Adapted from the Urantia Book original paper here
James Zebedee
James, the oldest of the two sons of Zebedee, was thirty years old when they became apostles. These two had known Jesus longer than the others, and he nicknamed them the “sons of thunder.” James was married, had four children, and lived near his parents in the outskirts of Capernaum. He and his brother John, along with Andrew and Simon, all made their livelihoods fishing together.
James was a contradiction when it came to his temperament. It was almost like he was two different people at times, and both of them were bound by strong feelings. When something got him angry, his intense and fiery temper would let loose a hurricane. Then, he’d find a way to justify his anger and put it off to righteous indignation. But other than those times, he was a lot like Andrew, except without Andrew’s discretion or insight into human nature. James was also a better public speaker than Andrew, being right up there with Peter and Matthew as the best of the twelve.
James would be quiet and reserved one day, and a great storyteller the next. While he usually talked freely with Jesus, with the others he’d stay quiet for days at a time and these spells of unaccountable silence were his one great weakness. The one thing about Jesus that James admired the most was his sympathy for and interest in everything small and the great, rich and the poor.
James’ outstanding feature was his ability to see all sides of a situation. Of the twelve, he came the closest to grasping the significance of Jesus’ teaching, and by the time they ended their training he understood Jesus’ lessons better than the others. He could get along with a wide range of personalities, from the versatile Andrew, to the impetuous Peter, to his self-contained brother, John. James was a well-balanced thinker and planner. Along with Andrew, he was one of the more level-headed of the apostles. He did what needed to be done, but he was never in a hurry doing it. He was the perfect balance for Peter.
Though James and John had trouble working together, it was inspiring to witness how well they did get along. They didn’t do as well together as Andrew and Peter, but they did a lot better than most brothers, especially ones as headstrong and determined as were these two. They liked each other, and had always played well together as kids. And, when it came right down to it, they were a lot more tolerant of each other than they were of strangers. After all, these were the “sons of thunder” who wanted to call down fire from the heavens to destroy the Samaritans for disrespecting their Master. But James’ untimely death tended to quench his younger brother’s intensity.
James was modest and undramatic. He worked every day without drawing attention to himself, and once he had grasped part of the real meaning of the kingdom, he never sought special rewards for himself. And in the story that we have about James’ and John’s mother asking Jesus if her sons would sit on his right and left-hand sides, remember that she did that, not them. James and John also knew what they were getting into by following Jesus and his supposed revolt against the Roman power. When Jesus asked them if they were ready to drink the cup, they both said that they were. And with regard to James, that literally became true—he drank the cup with Jesus being the first apostle to experience martyrdom when he was killed early on by Herod Agrippa’s sword. Herod feared James more than all the other apostles because even though he was quiet and silent at times, he was brave and determined when he stood for his convictions. James was thus the first of the twelve to sacrifice his life on the new battle line of the kingdom.
James lived a full life, and when they killed him he bore himself with such grace and fortitude that even his accuser, the man who had informed on him and who was at his trial and execution, was so touched that afterwards he went directly to join Jesus’ disciples.
John Zebedee
John was twenty-four years old and the youngest of the twelve when he became an apostle. He was single, living with his parents at Bethsaida, and fishing with his brother James, and Andrew and Peter. Both before and after becoming an apostle, John was Jesus’ personal helper when it came to taking care of his mom and family, and he held this responsibility after Jesus’ resurrection for as long as Mary lived.
Shortly after the twelve became apostles and Jesus appointed Andrew director of the group, he told Andrew to assign two or three of the apostles to always be with him for comfort and to get him the things he needed every day. Andrew decided that it was best for him to assign this duty to the three apostles that were chosen right after him. He wanted to be part of this group, but he already had his job. So, Andrew immediately gave Peter, James, and John the job of attaching themselves to Jesus pretty much around the clock.
Since John was the youngest of the twelve and so closely involved with Jesus’ family affairs, he was very dear to him. But it’s not completely true where it’s said that John was the disciple whom Jesus loved. Jesus didn’t have favorites or love some of his apostles more than the others. This idea came from the fact that John was one of Jesus’ three personal aides, and that he and his brother James had known him longer than the others.
John Zebedee had a lot of good traits, but he was also really conceited, even if he did hide it well. His long-time friendship with Jesus had changed John for the better in many ways, and for a while it lessened his conceit. But later in life, after growing old and becoming a bit childish, it returned. When John was telling Nathan what to write in the Gospel of John, he continually referred to himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved. Given that John had come closer to being Jesus’ buddy than any other person on Earth, and that he had been entrusted with so many of Jesus’ personal affairs, it’s to be expected that he thought of himself as the person most loved by Jesus, even if in truth Jesus loved all of them equally.
