OF SAINT PETER...
This page is dedicated to St. Peter and the inspiration
which this story about his life gave to me...
SIMON PETER (excerpt from the Urantia Book)
When Simon joined the apostles, he was thirty years of age. He was
married, had three children, and lived at Bethsaida, near Capernaum. His
brother, Andrew, and his wife's mother lived with him. Both Peter and
Andrew were fisher partners of the sons of Zebedee.
The Master had known Simon for some time before Andrew presented him as
the second of the apostles. When Jesus gave Simon the name Peter, he did
it with a smile; it was to be a sort of nickname. Simon was well known
to all his friends as an erratic and impulsive fellow. True, later on,
Jesus did attach a new and significant import to this lightly bestowed nickname.
Simon Peter was a man of impulse, an optimist. He had grown up
permitting himself freely to indulge strong feelings; he was constantly
getting into difficulties because he persisted in speaking without
thinking. This sort of thoughtlessness also made incessant trouble for
all of his friends and associates and was the cause of his receiving
many mild rebukes from his Master. The only reason Peter did not get
into more trouble because of his thoughtless speaking was that he very
early learned to talk over many of his plans and schemes with his
brother, Andrew, before he ventured to make public proposals.
Peter was a fluent speaker, eloquent and dramatic. He was also a natural
and inspirational leader of men, a quick thinker but not a deep
reasoner. He asked many questions, more than all the apostles put
together, and while the majority of these questions were good and
relevant, many of them were thoughtless and foolish. Peter did not have
a deep mind, but he knew his mind fairly well. He was therefore a man of
quick decision and sudden action. While others talked in their
astonishment at seeing Jesus on the beach, Peter jumped in and swam
ashore to meet the Master.
The one trait which Peter most admired in Jesus was his supernal
tenderness. Peter never grew weary of contemplating Jesus' forbearance.
He never forgot the lesson about forgiving the wrongdoer, not only seven
times but seventy times and seven. He thought much about these
impressions of the Master's forgiving character during those dark and
dismal days immediately following his thoughtless and unintended denial
of Jesus in the high priest's courtyard.
Simon Peter was distressingly vacillating; he would suddenly swing from
one extreme to the other. First he refused to let Jesus wash his feet
and then, on hearing the Master's reply, begged to be washed all over.
But, after all, Jesus knew that Peter's faults were of the head and not
of the heart.
He was one of the most inexplicable combinations of courage and
cowardice that ever lived on earth. His great strength of character was
loyalty, friendship. Peter really and truly loved Jesus. And yet despite
this towering strength of devotion he was so unstable and inconstant
that he permitted a servant girl to tease him into denying his Lord and
Master. Peter could withstand persecution and any other form of direct
assault, but he withered and shrank before ridicule. He was a brave
soldier when facing a frontal attack, but he was a fear-cringing coward
when surprised with an assault from the rear.
Peter was the first of Jesus' apostles to come forward to defend the
work of Philip among the Samaritans and Paul among the gentiles; yet
later on at Antioch he reversed himself when confronted by ridiculing
Judaizers, temporarily withdrawing from the gentiles only to bring down
upon his head the fearless denunciation of Paul.
He was the first one of the apostles to make wholehearted confession of
Jesus' combined humanity and divinity and the first--save Judas--to deny
him. Peter was not so much of a dreamer, but he disliked to descend from
the clouds of ecstasy and the enthusiasm of dramatic indulgence to the
plain and matter-of-fact world of reality.
In following Jesus, literally and figuratively, he was either leading
the procession or else trailing behind--"following afar off." But he was
the outstanding preacher of the twelve; he did more than any other one
man, aside from Paul, to establish the kingdom and send its messengers
to the four corners of the earth in one generation.
After his rash denials of the Master he found himself, and with Andrew's
sympathetic and understanding guidance he again led the way back to the
fish nets while the apostles tarried to find out what was to happen
after the crucifixion. When he was fully assured that Jesus had forgiven
him and knew he had been received back into the Master's fold, the fires
of the kingdom burned so brightly within his soul that he became a great
and saving light to thousands who sat in darkness.
After leaving Jerusalem and before Paul became the leading spirit among
the gentile Christian churches, Peter traveled extensively, visiting all
the churches from Babylon to Corinth. He even visited and ministered to
many of the churches which had been raised up by Paul. Although Peter
and Paul differed much in temperament and education, even in theology,
they worked together harmoniously for the upbuilding of the churches
during their later years.
Something of Peter's style and teaching is shown in the sermons
partially recorded by Luke and in the Gospel of Mark. His vigorous style
was better shown in his letter known as the First Epistle of
Peter; at least this was true before it was subsequently altered by a
disciple of Paul.
But Peter persisted in making the mistake of trying to convince the Jews
that Jesus was, after all, really and truly the Jewish Messiah. Right up
to the day of his death, Simon Peter continued to suffer confusion in
his mind between the concepts of Jesus as the Jewish Messiah, Christ as
the world's redeemer, and the Son of Man as the revelation of God, the
loving Father of all mankind.
Peter's wife was a very able woman. For years she labored acceptably as
a member of the women's corps, and when Peter was driven out of
Jerusalem, she accompanied him upon all his journeys to the churches as
well as on all his missionary excursions. And the day her illustrious
husband yielded up his life, she was thrown to the wild beasts in the
arena at Rome.
And so this man Peter, an intimate of Jesus, one of the inner circle,
went forth from Jerusalem proclaiming the glad tidings of the kingdom
with power and glory until the fullness of his ministry had been
accomplished; and he regarded himself as the recipient of high honors
when his captors informed him that he must die as his Master had died,
on the cross. And thus was Simon Peter crucified (upsidedown) in Rome.
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