Well, that escalated fast

 If you are joining me on this journey to read through Mark's account of Jesus' life over the next couple of weeks, you might have finished chapter one by now. Good work!

As we move into chapter 2, you might notice something. Early on, it seems like the action is happening rather rapidly. One thing you probably came across a few times was the word "immediately." It's like, Jesus is here, and then immediately, he is there, and then this next thing happened immediately. It's fast action, hard hitting, and moving rapidly from one scene to the next. No waiting around, this is an action packed story.

That's one of the interesting things about Mark's account, and so it's worth tossing in a couple of interesting tidbits about him. First, who was Mark? He isn't found anywhere in the other accounts of Jesus' life. He may very well be the Mark that is written about in Acts, but the truth is, the Bible doesn't tell us who Mark is.

Yet, he obviously got to know the story of Jesus somehow. And we do have some basis for determining who he is. After John died around the year 90 in the first century, we have a few people who were second or third generation Christians who were writing about how the stories of Jesus had come together. One of them looked into Mark and made a note that he was someone who followed Peter around as he went telling others about Jesus. He wrote that Mark wrote down the accounts of Jesus that Peter was telling, and put them into order. So in a way, as we read through Mark's account, we're kind of getting Peter's view of how things happened with Jesus.

Along with being the shortest of the stories of Jesus in the Bible, many believe Mark is the first one who wrote an account of Jesus. While we may never know the full truth of that, there are some things that may seem to indicate that. You noticed that we come across John the Baptist early on in chapter 1, and it almost seems as though you should know who John is. He isn't introduced. He's just there, on the scene, and then, BAM, Jesus is on the scene. You'd tend to write a story like that when people are familiar with the main characters. So it may very well be that Mark wrote the first account of Jesus.

As we get into chapter 2, we'll see some more fast action, and sides being taken already when it comes to Jesus. More on that with the next post, though!