John the Baptist

135:4.1On Au­gust 17, A.D. 22, when John was twenty-eight years of age, his mother sud­denly passed away. Eliz­a­beth’s friends, know­ing of the Nazarite re­stric­tions re­gard­ing con­tact with the dead, even in one’s own fam­ily, made all ar­range­ments for the burial of Eliz­a­beth be­fore send­ing for John. When he re­ceived word of the death of his mother, he di­rected Ezda to drive his herds to En­gedi and started for He­bron.

135:4.2On re­turn­ing to En­gedi from his mother’s fu­neral, he pre­sented his flocks to the broth­er­hood and for a sea­son de­tached him­self from the out­side world while he fasted and prayed. John knew only of the old meth­ods of ap­proach to di­vin­ity; he knew only of the rec­ords of such as Eli­jah, Samuel, and Daniel. Eli­jah was his ideal of a prophet. Eli­jah was the first of the teach­ers of Is­rael to be re­garded as a prophet, and John truly be­lieved that he was to be the last of this long and il­lus­tri­ous line of the mes­sen­gers of heaven.

135:4.3For two and a half years John lived at En­gedi, and he per­suaded most of the broth­er­hood that “the end of the age was at hand”; that “the king­dom of heaven was about to ap­pear.” And all his early teach­ing was based upon the cur­rent Jew­ish idea and con­cept of the Mes­siah as the prom­ised de­liv­erer of the Jew­ish na­tion from the dom­i­na­tion of their gen­tile rulers.

135:4.4Through­out this pe­riod John read much in the sa­cred writ­ings which he found at the En­gedi home of the Nazarites. He was es­pe­cially im­pressed by Isa­iah and by Malachi, the last of the proph­ets up to that time. He read and reread the last five chap­ters of Isa­iah, and he be­lieved these prophe­cies. Then he would read in Malachi: “Be­hold, I will send you Eli­jah the prophet be­fore the com­ing of the great and dread­ful day of the Lord; and he shall turn the hearts of the fa­thers to­ward the chil­dren and the hearts of the chil­dren to­ward their fa­thers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.” And it was only this prom­ise of Malachi that Eli­jah would re­turn that de­terred John from go­ing forth to preach about the com­ing king­dom and to ex­hort his fel­low Jews to flee from the wrath to come. John was ripe for the procla­ma­tion of the mes­sage of the com­ing king­dom, but this ex­pec­ta­tion of the com­ing of Eli­jah held him back for more than two years. He knew he was not Eli­jah. What did Malachi mean? Was the prophecy lit­eral or fig­u­ra­tive? How could he know the truth? He fi­nally dared to think that, since the first of the proph­ets was called Eli­jah, so the last should be known, even­tu­ally, by the same name. Nev­er­the­less, he had doubts, doubts suf­fi­cient to pre­vent his ever call­ing him­self Eli­jah.

135:4.5It was the in­flu­ence of Eli­jah that caused John to adopt his meth­ods of di­rect and blunt as­sault upon the sins and vices of his con­tem­po­raries. He sought to dress like Eli­jah, and he en­deav­ored to talk like Eli­jah; in ev­ery out­ward as­pect he was like the olden prophet. He was just such a stal­wart and pic­turesque child of na­ture, just such a fear­less and dar­ing preacher of righ­teous­ness. John was not il­lit­er­ate, he did well know the Jew­ish sa­cred writ­ings, but he was hardly cul­tured. He was a clear thinker, a pow­er­ful speaker, and a fiery de­nun­ci­a­tor. He was hardly an ex­am­ple to his age, but he was an elo­quent re­buke.

135:4.6At last he thought out the method of pro­claim­ing the new age, the king­dom of God; he set­tled that he was to be­come the her­ald of the Mes­siah; he swept aside all doubts and de­parted from En­gedi one day in March of A.D. 25 to be­gin his short but bril­liant ca­reer as a pub­lic preacher.