Death of the Last Apostle

A world with no succession

The last Apostle was dying.

The room was dim, lit only by a few flickering oil lamps. Shadows stretched and twisted along the stone walls as the old man lay motionless on his cot. His breath was slow, ragged. His hands, worn and calloused from decades of labor, rested lightly on his chest. The disciples who had gathered around him knelt in hushed reverence, their faces pale with sorrow.

No one spoke.

John—the last witness of Christ, the last link to the Twelve—was fading. When he breathed his last, there would be no one left with the authority of Christ’s own commissioning. No one who could say, with divine certainty, “This is what the Lord commands.”

A young man, Matthias, clenched his fists. His thoughts churned with anxiety. What happens now?

The letters—yes, there were letters. Paul had written to the churches, Peter had exhorted the faithful, John himself had left words of warning and hope. But who could interpret them definitively? Who could settle disputes with the authority that had bound and loosed sins in the name of Christ?

Matthias had seen it before. Factions were already forming—some clung to Paul’s writings, others insisted on different traditions passed down in whispers and scraps of parchment. There were rumors of strange teachings in distant cities, of self-appointed leaders twisting the words of the Apostles to their own liking. Without John, who will correct them?

A woman beside him, Miriam, wiped her eyes. “Surely God will not abandon us,” she whispered.

A grizzled elder near the foot of John’s cot shook his head. “God is faithful,” he murmured. “But men…” He trailed off. The weight of uncertainty pressed against his chest like an iron stone.

John let out a final, rattling breath.

Silence.

A silence that stretched beyond that room. A silence that, in time, would settle over the whole Church.

Matthias’ mind raced. Was this how Christ’s Church was meant to continue—fractured, leaderless, grasping at letters and memories? Who now could authoritatively teach what the Apostles themselves had declared? Who could stand against heresies with the same boldness that Peter, Paul, and John had? Who could unify the faithful when arguments arose?

A deep, sinking fear settled in his stomach.

What if—just what if—the Church began to divide? What if interpretations of Scripture splintered into endless disputes? What if truth became a matter of opinion rather than divine authority? What if, centuries from now, believers had no certainty at all, left only with their own best guesses about what Christ had truly taught?

Miriam clutched her cloak, shivering. Christ promised to be with us always, she reminded herself. But she could not shake the realization: He had given His authority to the Apostles, and now the last of them was gone.

A world without successors would be a world of uncertainty. A world where no one could say definitively what the faith required. A world where the Church might not endure in unity at all.

A world where Christ had left no shepherds—only scattered, wandering sheep.