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Who is John?
by Ray Mossholder
Perhaps as I share you will understand better why God would choose John to do all this writing and especially his written descriptions in the book of Revelation. If you find that book difficult to interpret, you aren’t alone – many have found the same thing. But it’s like something Mark Twain once said. He is quoted as saying “It’s not the parts of the Bible that I don’t understand that bother me. It’s the parts of the Bible that I DO understand that bother me!”
What John wrote in the book of Revelation confirms Scripture throughout both the Old and New Testaments. Things like – there is an eternal Heaven where all Christians of every age in history will live with Jesus Christ forever. It will be a place of joy and no sorrow. It’s confirmed that Jesus Christ is returning for His Church – the body of believers who have placed their faith in Him. We further realize how terrible the tribulation of seven years will be and that there will be Christians during that time who are alive. Some of them will be martyred. There definitely is an eternal hell.
Now, let’s take a look at who the apostle John really was. In this day that is trying to do away with Christianity and all thoughts of the one true God, I have heard John called a homosexual, effeminate, Arnold Schwarzenegger coined the phrase some might use on John – “a girlyman!” Christ’s enemies say would this because three times in the book of John, John says he is the disciple that “Jesus loved.” Their accusation is blasphemous and if it were said about Mohammed there would be murders. It is so far from the truth that it might as well have come from another planet. John was every bit a man, a rugged fisherman, and one to whom Jesus fully entrusted with His own mother, Mary, while Jesus was on the cross.
John was the son of a fisherman named Zebedee. At the beginning of his life it was like father, like son. He learned the fishing trade early and pursued it hard until Jesus called him as a young adult. By that time John’s brother James along with Peter and Andrew were a team already. They had formed a fishing fleet – “The Sons of Zebedee” – long before Christ called them to be “fishers of men.”
Let’s see what else we can find out as absolute truth regarding this author, disciple of Christ, and appointed apostle by our Lord. We do know from the Gospels that John was one of the three that might be called “the inner circle” of Jesus. The other two besides John were Peter and James. Not one of these men were chosen because they were brilliant, superior in character, most flawless, or nicest. In fact, Peter so often put his foot in his mouth that it is amazing he didn’t have to travel with the chiropractor! And that should tell us something that is a major truth throughout both the Old and New Testaments – Christ doesn’t choose the kind of people that CEOs and major corporations seek out. They weren’t pedigreed or pedicured. Peter and John most likely stunk of fish when Jesus called them. Sitting here knowing that I have the privilege of ministry to nearly the entire world, I am living proof that Christ doesn’t only use the brilliant, Eagle Scouts, the flawless or even the nicest to be leaders in His Church. So if you feel that God can’t use you because of your faults, that’s false.
Jesus called both John and James “Boanarges” = “The sons of thunder” not because they knew how to keep their cool, but because they were like volcanoes and blew their tops often. Oh, did they have tempers! So if that’s one of your faults, it obviously doesn’t disqualify you from being a leader in Christ. Rough, tough, and ready enough, describes John. He was never a girlyman!
John was exclusionary. In Mark 9, he strongly scolded a man who was casting out demons because the man was not a part of the twelve. Jesus gently rebuked John for that and told him that it was impossible for a man to cast out demons and then speak badly about Him.
In Luke 9, John and his brothers wanted to call down fire from Heaven on the Samaritans who refused to welcome Jesus. The irony of that is that Jesus later, when he was in Heaven, did call down fire on the Samaritans in Acts 8 – the fire of the Holy Spirit! And Peter and John were right in the midst of it.
No one could claim that John wasn’t highly ambitious. In Matthew 20 he had his mother fight his battles for him! She went to Jesus and asked that her two sons be given the place of honor on the right-hand and left-hand of Him in Heaven. Jesus told her, “Oh lady, you don’t know what you’re asking.” The request caused many arguments among the disciples because they all wanted to be first!
John viewed everything as either right or wrong. He knew what he believed was the truth and nothing but the truth. The oriental idea that has shrunk the brains of many Americans – the belief that there are no absolutes – would be absolutely torn apart by John. Jesus Christ IS the absolute and so is God’s Word. John knew that far better than most Christians do today.
James, John and Peter were taken by Jesus to places where the other apostles weren’t invited. John and the other two stood with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration where Jesus shone brighter than a million noonday sun’s. He was a leader in the early church and for a period of time ministered alongside Peter.
