John was the youngest apostle and the only one to live to old age becoming the oldest living apostle in the Bible. History records that the Roman emperor Domitian sent John to a fate of being boiled in oil among other attempt, but he would not die. Like the prophet Daniel who survived the flaming furnace and the lion’s den, both men had to important a task in that they should report the prophecies of the end of the world. These two men could no die until that task was accomplished; an indicator of the critical importance or the message. The empower banished John to the isle of Patmos , where Rome sent their political prisoners. There he could not speak to the multitudes about Jesus, but he would be given a message that he would record and would reach many more than he could have ever relayed to outside of Patmos. It should be noted that It is in John’s epistles that he make the one reference to the Antichrist, and no where else in the Bible is the Antichrist mentioned by that name.
Of all of the apostles did Jesus choose John to write the Revelation prophecy?
The Bible tells us in Revelation 1:2 that it was given to John “who bore witness to the word of God, and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, to all things that he saw.” John was the apostle James younger brother.. They were referred to as the sons of Zebedee who was a fisherman who had a fishing business. They worked with their father. When Jesus walked by and saw them and called to them, they immediately left the boat, and their father and the fishing business they would most likely inherit from him behind. Their mother was Salome Mary’s sister. They were Jesus’s cousins. Their mother was Salome. James and John were disciples of John the Baptist, their second cousin. They were the first apostles Jesus called. Jesus referred to them as Boanerges translated sons of thunder for their fiery zeal. When a Samaritan town would not receive Jesus or his messengers, James and John asked Jesus “Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them, just a Elijah did?” Jesus told them that the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them (Luke 9:54-55).
Peter James and John were the only witnesses of the raising of the daughter of Jarius, All three also witnessed the transfiguration, where Jesus appeared on the mount talking to Moses and Elijah in a brightest of white light. Jesus sent John and Peter into the city to make preparation for the final Passover meal.-the last supper. Jesus took John, Peter and James and asked them to watch for Him as He went further and prayed in agony so much so that his sweat appeared as drops of blood, prior to His arrest. After the arrest of Jesus, Peter and John followed him into the palace of the high-priest.
John alone among the Apostles remained near Jesus at the foot of the cross alongside myrrh bearers and numerous other women; following the instruction of Jesus from the Cross, John took Mary, Jesus’s mother into his care and Mary took John as her own son. After Pentecost, John along with Peter, took a prominent part in founding and guiding the church. He is with Peter at the healing of the lame man in the Temple. He and Peter are also thrown into prison. He is also with Peter visiting the newly converted in Samara. John survived longer than James by more than half a century after James became the first Apostle to die a martyr’s death. When John was released from exile, he returned to Ephesus and lived till the time of the Roman emperor Trajan.
John wrote one of the gospels and three of the epistles and the book of Revelation. Although John does not mention himself by name in his own gospel, he refers to himself four times as “the disciple Jesus loved.” He is pictured as the Apostle who leaned on Jesus, and his kindness and gentle spirit emanate from his gospel and epistles. He is the love Apostle who spoke more of God’s love than any other. In 1 John 4:8 he stated, “God is love.” This brings us to why I believe God used him of all of the Apostles to write the Revelation.
The Revelation is about God’s judgment onto the earth and who does He give the vision to but the apostle who made known to the world God’s love and spoke often of it who best to reveal the message of God’s judgment than the apostle who knew God’s love and understood that in them are no contradiction. John states in 1 John 5:2-3:
By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome.
It is in not keeping the commandments and the first especially, and the resulting idolatry and rejection of the Lord Jesus Christ that brings us to the perilous, idolatrous days that usher in the Revelation.
It should also be noted that in John’s gospel is the only place as Jesus was dying that John records Jesus stating It is Finished marking what the prophets forecast years before, it had now come to fruition and Jesus’s death and resurrection ushered in a new dispensation. In the same way John records in Revelation 16:17:
Then the seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air, and a loud voice came out of the temple, of heaven, from the throne saying, It is done. And there were noises and thundering and lightnings and there was a great earthquake, such a mighty and great earthquake as had not occurred since men were on the earth.
Down in verse 20 it tells us that every island fled away and the mountains were not found. When Jesus died on the cross, there was an earthquake, rocks split, the veil of the temple was torn in two and although he died at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, the sun darkened for three hours, when he returns the earthquake will obliterate the earth and the moon will turn to blood and the skies rolled up as a scroll.
The IT IS FINISHED and IT IS DONE statements marking the end of the law, the resurrection, the start of the age of grace and its end, are given to John whom Jesus loved and as God would use Him to record the life and resurrection of Jesus, he would now record the vision of His return. As he spoke in the epistles of the importance of keeping the commands of God, he would now be God’s prophet to reveal the Revelation prophecy of what is in store for those who do not keep those commands or trust in His Son for eternal life.