Weird Stuff in the Bible

The Theory that the Apostle John is Still Alive
John 21

Introduction
I few weeks ago I received one of the strangest questions I had ever had sent to me: could the Apostle John still be alive?
Now, I probably would have shrugged it off except within an hour, I had a second person ask me the same question.
Now, I have never heard this question posed before. I had never had this thought cross my mind before. And yet to be asked this question completely out of the blue twice in the same hour made me think: perhaps God just wants me to look into this a little bit.
But could it be true? Is the Apostle John as immortal as Chuck Norris or Rickroll Memes or reruns of Friends?
Well, I’ll tell you upfront: I don’t think it’s likely that the Apostle John is still alive. But I want to give it a fair hearing today on this podcast and take a look at why there’s a theory going around right now that he is.
And even if this isn’t one of the burning questions on your heart, I think if you bear with me for today’s lesson, you’ll learn a few things and make sense of a few verses with me that never made a whole lot of sense before.
For example, the verse that says: there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power.
That was something that Jesus said about his disciples. Now, obviously, those men were alive a couple thousand years ago, and we have still not entered the millennial Kingdom of Christ. So what did Jesus mean by saying that?
I find it to be weird, and I’d like to explore why it’s in the Bible.
Turn to John 21, and let’s get weird.
[theme music]

(Continued)
Welcome to Weird Stuff in the Bible, where we explore scripture passages that are bizarre, perplexing or just plain weird. This is Luke Taylor, and today we’re going to be talking about the theory that the Apostle John is still alive.
One of the listeners who requested this is Chris in Boston, Massachusetts. He said, “Could the Apostle John still be alive today?  Since we know that Enoch never died and that Elijah never died, is it possible that Jesus was speaking literally when he said “Assuredly I say to you that there are some standing here who will not taste death till they see the kingdom of God present with power." (Mark 9:1)?  And specifically about John in Jn 21:22, Jesus says, "If I will that he remain till I come, what is that to you?"  
Could the rumors among the disciples about John’s immortality have been based in reality?  A careful read of Jn 21 shows that John never actually denies this possibility.  On the contrary, one could say that he used repetition to emphasize what Jesus said.”
By the way, I’ll mention that Chris is part of a ministry up there doing great work in street evangelism. I exchanged a couple emails back and forth with him and checked out his ministry and I think he’s doing admirable work. It’s not the angry, offensive street offensive that some people do where they just scream at everybody going by and tell them they’re going to hell. It’s a more friendly, conversational approach. So I invite everyone to pause the podcast for a minute and say a prayer for Chris in what he is doing to build God’s Kingdom in Boston.
And thank you if you did that. Now let’s get into today’s lesson: why do some believe that there’s a possibility that John the Apostle is still alive?

What Happened to John in Tradition?
Well, the Gospel of John had a curious statement to Peter in the last chapter. This is right at the end of the Gospel, Jesus has risen from the dead, Jesus met the disciples on the shoreline and had breakfast with them. Peter has just been prophesied about his death, that he would someday die as a martyr. This is what happened next:
John 21:21-25
21 When Peter saw him [that is, John; Peter is asking Jesus about John], he said to Jesus, “Lord, what about this man?” 22 Jesus said to him, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me!” 23 So the saying spread abroad among the brothers that this disciple was not to die; yet Jesus did not say to him that he was not to die, but, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?”
24 This is the disciple who is bearing witness about these things, and who has written these things, and we know that his testimony is true.
25 Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.
Now, after this, John shows up again in some stories in the Book of Acts. The Day of Pentecost. The healing of a man by the gate called Beautiful. He’s with Peter in Samaria in Acts 8. And later on, John will of course write some more books of the New Testament: I, II and III John. And then John also gets to write the last book of the Bible, Revelation.
In that book, John is given a vision of future events: a tribulation period that takes place across planet earth, followed by the return of Christ, and then a one-thousand-year period of peace. BTW, I’m one of those freaky Christians who takes a lot of Revelation literally and not just symbolic. Like, when I read that there’s a False Prophet, I’m like: yeah, and he’s probably working for the Weather Channel.
When John received this information or vision that he used to write the book of Revelation, John had been exiled to the Isle of Patmos. According to historical records, before that they had tried to kill John by lowering him into boiling oil and making him drink poison, and John had been supernaturally protected from these things. We have records of all the other apostles dying; we have no record of John’s death. The tradition is that he died of old age on Patmos. And so, of course, it’s rather interesting that Jesus had made the comment: If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?
Again, Peter had just been told about his own death. Jesus had said to Peter, "when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.” According to historical data, Peter died on an upside down cross. So right after Peter was told, a bit cryptically, how he would die, Peter basically says, “But what about John?” And Jesus says, “Peter, if John stays alive until the day I come back, what is that to you? Let Peter worry about Peter and I’ll worry about John.”
And anyone out there who’s ever been a parent can connect with saying something like that to their kids.
Now, that non-answer answer from Jesus is a foundation for why some wonder if John ever actually died, or if John has some kind of immortality.

