The Commission to the Twelve
WHAT do you understand by, “Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel till the Son of Man be come”? Matt. 10: 23. Was not the commission given in the first part of the chapter, after the resurrection of our Lord? Had they power to cast out devils, to heal the sick, and to raise the dead, before his resurrection? P. W. B. 1. In Luke 10: 1, we learn that our Lord sent out the seventy, two and two, into every city where he designed to come. From this we infer that the twelve were sent out in like manner, and that they would not complete their mission till he should overtake and join them in their labors. 2. Our Lord had not been crucified when he sent out the twelve; for in his conversation with them in Luke 22: 35, which was just prior to his crucifixion, he asks them if they lacked anything when he sent them out without purse and scrip. This was at the expiration of the first commission, for he there revokes it. 3. That they had power to heal all manner of diseases is evident from the commission itself as given in the first verse of the tenth chapter of Matthew; also from Luke 10: 17, which states the fact that even the devils were subject to them through the name of Christ.