The Voice by the River
CHAPTER 14
WHILE JESUS was still living in Nazareth and working in his carpenter shop, suddenly the news went through all the land that a strange man was preaching in the desert country of Judea, not far from Jerusalem; and that all the people were going out of the cities and villages to hear him.
This man was John, the son of the old priest Zacharias and his wife Elizabeth. You remember that an angel came to Zacharias while he was standing by the altar in the Temple, and told him that he should have a son, and that his name should be John. John had now grown up and was a young man about thirty years old. He had lived out in the desert places away from the cities and their crowds, so that he could be alone and think and pray and listen to the voice of God. And God had spoken to him in the desert and he had told him to preach to the people and tell them how to get ready for the Kingdom of God, which was soon to come.
John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness
John was preaching beside the river Jordan, at the foot of the mountains; and from the cities and villages everywhere the people went to listen to his words. John did not look like the men of his time. He had never cut his hair, and it hung upon his shoulders in a long black mass. His black beard, too, was very long, for it had never been trimmed. His clothing was a skin torn from a beast or a mantle woven from the rough, shaggy hair of the camel, fastened by a leather belt around the waist. He had lived out of doors in the sun and the winds and the rain, so that his face and arms and legs and his bare feet were all brown and hard. He ate for his food the locusts which he could pick up in the fields and the woods and the honey to be found in the hollow trees. When the people looked at him, they thought of the great prophet Elijah, who many hundred years before had gone up to heaven in a chariot of fire near that very place where John was preaching, and they said wonderingly to each other:
"This must be Elijah, the fiery prophet, who has come back to earth."
A prophet among the Israelites was a man who brought to the people the word which God had given him to speak. The books of the Old Testament, which all the people knew almost by heart, told of many prophets, such as Moses, who brought water for his people by striking the rock; Samuel, whose prayers saved the people from their enemies; Nathan, who spoke bold words to David the king; and Elisha, who had made the bitter waters of a spring sweet, had cured the leper Naaman and wrought many wonderful works. Of all the prophets, they thought Elijah the greatest, and they remembered that in the last book of the Old Testament, the book of the prophet Malachi, it was written:
"Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great day of the Lord shall come."