JOHN THE EVANGELIST

Taking into account not only the chronology of conversion, but also the age of the calling of each of the Apostles, John was the first of the Twelve Disciples in age, for he followed the Lord Jesus in his youth. This can be proved by both indirect indications of Scripture and direct evidence of Tradition.

John followed Christ while still a disciple of John the Baptist. Thus, he experienced the immediate, preliminary beginnings of the good news of the Kingdom of God, which was clearly foretold by John in his preaching.

The Evangelist accompanied the Lord at the most important moments of His ministry; he was with Him on the Mount of Transfiguration, at the moments when the Savior performed His greatest miracles, raising the dead.

Overcoming the fear, doubt and despair that had seized everyone then, he, the only one of the Apostles, followed Christ to the very foot of the Cross. “Then He said to the disciple, Behold, thy mother! And from that hour that disciple took her to his own home” (cf. John 19:26-27). So Jesus entrusted His Mother to John.

According to Tradition, John outlived all the Apostles and left this world at the end of the first century of Christian history, having lived for about a hundred years. Thus, in John, whom the Eastern Orthodox tradition calls “the Theologian”, the words of the Lord Jesus in the Apocalypse about Himself were fulfilled. Like Him, “the Alpha and Omega of Revelation and History” (Rev. 22:13), John became the first and last witness of the apostolic generation of disciples.

“Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? Follow thou me” (John 21:22). This Easter address of the Lord Jesus to Peter, in which the Savior foreshadowed the future fate of John, became one of the most difficult words of Scripture to interpret. According to the Gospel of John itself, even then “there was a rumor among the disciples that he would not die” (21:23). Indeed, Tradition has been preserved, according to which the body of John, still alive but already preparing for his departure, was covered with a shroud.

Indeed, Tradition has been preserved, according to which the body of John, still alive, but already preparing for his departure, and praying in silence, was covered by the disciples with a shroud. As if involuntarily formed in this way, the tomb of the Apostle was soon discovered empty. Thus the death of John, or, more correctly, his earthly end, became the personification of all future Orthodox Christian eschatology, which speaks of the Second Coming of Christ, that “it is already happening, but has not yet come.”