John the Baptist

135:8.6There was a tone of fi­nal­ity and au­thor­ity in Je­sus’ voice. John was atrem­ble with emo­tion as he made ready to bap­tize Je­sus of Naz­a­reth in the Jor­dan at noon on Mon­day, Jan­uary 14, A.D. 26. Thus did John bap­tize Je­sus and his two broth­ers James and Jude. And when John had bap­tized these three, he dis­missed the oth­ers for the day, an­nounc­ing that he would re­sume bap­tisms at noon the next day. As the peo­ple were de­part­ing, the four men still stand­ing in the wa­ter heard a strange sound, and pres­ently there ap­peared for a mo­ment an ap­pari­tion im­me­di­ately over the head of Je­sus, and they heard a voice say­ing, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” A great change came over the coun­te­nance of Je­sus, and com­ing up out of the wa­ter in si­lence he took leave of them, go­ing to­ward the hills to the east. And no man saw Je­sus again for forty days.

135:6.4There was still an­other and a new fea­ture about the work of this Nazarite preacher: He bap­tized ev­ery one of his be­liev­ers in the Jor­dan “for the re­mis­sion of sins.” Al­though bap­tism was not a new cer­e­mony among the Jews, they had never seen it em­ployed as John now made use of it. It had long been the prac­tice thus to bap­tize the gen­tile pros­e­lytes into the fel­low­ship of the outer court of the tem­ple, but never had the Jews them­selves been asked to sub­mit to the bap­tism of re­pen­tance. Only fif­teen months in­ter­vened be­tween the time John be­gan to preach and bap­tize and his ar­rest and im­pris­on­ment at the in­sti­ga­tion of Herod An­tipas, but in this short time he bap­tized con­sid­er­ably over one hun­dred thou­sand pen­i­tents.

135:12.7Herod was filled with fear and sor­row, but be­cause of his oath and be­cause of all those who sat at meat with him, he would not deny the re­quest. And Herod An­tipas sent a sol­dier, com­mand­ing him to bring the head of John. So was John that night be­headed in the prison, the sol­dier bring­ing the head of the prophet on a plat­ter and pre­sent­ing it to the young woman at the rear of the ban­quet hall. And the damsel gave the plat­ter to her mother. When John’s dis­ci­ples heard of this, they came to the prison for the body of John, and af­ter lay­ing it in a tomb, they went and told Je­sus.

122:2.7John was born in the City of Ju­dah, March 25, 7 B.C. Zach­a­rias and Eliz­a­beth re­joiced greatly in the re­al­iza­tion that a son had come to them as Ga­briel had prom­ised, and when on the eighth day they pre­sented the child for cir­cum­ci­sion, they for­mally chris­tened him John, as they had been di­rected afore­time. Al­ready had a nephew of Zach­a­rias de­parted for Naz­a­reth, car­ry­ing the mes­sage of Eliz­a­beth to Mary pro­claim­ing that a son had been born to her and that his name was to be John.

135:0.1John the Bap­tist was born March 25, 7 B.C., in ac­cor­dance with the prom­ise that Ga­briel made to Eliz­a­beth in June of the pre­vi­ous year. For five months Eliz­a­beth kept se­cret Ga­briel’s vis­i­ta­tion; and when she told her hus­band, Zach­a­rias, he was greatly trou­bled and fully be­lieved her nar­ra­tive only af­ter he had an un­usual dream about six weeks be­fore the birth of John. Ex­cept­ing the visit of Ga­briel to Eliz­a­beth and the dream of Zach­a­rias, there was noth­ing un­usual or super­nat­u­ral con­nected with the birth of John the Bap­tist.

45:4.1715. John the Bap­tist, the fore­run­ner of Mi­chael’s mis­sion on Uran­tia and, in the flesh, dis­tant cousin of the Son of Man.

114:2.3At the pres­ent time one John, known to you as “the Bap­tist,” is chair­man of this coun­cil when it is in ses­sion on Je­ru­sem. But the ex of­fi­cio head of this coun­cil is the As­signed Sen­tinel of Sa­ta­nia, the di­rect and per­sonal rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the As­so­ciate In­spec­tor on Sal­ving­ton and of the Su­preme Ex­ec­u­tive of Or­von­ton.

135:12.1As John was work­ing in south­ern Perea when ar­rested, he was taken im­me­di­ately to the prison of the fortress of Machaerus, where he was in­car­cer­ated un­til his ex­e­cu­tion. Herod ruled over Perea as well as Gal­i­lee, and he main­tained res­i­dence at this time at both Ju­lias and Machaerus in Perea. In Gal­i­lee the of­fi­cial res­i­dence had been moved from Sep­pho­ris to the new cap­i­tal at Tiberias.

135:12.2Herod feared to re­lease John lest he in­sti­gate re­bel­lion. He feared to put him to death lest the mul­ti­tude riot in the cap­i­tal, for thou­sands of Pere­ans be­lieved that John was a holy man, a prophet. There­fore Herod kept the Nazarite preacher in prison, not know­ing what else to do with him. Sev­eral times John had been be­fore Herod, but never would he agree ei­ther to leave the do­mains of Herod or to re­frain from all pub­lic ac­tiv­i­ties if he were re­leased. And this new ag­i­ta­tion con­cern­ing Je­sus of Naz­a­reth, which was steadily in­creas­ing, ad­mon­ished Herod that it was no time to turn John loose. Be­sides, John was also a vic­tim of the in­tense and bit­ter ha­tred of Hero­dias, Herod’s un­law­ful wife.

135:12.3On nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions Herod talked with John about the king­dom of heaven, and while some­times se­ri­ously im­pressed with his mes­sage, he was afraid to re­lease him from prison.

135:12.4Since much build­ing was still go­ing on at Tiberias, Herod spent con­sid­er­able time at his Perean res­i­dences, and he was par­tial to the fortress of Machaerus. It was a mat­ter of sev­eral years be­fore all the pub­lic build­ings and the of­fi­cial res­i­dence at Tiberias were fully com­pleted.

135:12.5In cel­e­bra­tion of his birth­day Herod made a great feast in the Machaerian palace for his chief of­fi­cers and other men high in the coun­cils of the gov­ern­ment of Gal­i­lee and Perea. Since Hero­dias had failed to bring about John’s death by di­rect ap­peal to Herod, she now set her­self to the task of hav­ing John put to death by cun­ning plan­ning.

