Mark 5:20

And he went his way, and began to publish in Decapolis how great things Jesus had done for him: and all men marveled.

Attempts to get rid of Jesus in all ages have generally been as futile and ineffective as were those of the village of the Gerasenes. "Decapolis" means "the ten cities" which lay in the area, nine of them east of lake Galilee; and it must have been a very effective witness indeed which was provided by that erstwhile terror of the tombs who went up and down the area extolling the power and mercy of Jesus, whom he also, no doubt, identified as "Lord." No wonder it is said that "All men marveled."

Lessons from this miracle include: (1) Jesus came into the world to destroy the works of the devil, and here was an outstanding example of it. (2) Jesus must choose for all men the area of the service they will render to his name; the man here was denied his request and given another assignment. (3) Men frequently need to begin at home the work of bringing others to Christ. (4) Men should beware of permitting purely secular interests to dominate their thinking. This wretched village made a choice which probably resulted in the eternal death of many of their citizens.

THE RAISING OF JAIRUS' DAUGHTER

The significance of this wonder lies in the identity of the principals. Jairus was a ruler of the Jewish synagogue in Capernaum, a prominent and respected leader of the people, and who, according to Trench, was part of "the deputation which came to the Lord pleading for the heathen centurion (Luke 7:3)."[10] Only about forty years had elapsed since the deed itself when Mark composed his gospel. He may not have been an eyewitness of the miracle, but he had worked closely with the apostle Peter for years, and Peter was an eyewitness. Furthermore, he had heard the apostle preach hundreds if not thousands of times; and the elementary integrity which must be assigned both to Peter and to Mark make any doubt of this miracle an act of the will, not of intelligence. All of the gobbledegook which has come out of the critical schools regarding Mark's "sources" has been subjectively fabricated in the laboratories of unbelief and can never be made to fit the fact that Mark needed no source except that of having heard the apostle Peter preach the same thing over and over for three decades, until, it may be assumed, Mark knew it all by heart. Since Peter was an eyewitness, there was simply no room for any "traditions" to have grown up, no time for any admixture of foreign elements, and no opportunity for any corruption of the narrative. We are here face to face with historical truth.

So much for the eye-witness and the narrator; what about the person raised from the dead? The prominence and power of Jairus, and the fact of his having been widely known in Capernaum by at least thousands of people within a time limit of not over forty years before Mark wrote make it absolutely impossible that any fictitious element could have been injected into this historical event without bringing a deluge of criticism and refutation. The rapidly spreading faith was opposed by countless powerful and determined enemies who would have seized upon any excuse to charge the apostles and gospel writers with fraud; but it is a singular fact that history has produced no such denials. It must be assumed that Jairus' contemporaries, his fellow-rulers of the synagogues of Israel, most of whom did not accept Christianity, knew of this record in the Christian gospels, as well as of the repeated preaching of it for forty years; but they did not contradict it, the truth of it being so widely known, and so utterly beyond all denial, that they could not demean themselves by any attempt to refute the truth. It is agreed by all the world that Mark wrote his gospel prior to 70 A.D., and perhaps as early as 60 A.D.; and the nature of it is such that had there been any element of untruth or inaccuracy in it, it could never have gained credibility. But it did gain credibility, a credibility which has been maintained for more than nineteen centuries. No lie could have done that.