An Unusual Ending
Truth For Life Daily Program
Alistair Begg
4.8 • 4.5K Ratings
🗓️ 21 April 2025
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Most consider Mark’s Gospel the first to be written. It’s also the shortest Gospel and ends suddenly, often raising questions and debates. On Truth For Life, Alistair Begg considers the abrupt ending in light of Mark’s typical pace, pattern,and purpose.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Thank you. Most Bible scholars believe the Gospel of Mark was the first of the Gospels to be written. |
| 0:31.5 | It's also the shortest, and it ends in a sudden manner that often raises questions and debates. |
| 0:39.3 | Today on Truth for Life, |
| 0:45.4 | Alistair Begg considers the abrupt ending of Chapter 16 in light of Mark's typical pace, |
| 0:58.6 | pattern, and purpose. I imagine that all of us have had the experience, either in the reading of a book or in the seeing of a film, of being taken aback by the abruptness of the ending. We've been sitting there, |
| 1:06.6 | expecting it to go on for another five or ten minutes, and suddenly the credits have come up, |
| 1:11.2 | or we've turned the page, and we realized that the rest of the book that we thought we were |
| 1:15.8 | about to read is actually footnotes, and we've now turned to the final page. And we've perhaps |
| 1:20.8 | said out loud, but it can't possibly end like this, or it can't possibly end like that. Now, if your Bible is open, and I hope it is, |
| 1:30.8 | if you're using the English standard version, you will notice that in between verse 8 and 9, |
| 1:36.1 | there is a statement put there by the translators, by the publishers, some of the earliest |
| 1:43.6 | manuscripts do not include 16, 9 to 20. |
| 1:51.0 | So presumably 169 to 20, an appendix, a postscript, was placed at the end of Mark's Gospel, because when people read the end of Mark's gospel |
| 2:04.7 | at verse 8, they found themselves saying, but it can't end like that. How can the gospel of Mark, |
| 2:13.4 | how can any gospel end with the phrase, they were afraid? Now, since we're not going to be |
| 2:23.1 | dealing with the appendix or the postscript, that is verses 9 to 20, but concluding with the |
| 2:29.1 | 8th verse, it's important for me to say something by way of explanation. |
| 2:35.6 | And the first thing that we need to affirm is this. |
| 2:39.4 | The Bible's absolute authority as the Word of God. |
| 2:45.5 | To make sure that we are affirming together that the Bible is God's speech in written form, that what the Bible says, |
| 2:56.0 | God says. The Bible is completely true in what it says, and it makes no claims that are not true. |
| 3:07.3 | We understand why Paul wrote to Timothy to affirm for him the necessity |
... |
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