135:12.6In the course of the evening’s fes­tiv­i­ties and en­ter­tain­ment, Hero­dias pre­sented her daugh­ter to dance be­fore the ban­queters. Herod was very much pleased with the damsel’s per­for­mance and, call­ing her be­fore him, said: “You are charm­ing. I am much pleased with you. Ask me on this my birth­day for what­ever you de­sire, and I will give it to you, even to the half of my king­dom.” And Herod did all this while well un­der the in­flu­ence of his many wines. The young lady drew aside and in­quired of her mother what she should ask of Herod. Hero­dias said, “Go to Herod and ask for the head of John the Bap­tist.” And the young woman, re­turn­ing to the ban­quet ta­ble, said to Herod, “I re­quest that you forth­with give me the head of John the Bap­tist on a plat­ter.”

144:9.1John the Bap­tist was ex­e­cuted by or­der of Herod An­tipas on the evening of Jan­uary 10, A.D. 28. The next day a few of John’s dis­ci­ples who had gone to Machaerus heard of his ex­e­cu­tion and, go­ing to Herod, made re­quest for his body, which they put in a tomb, later giv­ing it burial at Se­baste, the home of Ab­ner. The fol­low­ing day, Jan­uary 12, they started north to the camp of John’s and Je­sus’ apos­tles near Pella, and they told Je­sus about the death of John. When Je­sus heard their re­port, he dis­missed the mul­ti­tude and, call­ing the twenty-four to­gether, said: “John is dead. Herod has be­headed him. Tonight go into joint coun­cil and ar­range your af­fairs ac­cord­ingly. There shall be de­lay no longer. The hour has come to pro­claim the king­dom openly and with power. To­mor­row we go into Gal­i­lee.”

144:9.2Ac­cord­ingly, early on the morn­ing of Jan­uary 13, A.D. 28, Je­sus and the apos­tles, ac­com­pa­nied by some twenty-five dis­ci­ples, made their way to Ca­per­naum and lodged that night in Zeb­e­dee’s house.

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.

123:3.4Be­fore Je­sus was six years of age, in the early sum­mer of 1 B.C., Zach­a­rias and Eliz­a­beth and their son John came to visit the Naz­a­reth fam­ily. Je­sus and John had a happy time dur­ing this, their first visit within their mem­o­ries. Al­though the vis­i­tors could re­main only a few days, the par­ents talked over many things, in­clud­ing the fu­ture plans for their sons. While they were thus en­gaged, the lads played with blocks in the sand on top of the house and in many other ways en­joyed them­selves in true boy­ish fash­ion.

135:0.3The most event­ful oc­cur­rence in John’s early child­hood was the visit, in com­pany with his par­ents, to Je­sus and the Naz­a­reth fam­ily. This visit oc­curred in the month of June, 1 B.C., when he was a lit­tle over six years of age.

122:2.8From his ear­li­est in­fancy John was ju­di­ciously im­pressed by his par­ents with the idea that he was to grow up to be­come a spir­i­tual leader and re­li­gious teacher. And the soil of John’s heart was ever re­spon­sive to the sow­ing of such sug­ges­tive seeds. Even as a child he was found fre­quently at the tem­ple dur­ing the sea­sons of his fa­ther’s ser­vice, and he was tremen­dously im­pressed with the sig­nif­i­cance of all that he saw.

• rumors of J. reached Jesus

134:9.8As time passed, ru­mors came to Ca­per­naum of one John who was preach­ing while bap­tiz­ing pen­i­tents in the Jor­dan, and John preached: “The king­dom of heaven is at hand; re­pent and be bap­tized.” Je­sus lis­tened to these re­ports as John slowly worked his way up the Jor­dan val­ley from the ford of the river near­est to Je­ru­sa­lem. But Je­sus worked on, mak­ing boats, un­til John had jour­neyed up the river to a point near Pella in the month of Jan­uary of the next year, A.D. 26, when he laid down his tools, declar­ing, “My hour has come,” and pres­ently pre­sented him­self to John for bap­tism.

• spoke favorably of J.’s message

135:8.1By De­cem­ber of A.D. 25, when John reached the neigh­bor­hood of Pella in his jour­ney up the Jor­dan, his fame had ex­tended through­out all Pales­tine, and his work had be­come the chief topic of con­ver­sa­tion in all the towns about the lake of Gal­i­lee. Je­sus had spo­ken fa­vor­ably of John’s mes­sage, and this had caused many from Ca­per­naum to join John’s cult of re­pen­tance and bap­tism. James and John the fish­er­men sons of Zeb­e­dee had gone down in De­cem­ber, soon af­ter John took up his preach­ing po­si­tion near Pella, and had of­fered them­selves for bap­tism. They went to see John once a week and brought back to Je­sus fresh, first­hand re­ports of the evan­ge­list’s work.

• last visit; messages passed

135:9.9Early in the morn­ing of the next day he took leave of John and his dis­ci­ples, go­ing back to Gal­i­lee. He gave them no word as to when they would again see him. To John’s in­quiries about his own preach­ing and mis­sion Je­sus only said, “My Fa­ther will guide you now and in the fu­ture as he has in the past.” And these two great men sep­a­rated that morn­ing on the banks of the Jor­dan, never again to greet each other in the flesh.

135:11.1John had a lonely and some­what bit­ter ex­pe­ri­ence in prison. Few of his fol­low­ers were per­mit­ted to see him. He longed to see Je­sus but had to be con­tent with hear­ing of his work through those of his fol­low­ers who had be­come be­liev­ers in the Son of Man. He was of­ten tempted to doubt Je­sus and his di­vine mis­sion. If Je­sus were the Mes­siah, why did he do noth­ing to de­liver him from this un­bear­able im­pris­on­ment? For more than a year and a half this rugged man of God’s out­doors lan­guished in that de­spi­ca­ble prison. And this ex­pe­ri­ence was a great test of his faith in, and loy­alty to, Je­sus. In­deed, this whole ex­pe­ri­ence was a great test of John’s faith even in God. Many times was he tempted to doubt even the gen­uine­ness of his own mis­sion and ex­pe­ri­ence.

