The Lord Jesus Christ and His Apostles

The Lord left his apostles with instructions and with great gifts. The instructions are listed in several distinct places, but the the gifts are more scattered, both in the four gospels and in the book of Acts later, being given as the apostles needed them.

First, about the apostles... just to clarify, here I'm referring to "the disciples" as including anyone who has followed along to hear the Lord, and "the apostles" to mean the twelve men that the Lord recruited specifically, as listed in Matthew 10, Mark 3, and Luke 6.

Who were the apostles? From the lists in Matthew and Mark, which are the same, we have: Simon (Peter), James and John the sons of Zebedee, Andrew (Peter’s brother), Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew (the publican), Thomas, James the son of Alpheus, (as is Matthew, so they are brothers, too), Thaddeus, (also known as Libbeus), Simon the Canaanite (also called Simon the Zealot), and Judas Iscariot. Bartholomew is almost undoubtedly another name for Nathaniel, see John 1. The list in Luke includes another Judas, "Judas the brother of James" and doesn’t have Thaddeus.

The stories of how they were individually chosen differ, especially in the gospel of John, but that these twelve were appointed by the Lord is clear. A point of interest is that - other than Simon the Canaanite and Judas Iscariot they are all from towns around the sea of Galilee - and perhaps those two are as well. These twelve have their names inscribed on the twelve foundations of the walls of the holy city New Jerusalem, in Revelation 21:14 in which there are also the twelve gates. These men were chosen to represent all the different states of the natural human being that can be receptive of the Lord. They are from Galilee because Galilee represents that natural state of the human mind. The number twelve in the Word represents all possible states of mankind.

What is indicated here is that all people, everywhere, can be saved or regenerated if they repent and turn to the Lord in their lives. No one is "outside" of His reach. We are born natural, everyone is, but we are so formed that our minds can be raised to what is higher, called spiritual for our conceptions of Divine truth, or Celestial for our perceptions of Divine good. But we all start in a natural state and can only move upward by listening to the Lord’s teachings in His Word, and following Him as those Apostles did.

Not all of our natural states are states of good; they can be selfish, domineering, and cruel. But the Lord said that He came "not to save the just but to call sinners to repentance". Perhaps this is why Simon the Canaanite and Judas were two that He called. Simon is little known, but in some places in the Word, "Canaan signifies an external worship without a true internal worship". (See Arcana Coelestia 1060). Can the Lord work with that - with external worship that's internally barren? Yes, as a starting point. And, even Judas, who betrayed the Lord so terribly, we are told, repented of his betrayal of the Lord. (Matthew 27:3-5)

The Lord's Instructions to the Apostles

The two most comprehensive sets of instructions are in Luke 10:1-17 where seventy Disciples are sent out two by two, apparently to a specified list of cities that Jesus intends to visit, and then in Matthew 20:1-19 where the chosen twelve Apostles are sent out to all Israel. Later, as recorded in different epistles, the Apostles go out further, through a wide region.

The basic instructions were to preach that the kingdom of heaven is near, that all should be led to repent of their sins, and that all who wish should be baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Spirit. The Apostles should not take any money or extra clothing along, and they were to depend entirely on the Lord’s providence with no doubt that they shall be welcomed, fed, and sheltered. If they were welcomed, they should stay and preach the good news about the risen Lord and His teachings, and if they were not, they should shake from their feet the dust of that place and go on to a place where they were welcome. See Matthew 10, 28, Mark 13, 16, Luke 9, 10:24.

There are several assurances for the twelve. The Lord has told them to stay in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit is sent to strengthen them, and in John 20 where the ten are gathered it is said that He breathed on them and said, "Receive ye the Holy Spirit". Also, in his long talk with them in John 14, 15, 16) He assures them that his crucifixion and death are necessary to his mission and they should even rejoice that it is coming. He shows them from scripture that it has all been prophesied from long ago, (see Mark 4:34) and that what seems to them a tragedy, is truly His glorification and the end of the work He came to do. They, His twelve, are in the same steam of providence and will be protected. "Don’t be anxious," He tells them, "I will put into your mouths what you are to say, I will bring into your memories the incidents to tell to the people".

Here is a listing of the chapters and verses in John where such things are said: John 14:1-3, 10, 16-18, 26-28, 15:11, 16, 26-27, 16:7, 13-15, 22, 26-27, 33. Or simply read the three chapters and pick out your favorites.

A marvelous gift is mentioned in Matthew 10:13, "But blessed are your eyes for they see and blessed are your ears, for they hear…".

In the book of Acts, the Lord vividly shows the apostles that when they speak in their Galileen dialect every listener will hear their words as his own language in his ears; not gibberish, but Arabic to the Arabs, Greek to the Greeks, and Latin to the Romans.

When Peter starts to preach to a gathering of sympathetic Jews he speaks clearly and unafraid, saying that Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God and that people should worship Him openly and repent of how they might have felt earlier. Peter’s talk in Acts 3 and 4 is a bold and powerful one. No more hiding behind locked doors.

