Man of the Ages
Jesus said to him, “If I will that he tarries till I come, what is that to you? - John 21:22

I Remember our conversation almost as if it had taken place yesterday - instead of ages. Jesus had wandered off into an isolated spot to pray and I had followed Him. We sat together without speaking for quite a while. So many things were going through my mind.
    He had told us that He was about to be arrested and killed. At the time we didn’t understand why. I loved Him dearly. He had become my closest friend. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing Him. Finally, I broke the silence.
     “Isn’t there some other way?”
     “I have asked that question myself,” He answered. “There is none.”
     He had told us that He would rise again from the dead and come back in glory. I struggled to believe this. I had seen Him do so many miracles, why did I doubt? I had a whisper of a thought. It crept into my mind at that moment and I didn’t know if I should speak it. It was so preposterous, and yet, this thought, I knew was born out of my innermost longing to see all of this through to the end. I tried to picture His glorious return. I desired to see the end of history, the culmination, the final fulfillment of the end of days. I wanted to see how the world would react when it finally beheld the Truth descending. I wanted to know what the world would be like then.
     I thought I would mention it as a philosophical thought just to see how He would respond to it. Before I had a chance to assemble my words into the first sentence, He turned to me and said, “You must be prepared to endure a great weariness.”
     I did not understand what He meant. Then some of the others found us, Peter asked a question and my thought remained hovering in the wind.
     Shortly afterward we followed Him to Jerusalem. Then things progressed very quickly. He was arrested. There was a trial of sorts and He was condemned. They beat Him brutally. The Romans, you see, considered it an act of mercy. If He bled heavily before He was crucified it would hasten His death. A strange mercy, isn’t it?
     I watched as the soldiers nailed Him to a cross. I still remember the agony I felt in my soul as I watched Him die. Everything He had spoken to us about eternity was forgotten at that moment. Whatever faith we possessed was impaled with Him, carried to a tomb and forgotten. Then faith was suddenly, unexpectedly revived. I remember staring with Peter into an empty tomb. We struggled to believe. When we finally saw Him alive for the first time after we had watched Him die so horribly we thought we were beholding an apparition. But a ghost can’t be touched. I threw my arms around His neck and cried.
     He appeared to us several times. During one of those occasions He prophesied to Peter of the death he was to die to glorify God. Then Peter pointed to me and asked, “What about this man?”
     Jesus answered, “If I will that he tarries until I come, what is that to you?”
     The other disciples immediately assumed that I was not going to suffer a physical death. I was quick to dispel any such notion. Jesus was merely saying to Peter that whatever concerned me wasn’t really any of his business. At least that’s what I thought at the time.
     Then the years began their progression. I lived through the early persecutions. They did try to kill me. I was thrown into a vat of boiling oil and I was supernaturally lifted out unscathed. My adversaries were terrified. It was one of the most triumphant moments of my life.
     They didn’t know what to do with me. I was eventually sentenced to Patmos, a prison island. They assumed I would die there. I didn’t.
     During the year I was in that place, I received many prophetic revelations. I know now that my time on Patmos was for that purpose. The isolation I experienced there, the time alone in intimate communion with God, was necessary to sharpen my spiritual eyes and ears so I could see and hear into the heavenly realm. At the time, I thought the visions I was receiving were the answers to my unspoken request. I was shown many things that were to happen in the future, including the Lord’s return, although many of the events I was shown were beyond my understanding. Prophecy, you see, really can’t be understood completely until it is fulfilled. Most often we are given shadows. I believe that it is more important to understand the principle behind what is being shown to us, the teaching. This will serve us through any generation.
     Anyway, I survived my year in quiet solitude, yet I was never alone. The Divine Presence had never left me. During this time, the church continued to endure severe persecution. I was eventually transported back to the mainland. It was during this transition that I regained my freedom. Somehow in the political shuffle I was dislodged. I have no doubt that Divine Intervention was employed on my behalf. I had been misplaced and the predators who knew of my existence became distracted long enough for me to dissolve back into the populace.
     I retired to a small house and continued to teach and disciple many. Years passed. Many things had changed - except me. I had not aged one day. All of the other original disciples had been martyred. I was left alive and I was grateful. I was very happy to continue working on behalf of the Gospel. It was still too early for me to comprehend the full scope of what was happening to me. You see I still did not fully realize that I had been given the answer to a question I had never asked. It was merely a thought left hovering in the wind long enough for the Son of God to notice and read.
     “You must be prepared to endure a great weariness.”
     To this day, the words He spoke still ring their prophetic reality into my soul.
     It was eventually circulated among the churches that I had died at an extremely old age. This was an assumption. I had merely packed my bags and left on a journey from which I did not return. I had to leave before anyone discovered my secret. It had taken me quite a long time before I discovered it myself.
     He had willed that I would tarry until He came.
     In the beginning, I thought I would not have to wait to see His return that much longer. He had said He would come quickly. But I had forgotten that to the Lord, one thousand years were as one day.
     I watched the days go by, year after year, after endless year.
     One thing I always wondered about - why did He freeze my face in this particular format? He waited until I was in my fifties before the aging process stopped for me. I was left with graying hair - a thinning silver forest, and just enough wrinkles to give my face some character I suppose. I assumed that He wanted me to look as wise as I sometimes spoke. I would have preferred a more youthful appearance, considering that I was going to have to live with it for so long. So I sigh and submit, not my will, but Thine be done.
     So now you have been made privy to my secret. You must be wondering, “How incredible! This man is two thousand years old!” And I never bought a dime’s worth of insurance. How could I explain to them why I wasn’t going to need it?
     I watched history pass before me like a cloud. If I had written it all down, it would have been the world’s largest history book. No one would have had the time to read it except me. So I didn’t bother.