Other Reasons to Believe this Theory
But that’s not all. There’s also a verse spoken about the disciples in multiple Gospels, such as
Mark 9:1
“Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power.”
And Chris also shares these other ideas, which I’ll read from his email.
God told John, “Thou must prophesy again before many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings.”  Did that ever happen?  Why did most translators change “before” to “about”?
In the middle of the context of the great tribulation, why did John refer to himself as “your brother and companion in the tribulation”?
When Jesus in Mt24:34 said "this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place,” could this refer to the “generation” or life span of some with super-long lives, including but perhaps not limited to John?
So let’s take all of these questions one at a time. I think it’s worth doing that because some of these verses cause confusion for Bible readers just in general, so let’s pick them all apart real quick.

Counter
To start with, I understand why someone could hear Jesus’ words in John 21 and think, “Well perhaps John will just hang around until Jesus returns.” But even if that’s actually how the disciples would have taken it, that doesn’t mean their interpretation there would have been correct. Actually, it’s a little shocking that as you read the New Testament, everybody kind of expected that Jesus was going to be returning very very soon. Like, within their lifetimes. If Peter actually did think, hypothetically, that John would be alive until the coming of the Lord, that wouldn’t mean Peter thought John was immortal, because they expected Jesus to be coming back in their lifetimes. Peter probably never thought it would be at least 2,000 years.
Jesus was simply making this point: don’t focus on others. Follow Jesus yourself. Don’t play the comparison game. Don’t worry about what Jesus is doing in this other person’s life. You worry about you and your own walk with Jesus. That’s why Jesus said to Peter: You follow me.
That’s what Jesus said to me a few months ago as I was reading John 21. Just around that time, I had been comparing myself to other Christians, thinking “When so-and-so was my age, he had already done this and this and this, and here I am still trying to figure out why God has me on this earth.” And I was getting kind of down on myself, if I can just be transparent with you all for a minute, because I felt like I hadn’t accomplished as much at my age as I would have liked to. Especially in comparison to other Christian men; that’s what was really tripping me up.
And then I was reading John 21 and these words just left up off the page at me. God was speaking directly to me through this chapter and answering those thoughts that had been on my mind. He said, “Luke, don’t worry about what I’m doing in those other people’s lives. I’m writing their story and I’m writing a different story for you. You follow me. You don’t follow them; you follow me.”
And that shut all those thoughts down from right then, from that moment on. And that is the idea that Jesus is trying to communicate right here. Yes, Jesus leaves the door open right there to the possibility that John could be alive for how ever many thousands of years that it would take Jesus to return to earth. But I think that would be reading more into it than was intended.
——
But what about this other comment made in multiple gospels, where Jesus said to some of His disciples:
“Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power.”
Well, a lot of Christians puzzle over that verse, because it sounds like Jesus is saying that some of the disciples will remain on earth until the Millennial Kingdom of God is inaugurated on earth. And this fuels some of the ammillenial views that say we’re already in the Kingdom, that the events of the book of Revelation have current symbolic meaning and are not future or literal.
But, I take a different view of this verse. I think it’s actually very clear what Jesus was talking about when he said it, because every time it comes up in one of the Gospels, it takes place right in between two events. Right before it, it’s that famous scene where Jesus says to the disciples: “Who do you say that I am?” And Peter gets it right first that he says: “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” And then right after this, Jesus says there are some standing here who will not die before they see the Kingdom of God.
Then- right after Jesus says this- it always tells the same story right after: the Transfiguration. And there are three of those very disciples that Jesus was just speaking to who went to the Mount of Transfiguration: Peter, James and John.
So I take his comment as referring to that. If it is used as evidence that He was talking about the Second Coming of Christ right there, then it wouldn’t just be John who was left on this earth. It would be multiple disciples.
——
Then there’s a comment in Revelation 10:11, kind of right in the middle of the book of Revelation, where an angel says to John:
“You must again prophesy about many peoples and nations and languages and kings.”
Chris had asked about this, saying, “Did that ever happen? Why did most translators change “before” to “about”?
So I checked into this because almost every single Bible translation I can find says “about” instead of “before.” The King Jimmy was the only one I found that said “before.” The difference here is that if it says “before,” then it sounds like John has a job to go appear before other kings and leaders of the earth. But if it says “about,” then all it’s saying is that John’s job is not done in Revelation 10 and he still has some more chapters to write.
