Day 35: Acts 16-18. Arguments, Imprisonment, Preaching: The Grace of God
Paul and his companions have dodged a bulletin with church-dividing implications. The Gentile and Jewish believers have found a way to be in fellowship with one another. Still, Paul and Barnabas somehow couldn't fix a rift that developed between the two of them. We really don't know much about the rift, except that it had to do with John Mark. Barnabas wanted to take him along with them; Paul did not. On the basis of something as simple as this, Paul and Barnabas part ways. Paul teams up with Silas, and eventually Timothy, the son of a Jewish woman and a Greek father (interesting that he has Timothy circumcised because of the company with whom he expected to be traveling). It's sort of sad that the church could come to an agreement with respect to the first controversial issues they faced, but that Paul and Barnabas couldn't come to an agreement with regard to John Mark. But that's the way it is in churches sometimes, isn't it? It is the...