­er­wise af­fected.

• personal traits and attitudes › confused, saddened by entry into Jerusalem
• position and achievements › much more effective preacher than Jesus

172:5.3Si­mon Pe­ter was at first al­most swept off his feet by this pop­u­lar man­i­fes­ta­tion of en­thu­si­asm; but he was con­sid­er­ably sobered by the time they re­turned to Beth­any that night. Pe­ter sim­ply could not fig­ure out what the Mas­ter was about. He was ter­ri­bly dis­ap­pointed that Je­sus did not fol­low up this wave of pop­u­lar fa­vor with some kind of a pro­nounce­ment. Pe­ter could not un­der­stand why Je­sus did not speak to the mul­ti­tude when they ar­rived at the tem­ple, or at least per­mit one of the apos­tles to ad­dress the crowd. Pe­ter was a great preacher, and he dis­liked to see such a large, re­cep­tive, and en­thu­si­as­tic au­di­ence go to waste. He would so much have liked to preach the gospel of the king­dom to that throng right there in the tem­ple; but the Mas­ter had specif­i­cally charged them that they were to do no teach­ing or preach­ing while in Je­ru­sa­lem this Pass­over week. The re­ac­tion from the spec­tac­u­lar pro­ces­sion into the city was dis­as­trous to Si­mon Pe­ter; by night he was sobered and in­ex­press­ibly sad­dened.

• Jesus › admonitions to S.P.

174:0.2This morn­ing he greeted each of the twelve with a per­sonal salu­ta­tion. To An­drew he said: “Be not dis­mayed by the events just ahead. Keep a firm hold on your breth­ren and see that they do not find you down­cast.” To Pe­ter he said: “Put not your trust in the arm of flesh nor in weapons of steel. Es­tab­lish your­self on the spir­i­tual foun­da­tions of the eter­nal rocks.” To James he said: “Fal­ter not be­cause of out­ward ap­pear­ances. Re­main firm in your faith, and you shall soon know of the re­al­ity of that which you be­lieve.” To John he said: “Be gen­tle; love even your en­e­mies; be tol­er­ant. And re­mem­ber that I have trusted you with many things.” To Na­than­iel he said: “Judge not by ap­pear­ances; re­main firm in your faith when all ap­pears to van­ish; be true to your com­mis­sion as an am­bas­sador of the king­dom.” To Philip he said: “Be un­moved by the events now im­pend­ing. Re­main un­shaken, even when you can­not see the way. Be loyal to your oath of con­se­cra­tion.” To Mat­thew he said: “For­get not the mercy that re­ceived you into the king­dom. Let no man cheat you of your eter­nal re­ward. As you have with­stood the in­cli­na­tions of the mor­tal na­ture, be will­ing to be stead­fast.” To Thomas he said: “No mat­ter how dif­fi­cult it may be, just now you must walk by faith and not by sight. Doubt not that I am able to fin­ish the work I have be­gun, and that I shall even­tu­ally see all of my faith­ful am­bas­sadors in the king­dom be­yond.” To the Al­pheus twins he said: “Do not al­low the things which you can­not un­der­stand to crush you. Be true to the af­fec­tions of your hearts and put not your trust in ei­ther great men or the chang­ing at­ti­tude of the peo­ple. Stand by your breth­ren.” And to Si­mon Ze­lo­tes he said: “Si­mon, you may be crushed by dis­ap­point­ment, but your spirit shall rise above all that may come upon you. What you have failed to learn from me, my spirit will teach you. Seek the true re­al­i­ties of the spirit and cease to be at­tracted by un­real and ma­te­rial shad­ows.” And to Ju­das Is­car­iot he said: “Ju­das, I have loved you and have prayed that you would love your breth­ren. Be not weary in well do­ing; and I would warn you to be­ware the slip­pery paths of flat­tery and the poi­son darts of ridicule.”

• questions of

174:1.1For sev­eral days Pe­ter and James had been en­gaged in dis­cussing their dif­fer­ences of opin­ion about the Mas­ter’s teach­ing re­gard­ing the for­give­ness of sin. They had both agreed to lay the mat­ter be­fore Je­sus, and Pe­ter em­braced this oc­ca­sion as a fit­ting op­por­tu­nity for se­cur­ing the Mas­ter’s coun­sel. Ac­cord­ingly, Si­mon Pe­ter broke in on the con­ver­sa­tion deal­ing with the dif­fer­ences be­tween praise and wor­ship, by ask­ing: “Mas­ter, James and I are not in ac­cord re­gard­ing your teach­ings hav­ing to do with the for­give­ness of sin. James claims you teach that the Fa­ther for­gives us even be­fore we ask him, and I main­tain that re­pen­tance and con­fes­sion must pre­cede the for­give­ness. Which of us is right? what do you say?”

• descendants persecuted by Christians

175:2.2Many times has this un­rea­son­ing and un-Christ­like ha­tred and per­se­cu­tion of mod­ern Jews ter­mi­nated in the suf­fer­ing and death of some in­no­cent and un­of­fend­ing Jew­ish in­di­vid­ual whose very an­ces­tors, in the times of Je­sus, heart­ily ac­cepted his gospel and pres­ently died un­flinch­ingly for that truth which they so whole­heart­edly be­lieved. What a shud­der of hor­ror passes over the on­look­ing ce­les­tial be­ings as they be­hold the pro­fessed fol­low­ers of Je­sus in­dulge them­selves in per­se­cut­ing, ha­rass­ing, and even mur­der­ing the later-day de­scen­dants of Pe­ter, Philip, Mat­thew, and oth­ers of the Pales­tinian Jews who so glo­ri­ously yielded up their lives as the first mar­tyrs of the gospel of the heav­enly king­dom!

• questions of

176:1.6Even af­ter this ex­plicit warn­ing, many of Je­sus’ fol­low­ers in­ter­preted these pre­dic­tions as re­fer­ring to the changes which would ob­vi­ously oc­cur in Je­ru­sa­lem when the reap­pear­ing of the Mes­siah would re­sult in the es­tab­lish­ment of the New Je­ru­sa­lem and in the en­large­ment of the city to be­come the world’s cap­i­tal. In their minds these Jews were de­ter­mined to con­nect the de­struc­tion of the tem­ple with the “end of the world.” They be­lieved this New Je­ru­sa­lem would fill all Pales­tine; that the end of the world would be fol­lowed by the im­me­di­ate ap­pear­ance of the “new heav­ens and the new earth.” And so it was not strange that Pe­ter should say: “Mas­ter, we know that all things will pass away when the new heav­ens and the new earth ap­pear, but how shall we know when you will re­turn to bring all this about?”

• Simon Peter

178:2.6When Ju­das heard the Mas­ter speak­ing with Philip about these mat­ters, he drew closer that he might over­hear their con­ver­sa­tion. But David Zeb­e­dee, who was stand­ing near, stepped up and en­gaged Ju­das in con­ver­sa­tion while Philip, Pe­ter, and John went to one side to talk with the Mas­ter.

178:2.7Said Je­sus to the three: “Go im­me­di­ately into Je­ru­sa­lem, and as you en­ter the gate, you will meet a man bear­ing a wa­ter pitcher. He will speak to you, and then shall you fol­low him. When he leads you to a cer­tain house, go in af­ter him and ask of the good man of that house, ‘Where is the guest cham­ber wherein the Mas­ter is to eat sup­per with his apos­tles?’ And when you have thus in­quired, this house­holder will show you a large up­per room all fur­nished and ready for us.”

178:2.8When the apos­tles reached the city, they met the man with the wa­ter pitcher near the gate and fol­lowed on af­ter him to the home of John Mark, where the lad’s fa­ther met them and showed them the up­per room in readi­ness for the evening meal.

• Simon Peter
• took lowest seat at Remembrance Supper

179:1.4They ex­pected the Mas­ter to ar­rive any mo­ment, but they were in a quandary as to whether they should seat them­selves or await his com­ing and de­pend on him to as­sign them their places. While they hes­i­tated, Ju­das stepped over to the seat of honor, at the left of the host, and sig­ni­fied that he in­tended there to re­cline as the pre­ferred guest. This act of Ju­das im­me­di­ately stirred up a heated dis­pute among the other apos­tles. Ju­das had no sooner seized the seat of honor than John Zeb­e­dee laid claim to the next pre­ferred seat, the one on the right of the host. Si­mon Pe­ter was so en­raged at this as­sump­tion of choice po­si­tions by Ju­das and John that, as the other an­gry apos­tles looked on, he marched clear around the ta­ble and took his place on the low­est couch, the end of the seat­ing or­der and just op­po­site to that cho­sen by John Zeb­e­dee. Since oth­ers had seized the high seats, Pe­ter thought to choose the low­est, and he did this, not merely in protest against the un­seemly pride of his breth­ren, but with the hope that Je­sus, when he should come and see him in the place of least honor, would call him up to a higher one, thus dis­plac­ing one who had pre­sumed to honor him­self.

179:3.1Af­ter drink­ing the first cup of the Pass­over, it was the Jew­ish cus­tom for the host to arise from the ta­ble and wash his hands. Later on in the meal and af­ter the sec­ond cup, all of the guests like­wise rose up and washed their hands. Since the apos­tles knew that their Mas­ter never ob­served these rites of cer­e­mo­nial hand wash­ing, they were very cu­ri­ous to know what he in­tended to do when, af­ter they had par­taken of this first cup, he arose from the ta­ble and silently made his way over to near the door, where the wa­ter pitch­ers, basins, and tow­els had been placed. And their cu­rios­ity grew into as­ton­ish­ment as they saw the Mas­ter re­move his outer gar­ment, gird him­self with a towel, and be­gin to pour wa­ter into one of the foot basins. Imag­ine the amaze­ment of these twelve men, who had so re­cently re­fused to wash one an­other’s feet, and who had en­gaged in such un­seemly dis­putes about po­si­tions of honor at the ta­ble, when they saw him make his way around the un­oc­cu­pied end of the ta­ble to the low­est seat of the feast, where Si­mon Pe­ter re­clined, and, kneel­ing down in the at­ti­tude of a ser­vant, make ready to wash Si­mon’s feet. As the Mas­ter knelt, all twelve arose as one man to their feet; even the traitorous Ju­das so far for­got his in­famy for a mo­ment as to arise with his fel­low apos­tles in this ex­pres­sion of sur­prise, re­spect, and ut­ter amaze­ment.

• position and achievements › first to confess Jesus’ divinity

179:3.2There stood Si­mon Pe­ter, look­ing down into the up­turned face of his Mas­ter. Je­sus said noth­ing; it was not nec­es­sary that he should speak. His at­ti­tude plainly re­vealed that he was minded to wash Si­mon Pe­ter’s feet. Not­with­stand­ing his frail­ties of the flesh, Pe­ter loved the Mas­ter. This Galilean fish­er­man was the first hu­man be­ing whole­heart­edly to be­lieve in the di­vin­ity of Je­sus and to make full and pub­lic con­fes­sion of that be­lief. And Pe­ter had never since re­ally doubted the di­vine na­ture of the Mas­ter. Since Pe­ter so revered and hon­ored Je­sus in his heart, it was not strange that his soul re­sented the thought of Je­sus’ kneel­ing there be­fore him in the at­ti­tude of a me­nial ser­vant and propos­ing to wash his feet as would a slave. When Pe­ter pres­ently col­lected his wits suf­fi­ciently to ad­dress the Mas­ter, he spoke the heart feel­ings of all his fel­low apos­tles.

