John the Baptist

135:10.1Since Je­sus had gone north into Gal­i­lee, John felt led to re­trace his steps south­ward. Ac­cord­ingly, on Sun­day morn­ing, March 3, John and the re­main­der of his dis­ci­ples be­gan their jour­ney south. About one quar­ter of John’s im­me­di­ate fol­low­ers had mean­time de­parted for Gal­i­lee in quest of Je­sus. There was a sad­ness of con­fu­sion about John. He never again preached as he had be­fore bap­tiz­ing Je­sus. He some­how felt that the re­spon­si­bil­ity of the com­ing king­dom was no longer on his shoul­ders. He felt that his work was al­most fin­ished; he was dis­con­so­late and lonely. But he preached, bap­tized, and jour­neyed on south­ward.

135:10.2Near the vil­lage of Adam, John tar­ried for sev­eral weeks, and it was here that he made the mem­o­rable at­tack upon Herod An­tipas for un­law­fully tak­ing the wife of an­other man. By June of this year (A.D. 26) John was back at the Beth­any ford of the Jor­dan, where he had be­gun his preach­ing of the com­ing king­dom more than a year pre­vi­ously. In the weeks fol­low­ing the bap­tism of Je­sus the char­ac­ter of John’s preach­ing grad­u­ally changed into a procla­ma­tion of mercy for the com­mon peo­ple, while he de­nounced with re­newed ve­he­mence the cor­rupt po­lit­i­cal and re­li­gious rulers.

135:10.3Herod An­tipas, in whose ter­ri­tory John had been preach­ing, be­came alarmed lest he and his dis­ci­ples should start a re­bel­lion. Herod also re­sented John’s pub­lic crit­i­cisms of his do­mes­tic af­fairs. In view of all this, Herod de­cided to put John in prison. Ac­cord­ingly, very early in the morn­ing of June 12, be­fore the mul­ti­tude ar­rived to hear the preach­ing and wit­ness the bap­tiz­ing, the agents of Herod placed John un­der ar­rest. As weeks passed and he was not re­leased, his dis­ci­ples scat­tered over all Pales­tine, many of them go­ing into Gal­i­lee to join the fol­low­ers of Je­sus.