“In Mark 6:7, Christ sends the apostles out to preach two by two. Was Judas involved? If so, with whom was he paired?”

If the Lord didn’t send Judas out to preach, the other apostles would have been suspicious of him. That suspicion would certainly have manifested itself at the last supper, when the Lord said, “One of you which eateth with Me shall betray Me” (Mark 14:18). If they had any reservations about Judas at all, they would have asked, “Is it Judas?” Instead, “they began… to say unto Him one by one, Is it I? and another said, Is it I?” (v. 19), “doubting of whom He spake” (John 13:22).

So it seems clear that Judas preached the gospel. If he believed the gospel, he must have believed it in the shallow sense in which others in Scripture are said to have believed (John 2:23,24; 8:30 cf. 31-44; Acts 8:13-23). That is, he didn’t “believe to the saving of the soul” (Heb. 10:39).

We’re not told who he was paired with, but if the apostles got to choose, you would think he’d have chosen Doubting Thomas. If he was already showing signs of the doubt he expressed later (John 20:25), then Judas would no doubt have felt most comfortable with him.

To the Reader:

Some of our Two Minutes articles were written many years ago by Pastor C. R. Stam for publication in newspapers. When many of these articles were later compiled in book form, Pastor Stam wrote this word of explanation in the Preface:

"It should be borne in mind that the newspaper column, Two Minutes With the Bible, has now been published for many years, so that local, national and international events are discussed as if they occurred only recently. Rather than rewrite or date such articles, we have left them just as they were when first published. This, we felt, would add to the interest, especially since our readers understand that they first appeared as newspaper articles."

To this we would add that the same is true for the articles written by others that we continue to add, on a regular basis, to the Two Minutes library. We hope that you'll agree that while some of the references in these articles are dated, the spiritual truths taught therein are timeless.