What's In A Name?

The chapter for today starts out with Jesus calling together the 12 Disciples (notice, he "called" - not "forced" them together).  In the next sentence they're called Apostles.  Already my mind is asking what the difference is.  After I looked them up I learned that:

• Disciple: Follower of some doctrine or teacher.
• Apostle: Messenger or authorized representative.

So here's 12 regular guys (some were fishermen, tax collectors, rich, poor, educated, uneducated), and as usual their names are hard to figure out.  But regardless, they're sent on their way...but NOT to the Gentiles or the Samaritans.  That raised more questions for me...so I dug in a little more and found out that:

• Gentile:  Anyone who isn't a Jew.
• Samaritan:  A race that resulted from intermarriage between Jews and Gentiles after the Old Testament captivities (2 Kings 17:24)

Jesus asked his disciples to go only to the Jews because he came first to the Jews (Romans 1:16).  God chose them to tell the rest of the world about Him, and after they preached throughout the Roman empire - Gentiles came to the church willingly.

Okay - now my curiosity has subsided...but then verse 25 mentions Beelzebub (which now has me singing an old Queen song in my head and envisioning Wayne and Garth - I digress)...so I had to look that up and I read that Beelzebub was also known as "the lord of flies and the prince of demons".  The Pharisees accused Jesus of using his power to drive out demons.  The reading then leads into how to handle persecution.  Have any of you experienced opposition for your Christianity?  Probably nothing as severe as the Apostles...but still. 

Verses 10:34-39 is a real eye-opener, and something I know that I'll need to be ready for.  Verse 38 said we are to "take our cross and follow him"...oh yeah, you guessed it.  One more thing to look up.  I've heard that phrase, but never really thought about it.  I learned today that it means "to be willing to publicly identify with Jesus, to experience almost certain opposition, and to be committed to face even suffering and death for His sake".

Ok...I'll stop now.  :-)