135:11.2Af­ter he had been in prison sev­eral months, a group of his dis­ci­ples came to him and, af­ter re­port­ing con­cern­ing the pub­lic ac­tiv­i­ties of Je­sus, said: “So you see, Teacher, that he who was with you at the up­per Jor­dan pros­pers and re­ceives all who come to him. He even feasts with pub­li­cans and sin­ners. You bore coura­geous wit­ness to him, and yet he does noth­ing to ef­fect your de­liv­er­ance.” But John an­swered his friends: “This man can do noth­ing un­less it has been given him by his Fa­ther in heaven. You well re­mem­ber that I said, ‘I am not the Mes­siah, but I am one sent on be­fore to pre­pare the way for him.’ And that I did. He who has the bride is the bride­groom, but the friend of the bride­groom who stands near by and hears him re­joices greatly be­cause of the bride­groom’s voice. This, my joy, there­fore is ful­filled. He must in­crease but I must de­crease. I am of this earth and have de­clared my mes­sage. Je­sus of Naz­a­reth comes down to the earth from heaven and is above us all. The Son of Man has de­scended from God, and the words of God he will de­clare to you. For the Fa­ther in heaven gives not the spirit by mea­sure to his own Son. The Fa­ther loves his Son and will pres­ently put all things in the hands of this Son. He who be­lieves in the Son has eter­nal life. And these words which I speak are true and abid­ing.”

135:11.3These dis­ci­ples were amazed at John’s pro­nounce­ment, so much so that they de­parted in si­lence. John was also much ag­i­tated, for he per­ceived that he had ut­tered a prophecy. Never again did he wholly doubt the mis­sion and di­vin­ity of Je­sus. But it was a sore dis­ap­point­ment to John that Je­sus sent him no word, that he came not to see him, and that he ex­er­cised none of his great power to de­liver him from prison. But Je­sus knew all about this. He had great love for John, but be­ing now cog­nizant of his di­vine na­ture and know­ing fully the great things in prepa­ra­tion for John when he de­parted from this world and also know­ing that John’s work on earth was fin­ished, he con­strained him­self not to in­ter­fere in the nat­u­ral out­work­ing of the great preacher-prophet’s ca­reer.

• last visit; messages passed

135:11.4This long sus­pense in prison was hu­manly un­bear­able. Just a few days be­fore his death John again sent trusted mes­sen­gers to Je­sus, in­quir­ing: “Is my work done? Why do I lan­guish in prison? Are you truly the Mes­siah, or shall we look for an­other?” And when these two dis­ci­ples gave this mes­sage to Je­sus, the Son of Man replied: “Go back to John and tell him that I have not for­got­ten but to suf­fer me also this, for it be­comes us to ful­fill all righ­teous­ness. Tell John what you have seen and heard—that the poor have good tid­ings preached to them—and, fi­nally, tell the beloved her­ald of my earth mis­sion that he shall be abun­dantly blessed in the age to come if he finds no oc­ca­sion to doubt and stum­ble over me.” And this was the last word John re­ceived from Je­sus. This mes­sage greatly com­forted him and did much to sta­bi­lize his faith and pre­pare him for the tragic end of his life in the flesh which fol­lowed so soon upon the heels of this mem­o­rable oc­ca­sion.

• decided not to teach contemporaneously with J.

136:4.1Day by day, up in the hills, Je­sus for­mu­lated the plans for the re­main­der of his Uran­tia be­stowal. He first de­cided not to teach con­tem­po­ra­ne­ously with John. He planned to re­main in com­par­a­tive re­tire­ment un­til the work of John achieved its pur­pose, or un­til John was sud­denly stopped by im­pris­on­ment. Je­sus well knew that John’s fear­less and tact­less preach­ing would pres­ently arouse the fears and en­mity of the civil rulers. In view of John’s pre­car­i­ous sit­u­a­tion, Je­sus be­gan def­i­nitely to plan his pro­gram of pub­lic labors in be­half of his peo­ple and the world, in be­half of ev­ery in­hab­ited world through­out his vast uni­verse. Mi­chael’s mor­tal be­stowal was on Uran­tia but for all worlds of Neb­a­don.

• did not visit J. in prison or send word

138:1.5While the apos­tles were out on this mis­sion, Je­sus thought much about John, now in prison. It was a great temp­ta­tion to use his po­ten­tial pow­ers to re­lease him, but once more he re­signed him­self to “wait upon the Fa­ther’s will.”

• told apostles to reap the sowing of J.

143:6.1On the evening that Nalda drew the crowd out from Sy­char to see Je­sus, the twelve had just re­turned with food, and they be­sought Je­sus to eat with them in­stead of talk­ing to the peo­ple, for they had been with­out food all day and were hun­gry. But Je­sus knew that dark­ness would soon be upon them; so he per­sisted in his de­ter­mi­na­tion to talk to the peo­ple be­fore he sent them away. When An­drew sought to per­suade him to eat a bite be­fore speak­ing to the crowd, Je­sus said, “I have meat to eat that you do not know about.” When the apos­tles heard this, they said among them­selves: “Has any man brought him aught to eat? Can it be that the woman gave him food as well as drink?” When Je­sus heard them talk­ing among them­selves, be­fore he spoke to the peo­ple, he turned aside and said to the twelve: “My meat is to do the will of Him who sent me and to ac­com­plish His work. You should no longer say it is such and such a time un­til the har­vest. Be­hold these peo­ple com­ing out from a Samar­i­tan city to hear us; I tell you the fields are al­ready white for the har­vest. He who reaps re­ceives wages and gath­ers this fruit to eter­nal life; con­se­quently the sow­ers and the reapers re­joice to­gether. For herein is the say­ing true: ‘One sows and an­other reaps.’ I am now send­ing you to reap that whereon you have not la­bored; oth­ers have la­bored, and you are about to en­ter into their la­bor.” This he said in ref­er­ence to the preach­ing of John the Bap­tist.

• decided not to teach contemporaneously with J.

144:0.3Je­sus knew that the days of the pre­lim­i­nary work of teach­ing and preach­ing were about over, that the next move in­volved the be­gin­ning of the full and fi­nal ef­fort of his life on earth, and he did not wish the launch­ing of this un­der­tak­ing to be in any man­ner ei­ther try­ing or em­bar­rass­ing to John the Bap­tist. Je­sus had there­fore de­cided to spend some time in re­tire­ment re­hears­ing his apos­tles and then to do some quiet work in the cities of the De­capo­lis un­til John should be ei­ther ex­e­cuted or re­leased to join them in a united ef­fort.

• last visit; messages passed

144:8.1The lat­ter part of De­cem­ber they all went over near the Jor­dan, close by Pella, where they again be­gan to teach and preach. Both Jews and gen­tiles came to this camp to hear the gospel. It was while Je­sus was teach­ing the mul­ti­tude one af­ter­noon that some of John’s spe­cial friends brought the Mas­ter the last mes­sage which he ever had from the Bap­tist.