Except for the book of Revelation, John uses the language of the everyday person. There was nothing egghead about him. He was scholarly without showing off. His scholarship in writing his books in the New Testament was in the accuracy and the experience of being side-by-side with the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6). Like Peter and the other disciples – all except Judas Iscariot – John absolutely knew that Jesus was the only way to eternal life with God. And he knew how to hear what the Holy Spirit was saying so that he, like all the Bible writers, could write exactly what the Holy Spirit breathed (2 Peter 1:20–21) .
John never included his name to any of his writings, except, of course, in Revelation. It is obvious to any honest Bible scholar that John wrote the books we’ve shared. His style of writing is unquestionable and he didn’t write in a vacuum. John lived to somewhere very close to the end of the first century and there were multitudes of people who knew him and would have quickly challenged any attempt to say that he did not write these books. It is sad how people of later centuries try to disprove all claims of the New Testament being written in the first century but instead in the second or third century. They foolishly think they could possibly know better than the people who were up close and personal with the biblical authors for many years after Christ had returned to Heaven.
It wasn’t long before the diaspora, the fleeing of the Christians from Jerusalem in 70 A.D. because of great persecution, that John moved to Ephesus. John’s ministry in the latter part of his life was primarily to the churches in Asia Minor, an area which is Turkey today. He became the major overseer to the churches of Ephesus that Paul had planted and they had undoubtedly grown much larger from Paul’s time there. It is further documented that Jesus’ mother, Mary, lived with John until her death in Ephesus.
In 95 A.D. the Emperor Domitian began a hideous massacre of Christians. It would be just the about that time that John was arrested and sentenced to death in exile on the island of Patmos. He lived there in a cave called “the cave of the Apocalypse.” This must have been the hardest time for John in his whole life. Not only was Patmos a kind of living hell, but the churches he had overseen in Ephesus and Asia Minor were beginning to fall apart. In Revelation 2:4–5 the message John received was to the angel of the church in Ephesus “But I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Therefore remember from where you have fallen and repent and do the deeds you did at first or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place – unless you repent.”
“Your lampstand” was symbolic of the churches themselves and when threatened with removal you can imagine how hurt John was. First, this message was directed to his closest friends in Ephesus. Second, he no doubt felt that he had been a failure in keeping Christ the priority in the churches, even though that would have been his very message to them always. Third, he felt absolutely worthless on an island as remote to the rest of civilization as Patmos was. But remember this, and the saying is true, it is always darkest just before the dawn. John’s spirit would be lifted to a new high in recognizing he was now assigned to the supernatural revelation of what would happen at the end of time – the writing down of what he saw on that island that I have read to you at our websites – the book of Revelation.
There was much to sorrow over during John’s life. In 70 A.D. the entire city of Jerusalem was destroyed. Many of his friends were undoubtedly burned at the stake, fed to lions, or crucified like Peter was. Others had fled to the catacombs where they remained until their death. Both his age and his death sentence let him know that his time was very short. But the book of Revelation gave him the thrill of knowing for absolute certain that this world is not our home. And he was the first to see the fullness of where he was headed eternally with all those of us whose faith is in Jesus Christ. Thank God he shared it with us.
Some wonder how John was able to get the book of Revelation out of Patmos and into the rest of the world. The answer is that God was at work as He always is. Suddenly and miraculously, John had his death sentence removed and was released from that wretched island. He was allowed to return to Ephesus where he died at a ripe old age
According to many documents written at that time about John, after Christ ascended, James, John’s brother, was the first apostle to be martyred. John escaped martyrdom and outlived all of the other disciples. The last words John spoke are also well documented. He said “Little children, love one another.” He knew then what I know now – Christians must all hang together or each Christian will be hung separately. That’s as true today as it was in John’s time.
I think the truth of Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 13:13 is what John would have wanted me to leave with you. And he learned this truth by making mistakes until he got it right. “But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.” That’s because without love you, no matter how great your faith in Christ, no matter how great your hope in Christ; your church or you, in fact all Christians profit nothing without love.
Realize that to escape his death sentence and being sent to the hideous island of Patmos, all John would have had to do was to say that Jesus was a false teacher. But he would have never done that because he knew who Jesus was and is. Do you?
Who is John?