Saint John
Saint John the disciple wrote the Apocalypse, which is the Greek word for Revelation, the uncovering or unveiling of that which was previously hidden. More accurately, God gave Jesus the revelation which was given to an angel who gave it to John to record and write it down. John was the son of Zebedee and Salome, and the younger brother of James the greater. Salome appears as one of the women who followed the Lord and "ministered" to him of their substance, she seems to have been a sister of Mary making John a cousin of Jesus. The brothers James and John were at first disciples of John the Baptist and afterwards followed Jesus along with their friends, Peter and Andrew. They were called the day that Jesus came down from the mountain and He called the two "Boanerges," or "Sons of Thunder." Thunder in the Hebrew idiom is the voice of God and appears to have given swift, startling, aggressive utterance to the Divine truth which they all felt within them. So aggressive was their nature that they asked Jesus, when the Samaritans would not receive Him, "Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?" Luke 9:54 (NASB). The brothers worked with their father Zebedee as fishermen along with Simon and Andrew, probably in Bethsaida or the surrounding neighborhood. As the owners of their own boat or boats, the family evidently occupied a position of importance and were sufficiently prosperous to have hired servants. John was probably younger than the Lord and the other apostles. Besides his fishing business in Capernaum, he had a house in Jerusalem and was a personal acquaintance of the High Priest. He may also have been kin to John the Baptist. After Pentecost, John appears with Peter in Jerusalem and then in Samaria. When Paul goes to Jerusalem in 49 to attend the council of the Apostles he finds John there, Jerusalem was his Headquarters. It is probable that John evangelized Palestine for 12 years or so. During the persecution of Herod Antipas, the Christians dispersed, after this we do not find John in Palestine again. Probably he left in 57, for when Paul returns to Jerusalem he makes no mention, the later tradition places him at Asia Minor and he made his home in Ephesus. John and all of the other apostles, like Peter, were married men. John was the acknowledged elder of the Christians in Asia. The name sons of thunder, their joint petition for precedence, their passionate request to call fire from heaven, the energy of the Apocalypse, the opposition to the heretic Cerinthus - all show him as the spirit of an eagle, not the dove. Yet the Master made him the "disciple Jesus loved." John was a sensitive type of person, imaginative, poetic, a dreamer of dreams, and of course, saw visions. John is the author of the Gospel of John, three epistles and the Apocalypse. He lived at Ephesus until the reign of Trajan after caring for Jesus' mother until her death. All credible voices believe that the Apocalypse was written AD 95 or 96 and the epistles even later toward the end of his life. Eusebius records that John was exiled on the isle of Patmos toward the end of Domitian's reign. Some scholars date the writing of Revelation during the reign of Nero around the year 65 before the destruction of Jerusalem, but that is mistaken. Irenaeus mentions that John wrote the Gospel at Ephesus, William Barclay dates it about the year 100, after his exile. The fourth Gospel stresses the pre-existent Son of God, where His deity rather than his humanity is stressed. John traces the life of Jesus like the synoptic Gospels, but in its own original way. The Gospel undertakes to show not simply that Jesus was the Messiah, as Matthew does, but that He is a Spiritual being of a higher order than man. He is the Creator God made flesh. It is not a compilation, nor a rewriting, but a fresh creation by a great Spiritual genius. Never has the doctrine of heavenly love perfected itself in this way. Rather than compromise with emperor worship, John preferred banishment. His enemies once plunged him into a cauldron of boiling oil before the Latin Gate at Rome but he miraculously came out more vigorous and youthful than before. There is a story of an attempt to kill him with a poisoned chalice, but that "it was rendered harmless." Sometime under Domitian's reign of 81-96, John was banished to the rocky island of Patmos in the Aegean Sea, about 60 miles SW of Ephesus and about 150 miles east of Athens. It is 10 miles long, 6 miles wide, treeless and its terrain, rocky. It was used as a rock quarry and an ideal place of confinement and exile of political prisoners. It is possible that John labored in these rock quarries alongside the rogues and slaves of the empire, or it may be that he was given a certain degree of respect in his old age and reputation and not confined to hard labor. Many of these people banished to Patmos were Christians from Asia minor who had refused to worship the Emperor Domitian as a god and had therefore been condemned to exile or death. John lived in a cave, where he was supposed to have had his visions. He certainly had the opportunity to hear the Lord. John writes what He sees in Revelation and since what he sees comes from God it is faithful and true. "I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet, saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, and what you see, write in a book and send it unto the Seven Churches which are in Asia; unto Ephesus, and unto Smyrna, and unto Pergamos, and unto Thyatira, and unto Sardis, and unto Philadelphia, and unto Laodicea." Revelation 1:10-11. That still small voice breaks into the awakening of John's spirit and becomes mightier than the voice of any cruel overseer driving men to work in the quarries. Upon the murder of the tyrant Domitian in the year 96, his successor, Nerva, during his short reign of two years recalled John. He passed over to Ephesus from Patmos and lived out his life during the reign of Trajan. When he was no longer a Son of Thunder or "Eagle of Christ," which he was called, when he was a weak and worn old man with a feeble voice and trembling hands, he still lifted them up to bless. A beloved and venerated old man, his slightest words were treasured up because he was the last of living men who had seen the Lord. He lived to so great an age that people said he would never die. The disciple that Jesus loved lived a full life of apostolic activity, appointing and reproving Bishops, visiting and directing churches, and yet finding time to care for individual souls. He used to make missionary journeys also to neighboring Gentile cities, in some places to set in order whole churches. The churches of Smyrna, Pergamos, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea, and Thyatira were founded by him. There is a tradition in Ephesus that he played with a tame partridge. Polycarp was his friend and pupil, Ignatius is said to be a hearer. Papias, 70-155, a pupil. Among them, Polycarp became bishop of Smyrna; Papias of Hierapolis; and Ignatius of Antioch. Billy Graham writes of John: "As an apocalyptist John concentrated on one overpowering theme: the end of human history as we know it and the dawn of the glorious messianic age. As such, his message is always one of both warning and hope - warning of the coming judgment, and hope of Christ's inevitable triumph over evil and the establishment of His eternal Kingdom." John, as the last surviving apostle, tarried at Ephesus to extreme old age, his home had already become a center of the Christian Church and his feeble body could only with difficulty be carried to church in the arms of his disciples. John in his last years was unable to give utterance to many words, he simply said children, love one another. In John's words, "if only this is done it is enough." John passed away in Ephesus perhaps in the 7th year of Trajan AD 104. As far as they knew, he died quietly.