144:8.2John had now been in prison a year and a half, and most of this time Je­sus had la­bored very qui­etly; so it was not strange that John should be led to won­der about the king­dom. John’s friends in­ter­rupted Je­sus’ teach­ing to say to him: “John the Bap­tist has sent us to ask—are you truly the De­liv­erer, or shall we look for an­other?”

144:8.3Je­sus paused to say to John’s friends: “Go back and tell John that he is not for­got­ten. Tell him what you have seen and heard, that the poor have good tid­ings preached to them.” And when Je­sus had spo­ken fur­ther to the mes­sen­gers of John, he turned again to the mul­ti­tude and said: “Do not think that John doubts the gospel of the king­dom. He makes in­quiry only to as­sure his dis­ci­ples who are also my dis­ci­ples. John is no weak­ling. Let me ask you who heard John preach be­fore Herod put him in prison: What did you be­hold in John—a reed shaken with the wind? A man of change­able moods and clothed in soft rai­ment? As a rule they who are gor­geously ap­par­eled and who live del­i­cately are in kings’ courts and in the man­sions of the rich. But what did you see when you be­held John? A prophet? Yes, I say to you, and much more than a prophet. Of John it was writ­ten: ‘Be­hold, I send my mes­sen­ger be­fore your face; he shall pre­pare the way be­fore you.’

144:8.4“Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you, among those born of women there has not arisen a greater than John the Bap­tist; yet he who is but small in the king­dom of heaven is greater be­cause he has been born of the spirit and knows that he has be­come a son of God.”

144:8.5Many who heard Je­sus that day sub­mit­ted them­selves to John’s bap­tism, thereby pub­licly pro­fess­ing en­trance into the king­dom. And the apos­tles of John were firmly knit to Je­sus from that day for­ward. This oc­cur­rence marked the real union of John’s and Je­sus’ fol­low­ers.

144:8.6Af­ter the mes­sen­gers had con­versed with Ab­ner, they de­parted for Machaerus to tell all this to John. He was greatly com­forted, and his faith was strength­ened by the words of Je­sus and the mes­sage of Ab­ner.

• referred to J. as Elijah

158:2.2Pe­ter shud­dered at the thought of the Mas­ter’s dy­ing—it was too dis­agree­able an idea to en­ter­tain—and fear­ing that James or John might ask some ques­tion rel­a­tive to this state­ment, he thought best to start up a di­vert­ing con­ver­sa­tion and, not know­ing what else to talk about, gave ex­pres­sion to the first thought com­ing into his mind, which was: “Mas­ter, why is it that the scribes say that Eli­jah must first come be­fore the Mes­siah shall ap­pear?” And Je­sus, know­ing that Pe­ter sought to avoid ref­er­ence to his death and res­ur­rec­tion, an­swered: “Eli­jah in­deed comes first to pre­pare the way for the Son of Man, who must suf­fer many things and fi­nally be re­jected. But I tell you that Eli­jah has al­ready come, and they re­ceived him not but did to him what­so­ever they willed.” And then did the three apos­tles per­ceive that he re­ferred to John the Bap­tist as Eli­jah. Je­sus knew that, if they in­sisted on re­gard­ing him as the Mes­siah, then must John be the Eli­jah of the prophecy.

127:3.11In Septem­ber, Eliz­a­beth and John came to visit the Naz­a­reth fam­ily. John, hav­ing lost his fa­ther, in­tended to re­turn to the Judean hills to en­gage in agri­cul­ture and sheep rais­ing un­less Je­sus ad­vised him to re­main in Naz­a­reth to take up car­pen­try or some other line of work. They did not know that the Naz­a­reth fam­ily was prac­ti­cally pen­ni­less. The more Mary and Eliz­a­beth talked about their sons, the more they be­came con­vinced that it would be good for the two young men to work to­gether and see more of each other.

127:3.12Je­sus and John had many talks to­gether; and they talked over some very in­ti­mate and per­sonal mat­ters. When they had fin­ished this visit, they de­cided not again to see each other un­til they should meet in their pub­lic ser­vice af­ter “the heav­enly Fa­ther should call” them to their work. John was tremen­dously im­pressed by what he saw at Naz­a­reth that he should re­turn home and la­bor for the sup­port of his mother. He be­came con­vinced that he was to be a part of Je­sus’ life mis­sion, but he saw that Je­sus was to oc­cupy many years with the rear­ing of his fam­ily; so he was much more con­tent to re­turn to his home and set­tle down to the care of their lit­tle farm and to min­is­ter to the needs of his mother. And never again did John and Je­sus see each other un­til that day by the Jor­dan when the Son of Man pre­sented him­self for bap­tism.

170:1.32. A fu­ture hope—when the king­dom would be re­al­ized in full­ness upon the ap­pear­ance of the Mes­siah. This is the king­dom con­cept which John the Bap­tist taught.

170:2.9These teach­ings cover the ex­panded idea of the king­dom which was taught by Je­sus. This great con­cept was hardly em­braced in the el­e­men­tary and con­fused king­dom teach­ings of John the Bap­tist.

135:7.3In re­sponse to the ques­tions of his dis­ci­ples John con­tin­ued to ex­pand his teach­ings, from day to day adding more that was help­ful and com­fort­ing com­pared with his early and cryp­tic mes­sage: “Re­pent and be bap­tized.” By this time throngs were ar­riv­ing from Gal­i­lee and the De­capo­lis. Scores of earnest be­liev­ers lin­gered with their adored teacher day af­ter day.

136:0.2When John preached the com­ing king­dom, the bur­den of his mes­sage was: Re­pent! flee from the wrath to come. When Je­sus be­gan to preach, there re­mained the ex­hor­ta­tion to re­pen­tance, but such a mes­sage was al­ways fol­lowed by the gospel, the good tid­ings of the joy and lib­erty of the new king­dom.

136:1.5The ma­jor­ity of the Jews be­lieved that they con­tin­ued to lan­guish un­der Ro­man rule be­cause of their na­tional sins and be­cause of the half­heart­ed­ness of the gen­tile pros­e­lytes. The Jew­ish na­tion had not whole­heart­edly re­pented; there­fore did the Mes­siah de­lay his com­ing. There was much talk about re­pen­tance; where­fore the mighty and im­me­di­ate ap­peal of John’s preach­ing, “Re­pent and be bap­tized, for the king­dom of heaven is at hand.” And the king­dom of heaven could mean only one thing to any de­vout Jew: The com­ing of the Mes­siah.