So I checked out the Greek, and this is a Greek word “epi” (ee-pee), and it is a preposition that can be translated into a large variety of words. Upon. On. At. Against. Over. And when it comes to words like that, the translators usually just have to study the context and determine which English word makes the most sense to translate it as. And this preposition is so common, it shows up more than 100 times just in Revelation alone. And I’m not a Greek scholar but it seems pretty likely to me that translating it as “about” is more accurate. I think, because of its placement here in Revelation, it makes the most sense to understand it as the angel saying, “Get up John, you aren’t done yet.”
——
There was the comment about how John referred to himself in Revelation as “your brother and companion in the tribulation”?
Well, let’s look at the context of this, because the book of Revelation is about the Great Tribulation, but not the entire book. The Book of Revelation is only about the tribulation in chapters 4 through 19. When John describes himself this way, it’s in
Revelation 1:9 where it says
I, John, your brother and partner in the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance that are in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.
So this is not in the context of talking about the Great Tribulation of a 3-and-a-half or 7-year period. This is talking about the general persecution that all believers at that time were facing. Every time the Bible uses the word “tribulation” doesn’t mean it’s talking about THE Tribulation. Just like the Bible talks about false prophets many times, but it doesn’t mean it’s talking about THE False Prophet. Not every False Prophet is THE False Prophet. There’s lots of false prophets out there. That’s where the Weather Channel finds all these people.
In Revelation 1, it’s just talking about the general tribulation that all Christians were facing as they lived in this Roman Empire that was trying to literally kill them. A good way to break up the book of Revelation is exactly how this exact chapter does.
Revelation 1:19 says
19 Write therefore the things that you have seen, those that are and those that are to take place after this.
Or I like how the King Jimmy says it:
Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter
So there are three categories of things the Book of Revelation says: those which were, those that are, and those that shall come after.
Chapter 1 is the things that were, chapters 2 and 3 are the things which are (meaning things that are going on right now, what some call the Church Age), and chapters 4 onwards are the things which shall come after. That’ll be the tribulation, the Second Coming of Christ, and the Millennium.
So this comment John makes about himself is in chapter 1, and this could only be referring just to the things that have taken place in John’s life up to that point; it’s not in the context of the Great Tribulation.
——
And then there was one more verse raised.
In Matthew 24:34, Jesus says
Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.
Matthew 24 is the Great Chapter known as the Olivet Discourse, which is Jesus’ teaching on the end times. He made this speech on the Mount of Olives, which is why some call it the Olivet Discourse. And I like to say that they asked Him about the future, so He told them “all of it.”
So some who have discussed this theory have thrown out the idea that maybe it could be referring to John himself here, and that his generation- if he was immortal- has lasted 2,000 years and counting.
I’ll disagree with that, because generation would have to mean something differently here than what it means anywhere else in Scripture. Let’s start by reading all of this in-context.
Matthew 24:32-34
32 “From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts out its leaves, you know that summer is near. 33 So also, when you see all these things, you know that he is near, at the very gates. 34 Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.
So Jesus is here speaking on the end times, and He uses the fig tree as an example to say that when you start to see these things taking place, that a generation will not pass before it all has taken place.
Some have taken the fig tree mentioned right here as referring to the Nation of Israel being reborn its original land, and so they say that from 1948, not a generation will pass away before Jesus comes back. And this is why it used to be popular to say that Jesus will return before 1988, because they said a biblical generation was 40 years, and so 40 years after 1948 would be 1988.
Well, when that didn’t work out, they said a generation was 70 years, and the next deadline was set for 2018. So this just hasn’t been working out.
So where was the communication breakdown? I don’t believe the fig tree is referring to Israel. I believe it was just using the fig tree as a metaphor for the end times itself. Jesus said that when you see these things taking place, what things is He talking about. (What things “are” He talking about? That doesn’t sound right either. What things “is” He talking about? What things “are” He talking about? It doesn’t sound right either way, I need a grammar nerd to help me out here.)
The things that Jesus is or are talking about are the antichrist showing up, the abomination of desolation, people flee to the mountains. When all that is going on, Jesus said, the end of the world is very very very very near.
So I don’t think it’s talking about Israel being reestablished as a nation there, although I do believe that’s a prerequisite for the end times. And I don’t think it’s talking about John when it says “this generation,” because Jesus wasn’t speaking of the generation that was alive 2000 years ago. He was speaking of the generation who would see the moon turn to blood and the other horrors of the Great Tribulation.