179:3.3Af­ter a few mo­ments of this great em­bar­rass­ment, Pe­ter said, “Mas­ter, do you re­ally mean to wash my feet?” And then, look­ing up into Pe­ter’s face, Je­sus said: “You may not fully un­der­stand what I am about to do, but here­after you will know the mean­ing of all these things.” Then Si­mon Pe­ter, draw­ing a long breath, said, “Mas­ter, you shall never wash my feet!” And each of the apos­tles nod­ded their ap­proval of Pe­ter’s firm dec­la­ra­tion of re­fusal to al­low Je­sus thus to hum­ble him­self be­fore them.

179:3.4The dra­matic ap­peal of this un­usual scene at first touched the heart of even Ju­das Is­car­iot; but when his vain­glo­ri­ous in­tel­lect passed judg­ment upon the spec­ta­cle, he con­cluded that this ges­ture of hu­mil­ity was just one more episode which con­clu­sively proved that Je­sus would never qual­ify as Is­rael’s de­liv­erer, and that he had made no mis­take in the de­ci­sion to desert the Mas­ter’s cause.

179:3.5As they all stood there in breath­less amaze­ment, Je­sus said: “Pe­ter, I de­clare that, if I do not wash your feet, you will have no part with me in that which I am about to per­form.” When Pe­ter heard this dec­la­ra­tion, cou­pled with the fact that Je­sus con­tin­ued kneel­ing there at his feet, he made one of those de­ci­sions of blind ac­qui­es­cence in com­pli­ance with the wish of one whom he re­spected and loved. As it be­gan to dawn on Si­mon Pe­ter that there was at­tached to this pro­posed en­act­ment of ser­vice some sig­ni­fi­ca­tion that de­ter­mined one’s fu­ture con­nec­tion with the Mas­ter’s work, he not only be­came rec­on­ciled to the thought of al­low­ing Je­sus to wash his feet but, in his char­ac­ter­is­tic and im­petu­ous man­ner, said: “Then, Mas­ter, wash not my feet only but also my hands and my head.”

179:3.6As the Mas­ter made ready to be­gin wash­ing Pe­ter’s feet, he said: “He who is al­ready clean needs only to have his feet washed. You who sit with me tonight are clean—but not all. But the dust of your feet should have been washed away be­fore you sat down at meat with me. And be­sides, I would per­form this ser­vice for you as a para­ble to il­lus­trate the mean­ing of a new com­mand­ment which I will pres­ently give you.”

179:3.7In like man­ner the Mas­ter went around the ta­ble, in si­lence, wash­ing the feet of his twelve apos­tles, not even pass­ing by Ju­das. When Je­sus had fin­ished wash­ing the feet of the twelve, he donned his cloak, re­turned to his place as host, and af­ter look­ing over his be­wil­dered apos­tles, said:

179:3.8“Do you re­ally un­der­stand what I have done to you? You call me Mas­ter, and you say well, for so I am. If, then, the Mas­ter has washed your feet, why was it that you were un­will­ing to wash one an­other’s feet? What les­son should you learn from this para­ble in which the Mas­ter so will­ingly does that ser­vice which his breth­ren were un­will­ing to do for one an­other? Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you: A ser­vant is not greater than his mas­ter; nei­ther is one who is sent greater than he who sends him. You have seen the way of ser­vice in my life among you, and blessed are you who will have the gra­cious cour­age so to serve. But why are you so slow to learn that the se­cret of great­ness in the spir­i­tual king­dom is not like the meth­ods of power in the ma­te­rial world?

179:3.9“When I came into this cham­ber tonight, you were not con­tent proudly to refuse to wash one an­other’s feet, but you must also fall to dis­put­ing among your­selves as to who should have the places of honor at my ta­ble. Such hon­ors the Phar­isees and the chil­dren of this world seek, but it should not be so among the am­bas­sadors of the heav­enly king­dom. Do you not know that there can be no place of prefer­ment at my ta­ble? Do you not un­der­stand that I love each of you as I do the oth­ers? Do you not know that the place near­est me, as men re­gard such hon­ors, can mean noth­ing con­cern­ing your stand­ing in the king­dom of heaven? You know that the kings of the gen­tiles have lord­ship over their sub­jects, while those who ex­er­cise this au­thor­ity are some­times called bene­fac­tors. But it shall not be so in the king­dom of heaven. He who would be great among you, let him be­come as the younger; while he who would be chief, let him be­come as one who serves. Who is the greater, he who sits at meat, or he who serves? Is it not com­monly re­garded that he who sits at meat is the greater? But you will ob­serve that I am among you as one who serves. If you are will­ing to be­come fel­low ser­vants with me in do­ing the Fa­ther’s will, in the king­dom to come you shall sit with me in power, still do­ing the Fa­ther’s will in fu­ture glory.”

179:3.10When Je­sus had fin­ished speak­ing, the Al­pheus twins brought on the bread and wine, with the bit­ter herbs and the paste of dried fruits, for the next course of the Last Sup­per.

• Jesus › admonitions to S.P.
• personal traits and attitudes › presumptuous self-confidence caused trouble

181:2.27Then the Mas­ter went over to Si­mon Pe­ter, who stood up as Je­sus ad­dressed him: “Pe­ter, I know you love me, and that you will ded­i­cate your life to the pub­lic procla­ma­tion of this gospel of the king­dom to Jew and gen­tile, but I am dis­tressed that your years of such close as­so­ci­a­tion with me have not done more to help you think be­fore you speak. What ex­pe­ri­ence must you pass through be­fore you will learn to set a guard upon your lips? How much trou­ble have you made for us by your thought­less speak­ing, by your pre­sump­tu­ous self-con­fi­dence! And you are des­tined to make much more trou­ble for your­self if you do not mas­ter this frailty. You know that your breth­ren love you in spite of this weak­ness, and you should also un­der­stand that this short­com­ing in no way im­pairs my af­fec­tion for you, but it lessens your use­ful­ness and never ceases to make trou­ble for you. But you will un­doubt­edly re­ceive great help from the ex­pe­ri­ence you will pass through this very night. And what I now say to you, Si­mon Pe­ter, I like­wise say to all your breth­ren here as­sem­bled: This night you will all be in great dan­ger of stum­bling over me. You know it is writ­ten, ‘The shep­herd will be smit­ten and the sheep will be scat­tered abroad.’ When I am ab­sent, there is great dan­ger that some of you will suc­cumb to doubts and stum­ble be­cause of what be­falls me. But I prom­ise you now that I will come back to you for a lit­tle while, and that I will then go be­fore you into Gal­i­lee.”

181:2.28Then said Pe­ter, plac­ing his hand on Je­sus’ shoul­der: “No mat­ter if all my breth­ren should suc­cumb to doubts be­cause of you, I prom­ise that I will not stum­ble over any­thing you may do. I will go with you and, if need be, die for you.”

• personal traits and attitudes › denied Jesus; couldn’t believe himself forgiven

181:2.29As Pe­ter stood there be­fore his Mas­ter, all atrem­ble with in­tense emo­tion and over­flow­ing with gen­uine love for him, Je­sus looked straight into his moist­ened eyes as he said: “Pe­ter, ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you, this night the cock will not crow un­til you have de­nied me three or four times. And thus what you have failed to learn from peace­ful as­so­ci­a­tion with me, you will learn through much trou­ble and many sor­rows. And af­ter you have re­ally learned this need­ful les­son, you should strengthen your breth­ren and go on liv­ing a life ded­i­cated to preach­ing this gospel, though you may fall into prison and, per­haps, fol­low me in pay­ing the su­preme price of lov­ing ser­vice in the build­ing of the Fa­ther’s king­dom.

181:2.30“But re­mem­ber my prom­ise: When I am raised up, I will tarry with you for a sea­son be­fore I go to the Fa­ther. And even this night will I make sup­pli­ca­tion to the Fa­ther that he strengthen each of you for that which you must now so soon pass through. I love you all with the love where­with the Fa­ther loves me, and there­fore should you hence­forth love one an­other, even as I have loved you.”

• asleep in Gethsemane

182:3.1Af­ter all was still and quiet about the camp, Je­sus, tak­ing Pe­ter, James, and John, went a short way up a near-by ravine where he had of­ten be­fore gone to pray and com­mune. The three apos­tles could not help rec­og­niz­ing that he was griev­ously op­pressed; never be­fore had they ob­served their Mas­ter to be so heavy-laden and sor­row­ful. When they ar­rived at the place of his de­vo­tions, he bade the three sit down and watch with him while he went off about a stone’s throw to pray. And when he had fallen down on his face, he prayed: “My Fa­ther, I came into this world to do your will, and so have I. I know that the hour has come to lay down this life in the flesh, and I do not shrink there­from, but I would know that it is your will that I drink this cup. Send me the as­sur­ance that I will please you in my death even as I have in my life.”

182:3.2The Mas­ter re­mained in a prayer­ful at­ti­tude for a few mo­ments, and then, go­ing over to the three apos­tles, he found them sound asleep, for their eyes were heavy and they could not re­main awake. As Je­sus awoke them, he said: “What! can you not watch with me even for one hour? Can­not you see that my soul is ex­ceed­ingly sor­row­ful, even to death, and that I crave your com­pan­ion­ship?” Af­ter the three had aroused from their slum­ber, the Mas­ter again went apart by him­self and, falling down on the ground, again prayed: “Fa­ther, I know it is pos­si­ble to avoid this cup—all things are pos­si­ble with you—but I have come to do your will, and while this is a bit­ter cup, I would drink it if it is your will.” And when he had thus prayed, a mighty an­gel came down by his side and, speak­ing to him, touched him and strength­ened him.

182:3.3When Je­sus re­turned to speak with the three apos­tles, he again found them fast asleep. He awak­ened them, say­ing: “In such an hour I need that you should watch and pray with me—all the more do you need to pray that you en­ter not into temp­ta­tion—where­fore do you fall asleep when I leave you?”

182:3.4And then, for a third time, the Mas­ter with­drew and prayed: “Fa­ther, you see my sleep­ing apos­tles; have mercy upon them. The spirit is in­deed will­ing, but the flesh is weak. And now, O Fa­ther, if this cup may not pass, then would I drink it. Not my will, but yours, be done.” And when he had fin­ished pray­ing, he lay for a mo­ment pros­trate on the ground. When he arose and went back to his apos­tles, once more he found them asleep. He sur­veyed them and, with a pity­ing ges­ture, ten­derly said: “Sleep on now and take your rest; the time of de­ci­sion is past. The hour is now upon us wherein the Son of Man will be be­trayed into the hands of his en­e­mies.” As he reached down to shake them that he might awaken them, he said: “Arise, let us be go­ing back to the camp, for, be­hold, he who be­trays me is at hand, and the hour has come when my flock shall be scat­tered. But I have al­ready told you about these things.”