138:8.8Je­sus made plain to his apos­tles the dif­fer­ence be­tween the re­pen­tance of so-called good works as taught by the Jews and the change of mind by faith—the new birth—which he re­quired as the price of ad­mis­sion to the king­dom. He taught his apos­tles that faith was the only req­ui­site to en­ter­ing the Fa­ther’s king­dom. John had taught them “re­pen­tance—to flee from the wrath to come.” Je­sus taught, “Faith is the open door for en­ter­ing into the pres­ent, per­fect, and eter­nal love of God.” Je­sus did not speak like a prophet, one who comes to de­clare the word of God. He seemed to speak of him­self as one hav­ing au­thor­ity. Je­sus sought to di­vert their minds from mir­a­cle seek­ing to the find­ing of a real and per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence in the sat­is­fac­tion and as­sur­ance of the in­dwelling of God’s spirit of love and sav­ing grace.

135:3.3John was never able com­pletely to rise above the con­fu­sion pro­duced by what he had heard from his par­ents con­cern­ing Je­sus and by these pas­sages which he read in the Scrip­tures. In Daniel he read: “I saw in the night vi­sions, and, be­hold, one like the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven, and there was given him do­min­ion and glory and a king­dom.” But these words of the prophet did not har­mo­nize with what his par­ents had taught him. Nei­ther did his talk with Je­sus, at the time of his visit when he was eigh­teen years old, cor­re­spond with these state­ments of the Scrip­tures. Not­with­stand­ing this con­fu­sion, through­out all of his per­plex­ity his mother as­sured him that his dis­tant cousin, Je­sus of Naz­a­reth, was the true Mes­siah, that he had come to sit on the throne of David, and that he (John) was to be­come his ad­vance her­ald and chief sup­port.

136:3.3Je­sus did not go into re­tire­ment for the pur­pose of fast­ing and for the af­flic­tion of his soul. He was not an as­cetic, and he came for­ever to de­stroy all such no­tions re­gard­ing the ap­proach to God. His rea­sons for seek­ing this re­tire­ment were en­tirely dif­fer­ent from those which had ac­tu­ated Moses and Eli­jah, and even John the Bap­tist. Je­sus was then wholly self-con­scious con­cern­ing his re­la­tion to the uni­verse of his mak­ing and also to the uni­verse of uni­verses, super­vised by the Par­a­dise Fa­ther, his Fa­ther in heaven. He now fully re­called the be­stowal charge and its in­struc­tions ad­min­is­tered by his el­der brother, Im­manuel, ere he en­tered upon his Uran­tia in­car­na­tion. He now clearly and fully com­pre­hended all these far-flung re­la­tion­ships, and he de­sired to be away for a sea­son of quiet med­i­ta­tion so that he could think out the plans and de­cide upon the pro­ce­dures for the pros­e­cu­tion of his pub­lic labors in be­half of this world and for all other worlds in his lo­cal uni­verse.

122:2.3“While your hus­band, Zach­a­rias, stands be­fore the al­tar in Je­ru­sa­lem, and while the as­sem­bled peo­ple pray for the com­ing of a de­liv­erer, I, Ga­briel, have come to an­nounce that you will shortly bear a son who shall be the fore­run­ner of this di­vine teacher, and you shall call your son John. He will grow up ded­i­cated to the Lord your God, and when he has come to full years, he will glad­den your heart be­cause he will turn many souls to God, and he will also pro­claim the com­ing of the soul-healer of your peo­ple and the spirit-lib­er­a­tor of all man­kind. Your kinswoman Mary shall be the mother of this child of prom­ise, and I will also ap­pear to her.”

173:2.6Je­sus never in­tended to ap­peal to John for his au­thor­ity; John had never been or­dained by the San­hedrin. Je­sus’ au­thor­ity was in him­self and in his Fa­ther’s eter­nal su­prem­acy.

122:2.1Je­sus’ life­work on Uran­tia was re­ally be­gun by John the Bap­tist. Zach­a­rias, John’s fa­ther, be­longed to the Jew­ish priest­hood, while his mother, Eliz­a­beth, was a mem­ber of the more pros­per­ous branch of the same large fam­ily group to which Mary the mother of Je­sus also be­longed. Zach­a­rias and Eliz­a­beth, though they had been mar­ried many years, were child­less.

122:2.2It was late in the month of June, 8 B.C., about three months af­ter the mar­riage of Joseph and Mary, that Ga­briel ap­peared to Eliz­a­beth at noon­tide one day, just as he later made his pres­ence known to Mary. Said Ga­briel:

122:2.4This vi­sion greatly fright­ened Eliz­a­beth. Af­ter Ga­briel’s de­par­ture she turned this ex­pe­ri­ence over in her mind, long pon­der­ing the say­ings of the ma­jes­tic vis­i­tor, but did not speak of the rev­e­la­tion to any­one save her hus­band un­til her sub­se­quent visit with Mary in early Febru­ary of the fol­low­ing year.

122:2.5For five months, how­ever, Eliz­a­beth with­held her se­cret even from her hus­band. Upon her dis­clo­sure of the story of Ga­briel’s visit, Zach­a­rias was very skep­ti­cal and for weeks doubted the en­tire ex­pe­ri­ence, only con­sent­ing half­heart­edly to be­lieve in Ga­briel’s visit to his wife when he could no longer ques­tion that she was ex­pec­tant with child. Zach­a­rias was very much per­plexed re­gard­ing the prospec­tive moth­er­hood of Eliz­a­beth, but he did not doubt the in­tegrity of his wife, not­with­stand­ing his own ad­vanced age. It was not un­til about six weeks be­fore John’s birth that Zach­a­rias, as the re­sult of an im­pres­sive dream, be­came fully con­vinced that Eliz­a­beth was to be­come the mother of a son of des­tiny, one who was to pre­pare the way for the com­ing of the Mes­siah.

