The Bible Study Podcast, episode 590. Today, the Bible Study podcast begins a study of the book of Mark.

Welcome to the Bible Study podcast. I'm your host, Chris Christensen. We are done with the study of the

kings of Israel and Judah that took a year

and a half. This one should only take about four weeks. This is the shortest of all the

gospels. The four gospels in the Bible, being Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Not written in that

order. If we put them in order of appearance, Mark would be first. And then Matthew and Luke

roughly the same time, and then John much later. And so Mark is the first of the Gospels written.

And I was always told that Mark was written, has been attributed to John Mark. And John Mark

appears in the Bible, but not a whole lot. He is not an apostle,

as Matthew or John were. And he is like Luke, a traveling companion with Paul, at least.

And he is a traveling companion with Paul on his first missionary journey. If you look in the book of Acts, he's a young man. In fact, he is a traveling companion with Paul on his first missionary journey.

If you look in the book of Acts, he's a young man.

In fact, he is so young that he gets homesick and goes home in the middle of that journey.

And there's a break between Paul and Barnabas as to whether to take him on the second journey

because Barnabas says, sure, let's take him.

And Paul says, no, this guy's a quitter.

Basically, this guy left us in the middle of our first journey.

He's just immature.

Let's take somebody else instead and they split ways at that point.

Now, later on, Mark will show up in some of Paul's letters as someone who is apparently

grown into usefulness and maturity, and that I was taught that tradition had it, that

Mark became a traveling companion of Peter, and that he wrote the gospel probably after

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