     Have any of you ever wondered why so many years passed before the Gospels were actually written? I think I know. Our accounts were not burdened by a lot of unnecessary details. They were sifted by time, leaving us the things that were the most important; the messages and events that were all we really needed to know.
     So it is with my long life. As I sit here remembering, I look back over the landscape of my past, I see only the mountains, the peaks that are to remain most noticeable. For these are the things that we really need to remember, children.
     I have endured a great weariness.
     There were times I cried out in agony begging to die. I have witnessed more bloodshed, pain and suffering than any human being on the face of this earth. And to my greatest grief, I have seen that much of it was inflicted in the name of “religion”.
     At times when I have been at my weakest spiritually, I have cried out to the Lord, “Why? Why does it have to be this way?” And on one of those occasions I heard His Still Small Voice whisper -
     “Are you more righteous than I?”
     Then He graciously led me back to the time when I stood beside Him at the door of Lazarus’ tomb. I watched Him weep as if His heart was breaking.
     It was then that I realized that He suffers with us. There is not one agony endured in this life that He does not feel Himself. He was willing from the beginning of creation to share our self-inflicted wounds and bare them on His cross. His powerful voice shouts our names and His life resurrects our lives out of the ashes of this world’s misery. Thus we can endure because there is hope, little children. Thus I endured.
     Considering that question “Why” - I have held it in my hands and studied it many times. It glimmered in my grasp like a jewel. And in its facets I realized that this world exists for you, dear brethren. Out of all the chaos and pain, this creation has birthed God’s chosen. God has been panning for gold throughout the ages. He has been sifting for His remnant like a prospector sifts sand through his sieve to discover the real treasure. He has made this earth to be your womb and heaven is your destination. You are His reward as much as He is yours.
     This sifting process is what I have witnessed, and I have at last, come to understand it. The world belongs to the devil and his cruelty, but you belong to God.I am talking to you, His chosen few, you who have hid yourselves in Christ.
     The antichrist has many faces and by now I have seen them all, though there may be at least a few more before this war is over.
     For the most part, he dresses well, mostly in religious garb. He is comfortable in a pulpit proclaiming himself as god, eager to strip Christ of His deity. He does this subtly at first, by shifting the emphasis of his teaching away from the simple purity of God’s word to his own humanistic interpretations. He is a master of the art of tickling ears. And those who want their ears tickled are eager to follow him. He is the world's first liberal theologian who countered God's simple command, "Don't eat of this fruit or you will die," by insisting to Eve that God didn't really mean what He said.
     I have met him on numerous occasions and he has never been able to conceal himself before me. I have always been allowed to see the serpent wrapped around his being. And I have experienced his hatred. He despises those who walk humbly with their God. He knows that the disbelief he injects into his victims has no effect upon God’s remnant. So he has no other option but to seek for our destruction. He can try to do this in a multitude of ways. The demons he employs always carry with them a black suitcase filled with lusts, love of the world, the lust of the eyes, the flesh and the pride of life. When this suitcase is opened in our presence, God is watching to see how hard we resist. The sifting begins and we struggle to stand. We cry out, “Abba, Father!”
     I heard Jesus cry this in Gethsemene. I had been dozing. His voice awakened me. He was in agony. I wanted to get up and comfort him, but I didn’t. I was a young man then, and at the time I didn’t know how. And somehow I knew this was something that had to be done between just Him and His Father.
     He sweat blood in prayer to gain the strength to do what He didn’t want to do. Little did I know that I would sweat blood for Him in prayer, time and time again, to keep from doing what I wanted to do.
     So the antichrist comes with his own bag of temptations, this bag of his labeled, “Compromise”. The religious jargon he speaks sounds so good to those who are not willing to shed a little blood. They are more than willing to travel the easy road he promises. I have said that those who belong to God practice righteousness. The one who practices sin is of the devil. One who belongs to God may become wounded in battle and through repentance be healed - but he is still in the battle. Those who belong to God cannot deliberately, continually, willfully practice sin - because they love Him.
     Although the world around them may be sifting they are the gold that will stand.
     As I look across the landscape now, I see only one mountain that is outstanding. It is glorious to behold in its simplicity. It is a barren mountain except for one cluster of trees growing upon its summit. The trees are all evergreens, growing together, unified in purpose. From the distance I can see that they are forming a cross. And in this remnant forest the trees are sheltering the poor, the needy, the neglected, the handicapped, the lonely, the suffering, the abused of mankind - all who are humble enough to seek shelter beneath their branches.
     I have never seen such a beautiful mountain. It is all I choose to remember from all the years I have witnessed.
     There is a knock on my door. Someone has just informed me that our service is about to begin and I must be going. I am a pastor now in a small country church somewhere in the United States. I’m not going to tell you exactly where. You’d think with all of my experience I would have a large church, possibly a television show, written hundreds of books. (Actually, there is only One Book I’ve contributed to, and I must say I am very pleased with its circulation). No, that was not God’s will for me. It was His will for me to be faithful with a little, for in His eyes it is so much.
     I do want to encourage you, children. Our precious Lord is coming soon. And as promised, I shall see that day. How do I know after all this time that His coming is imminent? My dear ones, for the first time in two thousand years I am beginning to age! Isn’t that wonderful? My hairline is rapidly receding. I’m gaining new wrinkles almost every day! It’s been so difficult for me to contain my joy in all of this. My brethren are beginning to think I’m a little strange - senile maybe? I do have to practice some restraint, but there are times when I’ll look into a mirror and just burst out laughing!
     So, I will leave you now with this - out of two thousand years of observing history and religion, there is only one mountain in the landscape, children. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, and again and again…Love one another.
     Sincerely,
     Your brother, John

copyright 1996 by H.D. Shively