Paul, Barnabas, Silas, and Judas Barsabbas escort the Council's letter to Antioch. Silas and Judas Barsabbas are prophets who encourage the church.
Paul wants to visit the churches that he had planted. This may have been motivated to see what happened after he had sent the Epistle of Galatians. He suggests the idea to Barnabas, who thinks it is good, but Barnabas wants to bring John-Mark.
Paul does not like this idea because John-Mark abandoned Paul and Barnabas during the first missionary trip. As I mentioned, the conflict with John-Mark may have originally been over the Apostle Paul assuming leadership over that of Barnabas. Here, we see the rift is strong.
They cannot agree about John-Mark, so Barnabas and Paul go their separate ways. Paul takes Silas while Barnabas and John-Mark go to Cyprus.
Here we internal divisions among the early church. On a large scale, it was divided on the observance of circumcision and the rest of the law. The Council of Jerusalem and Epistle of Galatians kept the church together. Collectively, they were a total repudiation of the necessity of keeping the law of Moses. However, the Council of Jerusalem adopted a few items that seemed to have been concessions for the greater good of the church.
On a much smaller scale, the conflict over the loyalty of John-Mark could not be reconciled. As readers, we wonder what exactly happened and if John-Mark could be trusted, or if Paul held too much of a grudge. As a result, it split up an effective team that had been together since the beginning. That said, splitting the team into two allowed them to cover more geographical territory.
As for John-Mark, if he eventually went on author the Gospel of Mark, then we can see he was redeemed and, all-in-all, he stayed loyal to the Kingdom of God.
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