• rushed forward with sword to smite Malchus

183:2.2Ju­das was much per­turbed by this fail­ure to find Je­sus at the Mark res­i­dence and in the com­pany of eleven men, only two of whom were armed for re­sis­tance. He hap­pened to know that, in the af­ter­noon when they had left camp, only Si­mon Pe­ter and Si­mon Ze­lo­tes were girded with swords; Ju­das had hoped to take Je­sus when the city was quiet, and when there was lit­tle chance of re­sis­tance. The be­trayer feared that, if he waited for them to re­turn to their camp, more than three­score of de­voted dis­ci­ples would be en­coun­tered, and he also knew that Si­mon Ze­lo­tes had an am­ple store of arms in his pos­ses­sion. Ju­das was be­com­ing in­creas­ingly ner­vous as he med­i­tated how the eleven loyal apos­tles would de­test him, and he feared they would all seek to de­stroy him. He was not only dis­loyal, but he was a real cow­ard at heart.

• rushed forward with sword to smite Malchus

183:3.7Je­sus was ready to go back to Je­ru­sa­lem with the guards, and the cap­tain of the sol­diers was al­to­gether will­ing to al­low the three apos­tles and their as­so­ciates to go their way in peace. But be­fore they were able to get started, as Je­sus stood there await­ing the cap­tain’s or­ders, one Malchus, the Syr­ian body­guard of the high priest, stepped up to Je­sus and made ready to bind his hands be­hind his back, al­though the Ro­man cap­tain had not di­rected that Je­sus should be thus bound. When Pe­ter and his as­so­ciates saw their Mas­ter be­ing sub­jected to this in­dig­nity, they were no longer able to re­strain them­selves. Pe­ter drew his sword and with the oth­ers rushed for­ward to smite Malchus. But be­fore the sol­diers could come to the de­fense of the high priest’s ser­vant, Je­sus raised a for­bid­ding hand to Pe­ter and, speak­ing sternly, said: “Pe­ter, put up your sword. They who take the sword shall per­ish by the sword. Do you not un­der­stand that it is the Fa­ther’s will that I drink this cup? And do you not fur­ther know that I could even now com­mand more than twelve le­gions of an­gels and their as­so­ciates, who would de­liver me from the hands of these few men?”

• personal traits and attitudes › followed afar off

183:3.10At about the time the eight apos­tles were be­ing awak­ened, those who had fled up the ravine were re­turn­ing, and they all gath­ered to­gether near the olive press to de­bate what should be done. In the mean­time, Si­mon Pe­ter and John Zeb­e­dee, who had hid­den among the olive trees, had al­ready gone on af­ter the mob of sol­diers, guards, and ser­vants, who were now lead­ing Je­sus back to Je­ru­sa­lem as they would have led a des­per­ate crim­i­nal. John fol­lowed close be­hind the mob, but Pe­ter fol­lowed afar off. Af­ter John Mark’s es­cape from the clutch of the sol­dier, he pro­vided him­self with a cloak which he found in the tent of Si­mon Pe­ter and John Zeb­e­dee. He sus­pected the guards were go­ing to take Je­sus to the home of An­nas, the high priest emer­i­tus; so he skirted around through the olive or­chards and was there ahead of the mob, hid­ing near the en­trance to the gate of the high priest’s palace.

• Simon Peter

183:4.4Shortly af­ter day­break, Si­mon Pe­ter wan­dered back to the Geth­sem­ane camp, a de­jected pic­ture of deep de­spair. David sent him in charge of a mes­sen­ger to join his brother, An­drew, who was at the home of Nicode­mus in Je­ru­sa­lem.

• accused by Annas’s portress
• personal traits and attitudes › followed afar off

184:2.1As the band of guards and sol­diers ap­proached the en­trance to the palace of An­nas, John Zeb­e­dee was march­ing by the side of the cap­tain of the Ro­man sol­diers. Ju­das had dropped some dis­tance be­hind, and Si­mon Pe­ter fol­lowed afar off. Af­ter John had en­tered the palace court­yard with Je­sus and the guards, Ju­das came up to the gate but, see­ing Je­sus and John, went on over to the home of Cai­a­phas, where he knew the real trial of the Mas­ter would later take place. Soon af­ter Ju­das had left, Si­mon Pe­ter ar­rived, and as he stood be­fore the gate, John saw him just as they were about to take Je­sus into the palace. The portress who kept the gate knew John, and when he spoke to her, re­quest­ing that she let Pe­ter in, she gladly as­sented.

184:2.2Pe­ter, upon en­ter­ing the court­yard, went over to the char­coal fire and sought to warm him­self, for the night was chilly. He felt very much out of place here among the en­e­mies of Je­sus, and in­deed he was out of place. The Mas­ter had not in­structed him to keep near at hand as he had ad­mon­ished John. Pe­ter be­longed with the other apos­tles, who had been specif­i­cally warned not to en­dan­ger their lives dur­ing these times of the trial and cru­ci­fix­ion of their Mas­ter.

184:2.3Pe­ter threw away his sword shortly be­fore he came up to the palace gate so that he en­tered the court­yard of An­nas un­armed. His mind was in a whirl of con­fu­sion; he could scarcely re­al­ize that Je­sus had been ar­rested. He could not grasp the re­al­ity of the sit­u­a­tion—that he was here in the court­yard of An­nas, warm­ing him­self be­side the ser­vants of the high priest. He won­dered what the other apos­tles were do­ing and, in turn­ing over in his mind as to how John came to be ad­mit­ted to the palace, con­cluded that it was be­cause he was known to the ser­vants, since he had bid­den the gate-keeper ad­mit him.

184:2.4Shortly af­ter the portress let Pe­ter in, and while he was warm­ing him­self by the fire, she went over to him and mis­chievously said, “Are you not also one of this man’s dis­ci­ples?” Now Pe­ter should not have been sur­prised at this rec­og­ni­tion, for it was John who had re­quested that the girl let him pass through the palace gates; but he was in such a tense ner­vous state that this iden­ti­fi­ca­tion as a dis­ci­ple threw him off his bal­ance, and with only one thought up­per­most in his mind—the thought of es­cap­ing with his life—he promptly an­swered the maid’s ques­tion by say­ing, “I am not.”

184:2.5Very soon an­other ser­vant came up to Pe­ter and asked: “Did I not see you in the gar­den when they ar­rested this fel­low? Are you not also one of his fol­low­ers?” Pe­ter was now thor­oughly alarmed; he saw no way of safely es­cap­ing from these ac­cusers; so he ve­he­mently de­nied all con­nec­tion with Je­sus, say­ing, “I know not this man, nei­ther am I one of his fol­low­ers.”

184:2.6About this time the portress of the gate drew Pe­ter to one side and said: “I am sure you are a dis­ci­ple of this Je­sus, not only be­cause one of his fol­low­ers bade me let you in the court­yard, but my sis­ter here has seen you in the tem­ple with this man. Why do you deny this?” When Pe­ter heard the maid ac­cuse him, he de­nied all knowl­edge of Je­sus with much curs­ing and swear­ing, again say­ing, “I am not this man’s fol­lower; I do not even know him; I never heard of him be­fore.”

184:2.7Pe­ter left the fire­side for a time while he walked about the court­yard. He would have liked to have es­caped, but he feared to at­tract at­ten­tion to him­self. Get­ting cold, he re­turned to the fire­side, and one of the men stand­ing near him said: “Surely you are one of this man’s dis­ci­ples. This Je­sus is a Galilean, and your speech be­trays you, for you also speak as a Galilean.” And again Pe­ter de­nied all con­nec­tion with his Mas­ter.

• personal traits and attitudes › superficially brave, but withered before ridicule

184:2.8Pe­ter was so per­turbed that he sought to es­cape con­tact with his ac­cusers by go­ing away from the fire and re­main­ing by him­self on the porch. Af­ter more than an hour of this iso­la­tion, the gate-keeper and her sis­ter chanced to meet him, and both of them again teas­ingly charged him with be­ing a fol­lower of Je­sus. And again he de­nied the ac­cu­sa­tion. Just as he had once more de­nied all con­nec­tion with Je­sus, the cock crowed, and Pe­ter re­mem­bered the words of warn­ing spo­ken to him by his Mas­ter ear­lier that same night. As he stood there, heavy of heart and crushed with the sense of guilt, the palace doors opened, and the guards led Je­sus past on the way to Cai­a­phas. As the Mas­ter passed Pe­ter, he saw, by the light of the torches, the look of de­spair on the face of his for­mer self-con­fi­dent and su­per­fi­cially brave apos­tle, and he turned and looked upon Pe­ter. Pe­ter never for­got that look as long as he lived. It was such a glance of com­min­gled pity and love as mor­tal man had never be­held in the face of the Mas­ter.

184:2.9Af­ter Je­sus and the guards passed out of the palace gates, Pe­ter fol­lowed them, but only for a short dis­tance. He could not go far­ther. He sat down by the side of the road and wept bit­terly. And when he had shed these tears of agony, he turned his steps back to­ward the camp, hop­ing to find his brother, An­drew. On ar­riv­ing at the camp, he found only David Zeb­e­dee, who sent a mes­sen­ger to di­rect him to where his brother had gone to hide in Je­ru­sa­lem.

184:2.10Pe­ter’s en­tire ex­pe­ri­ence oc­curred in the court­yard of the palace of An­nas on Mount Oli­vet. He did not fol­low Je­sus to the palace of the high priest, Cai­a­phas. That Pe­ter was brought to the re­al­iza­tion that he had re­peat­edly de­nied his Mas­ter by the crow­ing of a cock in­di­cates that this all oc­curred out­side of Je­ru­sa­lem since it was against the law to keep poul­try within the city proper.

184:2.11Un­til the crow­ing of the cock brought Pe­ter to his bet­ter senses, he had only thought, as he walked up and down the porch to keep warm, how clev­erly he had eluded the ac­cu­sa­tions of the ser­vants, and how he had frus­trated their pur­pose to iden­tify him with Je­sus. For the time be­ing, he had only con­sid­ered that these ser­vants had no moral or le­gal right thus to ques­tion him, and he re­ally con­grat­u­lated him­self over the man­ner in which he thought he had avoided be­ing iden­ti­fied and pos­si­bly sub­jected to ar­rest and im­pris­on­ment. Not un­til the cock crowed did it oc­cur to Pe­ter that he had de­nied his Mas­ter. Not un­til Je­sus looked upon him, did he re­al­ize that he had failed to live up to his priv­i­leges as an am­bas­sador of the king­dom.

