Thomas Didymus

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Thomas Didymus

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.

• Thomas Didymus

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.

• Thomas Didymus

151:2.5The Mas­ter per­mit­ted this con­fu­sion to pass the point of most in­tense ex­pres­sion; then he clapped his hands and called them about him. When they had all gath­ered around him once more, he said, “Be­fore I tell you about this para­ble, do any of you have aught to say?” Fol­low­ing a mo­ment of si­lence, Thomas spoke up: “Yes, Mas­ter, I wish to say a few words. I re­mem­ber that you once told us to be­ware of this very thing. You in­structed us that, when us­ing il­lus­tra­tions for our preach­ing, we should em­ploy true sto­ries, not fa­bles, and that we should se­lect a story best suited to the il­lus­tra­tion of the one cen­tral and vi­tal truth which we wished to teach the peo­ple, and that, hav­ing so used the story, we should not at­tempt to make a spir­i­tual ap­pli­ca­tion of all the mi­nor de­tails in­volved in the telling of the story. I hold that Pe­ter and Na­than­iel are both wrong in their at­tempts to in­ter­pret this para­ble. I ad­mire their abil­ity to do these things, but I am equally sure that all such at­tempts to make a nat­u­ral para­ble yield spir­i­tual analo­gies in all its fea­tures can only re­sult in con­fu­sion and se­ri­ous mis­con­cep­tion of the true pur­pose of such a para­ble. That I am right is fully proved by the fact that, whereas we were all of one mind an hour ago, now are we di­vided into two sep­a­rate groups who hold dif­fer­ent opin­ions con­cern­ing this para­ble and hold such opin­ions so earnestly as to in­ter­fere, in my opin­ion, with our abil­ity fully to grasp the great truth which you had in mind when you pre­sented this para­ble to the mul­ti­tude and sub­se­quently asked us to make com­ment upon it.”

• Thomas Didymus

164:0.1As the camp at Pella was be­ing es­tab­lished, Je­sus, tak­ing with him Na­than­iel and Thomas, se­cretly went up to Je­ru­sa­lem to at­tend the feast of the ded­i­ca­tion. Not un­til they passed over the Jor­dan at the Beth­any ford, did the two apos­tles be­come aware that their Mas­ter was go­ing on to Je­ru­sa­lem. When they per­ceived that he re­ally in­tended to be pres­ent at the feast of ded­i­ca­tion, they re­mon­strated with him most earnestly, and us­ing ev­ery sort of ar­gu­ment, they sought to dis­suade him. But their ef­forts were of no avail; Je­sus was de­ter­mined to visit Je­ru­sa­lem. To all their en­treaties and to all their warn­ings em­pha­siz­ing the folly and dan­ger of plac­ing him­self in the hands of the San­hedrin, he would re­ply only, “I would give these teach­ers in Is­rael an­other op­por­tu­nity to see the light, be­fore my hour comes.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.”

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.

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.

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.

156:1.4Then Thomas sought to send the woman away but met only with fail­ure. To him she said: “I have faith that your Mas­ter can cast out this de­mon which tor­ments my child. I have heard of his mighty works in Gal­i­lee, and I be­lieve in him. What has hap­pened to you, his dis­ci­ples, that you would send away those who come seek­ing your Mas­ter’s help?” And when she had thus spo­ken, Thomas with­drew.

164:5.3Je­sus con­tin­ued his teach­ing: “Many lov­ing works have I shown you from the Fa­ther, so that now would I in­quire for which one of these good works do you think to stone me?” And then an­swered one of the Phar­isees: “For no good work would we stone you but for blas­phemy, inas­much as you, be­ing a man, dare to make your­self equal with God.” And Je­sus an­swered: “You charge the Son of Man with blas­phemy be­cause you re­fused to be­lieve me when I de­clared to you that I was sent by God. If I do not the works of God, be­lieve me not, but if I do the works of God, even though you be­lieve not in me, I should think you would be­lieve the works. But that you may be cer­tain of what I pro­claim, let me again as­sert that the Fa­ther is in me and I in the Fa­ther, and that, as the Fa­ther dwells in me, so will I dwell in ev­ery one who be­lieves this gospel.” And when the peo­ple heard these words, many of them rushed out to lay hands upon the stones to cast at him, but he passed out through the tem­ple precincts; and meet­ing Na­than­iel and Thomas, who had been in at­ten­dance upon the ses­sion of the San­hedrin, he waited with them near the tem­ple un­til Josiah came from the coun­cil cham­ber.

