"If I Want Him To Remain Alive Until I Return"

Near the very end of the book of John after Christ's resurrection, verses 20-23 of chapter 21 mention a brief exchange between Jesus and Peter.  The latter sees Jesus walking with the disciple he loved (John 21:20, but also referenced in other verses like 13:23) following them, and he asks about this other man.  John 21:24, one verse after this story, seemingly identifies this disciple as the author of the book itself, or as John the Apostle.  Jesus asks Peter what it would be to him if John was to remain alive until his return, charging Peter again to follow him (Christ).  Jesus says that Peter must follow him no matter what lies ahead for the other disciple, not that this is the only aspect of this excerpt.

If Jesus or Yahweh wishes for someone to fulfill a special role but not another person, the latter should still do what is right, and this is what Jesus is getting at in part.  Their obligations do not depend on some individual plan from Christ or God—today, many people seem to fret over God supposedly or possibly having some specially tailored "will" for their lives even though the slightest inactivity when God wanted action, marrying the "wrong" person God "intended" for someone else when any morally permissible choice of a spouse is fine (not that there are many great candidates!), and so on would derail far more than just one divine plan.  As if what is morally right is not something meant for all people, not just those who assume some random thing is a sign from God or some other such idiocy, one action or life direction that deviates from this unbiblical life plan would impact other actions or people and ruin them as well.

Beyond touching lightly on such things, the words of Jesus in John 21:22 also are relevant to eschatology, particularly to the Second Coming.  Is he saying John would remain alive until a grand return of Christ potentially many, many centuries later?  As the book of John itself notes, Jesus did not say that John the Apostle would not die until his return.  He says that this could be the case if he so desired.  The rumor the text says circulated around the church because of this was rooted in a total non sequitur fallacy for those who actually might have believed it (John 21:23).  Nowhere does Jesus promise a deathless state for John up until the Second Coming, though he does acknowledge the possibility.

Jesus is also not saying here that his next coming, much less the fulfillment of all outstanding prophecies, would only be a handful of decades later in 70 AD, as variations of preterism entail.  In that year, there was apparently no trumpet call that gathered all living Christians to a returning Christ (Matthew 24:30-31) and no resurrection of the dead (1 Corinthians 15:50-55, Revelation 20:4-6, 11-13).  Moreover, was the gospel preached to the whole world as a testimony to all nations less than 100 years after the death of Jesus as he calls a prerequisite in Matthew 24:14?  Was the conflict between Jews and Romans in 70 AD one that would have killed all people in the world if it was not cut short (Matthew 24:22)?  Hardly!  There is absolutely no historical or Biblical evidence that any of this happened, and if it had, it would almost inevitably be some mystical, invisible, and thus utterly unverifiable or non-literal event, which undermines the very possibility of any historical evidence actually pointing to it.

Still, it is somewhat relevant that Jesus says in Matthew 24:34 that "this generation will not pass away" before all the individual things he speaks of would occur.  The aforementioned examples did not occur as described by Jesus within the next few decades after Christ's Ascension, so Jesus lied about the generation if he meant to exclusively refer to his listeners or he was speaking about the generation that sees the later events he promises, which according to all evidences did not occur in the first century AD whatsoever.  Alternatively, if John the Apostle was kept alive to this day, he could be the person from the crowd listening to Jesus, if that is what this verse meant, so there would still be no automatic affirmation of preterism here even if Matthew 24 blatantly taught that Jesus would return in the lifetime of someone listening—which it does not.