184:2.12Hav­ing taken the first step along the path of com­pro­mise and least re­sis­tance, there was noth­ing ap­par­ent to Pe­ter but to go on with the course of con­duct de­cided upon. It re­quires a great and no­ble char­ac­ter, hav­ing started out wrong, to turn about and go right. All too of­ten one’s own mind tends to jus­tify con­tin­u­ance in the path of er­ror when once it is en­tered upon.

184:2.13Pe­ter never fully be­lieved that he could be for­given un­til he met his Mas­ter af­ter the res­ur­rec­tion and saw that he was re­ceived just as be­fore the ex­pe­ri­ences of this tragic night of the de­nials.

• Jesus › message after resurrection

189:4.12As Mary sought to em­brace his feet, Je­sus said: “Touch me not, Mary, for I am not as you knew me in the flesh. In this form will I tarry with you for a sea­son be­fore I as­cend to the Fa­ther. But go, all of you, now and tell my apos­tles—and Pe­ter—that I have risen, and that you have talked with me.”

189:4.13Af­ter these women had re­cov­ered from the shock of their amaze­ment, they has­tened back to the city and to the home of Eli­jah Mark, where they re­lated to the ten apos­tles all that had hap­pened to them; but the apos­tles were not in­clined to be­lieve them. They thought at first that the women had seen a vi­sion, but when Mary Mag­da­lene re­peated the words which Je­sus had spo­ken to them, and when Pe­ter heard his name, he rushed out of the up­per cham­ber, fol­lowed closely by John, in great haste to reach the tomb and see these things for him­self.

189:5.1As the two apos­tles raced for Gol­go­tha and the tomb of Joseph, Pe­ter’s thoughts al­ter­nated be­tween fear and hope; he feared to meet the Mas­ter, but his hope was aroused by the story that Je­sus had sent spe­cial word to him. He was half per­suaded that Je­sus was re­ally alive; he re­called the prom­ise to rise on the third day. Strange to re­late, this prom­ise had not oc­curred to him since the cru­ci­fix­ion un­til this mo­ment as he hur­ried north through Je­ru­sa­lem. As John has­tened out of the city, a strange ec­stasy of joy and hope welled up in his soul. He was half con­vinced that the women re­ally had seen the risen Mas­ter.

189:5.2John, be­ing younger than Pe­ter, out­ran him and ar­rived first at the tomb. John tar­ried at the door, view­ing the tomb, and it was just as Mary had de­scribed it. Very soon Si­mon Pe­ter rushed up and, en­ter­ing, saw the same empty tomb with the grave cloths so pe­cu­liarly ar­ranged. And when Pe­ter had come out, John also went in and saw it all for him­self, and then they sat down on the stone to pon­der the mean­ing of what they had seen and heard. And while they sat there, they turned over in their minds all that had been told them about Je­sus, but they could not clearly per­ceive what had hap­pened.

189:5.3Pe­ter at first sug­gested that the grave had been ri­fled, that en­e­mies had stolen the body, per­haps bribed the guards. But John rea­soned that the grave would hardly have been left so or­derly if the body had been stolen, and he also raised the ques­tion as to how the ban­dages hap­pened to be left be­hind, and so ap­par­ently in­tact. And again they both went back into the tomb more closely to ex­am­ine the grave cloths. As they came out of the tomb the sec­ond time, they found Mary Mag­da­lene re­turned and weep­ing be­fore the en­trance. Mary had gone to the apos­tles be­liev­ing that Je­sus had risen from the grave, but when they all re­fused to be­lieve her re­port, she be­came down­cast and de­spair­ing. She longed to go back near the tomb, where she thought she had heard the fa­mil­iar voice of Je­sus.

189:5.4As Mary lin­gered af­ter Pe­ter and John had gone, the Mas­ter again ap­peared to her, say­ing: “Be not doubt­ing; have the cour­age to be­lieve what you have seen and heard. Go back to my apos­tles and again tell them that I have risen, that I will ap­pear to them, and that pres­ently I will go be­fore them into Gal­i­lee as I prom­ised.”

189:5.5Mary hur­ried back to the Mark home and told the apos­tles she had again talked with Je­sus, but they would not be­lieve her. But when Pe­ter and John re­turned, they ceased to ridicule and be­came filled with fear and ap­pre­hen­sion.

• Jesus › message after resurrection
• personal traits and attitudes › vacillated between faith and doubt on resurrection Sunday

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.

• Jesus › forgave S.P.’s denial

191:1.1It was near half past eight o’clock this Sun­day evening when Je­sus ap­peared to Si­mon Pe­ter in the gar­den of the Mark home. This was his eighth mor­ontia man­i­fes­ta­tion. Pe­ter had lived un­der a heavy bur­den of doubt and guilt ever since his de­nial of the Mas­ter. All day Sat­ur­day and this Sun­day he had fought the fear that, per­haps, he was no longer an apos­tle. He had shud­dered at the fate of Ju­das and even thought that he, too, had be­trayed his Mas­ter. All this af­ter­noon he thought that it might be his pres­ence with the apos­tles that pre­vented Je­sus’ ap­pear­ing to them, pro­vided, of course, he had re­ally risen from the dead. And it was to Pe­ter, in such a frame of mind and in such a state of soul, that Je­sus ap­peared as the de­jected apos­tle strolled among the flow­ers and shrubs.

191:1.2When Pe­ter thought of the lov­ing look of the Mas­ter as he passed by on An­nas’s porch, and as he turned over in his mind that won­der­ful mes­sage brought him early that morn­ing by the women who came from the empty tomb, “Go tell my apos­tles—and Pe­ter”—as he con­tem­plated these to­kens of mercy, his faith be­gan to sur­mount his doubts, and he stood still, clench­ing his fists, while he spoke aloud: “I be­lieve he has risen from the dead; I will go and tell my breth­ren.” And as he said this, there sud­denly ap­peared in front of him the form of a man, who spoke to him in fa­mil­iar tones, say­ing: “Pe­ter, the en­emy de­sired to have you, but I would not give you up. I knew it was not from the heart that you dis­owned me; there­fore I for­gave you even be­fore you asked; but now must you cease to think about your­self and the trou­bles of the hour while you pre­pare to carry the good news of the gospel to those who sit in dark­ness. No longer should you be con­cerned with what you may ob­tain from the king­dom but rather be ex­er­cised about what you can give to those who live in dire spir­i­tual pov­erty. Gird your­self, Si­mon, for the bat­tle of a new day, the strug­gle with spir­i­tual dark­ness and the evil doubt­ings of the nat­u­ral minds of men.”

191:1.3Pe­ter and the mor­ontia Je­sus walked through the gar­den and talked of things past, pres­ent, and fu­ture for al­most five min­utes. Then the Mas­ter van­ished from his gaze, say­ing, “Farewell, Pe­ter, un­til I see you with your breth­ren.”

191:1.4For a mo­ment, Pe­ter was over­come by the re­al­iza­tion that he had talked with the risen Mas­ter, and that he could be sure he was still an am­bas­sador of the king­dom. He had just heard the glo­ri­fied Mas­ter ex­hort him to go on preach­ing the gospel. And with all this welling up within his heart, he rushed to the up­per cham­ber and into the pres­ence of his fel­low apos­tles, ex­claim­ing in breath­less ex­cite­ment: “I have seen the Mas­ter; he was in the gar­den. I talked with him, and he has for­given me.”

• night vision on Sea of Galilee

191:1.5Pe­ter’s dec­la­ra­tion that he had seen Je­sus in the gar­den made a pro­found im­pres­sion upon his fel­low apos­tles, and they were about ready to sur­ren­der their doubts when An­drew got up and warned them not to be too much in­flu­enced by his brother’s re­port. An­drew in­ti­mated that Pe­ter had seen things which were not real be­fore. Al­though An­drew did not di­rectly al­lude to the vi­sion of the night on the Sea of Gal­i­lee wherein Pe­ter claimed to have seen the Mas­ter com­ing to them walk­ing on the wa­ter, he said enough to be­tray to all pres­ent that he had this in­ci­dent in mind. Si­mon Pe­ter was very much hurt by his brother’s in­sin­u­a­tions and im­me­di­ately lapsed into crest­fallen si­lence. The twins felt very sorry for Pe­ter, and they both went over to ex­press their sym­pa­thy and to say that they be­lieved him and to re­assert that their own mother had also seen the Mas­ter.

191:2.1Shortly af­ter nine o’clock that evening, af­ter the de­par­ture of Cleopas and Ja­cob, while the Al­pheus twins com­forted Pe­ter, and while Na­than­iel re­mon­strated with An­drew, and as the ten apos­tles were there as­sem­bled in the up­per cham­ber with all the doors bolted for fear of ar­rest, the Mas­ter, in mor­ontia form, sud­denly ap­peared in the midst of them, say­ing: “Peace be upon you. Why are you so fright­ened when I ap­pear, as though you had seen a spirit? Did I not tell you about these things when I was pres­ent with you in the flesh? Did I not say to you that the chief priests and the rulers would de­liver me up to be killed, that one of your own num­ber would be­tray me, and that on the third day I would rise? Where­fore all your doubt­ings and all this dis­cus­sion about the re­ports of the women, Cleopas and Ja­cob, and even Pe­ter? How long will you doubt my words and refuse to be­lieve my promises? And now that you ac­tu­ally see me, will you be­lieve? Even now one of you is ab­sent. When you are gath­ered to­gether once more, and af­ter all of you know of a cer­tainty that the Son of Man has risen from the grave, go hence into Gal­i­lee. Have faith in God; have faith in one an­other; and so shall you en­ter into the new ser­vice of the king­dom of heaven. I will tarry in Je­ru­sa­lem with you un­til you are ready to go into Gal­i­lee. My peace I leave with you.”

191:2.2When the mor­ontia Je­sus had spo­ken to them, he van­ished in an in­stant from their sight. And they all fell on their faces, prais­ing God and ven­er­at­ing their van­ished Mas­ter. This was the Mas­ter’s ninth mor­ontia ap­pear­ance.

• personal traits and attitudes › erratic, impulsive, enthusiastic personality

191:5.1Thomas spent a lone­some week alone with him­self in the hills around about Oli­vet. Dur­ing this time he saw only those at Si­mon’s house and John Mark. It was about nine o’clock on Sat­ur­day, April 15, when the two apos­tles found him and took him back with them to their ren­dezvous at the Mark home. The next day Thomas lis­tened to the telling of the sto­ries of the Mas­ter’s var­i­ous ap­pear­ances, but he stead­fastly re­fused to be­lieve. He main­tained that Pe­ter had en­thused them into think­ing they had seen the Mas­ter. Na­than­iel rea­soned with him, but it did no good. There was an emo­tional stub­born­ness as­so­ci­ated with his cus­tom­ary doubt­ful­ness, and this state of mind, cou­pled with his cha­grin at hav­ing run away from them, con­spired to cre­ate a sit­u­a­tion of iso­la­tion which even Thomas him­self did not fully un­der­stand. He had with­drawn from his fel­lows, he had gone his own way, and now, even when he was back among them, he un­con­sciously tended to as­sume an at­ti­tude of dis­agree­ment. He was slow to sur­ren­der; he dis­liked to give in. With­out in­tend­ing it, he re­ally en­joyed the at­ten­tion paid him; he de­rived un­con­scious sat­is­fac­tion from the ef­forts of all his fel­lows to con­vince and con­vert him. He had missed them for a full week, and he ob­tained con­sid­er­able plea­sure from their per­sis­tent at­ten­tions.