• sustained courage; “let us die with him”

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.

• did not believe demons entered swine at Kheresa

151:6.6As the swine herders rushed into the vil­lage to spread the news of the tam­ing of the lu­natic, the dogs charged upon a small and un­tended herd of about thirty swine and drove most of them over a precipice into the sea. And it was this in­ci­den­tal oc­cur­rence, in con­nec­tion with the pres­ence of Je­sus and the sup­posed mirac­u­lous cur­ing of the lu­natic, that gave ori­gin to the leg­end that Je­sus had cured Amos by cast­ing a le­gion of dev­ils out of him, and that these dev­ils had en­tered into the herd of swine, caus­ing them forth­with to rush head­long to their de­struc­tion in the sea be­low. Be­fore the day was over, this episode was pub­lished abroad by the swine ten­ders, and the whole vil­lage be­lieved it. Amos most cer­tainly be­lieved this story; he saw the swine tum­bling over the brow of the hill shortly af­ter his trou­bled mind had qui­eted down, and he al­ways be­lieved that they car­ried with them the very evil spir­its which had so long tor­mented and af­flicted him. And this had a good deal to do with the per­ma­nency of his cure. It is equally true that all of Je­sus’ apos­tles (save Thomas) be­lieved that the episode of the swine was di­rectly con­nected with the cure of Amos.

• opposed 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.

• sustained courage; “let us die with him”

167:4.7When they could not per­suade him to re­frain from go­ing into Judea, and when some of the apos­tles were loath even to ac­com­pany him, Thomas ad­dressed his fel­lows, say­ing: “We have told the Mas­ter our fears, but he is de­ter­mined to go to Beth­any. I am sat­is­fied it means the end; they will surely kill him, but if that is the Mas­ter’s choice, then let us ac­quit our­selves like men of cour­age; let us go also that we may die with him.” And it was ever so; in mat­ters re­quir­ing de­lib­er­ate and sus­tained cour­age, Thomas was al­ways the main­stay of the twelve apos­tles.

• bewildered, then amused, by entry into Jerusalem

172:5.9Thomas was the most be­wil­dered and puz­zled man of all the twelve. Most of the time he just fol­lowed along, gaz­ing at the spec­ta­cle and hon­estly won­der­ing what could be the Mas­ter’s mo­tive for par­tic­i­pat­ing in such a pe­cu­liar dem­on­stra­tion. Down deep in his heart he re­garded the whole per­for­mance as a lit­tle child­ish, if not down­right fool­ish. He had never seen Je­sus do any­thing like this and was at a loss to ac­count for his strange con­duct on this Sun­day af­ter­noon. By the time they reached the tem­ple, Thomas had de­duced that the pur­pose of this pop­u­lar dem­on­stra­tion was so to frighten the San­hedrin that they would not dare im­me­di­ately to ar­rest the Mas­ter. On the way back to Beth­any Thomas thought much but said noth­ing. By bed­time the Mas­ter’s clev­er­ness in stag­ing the tu­mul­tuous en­try into Je­ru­sa­lem had be­gun to make a some­what hu­mor­ous ap­peal, and he was much cheered up by this re­ac­tion.

• analytical mind; true scientist
• sustained courage; “let us die with him”

181:2.26And then Je­sus went over to Thomas, who, stand­ing up, heard him say: “Thomas, you have of­ten lacked faith; how­ever, when you have had your sea­sons with doubt, you have never lacked cour­age. I know well that the false proph­ets and spu­ri­ous teach­ers will not de­ceive you. Af­ter I have gone, your breth­ren will the more ap­pre­ci­ate your crit­i­cal way of view­ing new teach­ings. And when you all are scat­tered to the ends of the earth in the times to come, re­mem­ber that you are still my am­bas­sador. Ded­i­cate your life to the great work of show­ing how the crit­i­cal ma­te­rial mind of man can tri­umph over the in­er­tia of in­tel­lec­tual doubt­ing when faced by the dem­on­stra­tion of the man­i­fes­ta­tion of liv­ing truth as it op­er­ates in the ex­pe­ri­ence of spirit-born men and women who yield the fruits of the spirit in their lives, and who love one an­other, even as I have loved you. Thomas, I am glad you joined us, and I know, af­ter a short pe­riod of per­plex­ity, you will go on in the ser­vice of the king­dom. Your doubts have per­plexed your breth­ren, but they have never trou­bled me. I have con­fi­dence in you, and I will go be­fore you even to the ut­ter­most parts of the earth.”

