John 21:22

If. will that he tarry till. come.

Observe

1. that each one must work in the place where the Lord wills; " If. will. "

2. that as Peter's duty was restless activity in following Christ, it is indicated that John's work in part at least, is calm, trustful and patient waiting; tarry till. come.

These words of the Savior here give rise to much discussion. It has been held

1. That they have no special signification but to rebuke Peter and to assure him that John's future was the Lord's business, not his. Such. view is disproved by the deep significance that always inheres in the Savior's words.

2. That these words refer to. second coming at the destruction of Jerusalem. But all the weight of authority is to the end that John wrote his Gospel after the fall of Jerusalem; yet his language in the next verse shows that, while he pondered the Savior's words, he did not understand their meaning. The prophecy was, therefore, yet unfulfilled, as far as he was concerned.

3. That the coming referred to was death. That would deprive the Savior's words of any significance whatever, as they would be as true of every man as of John.

4. That they refer to the promised second coming of Christ, and that John did not die. natural death. Even Godet suggests that the primitive epoch of humanity had its Enoch; the theocratic epoch its Elijah and that the Christian epoch may have had its John who was translated without seeing death. In the face of the fact that the grave of John was pointed out at Ephesus until the chaos of Mahometan invasion swept over the East, such. view is absurd.

Discarding all these hypotheses as inadequate,. may be allowed to express my surprise that the commentators have not perceived that John did literally tarry until the Savior came, until he saw him, heard him speak, and recorded the last revelation of the Lord to the world. About sixty years from the time that Christ spoke these words, according to the testimony of the early Church, the aged John was an exile in, Patmos. There, upon the Lord's day, he "heard. great voice," and turning, he says, "I saw one like the Son of Man" blazing with such glory that he fell, "fell at his feet as dead, and then he laid his right hand on me, saying to me, Fear not." Then follow the Seven Letters to the Church dictated to John by our Lord, and the sublime prophecies of Revelation. It is, therefore,. historical fact that John did "tarry" on the earth long after the other apostles were wearing crowns of martyrdom, and until the Lord came to him visibly to make the last inspired revelation of his will to man. This view, which is the only one in which the Savior's words and the historical facts are in exact harmony, incidently shows that Revelation was not written when John penned this chapter. Had that been the case he would not have been at loss to understand just what the Savior's words could mean, but would have referred at once to the wonderful "coming" he witnessed on Patmos. All the testimony of the ancient Church agrees that Revelation was the last book of the Bible written, but. class of modern expositors, solely in the interest of. preconceived interpretation, have dated its composition before the fall of Jerusalem.