Traditions alone tell of St. John's death. One claims that as his brother James was the first of the Apostles to suffer martyrdom, he was the last. Others tell of miraculous preservation from death;—that he was thrown into a caldron of boiling oil, and drank hemlock, without any effect upon him. Sometimes he is pictured as holding a cup from which a viper, representing poison, is departing without doing him any harm.
There is still another story concerning his death. On the last Lord's Day of his life, after the Holy Communion, he told some of his disciples to follow him with spades. Leading them to a place of burial, he bid them dig a grave into which he placed himself, and they buried him up to the neck. Then in obedience to his command they placed a cloth over his face and completed the burial. With weeping they turned away and reported what had been done. But his disciples felt that, not the grave, but the great church was the fitting place for his burial. So with solemn service they went to bring his body thither. But on reaching the grave they found it empty, as he and Peter had found the tomb of their Lord on Easter morning. Then they remembered the words of Christ to Peter concerning John, "If I will that he abide till I come, what is that to thee?"
But there is another tradition stranger still. People refused to believe that St. John was dead, even though he had been supposed to be, and had been buried. For centuries his grave was shown at Ephesus. Pilgrims visiting it beheld a wonderful sight. The ground above it rose and fell, as if the great Apostle were still breathing as he had done for one hundred years, while treading the earth which now guarded his immortal sleep.
Such stories seem strange to us when we remember the chapter he wrote to correct a mistake made by those who misunderstood his Master's word, and believed that he would not die until the Lord returned to the earth.
He probably escaped martyrdom which befell his fellow-Apostles. Dying, probably in Ephesus, we think of him as peacefully entering the mansions of which he had heard his Lord tell in far-off Jerusalem nearly seventy years before.