The early history of the Christian church shows just how well all this worked out. You know what? The Apostles preached to the peoples in the Near East 2000 years ago, and their preaching is just as relevant today as it was then: "Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Being at hand has nothing to do with the date or the state of political history in the world, it has to do with the inside of your mind. The Lord is just as close to you now as He was then, and He never turns away, though we might turn away from him. Remember that He said "behold I stand at the door and knock and if anyone hears and opens the door He will come right in." This hasn’t changed nor will it ever change, but He leaves us in freedom to ignore His knocking, if that is what we want. We have to make the choice, but He is always ready if we choose to open the door.

5036. 'And committed him to the prison-house' means involving false-speaking against good. This is clear from the meaning of 'being committed to the prison-house' and 'being kept bound there' as being subjected to temptations involving false-speaking against good, dealt with below. But first of all something must be said about temptations. At the present day scarcely anyone in the Christian world knows where temptations originate. Those who undergo them do not believe them to be anything more than the feelings of anguish which creep in because of the evils residing inwardly with a person, which first make him uneasy, then fill him with anxiety, and finally torment him. But he is totally unaware of the fact that they are the work of the evil spirits present with him. The reason he is unaware that this is so is that he does not believe he is in the company of spirits while he is living in the world; indeed he has scarcely any belief that any spirit at all is present with him, when in fact a person, so far as his interiors are concerned, exists in constant association with spirits and angels.

[2] As for temptations themselves, they are going on while a person is in the actual process of being regenerated, for no one can be regenerated unless he also undergoes temptations; and the evil spirits around him are the means through which those temptations are brought about. In temptation the person is brought into a state in which the evil that possesses him, that is, possesses his own essential self, is dominant. Once he enters this state evil and hellish spirits surround him, and when they realize that inwardly he is protected by angels those evil spirits reactivate the false ideas he has previously contemplated and the evil deeds he has committed. But the angels defend him from within. This conflict is what the person experiences as temptation, yet the experience is so vague that he is aware of it as scarcely anything more than a feeling of anxiety. For a person, especially one who has no belief at all in influx, dwells in a state of complete obscurity and discerns scarcely the smallest fraction of the things over which evil spirits and angels are engaged in conflict. Yet a battle is taking place at such a time over that person and his eternal salvation, with both sides using what is within him; for both draw on what resides with the person and engage in conflict over it. The truth of this I have been led most certainly to know. I have heard such conflict going on, I have perceived the influx taking place, and I have seen the spirits and the angels, to whom I spoke at the time and subsequently about what was happening.

[3] As stated, temptations arise primarily when a person is becoming spiritual, for at that time he is gaining a spiritual understanding of the truths of doctrine. The person himself is often unaware that this is happening; even so, the angels present with him see spiritual concerns within his natural ones since his interiors at this time are open towards heaven. (This also explains why, after living in the world, a person who has been regenerated is among angels, where he both sees and perceives the spiritual concerns which had previously appeared to him as natural ones.) When therefore a person is such as this, it is possible for the angels to defend him in temptation when he is assailed by evil spirits; for the angels then have a place that has been established in him into which they can operate; that is, they can flow into the spiritual level established in him, and through this into that which is natural.

[4] Once therefore outermost truth has been removed, with the result that the person does not possess anything to protect himself from those who are natural, dealt with in 5006, 5008, 5009, 5022, 5028, he enters into temptations in which evil spirits, all of whom are wholly natural, make accusations against him, especially that of false-speaking against good. They say, for example, that he has thought and said that good should be done to the neighbour and has also given proof of this in his actions, yet by the neighbour he now means only those with whom good and truth are present, not those with whom evil and falsity are present and who are incapable of receiving correction. Consequently, because he is no longer willing to do good to the evil, apart from punishing them so as to correct them and to protect his neighbour from what is evil, they accuse him of having thought and spoken what was false and of not thinking as he speaks.

[5] Take another example. Because a person, once he has become spiritual, no longer believes it to be a holy and godly act to give to monasteries or even churches where great wealth exists, and because prior to his becoming spiritual he had thought it a holy and godly thing to do, those spirits accuse him of falsity. They reactivate all the thoughts he had cherished previously about such holy and godly giving, as well as all his actual deeds resulting from that way of thinking. Those spirits make similar accusations in countless other instances which these examples serve merely to illustrate somewhat. In particular those spirits enter the affections which the person possessed previously and reactivate these, reactivating also the falsities and evils which he had thought and committed, and in this way they fill him with anxiety and quite often with doubt extending to the point of despair.

[6] Such then is the origin of spiritual kinds of anxiety and of those feelings called the pangs of conscience. What makes these appear to exist essentially within himself is influx and communication. Anyone who knows and believes this may be compared to a person who sees himself in a mirror but knows that it is not he himself who appears in the mirror or on the other side of it, only his image, whereas anyone who does not know and believe this may be compared to a person who sees himself in the mirror and supposes that he himself, not his image, appears there.