191:5.2They were hav­ing their evening meal a lit­tle af­ter six o’clock, with Pe­ter sit­ting on one side of Thomas and Na­than­iel on the other, when the doubt­ing apos­tle said: “I will not be­lieve un­less I see the Mas­ter with my own eyes and put my fin­ger in the mark of the nails.” As they thus sat at sup­per, and while the doors were se­curely shut and barred, the mor­ontia Mas­ter sud­denly ap­peared in­side the cur­va­ture of the ta­ble and, stand­ing di­rectly in front of Thomas, said:

191:5.3“Peace be upon you. For a full week have I tar­ried that I might ap­pear again when you were all pres­ent to hear once more the com­mis­sion to go into all the world and preach this gospel of the king­dom. Again I tell you: As the Fa­ther sent me into the world, so send I you. As I have re­vealed the Fa­ther, so shall you re­veal the di­vine love, not merely with words, but in your daily liv­ing. I send you forth, not to love the souls of men, but rather to love men. You are not merely to pro­claim the joys of heaven but also to ex­hibit in your daily ex­pe­ri­ence these spirit re­al­i­ties of the di­vine life since you al­ready have eter­nal life, as the gift of God, through faith. When you have faith, when power from on high, the Spirit of Truth, has come upon you, you will not hide your light here be­hind closed doors; you will make known the love and the mercy of God to all man­kind. Through fear you now flee from the facts of a dis­agree­able ex­pe­ri­ence, but when you shall have been bap­tized with the Spirit of Truth, you will bravely and joy­ously go forth to meet the new ex­pe­ri­ences of pro­claim­ing the good news of eter­nal life in the king­dom of God. You may tarry here and in Gal­i­lee for a short sea­son while you re­cover from the shock of the tran­si­tion from the false se­cu­rity of the au­thor­ity of tra­di­tion­al­ism to the new or­der of the au­thor­ity of facts, truth, and faith in the su­preme re­al­i­ties of liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. Your mis­sion to the world is founded on the fact that I lived a God-re­veal­ing life among you; on the truth that you and all other men are the sons of God; and it shall con­sist in the life which you will live among men—the ac­tual and liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence of lov­ing men and serv­ing them, even as I have loved and served you. Let faith re­veal your light to the world; let the rev­e­la­tion of truth open the eyes blinded by tra­di­tion; let your lov­ing ser­vice ef­fec­tu­ally de­stroy the prej­u­dice en­gen­dered by ig­no­rance. By so draw­ing close to your fel­low men in un­der­stand­ing sym­pa­thy and with un­selfish de­vo­tion, you will lead them into a sav­ing knowl­edge of the Fa­ther’s love. The Jews have ex­tolled good­ness; the Greeks have ex­alted beauty; the Hin­dus preach de­vo­tion; the far­away as­cetics teach rev­er­ence; the Ro­mans de­mand loy­alty; but I re­quire of my dis­ci­ples life, even a life of lov­ing ser­vice for your broth­ers in the flesh.”

191:5.4When the Mas­ter had so spo­ken, he looked down into the face of Thomas and said: “And you, Thomas, who said you would not be­lieve un­less you could see me and put your fin­ger in the nail marks of my hands, have now be­held me and heard my words; and though you see no nail marks on my hands, since I am raised in the form that you also shall have when you de­part from this world, what will you say to your breth­ren? You will ac­knowl­edge the truth, for al­ready in your heart you had be­gun to be­lieve even when you so stoutly as­serted your un­be­lief. Your doubts, Thomas, al­ways most stub­bornly as­sert them­selves just as they are about to crum­ble. Thomas, I bid you be not faith­less but be­liev­ing—and I know you will be­lieve, even with a whole heart.”

191:5.5When Thomas heard these words, he fell on his knees be­fore the mor­ontia Mas­ter and ex­claimed, “I be­lieve! My Lord and my Mas­ter!” Then said Je­sus to Thomas: “You have be­lieved, Thomas, be­cause you have re­ally seen and heard me. Blessed are those in the ages to come who will be­lieve even though they have not seen with the eye of flesh nor heard with the mor­tal ear.”

191:5.6And then, as the Mas­ter’s form moved over near the head of the ta­ble, he ad­dressed them all, say­ing: “And now go all of you to Gal­i­lee, where I will pres­ently ap­pear to you.” Af­ter he said this, he van­ished from their sight.

191:5.7The eleven apos­tles were now fully con­vinced that Je­sus had risen from the dead, and very early the next morn­ing, be­fore the break of day, they started out for Gal­i­lee.

• position and achievements › chief preacher and recognized head of Jesus’ apostles

192:0.2From this time on, un­til the apos­tles were dis­persed by the ris­ing tide of per­se­cu­tion, Pe­ter was the gen­er­ally rec­og­nized head of the apos­tolic corps. Je­sus never gave him any such au­thor­ity, and his fel­low apos­tles never for­mally elected him to such a po­si­tion of re­spon­si­bil­ity; he nat­u­rally as­sumed it and held it by com­mon con­sent and also be­cause he was their chief preacher. From now on pub­lic preach­ing be­came the main busi­ness of the apos­tles. Af­ter their re­turn from Gal­i­lee, Matthias, whom they chose to take the place of Ju­das, be­came their trea­surer.

192:1.1About six o’clock Fri­day morn­ing, April 21, the mor­ontia Mas­ter made his thir­teenth ap­pear­ance, the first in Gal­i­lee, to the ten apos­tles as their boat drew near the shore close to the usual land­ing place at Beth­saida.

192:1.2Af­ter the apos­tles had spent the af­ter­noon and early evening of Thurs­day in wait­ing at the Zeb­e­dee home, Si­mon Pe­ter sug­gested that they go fish­ing. When Pe­ter pro­posed the fish­ing trip, all of the apos­tles de­cided to go along. All night they toiled with the nets but caught no fish. They did not much mind the fail­ure to make a catch, for they had many in­ter­est­ing ex­pe­ri­ences to talk over, things which had so re­cently hap­pened to them at Je­ru­sa­lem. But when day­light came, they de­cided to re­turn to Beth­saida. As they neared the shore, they saw some­one on the beach, near the boat land­ing, stand­ing by a fire. At first they thought it was John Mark, who had come down to wel­come them back with their catch, but as they drew nearer the shore, they saw they were mis­taken—the man was too tall for John. It had oc­curred to none of them that the per­son on the shore was the Mas­ter. They did not al­to­gether un­der­stand why Je­sus wanted to meet with them amidst the scenes of their ear­lier as­so­ci­a­tions and out in the open in con­tact with na­ture, far away from the shut-in en­vi­ron­ment of Je­ru­sa­lem with its tragic as­so­ci­a­tions of fear, be­trayal, and death. He had told them that, if they would go into Gal­i­lee, he would meet them there, and he was about to ful­fill that prom­ise.

• personal traits and attitudes › erratic, impulsive, enthusiastic personality

192:1.3As they dropped an­chor and pre­pared to en­ter the small boat for go­ing ashore, the man on the beach called to them, “Lads, have you caught any­thing?” And when they an­swered, “No,” he spoke again. “Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find fish.” While they did not know it was Je­sus who had di­rected them, with one ac­cord they cast in the net as they had been in­structed, and im­me­di­ately it was filled, so much so that they were hardly able to draw it up. Now, John Zeb­e­dee was quick of per­cep­tion, and when he saw the heavy-laden net, he per­ceived that it was the Mas­ter who had spo­ken to them. When this thought came into his mind, he leaned over and whis­pered to Pe­ter, “It is the Mas­ter.” Pe­ter was ever a man of thought­less ac­tion and im­petu­ous de­vo­tion; so when John whis­pered this in his ear, he quickly arose and cast him­self into the wa­ter that he might the sooner reach the Mas­ter’s side. His breth­ren came up close be­hind him, hav­ing come ashore in the small boat, haul­ing the net of fishes af­ter them.

192:1.4By this time John Mark was up and, see­ing the apos­tles com­ing ashore with the heavy-laden net, ran down the beach to greet them; and when he saw eleven men in­stead of ten, he sur­mised that the un­rec­og­nized one was the risen Je­sus, and as the as­ton­ished ten stood by in si­lence, the youth rushed up to the Mas­ter and, kneel­ing at his feet, said, “My Lord and my Mas­ter.” And then Je­sus spoke, not as he had in Je­ru­sa­lem, when he greeted them with “Peace be upon you,” but in com­mon­place tones he ad­dressed John Mark: “Well, John, I am glad to see you again and in care­free Gal­i­lee, where we can have a good visit. Stay with us, John, and have break­fast.”

192:1.5As Je­sus talked with the young man, the ten were so as­ton­ished and sur­prised that they ne­glected to haul the net of fish in upon the beach. Now spoke Je­sus: “Bring in your fish and pre­pare some for break­fast. Al­ready we have the fire and much bread.”

192:1.6While John Mark had paid homage to the Mas­ter, Pe­ter had for a mo­ment been shocked at the sight of the coals of fire glow­ing there on the beach; the scene re­minded him so vividly of the mid­night fire of char­coal in the court­yard of An­nas, where he had dis­owned the Mas­ter, but he shook him­self and, kneel­ing at the Mas­ter’s feet, ex­claimed, “My Lord and my Mas­ter!”

192:1.7Pe­ter then joined his com­rades as they hauled in the net. When they had landed their catch, they counted the fish, and there were 153 large ones. And again was the mis­take made of call­ing this an­other mirac­u­lous catch of fish. There was no mir­a­cle con­nected with this episode. It was merely an ex­er­cise of the Mas­ter’s pre­knowl­edge. He knew the fish were there and ac­cord­ingly di­rected the apos­tles where to cast the net.

192:1.8Je­sus spoke to them, say­ing: “Come now, all of you, to break­fast. Even the twins should sit down while I visit with you; John Mark will dress the fish.” John Mark brought seven good-sized fish, which the Mas­ter put on the fire, and when they were cooked, the lad served them to the ten. Then Je­sus broke the bread and handed it to John, who in turn served it to the hun­gry apos­tles. When they had all been served, Je­sus bade John Mark sit down while he him­self served the fish and the bread to the lad. And as they ate, Je­sus vis­ited with them and re­counted their many ex­pe­ri­ences in Gal­i­lee and by this very lake.

192:1.9This was the third time Je­sus had man­i­fested him­self to the apos­tles as a group. When Je­sus first ad­dressed them, ask­ing if they had any fish, they did not sus­pect who he was be­cause it was a com­mon ex­pe­ri­ence for these fish­er­men on the Sea of Gal­i­lee, when they came ashore, to be thus ac­costed by the fish mer­chants of Ta­ri­chea, who were usu­ally on hand to buy the fresh catches for the dry­ing es­tab­lish­ments.

