(AN: Here our secondary protagonist makes his third act appearance and his part of the story commences, along with a lengthy, and very sad, jump through time. Enjoy, if that is possible for this chapter)
John's Lament
But I tell you that there are some here who will not taste death until they have seen the Son of Man coming in His Kingdom.
In the beginning, these words had given John Bar-Zebedee courage and hope beyond measure. That time on the shores of the Lake of Galilee, it became common belief that Jesus had told him that he would not die, that he would endure until He returned. That seemed to be in concert with the statement that Jesus Himself had said. It gave John hope that, no matter what woe may betide them, God and His Son were always with them.
Over time, it soon became evident that their Great Commission was not going to be an easy task, as that one time on the Shavuot had led them to believe: in short, it was a matter of life and death. Stephen, one of the Seven Servants - the deacons - was the first one to die for the faith of Jesus. The next blow that came to the followers of the Way was the hardest one of all: John's own brother James had been cut down, slain by the edge of the sword and his head cut off from his body. He wept when he heard the news in Antioch, and prayed for his father and his mother. They would endure this the hardest, though he would endure this tragic news as hard as they would, if not harder.
The years passed, and while Peter, Andrew, the ex-rabbi Paul and many others received the Spirit of Holiness and began preaching, John had only one commission: watch after Jesus' mother. They went to Ephesus, he and Maryam the Elder, along with Maryam of Magdala, and there lived out their lives in relative peace, entertaining all the believers of the Way: kristianos they were called.
But even in Ephesus, tragedy was not far behind them. He watched as Maryam, whom he had grown to love as though she were his mother indeed, slowly grew older and weaker, finally entering that age of extreme dotage when it is futile to deny that one is advanced in age and ready to die. At last there came a day when she was too old and feeble to even rise from her bed. The end was inevitable. Friends and fellow believers gathered to pay their wishes of good health and be there for her in her last hours. But he, John, was there to the very end, with the well-aged Maryam of Magdala at his side, as the old woman finally breathed her last, praising God and longing to see her Son's face again.
John assumed that, after that commission was completed, he would at last be able to join the others in their Great Commission, perhaps earning for himself the worthy end of a martyr like that of his brother. However, the Spirit, which called all the rest of the Twelve, including young John Mark and worthy Barnabas, to worthy causes in the name of Jesus the Christ, continued to remain silent regarding himself. Even Maryam of Magdala, eventually, found a worthy death. Over the years, she told him that she lived in constant fear of the pagan gods, through whom the demons which had plagued her had worked: only the power of Jesus, which had saved her, gave her victory over them. But in the end, her zeal brought about her death as the blood-thirsty pagans, worshipers of Artemis, tore her to pieces for desecrating a statue of the goddess.
Year after year, tragedy seemed to only grow greater and greater. In the wake of the Great Fire of Rome, Peter and Paul were put to death: the one by inverse crucifixion - a cruelty of the Romans who performed the act - and the other by beheading, roughly on the same day. One by one, reports began to pour in that the others had met similar fates. Even Thomas, the great doubter, found the courage to spread the gospel to the farthest corners of Alexander's empire, only to be stabbed in the back (literally) by the Hindu priests. One by one the others were slowly killed off, making it seem as though the whole world were out to kill them all and so snuff out the light of the gospel: until only he himself remained, it seemed, of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus and of those who had seen Him face to face and spoken with Him and heard His words with his own ears.
Then the greatest tragedy of all took place. All across the world, the voices of Israel were lifted up in lament as they heard the terrible news of the fall of Jerusalem. Tensions between the Empire and Israel reached the breaking point two years after the death of Peter and Paul and a rebellion started. Four years later, General Titus, who later became Emperor of Rome, brought the full might of the Roman army to bear down upon Jerusalem, leveling it to the ground: over a million people were killed in the siege. The words of Jesus came to John's mind, that not a single brick of the Temple would remain that wouldn't be thrown down.
As if to further prove the terrible truths of the prophecies of old, the last of the rebels defended themselves against Rome's legions in the fortress of Masada. After only two more years, everyone in the fortress killed themselves rather than be captured by Rome. Many gray-beards, both of the people of Israel and of the Christians, saw this as a fulfillment of that which Moses warned the Children of Israel: Rome was the nation of fierce countenance, swift as the eagles, who besieged the cities, broke down the walls and killed over one million people, showing favor neither to the young or old.
In Ephesus he remained, the object only of a few visiting believers, a relic frequented by those who longed to see and hear one who had stood in the presence of the Son of God. A pallor of darkness gathered above his countenance day after day, sapping his will and weakening his faith. The children of Israel were scattered, even greater than they had been in the days of the captivity of Babylon: the Christians were vagabonds, fugitives, more accursed among the children of men than the murder Cain. Even among their own people, division was rife. Many began to take after their own beliefs, adopting customs too near to those of their pagan neighbors and labeling them 'Christian' days of worship, as well as things that did not sit with what John had been revealed from Christ.
So John waited, longing for the time when the Son of Man would come again. Many theories began to circulate, with variying degrees of truth in them, though many agreed with the Roman Christians that the time of the end was near, for the Man of Sin had already revealed himself in the person of Nero. Yes, he had exalted and opposed himself over all that was God or worshiped, and in the end, he killed himself. Thirty years passed after Nero's death, and the world seemed to go on as it had before.
And so John waited. Over sixty years had passed since Jesus had ascended to Heaven, and John's faith was weakening. All he had loved were either dead or gone beyond human reckoning, Jerusalem the Holy City now lay in the earth, nothing but ashes and dust, the once-Chosen people now scattered across the four corners of the earth, the world was always one step behind them, ready to destroy and torture him in the most cruel and hideous ways imaginable by the godless hearts of mankind, and even the faithful were losing their way.
"When, LORD?" John cried, lifting longing eyes and aged head once more to the sky of a dark and dreary world. "How long shall it be until Your coming?"
Now the words of Jesus seemed like a condemnation to the worst possible punishment: burning in Gehenna was nothing compared to living forever, watching all the ones he had loved die and all that he had worked towards in the church come to vanity, vexation and folly. He bowed his head, covered in his hands, weeping openly: manhood be damned! He was old and weary of life, and everything and everyone he had loved were now dead. Surely the old, being strong for so long, may be permitted moments of weakness, where their strength and long reserve is too stretched and spent to continue?
Suddenly, there came, like the still small voice that appeared to Elijah in the cave at Mount Sinai, the answer. After so many years in silence and solitude, the voice of the angel was like the blessed light of the sun shining out of the dark clouds of eternal night. It only gave him one command:
Speak and be not silent.
(AN: Some say that the Apostle John was not the same person as the author of the book of Revelation. However, the words of Christ must be true, that which said that some of the Twelve would not taste death until they had seen the coming of the Son of Man. If, therefore, the words of Christ are true, then John Bar-Zebedee is the author of Revelation. That will be canon in my story.)