1. Matthew
The former tax collector turned missionary was martyred in Ethiopia, where he was stabbed in the back by an swordsman sent by King Hertacus, after he criticised the king’s morals.
2. Mark
Died in Alexandria, Egypt, after being dragged by horses through the streets until he was dead.
3. Luke
Was hanged in Greece as a result of his tremendous preaching to the lost.
4. John
Faced martyrdom when he was boiled in a huge basin of boiling oil during a wave of persecution In Rome. However, he was miraculously delivered from death. He was then sentenced to the mines on the prison Island of Patmos. He wrote his prophetic Book of Revelation on Patmos. The apostle John was later freed and returned to serve As Bishop of Edessa in modern Turkey. He died as an old man, the only apostle to die peacefully.
5. Peter
He was crucified upside down on an x-shaped cross. According to church tradition it was because he told his tormentors that he felt unworthy to die in the same way that Jesus Christ had died.
6. James (the Just) brother of Jesus
Not one of the twelve James became a convert after the resurrection and went on to become the leader of the church in Jerusalem. Eusebius gives three versions of the death of James: (one from Clement of Alexandria, one from Hegesippus, and one from Josephus’ Antiquities) that in c 62 A.D. he was thrown over a hundred feet down from the southeast pinnacle* of the Temple when he refused to deny his faith in Christ. When they discovered that he survived the fall, his enemies stoned and beat James to death with a fuller’s club.
* This was the same pinnacle where Satan had taken Jesus during the Temptation.
7. James the Son of Zebedee.
He was a fisherman by trade when Jesus called him to a lifetime of ministry. As a strong leader of the church, James was beheaded in Jerusalem.
The Roman officer who guarded James watched amazed as James defended his faith at his trial. Later, the officer walked beside James to the place of execution. Overcome by conviction, he declared his new faith to the judge and knelt beside James to accept beheading as a Christian.
8. Bartholomew
Also known as Nathaniel Was a missionary to Asia. He witnessed for our Lord in present day Turkey. Bartholomew was martyred for his preaching in Armenia where he was flayed to death by a whip.
9. Andrew
Was crucified on an x-shaped cross in Patras, Greece. After being whipped severely by seven soldiers they tied his body to the cross with cords to prolong his agony. His followers reported that, when he was led toward the cross, Andrew saluted it in these words:
‘I have long desired and expected this happy hour. The cross has been consecrated by the body of Christ hanging on it.’
He continued to preach to his tormentors for two days until he expired.
10. Thomas
Thomas preached the gospel in Greece and India, where he angered local religious authorities, who martyred him during one of his missionary trips to establish the church in the Sub-continent.
Hippolytus records that Thomas met his fate in India:
And Thomas preached to the Parthians, Medes, Persians, Hyrcanians, Bactrians, and Margians, and was thrust through in the four members of his body with a pine spear at Calamene, the city of India, and was buried there.
11. Philip
According to Hippolytus, Philip preached and was executed in what today is eastern Turkey in 54 A.D.
Philip preached in Phrygia, and was crucified in Hierapolis with his head downward in the time of Domitian, and was buried there.
12. Jude
Was killed with arrows when he refused to deny his faith in Christ.
13. Matthias
The apostle chosen to replace the traitor Judas Iscariot, was stoned and then beheaded.
14. Paul
Escaped death on several occasions, including stoning shipwrecks (twice) and venomous snakebite. Was eventually tortured and then beheaded by the evil Emperor Nero in Rome in A.D. 67. Paul endured a lengthy imprisonment, which allowed him to write his many epistles to the churches he had formed throughout the Roman Empire. These letters, which taught many of the foundational Doctrines of Christianity, form a large portion of the New Testament.
CONCLUSIONS
What no Muslim can explain are other consequential FACTS arising from Jesus death and resurrection namely the empty tomb and the transformed lives of the disciples from a demoralised rabble who fled the scene when Jesus was arrested to fearless preachers and defenders of all they had witnessed.
They wrote their testimony in their own blood. They took what they had witnessed and reprised it in their own deaths many by similar crucifixion. People do not die for what they know to be a lie.
Muslims can deny one death but they cannot ever, have never and never will be able to deny nor explain the deaths of the Apostles in similar fashion. Their deaths as much as anything testify to the TRUTH of the original crucifixion of our Lord and you cannot explain away or deny it.
Perhaps these agonising deaths of the apostles is a reminder to us that our sufferings here are indeed minor compared to the intense persecution and cold cruelty they endured for the sake of the Faith. Jesus told His disciples: “You will be hated by everyone because of My name. But the one that endures to the end will be delivered.” (Matthew 10.22).