ighteous dead and reign with them on
earth. Now, the first Christians clung to the Jewish creed and
expectations, with such modifications merely as the variation of
the actual Jesus and his deeds from the theoretical Messiah and
his anticipated achievements compelled. Then, when Christ having
been received as the bringer of glad tidings from the Father died,
and after three days rose from the dead and ascended to God,
promising his brethren that where he was they should come, must
they not have regarded it all as a dramatic exemplification of the
fact that the region of death was no longer a hopeless dungeon,
since one mighty enough to solve its chains and burst its gates
had returned from it? must they not have considered him as a
pledge that their sins were forgiven, their doom reversed, and
heaven attainable?

John, in common with all the first Christians, evidently expected
that the second advent of the Lord would soon take place, to
consummate the objects he had left unfinished, to raise the dead
and judge them, justifying the worthy and condemning the unworthy.
There was a well known Jewish tradition that the appearance of
Antichrist would immediately precede the triumphant coming of the
Messiah. John says, "Even now are there many Antichrists: thereby
we know that it is the last hour."37 "Abide in him, that, when he
shall appear, we may not be ashamed before him at his coming."
"That we may have boldness in the day of judgment." The
evangelist's outlook for the return of the Savior is also shown at
the end of his Gospel. "Jesus said not unto him, 'He shall not
die;' but, 'If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to
thee?'" That the doctrine of a universal resurrection which the
Jews probably derived, through their communication with the
Persians, from the Zoroastrian system, and, with various
modifications, adopted is embodied in the following passage, who
can doubt? "The hour is coming when all that are in the graves
shall hear the voice of the Son of Man and shall come forth." That
a general resurrection would literally occur under the auspices of
Jesus was surely the meaning of the writer of those words. Whether
that thought was intended to be conveyed by Christ in the exact
terms he really used or not is a separate question, with which we
are not now concerned, our object being simply to set forth John's
views. Some commentators, seizing the letter and neglecting the
spirit, have inferred from var