“Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” The two brothers did
so, and they became Christ’s disciples. When Jesus called Peter no one
was with him but his brother Andrew. A little further on, the two sons
of Zebedee were in a ship with their father mending nets, and these
latter were separately called. From John, we learn that Andrew was
originally a disciple of John the Baptist, and that when Andrew first
saw Jesus, Peter was not present, but Andrew went and found Peter who,
if fishing, must have been angling on land, telling him “we have found
the Messiah,” and that Andrew then brought Peter to Jesus, who said,
“Thou art Simon, the son of Jonas; thou shalt be called Cephas.” There
is no mention in John of the sons of Zebedee being a little further on,
or of any fishing in the sea of Galilee. This call is clearly on land.
Luke’s Gospel states that when the call took place, Jesus and Peter were
both at sea. Jesus had been preaching to the people, who pressing upon
him, he got into Simon’s ship, from which he preached. After this he
directed Simon to put out into the deep and let down the nets. Simon
answered, “Master, we have toiled all night and taken nothing;
nevertheless at thy word I will let down the net.” No sooner was this
done, than the net was filled to breaking, and Simon’s partners, the two
sons of Zebedee, came to help, when at the call of Jesus, they brought
their ships to land, and followed him.
Is it credible that there were three several calls, or that the Gospels
being inspired, you could have three contradictory versions of the same
event? Has the story been here “painfully modified,” or how do Dr.
Tischendorf and the Religious Tract Society clear up the matter? Is it
credible that, as stated in Luke, Jesus had visited Simon’s house, and
cured Simon’s wife’s mother, before the call of Simon, but did not go to
Simon’s house for that purpose, until after the call of Simon, as
related in Matthew? It is useless to reply that the date of Jesus’s
visit is utterly unimportant, when we are told that it is upon the
credibility of the complete narrative that Christianity must rest. Each
stone is important to the building, and it is not competent for the
Christian advocate to regard as useless any word which the Holy Ghost
has considered important enough to reveal.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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