2 Timothy 4:11
2 Timothy 4:1111Only Luke is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, because he is useful to me in the ministry.
Read as a glimpse of Paul's final imprisonment and the loyalty of faithful companions. The Watchtower uses such passages for encouragement about endurance and mutual support, without connecting them to the earlier quarrel over Mark.
This is the last line of a story that started with a fight, and it is the reason to tell the story at all. Paul is near the end. Most of his companions have gone. And the man he asks for is the one he once refused to take on a journey — the young man whose unreliability split the mission in two at . Bring Mark along, he writes, for he is helpful to me in the ministry. Nothing is being covered up here. Luke recorded the quarrel; Paul records the restoration; both stand in Scripture. That is what the fruit of the Spirit looks like across a lifetime rather than in a single moment — the patience and kindness of working slowly through a real grievance. Raise it as a standard rather than as a weapon: this is the apostolic pattern for disagreement among leaders, and any movement's founding generation can be measured against it. Then let the Witness do the measuring. Compare , , .