VIII
CHRIST THE EDUCATOR OF EDUCATORS
I. The Christ Life
To Israel as a nation had been intrusted the sacred gift of teaching; but the power had departed from this people because they had mingled their educational ideas with the heathen, and had so far forgotten the commands of Jehovah that they were sending their children to heathen teachers, inviting into their midst the prophets of Baal.[45] That nation whose prophets had more than once warned the kings of the earth of impending danger, heard no longer the voice of God. For nearly four hundred years no prophet had arisen in Israel. “Prophecy had become so completely extinct—the Spirit had so utterly departed from Israel—that it was apparently assumed by many that a new prophet was an impossibility.” Had the God who brought their fathers out of Egypt, who had driven out the nations before their face,—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,—had He forsaken His people? Often the question was asked, as the family circle formed around the table. Almost with bated breath mothers awaited the birth of a child, hoping it might be the chosen of God, but still no prophet came.
Israel prior to birth of Christ
The priests in Israel went on in their formal round of duties; yearly the nation assembled at Jerusalem for the annual feasts. Thousands of victims were slain, and the blood ran freely from the altar; but there was no answering fire, no glow of the Shekinah. Jewish children sat day after day at the feet of masters in Israel, listening to the repetition of tradition and the words of the Talmud; but the life had departed from the instruction, and there was no response in the souls of men. Heaven waited anxiously for the opening of some soul to the inflow of God’s Spirit, but the avenues through which it should have come were closed. Teachers who should have been “under the full control of the Spirit,” knew not what it was to hear the voice of God; and children, fed only with physical and mental food, grew to manhood with shriveled spiritual natures, to become in turn the teachers of the next generation. As Israel’s governmental prosperity was due to her educational system, as her land produced abundantly when the children were properly taught, and as the nations round them bowed in respect to the chosen of God so long as they adhered to the system of education once offered, it is no wonder that the year 5 B.C., following centuries of departure from these truths, found Palestine in the iron grasp of Rome, and its people scarce able to pay the necessary tribute. Heaven’s eye saw this and more.
John the Baptist
Among the priests who ministered in the temple was one who looked for a deliverer, and to him the angel Gabriel came with the words: “Thy prayer is heard; and thy wife Elizabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John.” Although this man had touched the chord on which angels sang, and was enabled to feel the pulse-beat of the Eternal, the angel’s words startled him, and he believed them not. And that the sounds of earth might for a time be shut out, and Zacharias be enabled to listen only to the voice of God, the angel laid his hand upon him, and he remained speechless until the day of the fulfillment of Gabriel’s words.
The education of the forerunner