Until which “coming” would Apostle John live?

Beyond the “Second Coming”

 

Part Two:

Until which “coming” would Apostle John live?

 

 

by

 

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

 

^“Peter turned and saw that the disciple whom Jesus loved was following them.

(This was the one who had leaned back against Jesus at the supper and had said,

‘Lord, who is going to betray you?’)

When Peter saw him, he asked, ‘Lord, what about him?’

Jesus answered, ‘If I want him to remain alive until I return,

what is that to you? You must follow me’.”

 

John 21:20-22

 

 

 

 

The Apostles of Jesus Christ were the types who were never going ‘to die wondering’.

Philip, for instance (John 14:8): ‘Master, show us the Father; then we shall be content’.

And Thomas (20:25): ‘Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe’.

Now Peter: ‘Lord, what about him [John]?’

 

Jesus often met such questions with a mild rebuke.

In the case of Philip (John 14:9-11):

 

‘Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works. Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me, or else believe Me for the sake of the works themselves’.

 

In the case of ‘Doubting Thomas’ (20:27): ‘Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe’.

In the case of Peter: ‘What is that to you?’, etc.

 

But there may now arise a modern question: If, as most Christians seem to believe, Jesus has not yet come as He spoke of to his disciples - {and as they (e.g. Sts. John, Paul) wrote of with phrases like “soon”, or even “very soon”} - in what Christians term (wrongly, I think) the “second coming”, then how is it that the risen Jesus can say that He wanted John ‘to remain alive until I return’?

This statement, by the way, is perfectly in accord with what the pre-Resurrection Jesus had told his followers (Matthew 16:28): ‘Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom’.

Apparently, while Peter was not going to be one of these, John was.

Had Jesus Christ, who had risen from the dead by his own power, by the power of his Father (John 10:17-18): ‘The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father’, all of a sudden, despite his now being in a higher (transformed) state of being, become confused about when He would actually come again?

No, the fact is that there was a “coming” before the final coming, as I estimated in Part One: https://www.academia.edu/29837194/Beyond_the_Second_Coming_ thus:

 

As the Americans say, Let’s do the math.

 

First: “In the Gospel the Lord shows us that His first coming was in humility, as a Servant, to free the world from sin”. http://www.ewtn.com.au/devotionals/mercy/coming.htm

 

Second: His soon-to-take-place “coming” as gleaned from the quotes above, follows that one. And it is this particular “coming” that I would designate the “Second Coming”.

 

Last: There is yet to be a Final Coming, as indicated by the Catechism: “God's triumph over the revolt of evil will take the form of the last judgment after the final cosmic upheaval of this passing world” (No. 667). The Last Judgment.

 

Peter’s lifetime approximated to only the First of these.

John would live on until the Second.

We still await the Final coming of Jesus Christ.

When China Massacred Its Own People

David Turnley / Getty Images

Killed demonstrators are gathered in a makeshift morgue on June 4, 1989.

By Nicholas Kristof

Opinion Columnist

• June 1, 2019

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Thirty years ago in the spring of 1989, as the world’s most populous country teetered on the edge of freedom, I received a late-night phone call in my apartment in Beijing: The Chinese Army was invading its own capital.

Students and workers had made roads impassable by setting up barricades to block the army, so I jumped on my bicycle and pedaled furiously toward the gunfire. I reached Tiananmen Square shortly before the army, and then I watched as soldiers fired their automatic weapons directly at the crowd that I was in.

I was then the Beijing bureau chief of The Times, and I ran around that evening, the notebook clutched in my hand stained with the sweat of fear, to document horrors that remain seared into my memory. You never forget watching young people, some of the nation’s best and brightest, full of passion and idealism, stand up to machine guns — and then in an instant crumple bloody and lifeless on the ground.

Until that evening, millions of Chinese had marched freely for seven weeks in hundreds of cities across the country, denouncing corruption and seeking greater democracy. Sculptors had created a huge “Goddess of Democracy,” a Chinese version of the Statue of Liberty. Hope filled the air.

Then came the soldiers, firing not only on the crowds but even on families watching in horror from balconies. Troops fired at ambulances rescuing the wounded. Winter fell on China, and in political terms it hasn’t left.

It is indisputably true that China has dazzled economically, and critics like me should be humbled that life expectancy is today longer in Beijing (82 years) than in Washington, D.C. (77 years). The 10 percent most disadvantaged Shanghai 15-year-olds score better in math than the 10 percent most privileged 15-year-olds in America.


China is not like the old Soviet Union, which both impoverished and repressed people. Rather, China has saved lives, built universities at a rate of one a week and lifted more people out of poverty than any other country in human history — but it is deeply human, as one protester put it in 1989, to seek not just rice but also rights.

My memories of the massacre in Beijing are not only of government savagery but also of unparalleled courage on the part of the most humble citizens. I will never forget the rickshaw drivers, for whenever there was a pause in the gunfire, they would pedal their three-wheeled bicycle carts out toward the troops to pick up the wounded and rush them to the nearest hospital.

I particularly recall one burly rickshaw driver. He had a couple of bleeding people on the back of his cart and was pedaling furiously, his legs straining. He saw me and swerved toward me so that I could bear witness to his government’s brutality. As he passed, he pleaded with me: Tell the world!




https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/01/opinion/sunday/tiananmen-square-protest.html