Mark 6 - Mission of The Twelve and The Death of John The Baptist

Mission of The Twelve and The Death of John The Baptist

Jesus sends the Twelve (the Twelve Apostles) out to the various towns, in pairs, to heal the sick and drive out demons. They are only to take their staffs and that if any town rejects them "...shake the dust off your feet when you leave, as a testimony against them." (11) which is "...a gesture both of contempt and of warning."

Mark then tells of the death of John the Baptist at the hands of Herod Antipas. Herod is married to his wife Herodias, former wife of his brother Herod Philip I. John condemns Herod so Herod incarcerates John. Herodias seeks revenge on John during a birthday party for Herod. Her daughter dances for Herod and persuades Herod to kill John. John's disciples take his body and put it in a tomb. This is also found in Matthew 14:1-12. The year in which John died is unknown. Josephus has Herod killing John to quell a possible uprising around AD 36. Herod Philip died in 34 and Herod Antipas died sometime after 40 after being exiled to either Gaul or Spain.

Read more about this topic:  Mark 6

Famous quotes containing the words mission of, mission, twelve, death, john and/or baptist:

    “Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth.”
    —Umberto Eco (b. 1932)

    “Every Age has its own peculiar faith.... Any attempt to translate into facts the mission of one Age with the machinery of another, can only end in an indefinite series of abortive efforts. Defeated by the utter want of proportion between the means and the end, such attempts might produce martyrs, but never lead to victory.”
    —Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–1872)

    “Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
    “Now they are all on their knees,””
    —Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)

    “Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?
    Repair me now, for now mine end doth haste;
    I run to death, and death meets me as fast,
    And all my pleasures are like yesterday.”
    —John Donne (1572–1631)

    “Reprehension is a kind of middle thing betwixt admonition and correction: it is sharpe admonition, but a milde correction. It is rather to be used because it may be a meanes to prevent strokes and blowes, especially in ingenuous and good natured children. [Blows are] the last remedy which a parent can use: a remedy which may doe good when nothing else can.”
    —William Gouge, Puritan writer. As quoted in The Rise and Fall of Childhood by C. John Sommerville, ch. 11 (rev. 1990)

    “I am perhaps being a bit facetious but if some of my good Baptist brethren in Georgia had done a little preaching from the pulpit against the K.K.K. in the ‘20s, I would have a little more genuine American respect for their Christianity!”
    —Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)