Closing Thoughts
So, thank you to those who sent me this theory to pick apart today on the show. Even though I don’t really go along with that theory, I just thought it opened up a great opportunity to talk about some of these prophecy topics.
Next time, we’ll be in a different prophecy topic, but not about future end-times prophecy. We’ll talk about the concept of being a false prophet, and we’ll do that through the lens of a very very confusing story in I Kings 13 with an old prophet and a young prophet. A loyal listener named Alana sent in a question about that chapter, it’s one of the oddest chapters in the Bible, and I can’t wait to take an opportunity to dive into that with you all.
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What weird stuff in the Bible do you want to know more about? weirdstuffinthebible@gmail.com
I’m in a series at the moment where I’m doing listener submitted questions, but I’ve only got another month’s worth before I start into something else, so if you have a question you’d like answered, send it my way.
So in conclusion, I don’t think the theory that the apostle John is alive has a lot of biblical strength. All of the passages that support this idea seem to have alternative explanations that make more sense in-context.
Now, could there be secondary applications of verses and perhaps could these all be hints that John is alive and I’m just missing it? Perhaps. Maybe I’ll get to heaven someday and I’ll be like, “Hey, where’s John?” And they’ll say, “Well duh, he’s as immortal, he’s still back down there.”
Now, if someone told me that Christopher Lloyd was the apostle John, I would probably believe them. Because Christopher Lloyd looked old when I was a kid. If you go back and look at Christopher Lloyd in Back to the Future, he was an old man all the way back then. That was over 30 years ago. Actually, that’s going on 40 years ago! And yet he’s still alive and kicking.
So if you told me that Christopher Lloyd was actually immortal, I would probably believe it.
I mean, think about it guys. If he was THAT OLD when he played Doc Brown… maybe he actually is a time traveler.
And if that sounds weird, well, there’s weirder stuff than that in the Bible. Thanks for listening, God bless you for sticking around until the end, and we’ll see you next time.