122:2.6Ga­briel ap­peared to Mary about the mid­dle of Novem­ber, 8 B.C., while she was at work in her Naz­a­reth home. Later on, af­ter Mary knew with­out doubt that she was to be­come a mother, she per­suaded Joseph to let her jour­ney to the City of Ju­dah, four miles west of Je­ru­sa­lem, in the hills, to visit Eliz­a­beth. Ga­briel had in­formed each of these moth­ers-to-be of his ap­pear­ance to the other. Nat­u­rally they were anx­ious to get to­gether, com­pare ex­pe­ri­ences, and talk over the prob­a­ble fu­tures of their sons. Mary re­mained with her dis­tant cousin for three weeks. Eliz­a­beth did much to strengthen Mary’s faith in the vi­sion of Ga­briel, so that she re­turned home more fully ded­i­cated to the call to mother the child of des­tiny whom she was so soon to pre­sent to the world as a help­less babe, an av­er­age and nor­mal in­fant of the realm.

• no brothers or sisters

135:0.4Af­ter their re­turn from Naz­a­reth John’s par­ents be­gan the sys­tem­atic ed­u­ca­tion of the lad. There was no syn­a­gogue school in this lit­tle vil­lage; how­ever, as he was a priest, Zach­a­rias was fairly well ed­u­cated, and Eliz­a­beth was far bet­ter ed­u­cated than the av­er­age Judean woman; she was also of the priest­hood, be­ing a de­scen­dant of the “daugh­ters of Aaron.” Since John was an only child, they spent a great deal of time on his men­tal and spir­i­tual train­ing. Zach­a­rias had only short pe­ri­ods of ser­vice at the tem­ple in Je­ru­sa­lem so that he de­voted much of his time to teach­ing his son.

• over 6 feet tall, flowing hair, dressed like Elijah, stalwart, picturesque child of nature

135:1.4When six­teen years old, John, as a re­sult of read­ing about Eli­jah, be­came greatly im­pressed with the prophet of Mount Carmel and de­cided to adopt his style of dress. From that day on John al­ways wore a hairy gar­ment with a leather gir­dle. At six­teen he was more than six feet tall and al­most full grown. With his flow­ing hair and pe­cu­liar mode of dress he was in­deed a pic­turesque youth. And his par­ents ex­pected great things of this their only son, a child of prom­ise and a Nazarite for life.

• over 6 feet tall, flowing hair, dressed like Elijah, stalwart, picturesque child of nature

135:6.3He came from the herds­men, like Amos. He was dressed like Eli­jah of old, and he thun­dered his ad­mo­ni­tions and poured forth his warn­ings in the “spirit and power of Eli­jah.” It is not sur­pris­ing that this strange preacher cre­ated a mighty stir through­out all Pales­tine as the trav­el­ers car­ried abroad the news of his preach­ing along the Jor­dan.

• heroic but tactless preacher

135:6.7John was a heroic but tact­less preacher. One day when he was preach­ing and bap­tiz­ing on the west bank of the Jor­dan, a group of Phar­isees and a num­ber of Sad­ducees came for­ward and pre­sented them­selves for bap­tism. Be­fore lead­ing them down into the wa­ter, John, ad­dress­ing them as a group said: “Who warned you to flee, as vipers be­fore the fire, from the wrath to come? I will bap­tize you, but I warn you to bring forth fruit wor­thy of sin­cere re­pen­tance if you would re­ceive the re­mis­sion of your sins. Tell me not that Abra­ham is your fa­ther. I de­clare that God is able of these twelve stones here be­fore you to raise up wor­thy chil­dren for Abra­ham. And even now is the ax laid to the very roots of the trees. Ev­ery tree that brings not forth good fruit is des­tined to be cut down and cast into the fire.” (The twelve stones to which he re­ferred were the re­puted memo­rial stones set up by Joshua to com­mem­o­rate the cross­ing of the “twelve tribes” at this very point when they first en­tered the prom­ised land.)

• contrast with Jesus
• eloquent rebuke; hardly an example
• greatest born of women, but he who is small in kingdom is greater

136:0.1Je­sus be­gan his pub­lic work at the height of the pop­u­lar in­ter­est in John’s preach­ing and at a time when the Jew­ish peo­ple of Pales­tine were ea­gerly look­ing for the ap­pear­ance of the Mes­siah. There was a great con­trast be­tween John and Je­sus. John was an ea­ger and earnest worker, but Je­sus was a calm and happy la­borer; only a few times in his en­tire life was he ever in a hurry. Je­sus was a com­fort­ing con­so­la­tion to the world and some­what of an ex­am­ple; John was hardly a com­fort or an ex­am­ple. He preached the king­dom of heaven but hardly en­tered into the hap­pi­ness thereof. Though Je­sus spoke of John as the great­est of the proph­ets of the old or­der, he also said that the least of those who saw the great light of the new way and en­tered thereby into the king­dom of heaven was in­deed greater than John.

• saddened by loss of Andrew and Peter

137:1.3Soon af­ter Je­sus and An­drew re­turned to the camp, An­drew sought out his brother, Si­mon, and tak­ing him aside, in­formed him that he had set­tled in his own mind that Je­sus was the great Teacher, and that he had pledged him­self as a dis­ci­ple. He went on to say that Je­sus had ac­cepted his prof­fer of ser­vice and sug­gested that he (Si­mon) like­wise go to Je­sus and of­fer him­self for fel­low­ship in the ser­vice of the new king­dom. Said Si­mon: “Ever since this man came to work in Zeb­e­dee’s shop, I have be­lieved he was sent by God, but what about John? Are we to for­sake him? Is this the right thing to do?” Where­upon they agreed to go at once to con­sult John. John was sad­dened by the thought of los­ing two of his able ad­vis­ers and most promis­ing dis­ci­ples, but he bravely an­swered their in­quiries, say­ing: “This is but the be­gin­ning; pres­ently will my work end, and we shall all be­come his dis­ci­ples.” Then An­drew beck­oned to Je­sus to draw aside while he an­nounced that his brother de­sired to join him­self to the ser­vice of the new king­dom. And in wel­com­ing Si­mon as his sec­ond apos­tle, Je­sus said: “Si­mon, your en­thu­si­asm is com­mend­able, but it is dan­ger­ous to the work of the king­dom. I ad­mon­ish you to be­come more thought­ful in your speech. I would change your name to Pe­ter.”

• saddened by loss of Andrew and Peter

137:1.8Late that evening, James, John, An­drew, and Si­mon held con­verse with John the Bap­tist, and with tear­ful eye but steady voice the stal­wart Judean prophet sur­ren­dered two of his lead­ing dis­ci­ples to be­come the apos­tles of the Galilean Prince of the com­ing king­dom.