• told apostles to scatter, every man for himself

183:4.2An­drew had been re­leased from all re­spon­si­bil­ity in the group man­age­ment of his fel­low apos­tles; ac­cord­ingly, in this great­est of all crises in their lives, he was silent. Af­ter a short in­for­mal dis­cus­sion, Si­mon Ze­lo­tes stood up on the stone wall of the olive press and, mak­ing an im­pas­sioned plea for loy­alty to the Mas­ter and the cause of the king­dom, ex­horted his fel­low apos­tles and the other dis­ci­ples to has­ten on af­ter the mob and ef­fect the res­cue of Je­sus. The ma­jor­ity of the com­pany would have been dis­posed to fol­low his ag­gres­sive lead­er­ship had it not been for the ad­vice of Na­than­iel, who stood up the mo­ment Si­mon had fin­ished speak­ing and called their at­ten­tion to Je­sus’ oft-re­peated teach­ings re­gard­ing non­re­sis­tance. He fur­ther re­minded them that Je­sus had that very night in­structed them that they should pre­serve their lives for the time when they should go forth into the world pro­claim­ing the good news of the gospel of the heav­enly king­dom. And Na­than­iel was en­cour­aged in this stand by James Zeb­e­dee, who now told how Pe­ter and oth­ers drew their swords to de­fend the Mas­ter against ar­rest, and that Je­sus bade Si­mon Pe­ter and his fel­low swords­men sheathe their blades. Mat­thew and Philip also made speeches, but noth­ing def­i­nite came of this dis­cus­sion un­til Thomas, call­ing their at­ten­tion to the fact that Je­sus had coun­seled Laz­a­rus against ex­pos­ing him­self to death, pointed out that they could do noth­ing to save their Mas­ter inas­much as he re­fused to al­low his friends to de­fend him, and since he per­sisted in re­frain­ing from the use of his di­vine pow­ers to frus­trate his hu­man en­e­mies. Thomas per­suaded them to scat­ter, ev­ery man for him­self, with the un­der­stand­ing that David Zeb­e­dee would re­main at the camp to main­tain a clear­ing­house and mes­sen­ger head­quar­ters for the group. By half past two o’clock that morn­ing the camp was de­serted; only David re­mained on hand with three or four mes­sen­gers, the oth­ers hav­ing been dis­patched to se­cure in­for­ma­tion as to where Je­sus had been taken, and what was go­ing to be done with him.

• unwisely left associates to grieve in solitude

189:4.1As we ap­proach the time of the res­ur­rec­tion of Je­sus on this early Sun­day morn­ing, it should be re­called that the ten apos­tles were so­journ­ing at the home of Eli­jah and Mary Mark, where they were asleep in the up­per cham­ber, rest­ing on the very couches whereon they re­clined dur­ing the last sup­per with their Mas­ter. This Sun­day morn­ing they were all there as­sem­bled ex­cept Thomas. Thomas was with them for a few min­utes late Sat­ur­day night when they first got to­gether, but the sight of the apos­tles, cou­pled with the thought of what had hap­pened to Je­sus, was too much for him. He looked his as­so­ciates over and im­me­di­ately left the room, go­ing to the home of Si­mon in Beth­page, where he thought to grieve over his trou­bles in soli­tude. The apos­tles all suf­fered, not so much from doubt and de­spair as from fear, grief, and shame.

