Mark 3:13-19

HE CALLS THE TWELVE APOSTLES

Matthew 10:2-4; Mark 3:13-19; & Luke 6:13-16. Mark: “And He goes up into a mountain, and calls to Him those whom He wished, and He made twelve, that they may be with Him, and that He may send them out to preach, and to have the power to heal the sick and to cast out demons.” Luke says that “He went out into the mountain to pray, and was spending the night in the prayer of God. And when it was day, He called His disciples, and selecting twelve from them, whom He called Apostles.” Bishop Taylor used to make it a rule to spend a night in prayer before he sent away the missionaries to their respective fields of labor. Rev. A.B. Simpson anticipates those wonderful, unprecedented, and paradoxical missionary collections by a night of prayer. O what an example here for Annual Conferences, and other responsible transactions in the kingdom of God! Where E.V. says, “He ordained twelve” (Mark 3:14), the original is epoiese, which simply means “made;” i.e., He selected twelve out of the company of disciples who followed Him, and made them apostles. The word apostle is from apo, “from,” and stello, “send.” Hence it means persons sent forth, as the inspired Twelve were commissioned and sent into all the world. King James's translators used the word “ordained,” here and elsewhere, in order to sustain the Church usages and authority, there being no such a meaning in the original. Our Savior made the twelve apostles just like He makes you what you are, if true to His providence and grace. He has a vast diversity of workers in His kingdom. He made them all what they are. We have nothing to do but perfectly submit to His Word, Spirit, and providence, and rest assured He will make us efficient workers in His vineyard, though infinitely diverse, either from other. Paul says,

“He gave some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints.” (Ephesians 4:2.)

Hence, you see, all of these offices are perpetuated to the end of time. Under the shibboleth of Church ordination, floods of ecclesiastical misrule and tyranny have been turned on the Church, terribly to the detriment of her efficiency in the salvation of the world. The great dogma of ordination, as claimed and practiced by the High-Church isms, is unknown in the Bible, a true translation eliminating it altogether. It is all right for the Churches to corroborate the Holy Ghost in the ordination of God's saints for the work to which He calls them.

Matthew: “He placed on Simon the name Peter;” i.e., “rock,” which the world never saw till after the fires of Pentecost burnt up the debris, and swept away the cowardice, and revealed the solid rock. “James the son of Zebedee, and John the brother of James; and on these he put the names Boanerges, which is, Sons of thunder.”

This name is very significant, showing that James and John had tremendous voices, so they could roar hike thunder. O, what a blessing a stalwart physical constitution and stentorian voice! If the Lord has given you a strong voice, appreciate the honor of a Boanerges, and consecrate this rich and valuable gift to God. “And Andrew, Philip, and Bartholomew;” i.e., son of Tolmai, a patronymic for Nathanael. “Matthew, Thomas; James the son of Ahpheus [also called James the Less]; and Thaddeus [i.e., Jude], and Simeon the Canaanite.” Matthew and Mark call him the “Canaanite,” while Luke says, “Simon, called Zelotes” i.e., “the zealot.” Now if you will look in a Greek dictionary, you will find “ zelotes ” and “ canaanite ” synonymous, neither of them being proper names, as E.V. has them. The simple lexical meaning is, “ zealous,” setting forth the fact that Simon was a red-hot holiness evangelist, full of life and fire. “And Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed Him.” What a momentous transaction took place on this mountain, when our Lord selected these twelve men, not from the colleges nor the palaces, but from the lower walks of labor and private life, and invested them with the commission to preach the gospel to all the world! To this they all proved true but Judas Iscariot, whom Satan unfortunately captured before he received the baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire, the indispensable qualification of them all. However, he was nobly succeeded by Matthias, who, with the other eleven, received his allotment in the distribution of the world among the Twelve, going to Abyssinia; Mark, to Egypt; Matthew, to Ethiopia; Peter, to Rome; Andrew, to Armenia; Bartholomew, to Phrygia; Philip, to Syria; Jude, to Tartary; Thomas, to India. After our Lord's ascension, He augmented this number by the addition of five more noble apostles i.e.,

Paul, Apollos, Barnabas, and James and Judas, the brothers of the Lord the two Jameses included in the original Twelve both suffering martyrdom in Jerusalem.

Luke 6:17. “And coming down along with them, He stood on a level place.” The Mount of Beatitudes, hanging over the city of Capernaum, has a nice plateati, about half-way down from the summit, which is doubtless the plain on which our Lord halted with the Twelve, whom He had constituted apostles . “A multitude of His disciples, and a great host of the people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and Tyre and Sidon by the seaside, who came to bear Him, and to be healed of their diseases, and those troubled with unclean spirits; and they continued to be healed. And the whole crowd sought to touch Him, because power was going out from Him and was healing all.” After the night of prayer, spent high up in the Mount of Beatitudes, calling His disciples to Him, He proceeds to select from them the twelve apostles, accompanied by whom He descends from the summit about 8 A.M. No sooner does He descend to the plateau till the people, recognizing Him, come rushing from all directions. Moved with sympathy, He now does a mighty work of bodily healing and demoniacal ejectment, thus wonderfully saving the people, both from sin and sickness. Where E.V. says, “Power was going out from Him and was healing all,” the Greek says “dynamite,” a word which men of science have recently Anglicized and adopted, to indicate the greatest mechanical power in the known world, and very appropriately, as it is the word constantly used in the New Testament to reveal the matchless wonders of omnipotent grace.