John the Baptist
Joyce Voysey

John the Baptist doesn’t seem to have a very good press.  Of course, he wasn’t around for Luke to interview all those years later.  And neither were Zacharias and Elisabeth, I guess.  So I wonder who, besides Mary, Luke did interview about their experience.

John’s mission was to prepare the people for the coming Saviour, a hugely important mission.  Hundreds, if not thousands, came to him in the desert for baptism, and to be told of the need for redemption. 

About the desert, Wayne Jackson in his article, ”Who was John the Baptist?” in the Christian Courier (http://www.christiancourier.com/articles/266-who-was-john-the-baptist) states that “legend has it that Zacharias was slain by Herod the Great, forcing Elizabeth to flee with her babe into the wilderness area of Judea.

 

“John preached about the coming kingdom and the need to repent. The Palestine in which the prophet’s ministry was launched was firmly in the grip of a grossly pagan force, the Roman Empire.  Edersheim graphically describes the conditions of the time.

“It has been rightly said, that the idea of conscience, as we understand it, was unknown to heathenism.  Absolute right did not exist.  Might was right.  The social relations exhibited, if possible, even deeper corruption. The sanctity of marriage had ceased.  Female dissipation and the general dissoluteness led at last to an almost entire cessation of marriage.  Abortion, and the exposure and murder of newly-born children, were common and tolerated; unnatural vices, which even the greatest philosophers practiced, if not advocated, attained proportions which defy description” (I.259).

 

“Moral corruption had made deep inroads into Judaism as well. Read carefully the second chapter of the book of Romans.  It was into this world that John came with his piercing message: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Mt. 3:2; cf. Mk. 1:4).”

 

!!!!!

 

Jesus said of John, “Among them that are born of women there has not arisen a greater than John the Baptist . . .” (Matt. 11:11).  He even came to John for baptism, at which ceremony John had the message from God that this man is God’s beloved Son.

 

Chapter 3 has a long genealogy of Jesus through Joseph.  Were Joseph and Mary so closely related that they shared the same genealogy?