• unwisely left associates to grieve in solitude

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

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

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

• too proud to return of his own accord; Peter and John fetched
• unwisely left associates to grieve in solitude

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

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

• cursed with suspicion and over-individualism, many moods

193:4.3This un­for­tu­nate com­bi­na­tion of in­di­vid­ual pe­cu­liar­i­ties and men­tal ten­den­cies con­spired to de­stroy a well-in­ten­tioned man who failed to sub­due these evils by love, faith, and trust. That Ju­das need not have gone wrong is well proved by the cases of Thomas and Na­than­iel, both of whom were cursed with this same sort of sus­pi­cion and overde­vel­op­ment of the in­di­vid­u­al­is­tic ten­dency. Even An­drew and Mat­thew had many lean­ings in this di­rec­tion; but all these men grew to love Je­sus and their fel­low apos­tles more, and not less, as time passed. They grew in grace and in a knowl­edge of the truth. They be­came in­creas­ingly more trust­ful of their breth­ren and slowly de­vel­oped the abil­ity to con­fide in their fel­lows. Ju­das per­sis­tently re­fused to con­fide in his breth­ren. When he was im­pelled, by the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of his emo­tional con­flicts, to seek re­lief in self-ex­pres­sion, he in­vari­ably sought the ad­vice and re­ceived the un­wise con­so­la­tion of his un­spir­i­tual rel­a­tives or those chance ac­quain­tances who were ei­ther in­dif­fer­ent, or ac­tu­ally hos­tile, to the wel­fare and prog­ress of the spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties of the heav­enly king­dom, of which he was one of the twelve con­se­crated am­bas­sadors on earth.

138:5.1Thomas the fish­er­man and Ju­das the wan­derer met Je­sus and the apos­tles at the fisher-boat land­ing at Ta­ri­chea, and Thomas led the party to his near-by home. Philip now pre­sented Thomas as his nom­i­nee for apos­tle­ship and Na­than­iel pre­sented Ju­das Is­car­iot, the Judean, for sim­i­lar hon­ors. Je­sus looked upon Thomas and said: “Thomas, you lack faith; nev­er­the­less, I re­ceive you. Fol­low me.” To Ju­das Is­car­iot the Mas­ter said: “Ju­das, we are all of one flesh, and as I re­ceive you into our midst, I pray that you will al­ways be loyal to your Galilean breth­ren. Fol­low me.”

138:5.2When they had re­freshed them­selves, Je­sus took the twelve apart for a sea­son to pray with them and to in­struct them in the na­ture and work of the Holy Spirit, but again did they largely fail to com­pre­hend the mean­ing of those won­der­ful truths which he en­deav­ored to teach them. One would grasp one point and one would com­pre­hend an­other, but none of them could en­com­pass the whole of his teach­ing. Al­ways would they make the mis­take of try­ing to fit Je­sus’ new gospel into their old forms of re­li­gious be­lief. They could not grasp the idea that Je­sus had come to pro­claim a new gospel of sal­va­tion and to es­tab­lish a new way of find­ing God; they did not per­ceive that he was a new rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther in heaven.

138:5.3The next day Je­sus left his twelve apos­tles quite alone; he wanted them to be­come ac­quainted and de­sired that they be alone to talk over what he had taught them. The Mas­ter re­turned for the evening meal, and dur­ing the af­ter-sup­per hours he talked to them about the min­istry of ser­a­phim, and some of the apos­tles com­pre­hended his teach­ing. They rested for a night and the next day de­parted by boat for Ca­per­naum.

138:5.4Zeb­e­dee and Sa­lome had gone to live with their son David so that their large home could be turned over to Je­sus and his twelve apos­tles. Here Je­sus spent a quiet Sab­bath with his cho­sen mes­sen­gers; he care­fully out­lined the plans for pro­claim­ing the king­dom and fully ex­plained the im­por­tance of avoid­ing any clash with the civil au­thor­i­ties, say­ing: “If the civil rulers are to be re­buked, leave that task to me. See that you make no de­nun­ci­a­tions of Cae­sar or his ser­vants.” It was this same evening that Ju­das Is­car­iot took Je­sus aside to in­quire why noth­ing was done to get John out of prison. And Ju­das was not wholly sat­is­fied with Je­sus’ at­ti­tude.

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.”

138:10.76. Thomas was man­ager of the itin­er­ary. It de­volved upon him to ar­range lodg­ings and in a gen­eral way se­lect places for teach­ing and preach­ing, thereby in­sur­ing a smooth and ex­pe­di­tious travel sched­ule.

