A Few Lines on John the Baptist.
P. Ben
November, 2015.
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John the Baptist was an important messenger for the reason
that he drew his audiences to witness a spectacle of unequaled transcendence-
the merging (not confused entanglement) of offices in Christ. The prophets of lore spoke distinctly of
Messiah and Jehovah but quite down the line of their inspired text, it is
revealed that the Messiah Himself is Jehovah. For a simple rendering- in Psalm
102:24, we find the Messiah crying out, ‘I said, “O my God, take me not away in
the midst of my days: Thy years are throughout all generations’; the next
verses (Psalm 102:25-27) show that the Messiah in agony is Jehovah since
Jehovah addresses the Messiah as Creator God- ‘Of old hast Thou laid the
foundation of the earth:’. I have picked up only one among a plethora of such
verses. But this is not what the Baptist merely did although it amounts to the same
thing in a sense.
The Baptist directed the long awaited hopes of the remnant*
and got them enjoined with other excellent things. Sure, his was the voice
crying in the wilderness to show that Jesus is Jehovah-Messiah as promised of
old but this witnessing got to an unique level, when he bears record- not just
to the fulfillment of the old oracular but to the revelation of God to the
creature: the Son in the waters, the Father’s voice and the Spirit descending.
In a sense, a tremendous moment dawns on man’s fragile thought; the first
glimpses of a new economy without upsetting the ancient Hebraic system of
divine thought and covenantal promise.
*I am not entering into the details of the Baptist’s
ministry for the remnant of
In Matthew, Mark and Luke- the Baptist sees Christ as an
Establisher of the millennial system while in John, the Baptist looked to
Christ as an Establisher of an eternal system of divine perfection*.
*John’s pointing out-‘Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world’ (John 1) holds out for
eternity. In the millennium, sin of the world is not taken away but is subdued
rather, which of course is not so in speaking of new heavens and a new earth
wherein dwelleth righteousness founded on the blood of Christ shed on the
cross.
John’s testimony was that of Christ on earth but the Church’s
testimony is that of Christ in heaven.
Go to Collected-Writings.net