Domitian governed the Empire fifteen years, but his persecution of the Christians appears to have been limited to the latter part of his reign.  About this time the Apostle John, “for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ,” [171:1] was sent as an exile into Patmos, a small rocky island in the Aegaean Sea not far from the coast of Asia Minor.  It is said that he had previously issued unhurt from a cauldron of boiling oil into which he had been plunged in Rome by order of the Emperor; but this story, for which a writer who flourished about a century afterwards is the earliest voucher, [171:2] has been challenged as of doubtful authority. [171:3] We have no means of ascertaining the length of time during which he remained in banishment; [171:4] and all we know of this portion of his life is, that he had now those sublime and mysterious visions to be found in the Apocalypse.  After the fall of Jerusalem, as well as after he was permitted to leave Patmos, he appears to have resided chiefly in the metropolis of the Proconsular Asia; and hence some ancient writers, who flourished after the establishment of the episcopal system, have designated him the “Bishop of Ephesus.” [172:1] But the apostle, when advanced in life, chose to be known simply by the title of “the elder;” [172:2] and though he was certainly by far the most influential minister of the district where he sojourned, there is every reason to believe that he admitted his brethren to a share in the government of the Christian community.  Like Peter and Paul before him, he acknowledged the other elders as his “fellow-presbyters,” [172:3] and, as became his age and apostolic character, he doubtless exhorted them to take heed unto themselves and to all the flock over the which the Holy Ghost had made them overseers. [172:4]

John seems to have been the last survivor of the apostles.  He is said to have reached the advanced age of one hundred years, and to have died about the close of the first century.  He was a “Son of Thunder,” [172:5] and he appears to have long maintained the reputation of a powerful and impressive preacher; but when his strength began to give way beneath the pressure of increasing infirmities, he ceased to deliver lengthened addresses.  When he appeared before the congregation in extreme old age, he is reported to have simply repeated the exhortation “Children, love one another;” and when asked, why he always confined himself to the same brief admonition, he replied that “no more was necessary.” [172:6] Such a narrative is certainly quite in harmony with the character of the beloved disciple, for he knew that love is the “bond of perfectness” and “the fulfilling of the law.”