John's Story Read Online Free PDF Page A

bustling port city, now boasting nearly a quarter million residents, his most trusted young disciple, a redhead in his early twenties, had been trying to talk the old man into taking a break from leadership of the Ephesian church.
    John had already acceded to Polycarp’s insistence that he invite a surprise guest to take over the teaching and preaching for two weeks. That was not easy for the bishop. “It shows how much I trust you, young man. And I cannot persuade you to tell me who it is?”
    “No. I wish to see the look on your face when he arrives. Of course, you have so many friends from afar and have had such influence that it could be any of hundreds, and you would be glad.”
    “I am trying to guess.”
    “I will not say.”
    “Very well.”
    “You will be pleased by my choice, teacher. You must get some rest. And you must visit the new Roman Varius Baths too.”
    “A bathhouse? Now that I would rather not do. How easily that could become a place of debauchery, especially considering its source.”
    “The Lord gave me the liberty to try it, sir, and I found it most enjoyable, and appropriate. Men and women bathe separately, of course, and patrons may choose not to disrobe completely. It is so refreshing and relaxing, I know it would do wonders for you.”
    “But, dear one, I have heard the stories out of Rome, how ostentatious men bathe in wine and their wives in milk. Rumors say Nero’s wife’s bath was supplied with the milk of five hundred donkeys. And aren’t these bathhouse buildings akin to temples erected for Roman gods?”
    “Master, you yourself taught me not to concern myself with lesser gods. We know the futility of allegiance to anyone but the one true God. Paul tells us we are free from the law and that the world, even other religions, have no sway over us. Every day we have walked past the state agora and the temple deifying Julius Caesar, not to mention the divine personification of the Roman Empire itself.”
    John shook his head. “This is hardly persuading me. It’s bad enough I have to endure the Temple of Isis even before I reach Domitian Square. And when we are at the baths, how far would we be from that brothel with the ridiculous name?”
    “The House of Love?” Polycarp said. “Look past it to the great theater where Paul was accosted. We can pray there and thank God for all the rich teaching that beloved man bestowed upon us and the entire church.”
    John stopped. “Perhaps. But please don’t refer to the brothel as a house of anything but decadence. Sometimes I wonder what we are even doing in this city.”
    “Respected teacher, I mean no disrespect, but Ephesus has for more than five hundred years been a shrine to the Goddess Artemis, and yet you—as did Paul—chose it as a base for telling the world of the only true path to God. Didn’t you tell me that the Master Himself dined with publicans and sinners? We are here because it is where we must be, among the people who need our message as much as or more than anyone else in the world.”
    John sighed. “I fear we had best begin heading back. And Polycarp, I know you are right. Sometimes it is true that the teacher needs to be taught.”
    “Or at least to be reminded. I would not presume to teach you, sir.”
    “But you do. You do. The greater church has need of you, son. Pray to keep yourself pure for the broader ministry to which God may call you. I foresee you as an angel to one of the very churches I recently visited.”
    “An angel? I consider you such, master, as I do many of the other church leaders, but the term has always sounded so alien, so foreign to my mind.”
    “I mean bishop, of course.”
    “I cannot think of myself in those terms either, sir,” Polycarp said, as they ambled back toward Aquila and Priscilla’s estate. “I feel privileged, of course, to have sat under your teaching and counsel. Who else knew the Master personally?”
    “No one I know anymore.”
    “Indeed,” Polycarp said.