Will Paul be counted among the twelve apostles of the Lamb in Revelation?
A viewer asks whether Paul will be one of the twelve named as the apostles of the Lamb.
Answer
That is interesting, and it goes deeper than you may think. Matthias, who was elected to replace Judas, would make fourteen, because Paul is already a thirteenth apostle. If Judas is in hell there are only eleven of the original left, plus Matthias makes twelve, plus Paul makes thirteen. So the twelve apostles of the Lamb in the Apocalypse, a highly symbolic book where the number twelve appears about thirty times, is a symbolic number. It is like the twelve tribes of Israel, which were actually fourteen if you count them correctly; twelve stands for completeness or fullness. That is why the New Jerusalem in Apocalypse 21 has twelve foundations, when a building really needs only one, and why you find multiples of twelve, like the twenty-four elders around the throne in Apocalypse 4, which is two times twelve. So twelve apostles of the Lamb is symbolic. It is derived from the fact that there were once twelve, but it does not mean there are still exactly twelve, since Judas was replaced by Matthias and Paul was the thirteenth. The Apocalypse is not interested in being technical; it is interested in being symbolic.