John the Baptist

135:5.1In or­der to un­der­stand John’s mes­sage, ac­count should be taken of the sta­tus of the Jew­ish peo­ple at the time he ap­peared upon the stage of ac­tion. For al­most one hun­dred years all Is­rael had been in a quandary; they were at a loss to ex­plain their con­tin­u­ous sub­ju­ga­tion to gen­tile over­lords. Had not Moses taught that righ­teous­ness was al­ways re­warded with pros­per­ity and power? Were they not God’s cho­sen peo­ple? Why was the throne of David des­o­late and va­cant? In the light of the Mo­saic doc­trines and the pre­cepts of the proph­ets the Jews found it dif­fi­cult to ex­plain their long-con­tin­ued na­tional des­o­la­tion.

135:5.2About one hun­dred years be­fore the days of Je­sus and John a new school of re­li­gious teach­ers arose in Pales­tine, the apoc­a­lyp­tists. These new teach­ers evolved a sys­tem of be­lief that ac­counted for the suf­fer­ings and hu­mil­i­a­tion of the Jews on the ground that they were pay­ing the penalty for the na­tion’s sins. They fell back onto the well-known rea­sons as­signed to ex­plain the Baby­lo­nian and other cap­tiv­i­ties of for­mer times. But, so taught the apoc­a­lyp­tists, Is­rael should take heart; the days of their af­flic­tion were al­most over; the dis­ci­pline of God’s cho­sen peo­ple was about fin­ished; God’s pa­tience with the gen­tile for­eign­ers was about ex­hausted. The end of Ro­man rule was syn­ony­mous with the end of the age and, in a cer­tain sense, with the end of the world. These new teach­ers leaned heav­ily on the pre­dic­tions of Daniel, and they con­sis­tently taught that cre­ation was about to pass into its fi­nal stage; the king­doms of this world were about to be­come the king­dom of God. To the Jew­ish mind of that day this was the mean­ing of that phrase—the king­dom of heaven—which runs through­out the teach­ings of both John and Je­sus. To the Jews of Pales­tine the phrase “king­dom of heaven” had but one mean­ing: an ab­so­lutely righ­teous state in which God (the Mes­siah) would rule the na­tions of earth in per­fec­tion of power just as he ruled in heaven—“Your will be done on earth as in heaven.”

135:5.3In the days of John all Jews were ex­pec­tantly ask­ing, “How soon will the king­dom come?” There was a gen­eral feel­ing that the end of the rule of the gen­tile na­tions was draw­ing near. There was pres­ent through­out all Jewry a lively hope and a keen ex­pec­ta­tion that the con­sum­ma­tion of the de­sire of the ages would oc­cur dur­ing the life­time of that gen­er­a­tion.

135:5.4While the Jews dif­fered greatly in their es­ti­mates of the na­ture of the com­ing king­dom, they were alike in their be­lief that the event was im­pend­ing, near at hand, even at the door. Many who read the Old Tes­ta­ment lit­er­ally looked ex­pec­tantly for a new king in Pales­tine, for a re­gen­er­ated Jew­ish na­tion de­liv­ered from its en­e­mies and pre­sided over by the suc­ces­sor of King David, the Mes­siah who would quickly be ac­knowl­edged as the right­ful and righ­teous ruler of all the world. An­other, though smaller, group of de­vout Jews held a vastly dif­fer­ent view of this king­dom of God. They taught that the com­ing king­dom was not of this world, that the world was ap­proach­ing its cer­tain end, and that “a new heaven and a new earth” were to usher in the es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom of God; that this king­dom was to be an ev­er­last­ing do­min­ion, that sin was to be ended, and that the cit­i­zens of the new king­dom were to be­come im­mor­tal in their en­joy­ment of this end­less bliss.

135:5.5All were agreed that some dras­tic purg­ing or pu­ri­fy­ing dis­ci­pline would of ne­ces­sity pre­cede the es­tab­lish­ment of the new king­dom on earth. The lit­er­al­ists taught that a world-wide war would en­sue which would de­stroy all un­be­liev­ers, while the faith­ful would sweep on to uni­ver­sal and eter­nal vic­tory. The spiri­tists taught that the king­dom would be ush­ered in by the great judg­ment of God which would rel­e­gate the un­righ­teous to their well-de­served judg­ment of pun­ish­ment and fi­nal de­struc­tion, at the same time el­e­vat­ing the be­liev­ing saints of the cho­sen peo­ple to high seats of honor and au­thor­ity with the Son of Man, who would rule over the re­deemed na­tions in God’s name. And this lat­ter group even be­lieved that many de­vout gen­tiles might be ad­mit­ted to the fel­low­ship of the new king­dom.

135:5.6Some of the Jews held to the opin­ion that God might pos­si­bly es­tab­lish this new king­dom by di­rect and di­vine in­ter­ven­tion, but the vast ma­jor­ity be­lieved that he would in­ter­pose some rep­re­sen­ta­tive in­ter­me­di­ary, the Mes­siah. And that was the only pos­si­ble mean­ing the term Mes­siah could have had in the minds of the Jews of the gen­er­a­tion of John and Je­sus. Mes­siah could not pos­si­bly re­fer to one who merely taught God’s will or pro­claimed the ne­ces­sity for righ­teous liv­ing. To all such holy per­sons the Jews gave the ti­tle of prophet. The Mes­siah was to be more than a prophet; the Mes­siah was to bring in the es­tab­lish­ment of the new king­dom, the king­dom of God. No one who failed to do this could be the Mes­siah in the tra­di­tional Jew­ish sense.

135:5.7Who would this Mes­siah be? Again the Jew­ish teach­ers dif­fered. The older ones clung to the doc­trine of the son of David. The newer taught that, since the new king­dom was a heav­enly king­dom, the new ruler might also be a di­vine per­son­al­ity, one who had long sat at God’s right hand in heaven. And strange as it may ap­pear, those who thus con­ceived of the ruler of the new king­dom looked upon him not as a hu­man Mes­siah, not as a mere man, but as “the Son of Man”—a Son of God—a heav­enly Prince, long held in wait­ing thus to as­sume the ruler­ship of the earth made new. Such was the re­li­gious back­ground of the Jew­ish world when John went forth pro­claim­ing: “Re­pent, for the king­dom of heaven is at hand!”

135:5.8It be­comes ap­par­ent, there­fore, that John’s an­nounce­ment of the com­ing king­dom had not less than half a dozen dif­fer­ent mean­ings in the minds of those who lis­tened to his im­pas­sioned preach­ing. But no mat­ter what sig­nif­i­cance they at­tached to the phrases which John em­ployed, each of these var­i­ous groups of Jew­ish-king­dom ex­pec­tants was in­trigued by the procla­ma­tions of this sin­cere, en­thu­si­as­tic, rough-and-ready preacher of righ­teous­ness and re­pen­tance, who so solemnly ex­horted his hear­ers to “flee from the wrath to come.”