Zacharias

• Zacharias

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.

135:0.1John 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.

122:8.4The sec­ond day af­ter the birth of Je­sus, Mary sent word to Eliz­a­beth that her child had come and re­ceived word in re­turn invit­ing Joseph up to Je­ru­sa­lem to talk over all their af­fairs with Zach­a­rias. The fol­low­ing week Joseph went to Je­ru­sa­lem to con­fer with Zach­a­rias. Both Zach­a­rias and Eliz­a­beth had be­come pos­sessed with the sin­cere con­vic­tion that Je­sus was in­deed to be­come the Jew­ish de­liv­erer, the Mes­siah, and that their son John was to be his chief of aides, his right-hand man of des­tiny. And since Mary held these same ideas, it was not dif­fi­cult to pre­vail upon Joseph to re­main in Beth­le­hem, the City of David, so that Je­sus might grow up to be­come the suc­ces­sor of David on the throne of all Is­rael. Ac­cord­ingly, they re­mained in Beth­le­hem more than a year, Joseph mean­time work­ing some at his car­pen­ter’s trade.

135:2.1Af­ter an ill­ness of sev­eral months Zach­a­rias died in July, A.D. 12, when John was just past eigh­teen years of age. This was a time of great em­bar­rass­ment to John since the Nazarite vow for­bade con­tact with the dead, even in one’s own fam­ily. Al­though John had en­deav­ored to com­ply with the re­stric­tions of his vow re­gard­ing con­tam­i­na­tion by the dead, he doubted that he had been wholly obe­di­ent to the re­quire­ments of the Nazarite or­der; there­fore, af­ter his fa­ther’s burial he went to Je­ru­sa­lem, where, in the Nazarite cor­ner of the women’s court, he of­fered the sac­ri­fices re­quired for his cleans­ing.

135:2.2In Septem­ber of this year Eliz­a­beth and John made a jour­ney to Naz­a­reth to visit Mary and Je­sus. John had just about made up his mind to launch out in his life­work, but he was ad­mon­ished, not only by Je­sus’ words but also by his ex­am­ple, to re­turn home, take care of his mother, and await the “com­ing of the Fa­ther’s hour.” Af­ter bid­ding Je­sus and Mary good-bye at the end of this en­joy­able visit, John did not again see Je­sus un­til the event of his bap­tism in the Jor­dan.

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.

135:2.4As time passed, John re­turned less of­ten to He­bron, while he made more fre­quent vis­its to En­gedi. He was so en­tirely dif­fer­ent from the ma­jor­ity of the Nazarites that he found it very dif­fi­cult fully to frat­er­nize with the broth­er­hood. But he was very fond of Ab­ner, the ac­knowl­edged leader and head of the En­gedi colony.

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.

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.

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:

122:2.3“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.”

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.

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.

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.

135:0.5Zach­a­rias and Eliz­a­beth had a small farm on which they raised sheep. They hardly made a liv­ing on this land, but Zach­a­rias re­ceived a reg­u­lar al­lowance from the tem­ple funds ded­i­cated to the priest­hood.

122:9.2There lin­gered con­stantly about the courts of the tem­ple two re­mark­able char­ac­ters, Sim­eon a singer and Anna a po­et­ess. Sim­eon was a Judean, but Anna was a Galilean. This cou­ple were fre­quently in each other’s com­pany, and both were in­ti­mates of the priest Zach­a­rias, who had con­fided the se­cret of John and Je­sus to them. Both Sim­eon and Anna longed for the com­ing of the Mes­siah, and their con­fi­dence in Zach­a­rias led them to be­lieve that Je­sus was the ex­pected de­liv­erer of the Jew­ish peo­ple.

122:9.3Zach­a­rias knew the day Joseph and Mary were ex­pected to ap­pear at the tem­ple with Je­sus, and he had pre­ar­ranged with Sim­eon and Anna to in­di­cate, by the salute of his up­raised hand, which one in the pro­ces­sion of first-born chil­dren was Je­sus.

122:8.6These priests from Mes­o­po­ta­mia had been told some­time be­fore by a strange re­li­gious teacher of their coun­try that he had had a dream in which he was in­formed that “the light of life” was about to ap­pear on earth as a babe and among the Jews. And thither went these three teach­ers look­ing for this “light of life.” Af­ter many weeks of fu­tile search in Je­ru­sa­lem, they were about to re­turn to Ur when Zach­a­rias met them and dis­closed his be­lief that Je­sus was the ob­ject of their quest and sent them on to Beth­le­hem, where they found the babe and left their gifts with Mary, his earth mother. The babe was al­most three weeks old at the time of their visit.

122:10.4The mas­sacre of these in­fants took place about the mid­dle of Oc­to­ber, 6 B.C., when Je­sus was a lit­tle over one year of age. But there were be­liev­ers in the com­ing Mes­siah even among Herod’s court attachés, and one of these, learn­ing of the or­der to slaugh­ter the Beth­le­hem boy ba­bies, com­mu­ni­cated with Zach­a­rias, who in turn dis­patched a mes­sen­ger to Joseph; and the night be­fore the mas­sacre Joseph and Mary de­parted from Beth­le­hem with the babe for Alexan­dria in Egypt. In or­der to avoid at­tract­ing at­ten­tion, they jour­neyed alone to Egypt with Je­sus. They went to Alexan­dria on funds pro­vided by Zach­a­rias, and there Joseph worked at his trade while Mary and Je­sus lodged with well-to-do rel­a­tives of Joseph’s fam­ily. They so­journed in Alexan­dria two full years, not re­turn­ing to Beth­le­hem un­til af­ter the death of Herod.