144:2.1“John in­deed taught you a sim­ple form of prayer: ‘O Fa­ther, cleanse us from sin, show us your glory, re­veal your love, and let your spirit sanc­tify our hearts forever­more, Amen!’ He taught this prayer that you might have some­thing to teach the mul­ti­tude. He did not in­tend that you should use such a set and for­mal pe­ti­tion as the ex­pres­sion of your own souls in prayer.

144:3.13It is not strange that the apos­tles de­sired Je­sus to teach them a model prayer for be­liev­ers. John the Bap­tist had taught his fol­low­ers sev­eral prayers; all great teach­ers had for­mu­lated prayers for their pupils. The re­li­gious teach­ers of the Jews had some twenty-five or thirty set prayers which they re­cited in the syn­a­gogues and even on the street cor­ners. Je­sus was par­tic­u­larly averse to pray­ing in pub­lic. Up to this time the twelve had heard him pray only a few times. They ob­served him spend­ing en­tire nights at prayer or wor­ship, and they were very cu­ri­ous to know the man­ner or form of his pe­ti­tions. They were re­ally hard pressed to know what to an­swer the mul­ti­tudes when they asked to be taught how to pray as John had taught his dis­ci­ples.

123:6.8In Febru­ary, Na­hor, one of the teach­ers in a Je­ru­sa­lem academy of the rab­bis, came to Naz­a­reth to ob­serve Je­sus, hav­ing been on a sim­i­lar mis­sion to Zach­a­rias’s home near Je­ru­sa­lem. He came to Naz­a­reth at the in­sti­ga­tion of John’s fa­ther. While at first he was some­what shocked by Je­sus’ frank­ness and un­con­ven­tional man­ner of re­lat­ing him­self to things re­li­gious, he at­tributed it to the re­mote­ness of Gal­i­lee from the cen­ters of He­brew learn­ing and cul­ture and ad­vised Joseph and Mary to al­low him to take Je­sus back with him to Je­ru­sa­lem, where he could have the ad­van­tages of ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing at the cen­ter of Jew­ish cul­ture. Mary was half per­suaded to con­sent; she was con­vinced her el­dest son was to be­come the Mes­siah, the Jew­ish de­liv­erer; Joseph hes­i­tated; he was equally per­suaded that Je­sus was to grow up to be­come a man of des­tiny, but what that des­tiny would prove to be he was pro­foundly un­cer­tain. But he never re­ally doubted that his son was to ful­fill some great mis­sion on earth. The more he thought about Na­hor’s ad­vice, the more he ques­tioned the wis­dom of the pro­posed so­journ in Je­ru­sa­lem.

135:2.3John and Eliz­a­beth re­turned to their home and be­gan to lay plans for the fu­ture. Since John re­fused to ac­cept the priest’s al­lowance due him from the tem­ple funds, by the end of two years they had all but lost their home; so they de­cided to go south with the sheep herd. Ac­cord­ingly, the sum­mer that John was twenty years of age wit­nessed their re­moval to He­bron. In the so-called “wilder­ness of Judea” John tended his sheep along a brook that was trib­u­tary to a larger stream which en­tered the Dead Sea at En­gedi. The En­gedi colony in­cluded not only Nazarites of life­long and time-pe­riod con­se­cra­tion but nu­mer­ous other as­cetic herds­men who con­gre­gated in this re­gion with their herds and frat­er­nized with the Nazarite broth­er­hood. They sup­ported them­selves by sheep rais­ing and from gifts which wealthy Jews made to the or­der.

135:3.4From all John heard of the vice and wicked­ness of Rome and the dis­so­lute­ness and moral bar­ren­ness of the em­pire, from what he knew of the evil do­ings of Herod An­tipas and the gov­er­nors of Judea, he was minded to be­lieve that the end of the age was im­pend­ing. It seemed to this rugged and no­ble child of na­ture that the world was ripe for the end of the age of man and the dawn of the new and di­vine age—the king­dom of heaven. The feel­ing grew in John’s heart that he was to be the last of the old proph­ets and the first of the new. And he fairly vi­brated with the mount­ing im­pulse to go forth and pro­claim to all men: “Re­pent! Get right with God! Get ready for the end; pre­pare your­selves for the ap­pear­ance of the new and eter­nal or­der of earth af­fairs, the king­dom of heaven.”

143:2.2At one of the evening con­fer­ences, An­drew asked Je­sus: “Mas­ter, are we to prac­tice self-de­nial as John taught us, or are we to strive for the self-con­trol of your teach­ing? Wherein does your teach­ing dif­fer from that of John?” Je­sus an­swered: “John in­deed taught you the way of righ­teous­ness in ac­cor­dance with the light and laws of his fa­thers, and that was the re­li­gion of self-ex­am­i­na­tion and self-de­nial. But I come with a new mes­sage of self-for­get­ful­ness and self-con­trol. I show to you the way of life as re­vealed to me by my Fa­ther in heaven.

137:2.2That day, as Je­sus and his four dis­ci­ple-apos­tles de­parted for Gal­i­lee, there was a great tu­mult in the camp of John’s fol­low­ers. The first great di­vi­sion was about to take place. The day be­fore, John had made his pos­i­tive pro­nounce­ment to An­drew and Ezra that Je­sus was the De­liv­erer. An­drew de­cided to fol­low Je­sus, but Ezra re­jected the mild-man­nered car­pen­ter of Naz­a­reth, pro­claim­ing to his as­so­ciates: “The Prophet Daniel de­clares that the Son of Man will come with the clouds of heaven, in power and great glory. This Galilean car­pen­ter, this Ca­per­naum boat­builder, can­not be the De­liv­erer. Can such a gift of God come out of Naz­a­reth? This Je­sus is a rel­a­tive of John, and through much kind­ness of heart has our teacher been de­ceived. Let us re­main aloof from this false Mes­siah.” When John re­buked Ezra for these ut­ter­ances, he drew away with many dis­ci­ples and has­tened south. And this group con­tin­ued to bap­tize in John’s name and even­tu­ally founded a sect of those who be­lieved in John but re­fused to ac­cept Je­sus. A rem­nant of this group per­sists in Mes­o­po­ta­mia even to this day.