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.

• fisherman of Tarichea, onetime carpenter and stone mason, selected by Philip

138:2.52. Thomas Didy­mus, a fish­er­man of Ta­ri­chea and one­time car­pen­ter and stone ma­son of Gadara. He was se­lected by Philip.

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.

140:6.13And then Thomas asked Je­sus if they should “con­tinue hav­ing ev­ery­thing in com­mon.” Said the Mas­ter: “Yes, my breth­ren, I would that we should live to­gether as one un­der­stand­ing fam­ily. You are in­trusted with a great work, and I crave your un­di­vided ser­vice. You know that it has been well said: ‘No man can serve two mas­ters.’ You can­not sin­cerely wor­ship God and at the same time whole­heart­edly serve mam­mon. Hav­ing now en­listed un­re­servedly in the work of the king­dom, be not anx­ious for your lives; much less be con­cerned with what you shall eat or what you shall drink; nor yet for your bod­ies, what cloth­ing you shall wear. Al­ready have you learned that will­ing hands and earnest hearts shall not go hun­gry. And now, when you pre­pare to de­vote all of your en­er­gies to the work of the king­dom, be as­sured that the Fa­ther will not be un­mind­ful of your needs. Seek first the king­dom of God, and when you have found en­trance thereto, all things need­ful shall be added to you. Be not, there­fore, un­duly anx­ious for the mor­row. Suf­fi­cient for the day is the trou­ble thereof.”

140:7.1Af­ter a few hours’ sleep, when the twelve were as­sem­bled for a late break­fast with Je­sus, he said: “Now must you be­gin your work of preach­ing the glad tid­ings and in­struct­ing be­liev­ers. Make ready to go to Je­ru­sa­lem.” Af­ter Je­sus had spo­ken, Thomas mus­tered up cour­age to say: “I know, Mas­ter, that we should now be ready to en­ter upon the work, but I fear we are not yet able to ac­com­plish this great un­der­tak­ing. Would you con­sent for us to stay here­abouts for just a few days more be­fore we be­gin the work of the king­dom?” And when Je­sus saw that all of his apos­tles were pos­sessed by this same fear, he said: “It shall be as you have re­quested; we will re­main here over the Sab­bath day.”

140:10.4This same evening Thomas asked Je­sus: “Mas­ter, you say that we must be­come as lit­tle chil­dren be­fore we can gain en­trance to the Fa­ther’s king­dom, and yet you have warned us not to be de­ceived by false proph­ets nor to be­come guilty of cast­ing our pearls be­fore swine. Now, I am hon­estly puz­zled. I can­not un­der­stand your teach­ing.” Je­sus replied to Thomas: “How long shall I bear with you! Ever you in­sist on mak­ing lit­eral all that I teach. When I asked you to be­come as lit­tle chil­dren as the price of en­ter­ing the king­dom, I re­ferred not to ease of de­cep­tion, mere will­ing­ness to be­lieve, nor to quick­ness to trust pleas­ing strangers. What I did de­sire that you should gather from the il­lus­tra­tion was the child-fa­ther re­la­tion­ship. You are the child, and it is your Fa­ther’s king­dom you seek to en­ter. There is pres­ent that nat­u­ral af­fec­tion be­tween ev­ery nor­mal child and its fa­ther which in­sures an un­der­stand­ing and lov­ing re­la­tion­ship, and which for­ever pre­cludes all dis­po­si­tion to bar­gain for the Fa­ther’s love and mercy. And the gospel you are go­ing forth to preach has to do with a sal­va­tion grow­ing out of the faith-re­al­iza­tion of this very and eter­nal child-fa­ther re­la­tion­ship.”

141:4.2In an­swer to Thomas’s ques­tion, “Who is this God of the king­dom?” Je­sus replied: “God is your Fa­ther, and re­li­gion—my gospel—is noth­ing more nor less than the be­liev­ing rec­og­ni­tion of the truth that you are his son. And I am here among you in the flesh to make clear both of these ideas in my life and teach­ings.”