192:1.10Je­sus vis­ited with the ten apos­tles and John Mark for more than an hour, and then he walked up and down the beach, talk­ing with them two and two—but not the same cou­ples he had at first sent out to­gether to teach. All eleven of the apos­tles had come down from Je­ru­sa­lem to­gether, but Si­mon Ze­lo­tes grew more and more de­spon­dent as they drew near Gal­i­lee, so that, when they reached Beth­saida, he for­sook his breth­ren and re­turned to his home.

• fetched Simon Zelotes

192:1.11Be­fore tak­ing leave of them this morn­ing, Je­sus di­rected that two of the apos­tles should vol­un­teer to go to Si­mon Ze­lo­tes and bring him back that very day. And Pe­ter and An­drew did so.

192:2.1When they had fin­ished break­fast, and while the oth­ers sat by the fire, Je­sus beck­oned to Pe­ter and to John that they should come with him for a stroll on the beach. As they walked along, Je­sus said to John, “John, do you love me?” And when John an­swered, “Yes, Mas­ter, with all my heart,” the Mas­ter said: “Then, John, give up your in­tol­er­ance and learn to love men as I have loved you. De­vote your life to prov­ing that love is the great­est thing in the world. It is the love of God that im­pels men to seek sal­va­tion. Love is the an­ces­tor of all spir­i­tual good­ness, the essence of the true and the beau­ti­ful.”

• “do you love me?” Jesus asked
• Jesus › admonitions to S.P.

192:2.2Je­sus then turned to­ward Pe­ter and asked, “Pe­ter, do you love me?” Pe­ter an­swered, “Lord, you know I love you with all my soul.” Then said Je­sus: “If you love me, Pe­ter, feed my lambs. Do not ne­glect to min­is­ter to the weak, the poor, and the young. Preach the gospel with­out fear or fa­vor; re­mem­ber al­ways that God is no re­specter of per­sons. Serve your fel­low men even as I have served you; for­give your fel­low mor­tals even as I have for­given you. Let ex­pe­ri­ence teach you the value of med­i­ta­tion and the power of in­tel­li­gent re­flec­tion.”

192:2.3Af­ter they had walked along a lit­tle far­ther, the Mas­ter turned to Pe­ter and asked, “Pe­ter, do you re­ally love me?” And then said Si­mon, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” And again said Je­sus: “Then take good care of my sheep. Be a good and a true shep­herd to the flock. Be­tray not their con­fi­dence in you. Be not taken by sur­prise at the en­emy’s hand. Be on guard at all times—watch and pray.”

192:2.4When they had gone a few steps far­ther, Je­sus turned to Pe­ter and, for the third time, asked, “Pe­ter, do you truly love me?” And then Pe­ter, be­ing slightly grieved at the Mas­ter’s seem­ing dis­trust of him, said with con­sid­er­able feel­ing, “Lord, you know all things, and there­fore do you know that I re­ally and truly love you.” Then said Je­sus: “Feed my sheep. Do not for­sake the flock. Be an ex­am­ple and an in­spi­ra­tion to all your fel­low shep­herds. Love the flock as I have loved you and de­vote your­self to their wel­fare even as I have de­voted my life to your wel­fare. And fol­low af­ter me even to the end.”

• questions of

192:2.5Pe­ter took this last state­ment lit­er­ally—that he should con­tinue to fol­low af­ter him—and turn­ing to Je­sus, he pointed to John, ask­ing, “If I fol­low on af­ter you, what shall this man do?” And then, per­ceiv­ing that Pe­ter had mis­un­der­stood his words, Je­sus said: “Pe­ter, be not con­cerned about what your breth­ren shall do. If I will that John should tarry af­ter you are gone, even un­til I come back, what is that to you? Only make sure that you fol­low me.”

192:2.6This re­mark spread among the breth­ren and was re­ceived as a state­ment by Je­sus to the ef­fect that John would not die be­fore the Mas­ter re­turned, as many thought and hoped, to es­tab­lish the king­dom in power and glory. It was this in­ter­pre­ta­tion of what Je­sus said that had much to do with get­ting Si­mon Ze­lo­tes back into ser­vice, and keep­ing him at work.

192:2.7When they re­turned to the oth­ers, Je­sus went for a walk and talk with An­drew and James. When they had gone a short dis­tance, Je­sus said to An­drew, “An­drew, do you trust me?” And when the for­mer chief of the apos­tles heard Je­sus ask such a ques­tion, he stood still and an­swered, “Yes, Mas­ter, of a cer­tainty I trust you, and you know that I do.” Then said Je­sus: “An­drew, if you trust me, trust your breth­ren more—even Pe­ter. I once trusted you with the lead­er­ship of your breth­ren. Now must you trust oth­ers as I leave you to go to the Fa­ther. When your breth­ren be­gin to scat­ter abroad be­cause of bit­ter per­se­cu­tions, be a con­sid­er­ate and wise coun­selor to James my brother in the flesh when they put heavy bur­dens upon him which he is not qual­i­fied by ex­pe­ri­ence to bear. And then go on trust­ing, for I will not fail you. When you are through on earth, you shall come to me.”

192:2.8Then Je­sus turned to James, ask­ing, “James, do you trust me?” And of course James replied, “Yes, Mas­ter, I trust you with all my heart.” Then said Je­sus: “James, if you trust me more, you will be less im­pa­tient with your breth­ren. If you will trust me, it will help you to be kind to the broth­er­hood of be­liev­ers. Learn to weigh the con­se­quences of your say­ings and your do­ings. Re­mem­ber that the reap­ing is in ac­cor­dance with the sow­ing. Pray for tran­quil­lity of spirit and cul­ti­vate pa­tience. These graces, with liv­ing faith, shall sus­tain you when the hour comes to drink the cup of sac­ri­fice. But never be dis­mayed; when you are through on earth, you shall also come to be with me.”

192:2.9Je­sus next talked with Thomas and Na­than­iel. Said he to Thomas, “Thomas, do you serve me?” Thomas replied, “Yes, Lord, I serve you now and al­ways.” Then said Je­sus: “If you would serve me, serve my breth­ren in the flesh even as I have served you. And be not weary in this well-do­ing but per­se­vere as one who has been or­dained by God for this ser­vice of love. When you have fin­ished your ser­vice with me on earth, you shall serve with me in glory. Thomas, you must cease doubt­ing; you must grow in faith and the knowl­edge of truth. Be­lieve in God like a child but cease to act so child­ishly. Have cour­age; be strong in faith and mighty in the king­dom of God.”

192:2.10Then said the Mas­ter to Na­than­iel, “Na­than­iel, do you serve me?” And the apos­tle an­swered, “Yes, Mas­ter, and with an un­di­vided af­fec­tion.” Then said Je­sus: “If, there­fore, you serve me with a whole heart, make sure that you are de­voted to the wel­fare of my breth­ren on earth with tire­less af­fec­tion. Ad­mix friend­ship with your coun­sel and add love to your phi­los­o­phy. Serve your fel­low men even as I have served you. Be faith­ful to men as I have watched over you. Be less crit­i­cal; ex­pect less of some men and thereby lessen the ex­tent of your dis­ap­point­ment. And when the work down here is over, you shall serve with me on high.”

192:2.11Af­ter this the Mas­ter talked with Mat­thew and Philip. To Philip he said, “Philip, do you obey me?” Philip an­swered, “Yes, Lord, I will obey you even with my life.” Then said Je­sus: “If you would obey me, go then into the lands of the gen­tiles and pro­claim this gospel. The proph­ets have told you that to obey is bet­ter than to sac­ri­fice. By faith have you be­come a God-know­ing king­dom son. There is but one law to obey—that is the com­mand to go forth pro­claim­ing the gospel of the king­dom. Cease to fear men; be un­afraid to preach the good news of eter­nal life to your fel­lows who lan­guish in dark­ness and hunger for the light of truth. No more, Philip, shall you busy your­self with money and goods. You now are free to preach the glad tid­ings just as are your breth­ren. And I will go be­fore you and be with you even to the end.”

192:2.12And then, speak­ing to Mat­thew, the Mas­ter asked, “Mat­thew, do you have it in your heart to obey me?” Mat­thew an­swered, “Yes, Lord, I am fully ded­i­cated to do­ing your will.” Then said the Mas­ter: “Mat­thew, if you would obey me, go forth to teach all peo­ples this gospel of the king­dom. No longer will you serve your breth­ren the ma­te­rial things of life; hence­forth you are also to pro­claim the good news of spir­i­tual sal­va­tion. From now on have an eye sin­gle only to obey­ing your com­mis­sion to preach this gospel of the Fa­ther’s king­dom. As I have done the Fa­ther’s will on earth, so shall you ful­fill the di­vine com­mis­sion. Re­mem­ber, both Jew and gen­tile are your breth­ren. Fear no man when you pro­claim the sav­ing truths of the gospel of the king­dom of heaven. And where I go, you shall pres­ently come.”

192:2.13Then he walked and talked with the Al­pheus twins, James and Ju­das, and speak­ing to both of them, he asked, “James and Ju­das, do you be­lieve in me?” And when they both an­swered, “Yes, Mas­ter, we do be­lieve,” he said: “I will soon leave you. You see that I have al­ready left you in the flesh. I tarry only a short time in this form be­fore I go to my Fa­ther. You be­lieve in me—you are my apos­tles, and you al­ways will be. Go on be­liev­ing and re­mem­ber­ing your as­so­ci­a­tion with me, when I am gone, and af­ter you have, per­chance, re­turned to the work you used to do be­fore you came to live with me. Never al­low a change in your out­ward work to in­flu­ence your al­le­giance. Have faith in God to the end of your days on earth. Never for­get that, when you are a faith son of God, all up­right work of the realm is sa­cred. Noth­ing which a son of God does can be com­mon. Do your work, there­fore, from this time on, as for God. And when you are through on this world, I have other and bet­ter worlds where you shall like­wise work for me. And in all of this work, on this world and on other worlds, I will work with you, and my spirit shall dwell within you.”

192:2.14It was al­most ten o’clock when Je­sus re­turned from his visit with the Al­pheus twins, and as he left the apos­tles, he said: “Farewell, un­til I meet you all on the mount of your or­di­na­tion to­mor­row at noon­time.” When he had thus spo­ken, he van­ished from their sight.

192:3.1At noon on Sat­ur­day, April 22, the eleven apos­tles as­sem­bled by ap­point­ment on the hill near Ca­per­naum, and Je­sus ap­peared among them. This meet­ing oc­curred on the very mount where the Mas­ter had set them apart as his apos­tles and as am­bas­sadors of the Fa­ther’s king­dom on earth. And this was the Mas­ter’s four­teenth mor­ontia man­i­fes­ta­tion.