170:5.19Sooner or later an­other and greater John the Bap­tist is due to arise pro­claim­ing “the king­dom of God is at hand”—mean­ing a re­turn to the high spir­i­tual con­cept of Je­sus, who pro­claimed that the king­dom is the will of his heav­enly Fa­ther dom­i­nant and tran­scen­dent in the heart of the be­liever—and do­ing all this with­out in any way re­fer­ring ei­ther to the vis­i­ble church on earth or to the an­tic­i­pated sec­ond com­ing of Christ. There must come a re­vival of the ac­tual teach­ings of Je­sus, such a re­state­ment as will undo the work of his early fol­low­ers who went about to cre­ate a so­cio­philo­soph­i­cal sys­tem of be­lief re­gard­ing the fact of Mi­chael’s so­journ on earth. In a short time the teach­ing of this story about Je­sus nearly sup­planted the preach­ing of Je­sus’ gospel of the king­dom. In this way a his­tor­i­cal re­li­gion dis­placed that teach­ing in which Je­sus had blended man’s high­est moral ideas and spir­i­tual ide­als with man’s most sub­lime hope for the fu­ture—eter­nal life. And that was the gospel of the king­dom.

169:3.1When the meet­ing be­came too noisy, Si­mon Pe­ter, stand­ing up, took charge, say­ing: “Men and breth­ren, it is not seemly thus to dis­pute among your­selves. The Mas­ter has spo­ken, and you do well to pon­der his words. And this is no new doc­trine which he pro­claimed to you. Have you not also heard the al­le­gory of the Nazarites con­cern­ing the rich man and the beg­gar? Some of us heard John the Bap­tist thun­der this para­ble of warn­ing to those who love riches and covet dis­hon­est wealth. And while this olden para­ble is not ac­cord­ing to the gospel we preach, you would all do well to heed its lessons un­til such a time as you com­pre­hend the new light of the king­dom of heaven. The story as John told it was like this:

169:3.2“There was a cer­tain rich man named Dives, who, be­ing clothed in pur­ple and fine linen, lived in mirth and splen­dor ev­ery day. And there was a cer­tain beg­gar named Laz­a­rus, who was laid at this rich man’s gate, cov­ered with sores and de­sir­ing to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s ta­ble; yes, even the dogs came and licked his sores. And it came to pass that the beg­gar died and was car­ried away by the an­gels to rest in Abra­ham’s bo­som. And then, pres­ently, this rich man also died and was buried with great pomp and re­gal splen­dor. When the rich man de­parted from this world, he waked up in Hades, and find­ing him­self in tor­ment, he lifted up his eyes and be­held Abra­ham afar off and Laz­a­rus in his bo­som. And then Dives cried aloud: ‘Fa­ther Abra­ham, have mercy on me and send over Laz­a­rus that he may dip the tip of his fin­ger in wa­ter to cool my tongue, for I am in great an­guish be­cause of my pun­ish­ment.’ And then Abra­ham replied: ‘My son, you should re­mem­ber that in your life­time you en­joyed the good things while Laz­a­rus in like man­ner suf­fered the evil. But now all this is changed, see­ing that Laz­a­rus is com­forted while you are tor­mented. And be­sides, be­tween us and you there is a great gulf so that we can­not go to you, nei­ther can you come over to us.’ Then said Dives to Abra­ham: ‘I pray you send Laz­a­rus back to my fa­ther’s house, inas­much as I have five broth­ers, that he may so tes­tify as to pre­vent my broth­ers from com­ing to this place of tor­ment.’ But Abra­ham said: ‘My son, they have Moses and the proph­ets; let them hear them.’ And then an­swered Dives: ‘No, No, Fa­ther Abra­ham! but if one go to them from the dead, they will re­pent.’ And then said Abra­ham: ‘If they hear not Moses and the proph­ets, nei­ther will they be per­suaded even if one were to rise from the dead.’”

169:3.3Af­ter Pe­ter had re­cited this an­cient para­ble of the Nazarite broth­er­hood, and since the crowd had qui­eted down, An­drew arose and dis­missed them for the night. Al­though both the apos­tles and his dis­ci­ples fre­quently asked Je­sus ques­tions about the para­ble of Dives and Laz­a­rus, he never con­sented to make com­ment thereon.

135:6.2It was ap­par­ent to all who heard John that he was more than a preacher. The great ma­jor­ity of those who lis­tened to this strange man who had come up from the Judean wilder­ness went away be­liev­ing that they had heard the voice of a prophet. No won­der the souls of these weary and ex­pec­tant Jews were deeply stirred by such a phe­nom­e­non. Never in all Jew­ish his­tory had the de­vout chil­dren of Abra­ham so longed for the “con­so­la­tion of Is­rael” or more ar­dently an­tic­i­pated “the restora­tion of the king­dom.” Never in all Jew­ish his­tory could John’s mes­sage, “the king­dom of heaven is at hand,” have made such a deep and uni­ver­sal ap­peal as at the very time he so mys­te­ri­ously ap­peared on the bank of this south­ern cross­ing of the Jor­dan.

173:2.4The rulers of the tem­ple came be­fore Je­sus at this af­ter­noon hour chal­leng­ing not only his teach­ing but his acts. Je­sus well knew that these very men had long pub­licly taught that his au­thor­ity for teach­ing was Sa­tanic, and that all his mighty works had been wrought by the power of the prince of dev­ils. There­fore did the Mas­ter be­gin his an­swer to their ques­tion by ask­ing them a counter-ques­tion. Said Je­sus: “I would also like to ask you one ques­tion which, if you will an­swer me, I like­wise will tell you by what au­thor­ity I do these works. The bap­tism of John, whence was it? Did John get his au­thor­ity from heaven or from men?”

173:2.5And when his ques­tion­ers heard this, they with­drew to one side to take coun­sel among them­selves as to what an­swer they might give. They had thought to em­bar­rass Je­sus be­fore the mul­ti­tude, but now they found them­selves much con­fused be­fore all who were as­sem­bled at that time in the tem­ple court. And their dis­com­fi­ture was all the more ap­par­ent when they re­turned to Je­sus, say­ing: “Con­cern­ing the bap­tism of John, we can­not an­swer; we do not know.” And they so an­swered the Mas­ter be­cause they had rea­soned among them­selves: If we shall say from heaven, then will he say, Why did you not be­lieve him, and per­chance will add that he re­ceived his au­thor­ity from John; and if we shall say from men, then might the mul­ti­tude turn upon us, for most of them hold that John was a prophet; and so they were com­pelled to come be­fore Je­sus and the peo­ple con­fess­ing that they, the re­li­gious teach­ers and lead­ers of Is­rael, could not (or would not) ex­press an opin­ion about John’s mis­sion. And when they had spo­ken, Je­sus, look­ing down upon them, said, “Nei­ther will I tell you by what au­thor­ity I do these things.”