142:7.1Af­ter the busy pe­riod of teach­ing and per­sonal work of Pass­over week in Je­ru­sa­lem, Je­sus spent the next Wednes­day at Beth­any with his apos­tles, rest­ing. That af­ter­noon, Thomas asked a ques­tion which elicited a long and in­struc­tive an­swer. Said Thomas: “Mas­ter, on the day we were set apart as am­bas­sadors of the king­dom, you told us many things, in­structed us re­gard­ing our per­sonal mode of life, but what shall we teach the mul­ti­tude? How are these peo­ple to live af­ter the king­dom more fully comes? Shall your dis­ci­ples own slaves? Shall your be­liev­ers court pov­erty and shun prop­erty? Shall mercy alone pre­vail so that we shall have no more law and jus­tice?” Je­sus and the twelve spent all af­ter­noon and all that evening, af­ter sup­per, dis­cussing Thomas’s ques­tions. For the pur­poses of this rec­ord we pre­sent the fol­low­ing sum­mary of the Mas­ter’s in­struc­tion:

142:7.16Al­though Je­sus dis­coursed for sev­eral hours, Thomas was not yet sat­is­fied, for he said: “But, Mas­ter, we do not find that the Fa­ther in heaven al­ways deals kindly and mer­ci­fully with us. Many times we griev­ously suf­fer on earth, and not al­ways are our prayers an­swered. Where do we fail to grasp the mean­ing of your teach­ing?”

144:1.9The cen­tral theme of the dis­cus­sions through­out the en­tire month of Septem­ber was prayer and wor­ship. Af­ter they had dis­cussed wor­ship for some days, Je­sus fi­nally de­liv­ered his mem­o­rable dis­course on prayer in an­swer to Thomas’s re­quest: “Mas­ter, teach us how to pray.”

146:3.3On the sec­ond evening at Ramah, Thomas asked Je­sus this ques­tion: “Mas­ter, how can a new be­liever in your teach­ing re­ally know, re­ally be cer­tain, about the truth of this gospel of the king­dom?”

148:4.1It was the habit of Je­sus two evenings each week to hold spe­cial con­verse with in­di­vid­u­als who de­sired to talk with him, in a cer­tain se­cluded and shel­tered cor­ner of the Zeb­e­dee gar­den. At one of these evening con­ver­sa­tions in pri­vate Thomas asked the Mas­ter this ques­tion: “Why is it nec­es­sary for men to be born of the spirit in or­der to en­ter the king­dom? Is re­birth nec­es­sary to es­cape the con­trol of the evil one? Mas­ter, what is evil?” When Je­sus heard these ques­tions, he said to Thomas:

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.”

158:6.1They re­mained overnight with Cel­sus, and that evening in the gar­den, af­ter they had eaten and rested, the twelve gath­ered about Je­sus, and Thomas said: “Mas­ter, while we who tar­ried be­hind still re­main ig­no­rant of what tran­spired up on the moun­tain, and which so greatly cheered our breth­ren who were with you, we crave to have you talk with us con­cern­ing our de­feat and in­struct us in these mat­ters, see­ing that those things which hap­pened on the moun­tain can­not be dis­closed at this time.”

166:4.1While most Pales­tini­ans ate only two meals a day, it was the cus­tom of Je­sus and the apos­tles, when on a jour­ney, to pause at mid­day for rest and re­fresh­ment. And it was at such a noon­tide stop on the way to Phil­a­del­phia that Thomas asked Je­sus: “Mas­ter, from hear­ing your re­marks as we jour­neyed this morn­ing, I would like to in­quire whether spir­i­tual be­ings are con­cerned in the pro­duc­tion of strange and ex­traor­di­nary events in the ma­te­rial world and, fur­ther, to ask whether the an­gels and other spirit be­ings are able to pre­vent ac­ci­dents.”

176:3.1As they gath­ered about the camp­fire, some twenty of them, Thomas asked: “Since you are to re­turn to fin­ish the work of the king­dom, what should be our at­ti­tude while you are away on the Fa­ther’s busi­ness?” As Je­sus looked them over by the fire­light, he an­swered:

180:3.6When Je­sus sat down, Thomas arose and said: “Mas­ter, we do not know where you are go­ing; so of course we do not know the way. But we will fol­low you this very night if you will show us the way.”

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.