John’s greatest strength of character was dependability: he was prompt and courageous, faithful and devoted. His greatest weakness was the conceit of which we just spoke. It’s possible that by being the youngest in his family and the youngest of the apostles, John was just a bit spoiled and had been humored a little too much in his life. Regardless, the later John was a very different person than the self-admiring and erratic young man who joined Jesus’ ranks when he was twenty-four years old.
What John most liked about Jesus was his love and unselfishness. These traits made such an impression on John that the rest of his life was dominated by love and brotherly devotion. He talked about love and wrote about love. This “son of thunder” became the “apostle of love.” At Ephesus, when our aged bishop could no longer stand and preach and had to be carried to church in a chair, at the close of the services he would be asked to say a few words to the believers, and for years the only thing he said was, “My little children, love one another.”
John didn’t say much except when his temper got aroused. He had a remarkable and creative imagination, and while he thought a lot, he said little. As he grew older, his temper lessened and he learned to better control it. But he never did become one to talk more than absolutely necessary.
John was also somewhat bigoted and intolerant. In this respect, he and James were much alike—they both wanted to call down fire from heaven on the heads of the disrespectful Samaritans. And when John came across some strangers teaching in Jesus’ name, he promptly forbid them from doing so. But he wasn’t the only one of the twelve who thought they were better than everyone else.
John’s life was tremendously influenced seeing how Jesus went on about his business without having a home, especially knowing how faithfully he had taken care of his mother and family. John also deeply sympathized with Jesus because of his family’s failure to understand him, and he knew that they were gradually withdrawing from him. This entire situation, together with Jesus always deferring his slightest wish to the will of the Father in heaven and living his daily life based only on implicit trust, made a profound impression on John and produced marked and permanent changes in his character, changes that manifested themselves throughout his entire later life.
John was cool, daring, and courageous, which were traits few of the other apostles possessed. He was the one apostle who went with Jesus the night of his arrest, and dared to go with him into the very jaws of death. John was close-by right up to Jesus’ last hour on Earth, ready to receive whatever instructions he might give him in his last moments. One thing is certain, John was thoroughly dependable. John usually sat on Jesus’ right side when the twelve would eat, he was the first of the bunch to really and fully to believe Jesus had been resurrected, and he was the first to recognize Jesus when he came to them on the seashore after his resurrection. John was closely associated with Peter in the early activities of the Christian movement, he became one of the chief supporters of the Jerusalem church, and he was Peter’s main support on the day of Pentecost.
Several years after James was martyred, John married his brother’s widow, and for the last twenty years of his life he was taken care of by a loving granddaughter. John ended up in prison several times, and for four years he was banished to the Isle of Patmos until another emperor came to power in Rome. If John hadn’t been tactful and sagacious where his brother James had been brash and outspoken, he would have been killed right along with him. Over time, John, along with Jesus’ brother James, learned how to deal with the civil magistrates when they had to appear before them. They learned that a soft answer worked best, and to represent the church as a spiritual brotherhood devoted to the social service of mankind rather than as the kingdom of heaven. In other words, they were teaching loving service rather than ruling power—kingdom and king.
When John was exiled on Patmos, he wrote the Book of Revelation, which has been greatly abridged and distorted over time. What we now call the Book of Revelation only contains the surviving fragments of a much greater revelation, large portions of which were lost and other portions that were removed or changed after John wrote it.
John traveled a lot and never stopped working. After he became the bishop of the Asian churches, he settled down at Ephesus when he was ninety-nine years old and oversaw his associate, Nathan, who wrote the so-called Gospel according to John. Of the twelve apostles, John Zebedee eventually became the outstanding theologian of the bunch. He died of natural causes at Ephesus in A.D. 103 when he was one hundred and one years old.
Philip the Curious
Philip was the fifth apostle to be chosen. He was brought into the group when he and Nathaniel happened to meet Jesus, Andrew, Peter, James and John on their way to Cana from John’s camp on the Jordan River. Philip was twenty-seven years old, lived in Bethsaida, and was recently married but still without children. He knew about Jesus, but it had never occurred to him that he was special until Jesus looked at him and said, “Follow me.” He was also influenced by the fact that the other four had already accepted Jesus as the Deliverer. Philip earned the nickname that meant more or less curiosity, because he always wanted to be shown everything. It wasn’t that he was dull, he was just a commonplace matter-of-fact individual who couldn’t visualize ideas like could some of the other apostles.