192:3.2At this time the eleven apos­tles knelt in a cir­cle about the Mas­ter and heard him re­peat the charges and saw him re-en­act the or­di­na­tion scene even as when they were first set apart for the spe­cial work of the king­dom. And all of this was to them as a mem­ory of their for­mer con­se­cra­tion to the Fa­ther’s ser­vice, ex­cept the Mas­ter’s prayer. When the Mas­ter—the mor­ontia Je­sus—now prayed, it was in tones of majesty and with words of power such as the apos­tles had never be­fore heard. Their Mas­ter now spoke with the rulers of the uni­verses as one who, in his own uni­verse, had had all power and au­thor­ity com­mit­ted to his hand. And these eleven men never for­got this ex­pe­ri­ence of the mor­ontia reded­i­ca­tion to the for­mer pledges of am­bas­sador­ship. The Mas­ter spent just one hour on this mount with his am­bas­sadors, and when he had taken an af­fec­tion­ate farewell of them, he van­ished from their sight.

192:3.3And no one saw Je­sus for a full week. The apos­tles re­ally had no idea what to do, not know­ing whether the Mas­ter had gone to the Fa­ther. In this state of un­cer­tainty they tar­ried at Beth­saida. They were afraid to go fish­ing lest he come to visit them and they miss see­ing him. Dur­ing this en­tire week Je­sus was oc­cu­pied with the mor­ontia crea­tures on earth and with the af­fairs of the mor­ontia tran­si­tion which he was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing on this world.

192:4.1Word of the ap­pear­ances of Je­sus was spread­ing through­out Gal­i­lee, and ev­ery day in­creas­ing num­bers of be­liev­ers ar­rived at the Zeb­e­dee home to in­quire about the Mas­ter’s res­ur­rec­tion and to find out the truth about these re­puted ap­pear­ances. Pe­ter, early in the week, sent out word that a pub­lic meet­ing would be held by the sea­side the next Sab­bath at three o’clock in the af­ter­noon.

• position and achievements › preached to 500 in Bethsaida

192:4.2Ac­cord­ingly, on Sat­ur­day, April 29, at three o’clock, more than five hun­dred be­liev­ers from the en­vi­rons of Ca­per­naum as­sem­bled at Beth­saida to hear Pe­ter preach his first pub­lic ser­mon since the res­ur­rec­tion. The apos­tle was at his best, and af­ter he had fin­ished his ap­peal­ing dis­course, few of his hear­ers doubted that the Mas­ter had risen from the dead.

192:4.3Pe­ter ended his ser­mon, say­ing: “We af­firm that Je­sus of Naz­a­reth is not dead; we de­clare that he has risen from the tomb; we pro­claim that we have seen him and talked with him.” Just as he fin­ished mak­ing this dec­la­ra­tion of faith, there by his side, in full view of all these peo­ple, the Mas­ter ap­peared in mor­ontia form and, speak­ing to them in fa­mil­iar ac­cents, said, “Peace be upon you, and my peace I leave with you.” When he had thus ap­peared and had so spo­ken to them, he van­ished from their sight. This was the fif­teenth mor­ontia man­i­fes­ta­tion of the risen Je­sus.

192:4.4Be­cause of cer­tain things said to the eleven while they were in con­fer­ence with the Mas­ter on the mount of or­di­na­tion, the apos­tles re­ceived the im­pres­sion that their Mas­ter would pres­ently make a pub­lic ap­pear­ance be­fore a group of the Galilean be­liev­ers, and that, af­ter he had done so, they were to re­turn to Je­ru­sa­lem. Ac­cord­ingly, early the next day, Sun­day, April 30, the eleven left Beth­saida for Je­ru­sa­lem. They did con­sid­er­able teach­ing and preach­ing on the way down the Jor­dan, so that they did not ar­rive at the home of the Marks in Je­ru­sa­lem un­til late on Wednes­day, May 3.

192:4.5This was a sad home-com­ing for John Mark. Just a few hours be­fore he reached home, his fa­ther, Eli­jah Mark, sud­denly died from a hem­or­rhage in the brain. Al­though the thought of the cer­tainty of the res­ur­rec­tion of the dead did much to com­fort the apos­tles in their grief, at the same time they truly mourned the loss of their good friend, who had been their stanch sup­porter even in the times of great trou­ble and dis­ap­point­ment. John Mark did all he could to com­fort his mother and, speak­ing for her, in­vited the apos­tles to con­tinue to make their home at her house. And the eleven made this up­per cham­ber their head­quar­ters un­til af­ter the day of Pen­te­cost.

192:4.6The apos­tles had pur­posely en­tered Je­ru­sa­lem af­ter night­fall that they might not be seen by the Jew­ish au­thor­i­ties. Nei­ther did they pub­licly ap­pear in con­nec­tion with the fu­neral of Eli­jah Mark. All the next day they re­mained in quiet seclu­sion in this event­ful up­per cham­ber.

• position and achievements › inaugurated new religion of risen Christ, unintentionally

192:4.7On Thurs­day night the apos­tles had a won­der­ful meet­ing in this up­per cham­ber and all pledged them­selves to go forth in the pub­lic preach­ing of the new gospel of the risen Lord ex­cept Thomas, Si­mon Ze­lo­tes, and the Al­pheus twins. Al­ready had be­gun the first steps of chang­ing the gospel of the king­dom—son­ship with God and broth­er­hood with man—into the procla­ma­tion of the res­ur­rec­tion of Je­sus. Na­than­iel op­posed this shift in the bur­den of their pub­lic mes­sage, but he could not with­stand Pe­ter’s elo­quence, nei­ther could he over­come the en­thu­si­asm of the dis­ci­ples, es­pe­cially the women be­liev­ers.

192:4.8And so, un­der the vig­or­ous lead­er­ship of Pe­ter and ere the Mas­ter as­cended to the Fa­ther, his well-mean­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives be­gan that sub­tle pro­cess of grad­u­ally and cer­tainly chang­ing the re­li­gion of Je­sus into a new and mod­i­fied form of re­li­gion about Je­sus.

193:0.1The six­teenth mor­ontia man­i­fes­ta­tion of Je­sus oc­curred on Fri­day, May 5, in the court­yard of Nicode­mus, about nine o’clock at night. On this evening the Je­ru­sa­lem be­liev­ers had made their first at­tempt to get to­gether since the res­ur­rec­tion. As­sem­bled here at this time were the eleven apos­tles, the women’s corps and their as­so­ciates, and about fifty other lead­ing dis­ci­ples of the Mas­ter, in­clud­ing a num­ber of the Greeks. This com­pany of be­liev­ers had been vis­it­ing in­for­mally for more than half an hour when, sud­denly, the mor­ontia Mas­ter ap­peared in full view and im­me­di­ately be­gan to in­struct them. Said Je­sus:

193:0.2“Peace be upon you. This is the most rep­re­sen­ta­tive group of be­liev­ers—apos­tles and dis­ci­ples, both men and women—to which I have ap­peared since the time of my de­liv­er­ance from the flesh. I now call you to wit­ness that I told you be­fore­hand that my so­journ among you must come to an end; I told you that pres­ently I must re­turn to the Fa­ther. And then I plainly told you how the chief priests and the rulers of the Jews would de­liver me up to be put to death, and that I would rise from the grave. Why, then, did you al­low your­selves to be­come so dis­con­certed by all this when it came to pass? and why were you so sur­prised when I rose from the tomb on the third day? You failed to be­lieve me be­cause you heard my words with­out com­pre­hend­ing the mean­ing thereof.

193:0.3“And now you should give ear to my words lest you again make the mis­take of hear­ing my teach­ing with the mind while in your hearts you fail to com­pre­hend the mean­ing. From the be­gin­ning of my so­journ as one of you, I taught you that my one pur­pose was to re­veal my Fa­ther in heaven to his chil­dren on earth. I have lived the God-re­veal­ing be­stowal that you might ex­pe­ri­ence the God-know­ing ca­reer. I have re­vealed God as your Fa­ther in heaven; I have re­vealed you as the sons of God on earth. It is a fact that God loves you, his sons. By faith in my word this fact be­comes an eter­nal and liv­ing truth in your hearts. When, by liv­ing faith, you be­come di­vinely God-con­scious, you are then born of the spirit as chil­dren of light and life, even the eter­nal life where­with you shall as­cend the uni­verse of uni­verses and at­tain the ex­pe­ri­ence of find­ing God the Fa­ther on Par­a­dise.

193:0.4“I ad­mon­ish you ever to re­mem­ber that your mis­sion among men is to pro­claim the gospel of the king­dom—the re­al­ity of the fa­ther­hood of God and the truth of the son­ship of man. Pro­claim the whole truth of the good news, not just a part of the sav­ing gospel. Your mes­sage is not changed by my res­ur­rec­tion ex­pe­ri­ence. Son­ship with God, by faith, is still the sav­ing truth of the gospel of the king­dom. You are to go forth preach­ing the love of God and the ser­vice of man. That which the world needs most to know is: Men are the sons of God, and through faith they can ac­tu­ally re­al­ize, and daily ex­pe­ri­ence, this en­nobling truth. My be­stowal should help all men to know that they are the chil­dren of God, but such knowl­edge will not suf­fice if they fail per­son­ally to faith-grasp the sav­ing truth that they are the liv­ing spirit sons of the eter­nal Fa­ther. The gospel of the king­dom is con­cerned with the love of the Fa­ther and the ser­vice of his chil­dren on earth.

193:0.5“Among your­selves, here, you share the knowl­edge that I have risen from the dead, but that is not strange. I have the power to lay down my life and to take it up again; the Fa­ther gives such power to his Par­a­dise Sons. You should the rather be stirred in your hearts by the knowl­edge that the dead of an age en­tered upon the eter­nal as­cent soon af­ter I left Joseph’s new tomb. I lived my life in the flesh to show how you can, through lov­ing ser­vice, be­come God-re­veal­ing to your fel­low men even as, by lov­ing you and serv­ing you, I have be­come God-re­veal­ing to you. I have lived among you as the Son of Man that you, and all other men, might know that you are all in­deed the sons of God. There­fore, go you now into all the world preach­ing this gospel of the king­dom of heaven to all men. Love all men as I have loved you; serve your fel­low mor­tals as I have served you. Freely you have re­ceived, freely give. Only tarry here in Je­ru­sa­lem while I go to the Fa­ther, and un­til I send you the Spirit of Truth. He shall lead you into the en­larged truth, and I will go with you into all the world. I am with you al­ways, and my peace I leave with you.”

193:0.6When the Mas­ter had spo­ken to them, he van­ished from their sight. It was near day­break be­fore these be­liev­ers dis­persed; all night they re­mained to­gether, earnestly dis­cussing the Mas­ter’s ad­mo­ni­tions and con­tem­plat­ing all that had be­fallen them. James Zeb­e­dee and oth­ers of the apos­tles also told them of their ex­pe­ri­ences with the mor­ontia Mas­ter in Gal­i­lee and re­cited how he had three times ap­peared to them.

