Aysor.am
03.10.2009, 10:46
Commemoration of Christ’s seventy-two Disciples
Today the Armenian Apostolic Church celebrates day of Christ’s
seventy-two Disciples.
Besides the 12 Apostles, Jesus also had 72 disciples, whom he sent to
`preach the Good News to all nations’.
Unfortunately, those disciples’ names are not mentioned in the
Gospels. In the New Testament the word `disciple’ is used of the
followers of the Jesus Christ. Christ sent out his apostles and
disciples `like lambs among wolves’ two by two, to go ahead of him to
every town and place where he himself was about to go, saying them:
`Whoever listens to you listens to me; whoever rejects you rejects me;
and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me¦’ (The Gospel
according to Luke 10:16).
There are hardly any differences between the 12 apostles and the 72
disciples, they have the same power and authority and the same mission
(The Gospel according to Luke 10:9; 9:1). However, the names of all 72
disciples, like the names of the 40 innocent children martyred in
Bethlehem, are known to God only and are written in the sacred book of
the Heavenly Kingdom.