So, Mark would have grown up in the faith during those early years following the resurrection and was received into full fellowship in the community. When ten years or so later Paul came to Jerusalem, he found him ready for Christian service and took him back with him to Antioch. There he laboured for two or three years and then set out with Paul and Barnabas on what is known as Paul’s first missionary journey. He did not get far. After a short progress through Cyprus, evangelising and perhaps establishing one or two little communities, they crossed the sea to the Asiatic mainland and here Mark left the other two and returned to Jerusalem. (Acts 13:13). The cause of his defection is not known. The most likely surmise is that the increasing troubles in Judea and rising persecution of the Christians there led him to return to protect his mother. He must have gone back to Antioch within a year or so for when Paul and Barnabas planned their second missionary journey in AD 50 a dispute arose as to whether Mark should accompany them. The upshot of that was that the two evangelists separated and Mark went to Cyprus again with his uncle, Barnabas.

Of this evangelistic effort nothing is known. After their arrival in Cyprus in or about the year 50, when Mark was about thirty years of age, the curtain drops and does not rise for another ten years. According to Col.4:10, he was with Paul at Rome during the Apostle’s two years’ detention awaiting his first trial. That would be between the years 60 and 62. Of Barnabas nothing more is known and tradition has it that he was martyred in Cyprus soon after his arrival. If this were so, Mark would obviously have returned to his headquarters at Antioch. The early historians are emphatic and unanimous in saying that Mark was the founder and first elder or bishop, of the Christian church at Alexandria in Egypt, and Eusebius (4th century) says that the second bishop, Annianus, succeeded Mark in AD 61. It might therefore be concluded that from Antioch, Mark went to Egypt and stayed there perhaps eight or nine years by which time the church he founded had become numerous and influential? In later years Alexandria ranked with Antioch and Rome as one of the three most powerful churches of the Christian society and was a serious contender with Rome for the primacy of Christendom. If Annianus did succeed him in AD 61, Mark, learning that Paul had been taken to Rome to await trial, wanted to be with him in his hour of adversity. At forty‑two years of age, he was too young to think of retiring from any kind of service. So he went to Rome, which is where we find him in Col.4:10 and again in Philemon 24. The epistles to Colossians and Philemon were both written during AD 60‑62 and Mark was with Paul when they were despatched.

Two or three years later he is in Rome again, this time with Peter. Paul had gone on those travels which occupied the time between his first and second trials and which are not recorded in the Book of Acts. After Paul left, he probably went back to Antioch. After Paul and Aristarchus sailed for Spain there were none of the Asiatic evangelists left in Rome; the Church in Rome had its own leaders in Clement and Linus (both mentioned in the NT), and Anencletus so Mark was not really needed. The obvious conclusion is that he returned to Antioch where his friend Peter was now the leading elder, and wait for his next commission of service.

That commission came in about AD 65 when Peter decided to go to Rome. The Great Fire of Rome and the consequent persecution of the Christians there, blamed for the catastrophe by the mad Emperor Nero, was over and the decimated church there stood in dire need of help. Peter, Silas and Mark set sail for Rome and laboured with the church there for some two or three years before Peter’s martyrdom. It was quite likely that while there Mark wrote his Gospel, unless he did so during the five years or so immediately preceding, whilst at Antioch. The accounts of several 2nd and 3rd century Church historians regarding Mark were formerly held to infer that he wrote his Gospel at the dictation of Peter so that it was properly the Gospel of Peter. More sober examination of these old histories tends rather to indicate that Mark acted as a kind of secretary to Peter, writing down his oral teachings for the benefit of the believers, not that his own Gospel was dictated by Peter. In practice there is little doubt that Mark drew some of his material from Peter but the style and contents of his Gospel both point to a writer who himself witnessed most of the events which he records. He remembered the actual words spoken by Jesus and possessed a freshness of enthusiasm and outlook that point to a much younger man than Peter. The life of Jesus as related in the Gospel of Mark is seen through the eyes of a teenage lad rather than a grown man. Perhaps the 1st letter of Peter offers the most convincing argument in this connection. Peter wrote that epistle from Rome at about the same time as Mark wrote the Gospel. The total difference in style and in the usage of words between the two compositions renders it inconceivable that both stemmed from the same mind.

Within about another two years, Peter had gone to his reward, martyred for his faith. Silas must have left Rome only a few months before, carrying Peter’s 1st Epistle to the brethren of Roman Asia. Mark would have left Rome directly after Peter’s death, having no further object in remaining. He could not have known that Paul had just been arrested at Troas and was now en route for Rome again, to his second trial and to execution. The two ships carrying them probably passed each other somewhere in the Mediterranean, for Mark is next found at Ephesus. It is likely that he took with him Peter’s 2nd Epistle. So, he came to Ephesus, where Timothy had been serving for the past six years, since he left Rome after Paul’s first trial. Mark probably worked with Timothy and the Apostle John whom he knew so well in his boyhood days.

Six months later, Paul, back in Rome, in prison, facing trial for being the ringleader of what was now an illegal and proscribed religion, wrote to his

beloved co‑labourer Timothy asking him to come to Rome, and to bring Mark with him. (2 Tim.4:11). Only Luke had remained with him, he said and he wanted to see the others again for what would perhaps be the last time. "Do try to get here before winter." It was not to be. He wrote to Timothy early in AD 68. His final trial and execution could not have been later than April or May, for he was condemned during the reign of Nero, and Nero himself died during June of that year. Before Timothy even received the letter the great Apostle to the Gentiles had finished his course and passed into his Master’s safe keeping.

So, in the year 68, thirty‑five years after he had crouched behind that tree in Gethsemane watching his Master being taken, the curtain falls on John Mark, still serving that Master, in the Asiatic city of Ephesus. He was barely fifty years of age, probably the youngest survivor of those who had seen and heard Jesus in the flesh. He was still capable of work for the Master. Whether he stayed at Ephesus, or went back to Antioch or even Jerusalem, or to some other quite new field of endeavour, no one knows. He is not likely to have returned to the Church he founded at Alexandria. After his successor Annianus came Avilius, and after him Cerdo, and then Primus. It is apparent that Mark did not take up the oversight of the churches in Egypt again. Like so many of God’s heroes in the Bible, there was no departing in a blaze of glory. He just slips out quietly and is seen no more.