193:3.1Early Thurs­day morn­ing, May 18, Je­sus made his last ap­pear­ance on earth as a mor­ontia per­son­al­ity. As the eleven apos­tles were about to sit down to break­fast in the up­per cham­ber of Mary Mark’s home, Je­sus ap­peared to them and said:

193:3.2“Peace be upon you. I have asked you to tarry here in Je­ru­sa­lem un­til I as­cend to the Fa­ther, even un­til I send you the Spirit of Truth, who shall soon be poured out upon all flesh, and who shall en­dow you with power from on high.” Si­mon Ze­lo­tes in­ter­rupted Je­sus, ask­ing, “Then, Mas­ter, will you re­store the king­dom, and will we see the glory of God man­i­fested on earth?” When Je­sus had lis­tened to Si­mon’s ques­tion, he an­swered: “Si­mon, you still cling to your old ideas about the Jew­ish Mes­siah and the ma­te­rial king­dom. But you will re­ceive spir­i­tual power af­ter the spirit has de­scended upon you, and you will pres­ently go into all the world preach­ing this gospel of the king­dom. As the Fa­ther sent me into the world, so do I send you. And I wish that you would love and trust one an­other. Ju­das is no more with you be­cause his love grew cold, and be­cause he re­fused to trust you, his loyal breth­ren. Have you not read in the Scrip­ture where it is writ­ten: ‘It is not good for man to be alone. No man lives to him­self’? And also where it says: ‘He who would have friends must show him­self friendly’? And did I not even send you out to teach, two and two, that you might not be­come lonely and fall into the mis­chief and mis­eries of iso­la­tion? You also well know that, when I was in the flesh, I did not per­mit my­self to be alone for long pe­ri­ods. From the very be­gin­ning of our as­so­ci­a­tions I al­ways had two or three of you con­stantly by my side or else very near at hand even when I com­muned with the Fa­ther. Trust, there­fore, and con­fide in one an­other. And this is all the more need­ful since I am this day go­ing to leave you alone in the world. The hour has come; I am about to go to the Fa­ther.”

193:3.3When he had spo­ken, he beck­oned for them to come with him, and he led them out on the Mount of Olives, where he bade them farewell prepara­tory to de­part­ing from Uran­tia. This was a solemn jour­ney to Oli­vet. Not a word was spo­ken by any of them from the time they left the up­per cham­ber un­til Je­sus paused with them on the Mount of Olives.

193:5.1It was al­most half past seven o’clock this Thurs­day morn­ing, May 18, when Je­sus ar­rived on the west­ern slope of Mount Oli­vet with his eleven silent and some­what be­wil­dered apos­tles. From this lo­ca­tion, about two thirds the way up the moun­tain, they could look out over Je­ru­sa­lem and down upon Geth­sem­ane. Je­sus now pre­pared to say his last farewell to the apos­tles be­fore he took leave of Uran­tia. As he stood there be­fore them, with­out be­ing di­rected they knelt about him in a cir­cle, and the Mas­ter said:

193:5.2“I bade you tarry in Je­ru­sa­lem un­til you were en­dowed with power from on high. I am now about to take leave of you; I am about to as­cend to my Fa­ther, and soon, very soon, will we send into this world of my so­journ the Spirit of Truth; and when he has come, you shall be­gin the new procla­ma­tion of the gospel of the king­dom, first in Je­ru­sa­lem and then to the ut­ter­most parts of the world. Love men with the love where­with I have loved you and serve your fel­low mor­tals even as I have served you. By the spirit fruits of your lives im­pel souls to be­lieve the truth that man is a son of God, and that all men are breth­ren. Re­mem­ber all I have taught you and the life I have lived among you. My love over­shad­ows you, my spirit will dwell with you, and my peace shall abide upon you. Farewell.”

193:5.3When the mor­ontia Mas­ter had thus spo­ken, he van­ished from their sight. This so-called as­cen­sion of Je­sus was in no way dif­fer­ent from his other dis­ap­pear­ances from mor­tal vi­sion dur­ing the forty days of his mor­ontia ca­reer on Uran­tia.

193:5.4The Mas­ter went to Eden­tia by way of Je­ru­sem, where the Most Highs, un­der the ob­ser­va­tion of the Par­a­dise Son, re­leased Je­sus of Naz­a­reth from the mor­ontia state and, through the spirit chan­nels of as­cen­sion, re­turned him to the sta­tus of Par­a­dise son­ship and su­preme sov­er­eignty on Sal­ving­ton.

193:5.5It was about seven forty-five this morn­ing when the mor­ontia Je­sus dis­ap­peared from the ob­ser­va­tion of his eleven apos­tles to be­gin the as­cent to the right hand of his Fa­ther, there to re­ceive for­mal con­fir­ma­tion of his com­pleted sov­er­eignty of the uni­verse of Neb­a­don.

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.

• position and achievements › inaugurated new religion of risen Christ, unintentionally

194:0.3These men had been trained and in­structed that the gospel which they should preach was the fa­ther­hood of God and the son­ship of man, but at just this mo­ment of spir­i­tual ec­stasy and per­sonal tri­umph, the best tid­ings, the great­est news, these men could think of was the fact of the risen Mas­ter. And so they went forth, en­dowed with power from on high, preach­ing glad tid­ings to the peo­ple—even sal­va­tion through Je­sus—but they un­in­ten­tion­ally stum­bled into the er­ror of sub­sti­tut­ing some of the facts as­so­ci­ated with the gospel for the gospel mes­sage it­self. Pe­ter un­wit­tingly led off in this mis­take, and oth­ers fol­lowed af­ter him on down to Paul, who cre­ated a new re­li­gion out of the new ver­sion of the good news.

194:1.1The apos­tles had been in hid­ing for forty days. This day hap­pened to be the Jew­ish fes­ti­val of Pen­te­cost, and thou­sands of vis­i­tors from all parts of the world were in Je­ru­sa­lem. Many ar­rived for this feast, but a ma­jor­ity had tar­ried in the city since the Pass­over. Now these fright­ened apos­tles emerged from their weeks of seclu­sion to ap­pear boldly in the tem­ple, where they be­gan to preach the new mes­sage of a risen Mes­siah. And all the dis­ci­ples were like­wise con­scious of hav­ing re­ceived some new spir­i­tual en­dow­ment of in­sight and power.

194:1.2It was about two o’clock when Pe­ter stood up in that very place where his Mas­ter had last taught in this tem­ple, and de­liv­ered that im­pas­sioned ap­peal which re­sulted in the win­ning of more than two thou­sand souls. The Mas­ter had gone, but they sud­denly dis­cov­ered that this story about him had great power with the peo­ple. No won­der they were led on into the fur­ther procla­ma­tion of that which vin­di­cated their for­mer de­vo­tion to Je­sus and at the same time so con­strained men to be­lieve in him. Six of the apos­tles par­tic­i­pated in this meet­ing: Pe­ter, An­drew, James, John, Philip, and Mat­thew. They talked for more than an hour and a half and de­liv­ered mes­sages in Greek, He­brew, and Ara­maic, as well as a few words in even other tongues with which they had a speak­ing ac­quain­tance.

194:1.3The lead­ers of the Jews were as­tounded at the bold­ness of the apos­tles, but they feared to mo­lest them be­cause of the large num­bers who be­lieved their story.

194:1.4By half past four o’clock more than two thou­sand new be­liev­ers fol­lowed the apos­tles down to the pool of Siloam, where Pe­ter, An­drew, James, and John bap­tized them in the Mas­ter’s name. And it was dark when they had fin­ished with bap­tiz­ing this mul­ti­tude.

194:1.5Pen­te­cost was the great fes­ti­val of bap­tism, the time for fel­low­ship­ping the pros­e­lytes of the gate, those gen­tiles who de­sired to serve Yah­weh. It was, there­fore, the more easy for large num­bers of both the Jews and be­liev­ing gen­tiles to sub­mit to bap­tism on this day. In do­ing this, they were in no way dis­con­nect­ing them­selves from the Jew­ish faith. Even for some time af­ter this the be­liev­ers in Je­sus were a sect within Ju­daism. All of them, in­clud­ing the apos­tles, were still loyal to the es­sen­tial re­quire­ments of the Jew­ish cer­e­mo­nial sys­tem.

• position and achievements › founded and organized Christian church

194:4.12Stephen, the leader of the Greek colony of Je­sus’ be­liev­ers in Je­ru­sa­lem, thus be­came the first mar­tyr to the new faith and the spe­cific cause for the for­mal or­ga­ni­za­tion of the early Chris­tian church. This new cri­sis was met by the rec­og­ni­tion that be­liev­ers could not longer go on as a sect within the Jew­ish faith. They all agreed that they must sep­a­rate them­selves from un­be­liev­ers; and within one month from the death of Stephen the church at Je­ru­sa­lem had been or­ga­nized un­der the lead­er­ship of Pe­ter, and James the brother of Je­sus had been in­stalled as its tit­u­lar head.

• position and achievements › founded and organized Christian church

195:0.1The re­sults of Pe­ter’s preach­ing on the day of Pen­te­cost were such as to de­cide the fu­ture poli­cies, and to de­ter­mine the plans, of the ma­jor­ity of the apos­tles in their ef­forts to pro­claim the gospel of the king­dom. Pe­ter was the real founder of the Chris­tian church; Paul car­ried the Chris­tian mes­sage to the gen­tiles, and the Greek be­liev­ers car­ried it to the whole Ro­man Em­pire.

• position and achievements › inaugurated new religion of risen Christ, unintentionally

196:2.1Some day a ref­or­ma­tion in the Chris­tian church may strike deep enough to get back to the unadul­ter­ated re­li­gious teach­ings of Je­sus, the au­thor and fin­isher of our faith. You may preach a re­li­gion about Je­sus, but, per­force, you must live the re­li­gion of Je­sus. In the en­thu­si­asm of Pen­te­cost, Pe­ter un­in­ten­tion­ally in­au­gu­rated a new re­li­gion, the re­li­gion of the risen and glo­ri­fied Christ. The Apos­tle Paul later on trans­formed this new gospel into Chris­tian­ity, a re­li­gion em­body­ing his own the­o­logic views and por­tray­ing his own per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence with the Je­sus of the Da­mas­cus road. The gospel of the king­dom is founded on the per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence of the Je­sus of Gal­i­lee; Chris­tian­ity is founded al­most ex­clu­sively on the per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence of the Apos­tle Paul. Al­most the whole of the New Tes­ta­ment is de­voted, not to the por­trayal of the sig­nif­i­cant and in­spir­ing re­li­gious life of Je­sus, but to a dis­cus­sion of Paul’s re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence and to a por­trayal of his per­sonal re­li­gious con­vic­tions. The only no­table ex­cep­tions to this state­ment, aside from cer­tain parts of Mat­thew, Mark, and Luke, are the Book of He­brews and the Epis­tle of James. Even Pe­ter, in his writ­ing, only once re­verted to the per­sonal re­li­gious life of his Mas­ter. The New Tes­ta­ment is a su­perb Chris­tian doc­u­ment, but it is only mea­gerly Je­su­so­nian.