Philip was made steward of the apostles; it was his duty to see that they always had enough to eat and to take care of their daily needs. He did his duties well: he was methodical, systematic, and thorough with a good handle on the arithmetic he needed for his job.
Philip was the next to the oldest of a family of three boys and four girls. His family were also fishermen. After Jesus’ resurrection he baptized all of them into the kingdom. Philip’s father was a deep thinker and a very capable man in many respects, but his mother came from a very mediocre family. While Philip wasn’t a man who could be expected to do big things, he was a man who could do little things well and in a really big way. He managed the apostle’s commissary intelligently and efficiently. There were only a few times in four years that he didn’t have enough food on hand to feed the crew, or that an emergency came up for which he was unprepared.
Philip’s strong points were being methodical and reliable: his weak point was his utter lack of imagination. He was mathematical but not constructive, being more the typical average commonplace man of the times. But this was good for the people to see, and it gave them the courage to believe. Philip was like most of them, and it brought the masses great peace of mind to see that a normal everyday person like themselves was included in the Master’s councils on the affairs of the kingdom. And Jesus, in turn, learned a lot about how our human minds operate as he patiently listened to Philip’s foolish questions and dealt with his need to be shown proof of everything.
The trait that Philip admired the most, or in fact actually worshiped, about Jesus was his generosity: he could never find anything about Jesus that was in any way small, niggardly, or stingy.
Philip wasn’t an impressive man. He was often known as “Philip of Bethsaida, the town where Andrew and Peter live.” As said, Philip had almost no ability to visualize the possibilities of any given situation. He wasn’t pessimistic, he simply didn’t have a mind complex enough to see ahead. He also lacked much in the way of spiritual insight: it didn’t bother him a bit to interrupt Jesus in the middle of some deep discussion to ask what to the others was a foolish question. But it’s important to know that Jesus never scolded Philip for asking his questions or for interrupting him. Jesus knew that for Philip, these were honest questions, and that if he was to reprimand him even one time for asking them it would hurt his feelings to the point that he would never feel free again to ask another question. Jesus knew that on his worlds of time and space there were billions upon billions of similar people, and he wanted them all to feel free coming to him with their questions and problems. Jesus greatest interest was in knowing men, all types of men, and he was really more interested in Philip’s questions than in the sermon he might be preaching when interrupted.
Philip wasn’t a good public speaker either, although he was very persuasive and successful in his personal work. He didn’t get discouraged easily, and kept at whatever job he had until it was done. Philip had that great and rare gift of saying, “Come.” Like when his first convert, Nathaniel, wanted to argue about Jesus’ qualities and all Philip said was, “Come and see.” He wasn’t a dogmatic preacher who told people to go and do something. Instead, in all situations he’d tell the people to come with me, and I’ll show you the way. And, that’s always the best way to teach. Even parents can learn from Philip, and instead of the telling to their kids not to do something they’d get better results telling them to come we me and I’ll show you a better way.
Philip’s inability to adapt himself to a new situation was shown when the Greeks came to him at Jerusalem, and wanted to see Jesus. Now Philip would have said to any Jew asking such a question, “Come.” But these men were foreigners, and Philip couldn’t remember getting any instructions on what to do in this case. So, the only thing he could think of was to tell the chief, Andrew, and then they both went and took the Greeks to Jesus. Likewise, when Philip went into Samaria to preach and baptize people like Jesus had told him to do, he wouldn’t touch these believers as a sign of them receiving the Spirit of Truth. Peter and John did this later when they came down from Jerusalem for the mother church to watch Philip’s work.
After Jesus’ resurrection Philip helped with the reorganization of the twelve apostles, and he was the first to go out and baptize people outside of the immediate Jewish ranks. He was successful working with the Samaritans, and in all of his later efforts in behalf of the kingdom of heaven.
Philip, the onetime steward of the twelve, was a mighty man in the kingdom and won souls wherever he went. His wife, who was a member of the women’s corps, worked with him spreading the gospel after they had to flee from the persecutions in Jerusalem. She was a fearless woman, and when Philip was finally crucified at Hierapolis, she stood at the foot of his cross encouraging him to proclaim the glad tidings even to his murderers. When Philip’s strength failed and he could no longer speak, she began to recite the story of salvation by faith in Jesus up until a bunch of angry Jews came along and stoned her to death. Their eldest daughter, Leah, continued their work, later on becoming the renowned prophetess of Hierapolis.
Okay, folks, that’s it for Son of Man: Urantia, Chapter 18, part 2, “The Twelve Apostles.”
Next week we continue with Chapter 18, part 3.
Have a fantastic week out there everybody.
Bob