Women in white raiment

by John Lemley

THE ANGEL’S MESSAGE.

The sight of Zacharias struck dumb awakened among the people an expectation of some great and heavenly event; soon will “the things” done in the priest’s house be “noised abroad throughout all the hill country of Judea,” and the voice of “him that crieth” shall soon resound over hill and valley.

The sacred duties performed, retirement was next in order. As a priest, in the “course of Abia,” the twenty-four courses in the services of the temple relieved each other weekly, each course ministering during a whole week. So Zacharias and Elizabeth leave Jerusalem for their home among the picturesque hills of Judea, south-west of Bethlehem. How beautiful are the pictures of these Israelitish homes into which the Bible bids us so often to look. The familiar vine and fig-tree; the flower-planted courts; the waterpots filled for quenching thirst; the basin and towel and servant to bathe the heated, often dust-covered, feet; the domestic scene morning and evening in the grinding of the food in the familiar hand-mill, the work always performed by the women; the delightful views from the housetops in the cool of the evening; the maidens busy in filling the waterpots; the halting of visitors in the outer court, waiting for some damsel to open the door; the thousand little touches of real life which are always so charming to the observer. In addition to these outward signs, the good manners and propriety, the atmosphere of true courtesy; the youth rising up before the hoary head; the child learning at his mother’s knee, or inquiring of father or elder; a joyousness, such as a mind at peace with God only can exert, are all manifest in these Bible pictures which ages can not dim. Yet most striking are the proofs that in every household children were desired, and gladly welcomed.

Notwithstanding a barren wife in an Israelitish home was often a cause for divorce, Zacharias was pre-eminently a man of hope. As a pious husband and lover, he had faithfully and tenderly clung to his beloved Elizabeth through the long years of youth and middle age, and even after hope had died out of their longing hearts. Both had learned “the patience of unanswered prayer”—a lesson not easily mastered by the bravest of us. But now the hope was to be realized, the “reproach among men” was to be taken away. In that home among the hills of Judea was to be a child in the arms of its mother. The name of the child, and he a son, was to be John (Jehovah shows grace). Many homes would rejoice in his birth, and he would be God’s man, eating nothing to inflame carnal passions, and filled with the Holy Spirit, he would become prophet and reformer. The grossly literal hope of the people for Elijah’s appearance in the flesh would be spiritually fulfilled, for Elizabeth’s son was to have the spirit and the power of the Tishbite; and thus gifted of the Almighty, was to be the forerunner of the Christ. All that was spoken of the Messiah’s messenger by Isaiah, as “the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make His paths straight,” and by Malachi, “Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me,” were fulfilled in this son of many prayers.

In due time he was born, and on the eighth day, in conformity with the law of Moses, was brought to the priest for circumcision, and, as the performance of this rite was the accustomed time for naming a child, the friends of the family proposed to call him Zacharias after the name of his father. The mother, however, required that he should be called John—a decision which Zacharias, still speechless, confirmed by writing on a tablet, “his name is John.” The judgment on his want of faith was then withdrawn, and the first use which he made of his recovered speech, was to praise Jehovah for his faithfulness and mercy, a proof that the cure had taken place in his soul also.

A single verse contains all that we know of Elizabeth’s child of promise for the space of thirty years—the whole period which elapsed between his birth and the commencement of his public ministry. The record is, “The child grew and waxed strong in the spirit, and was in the desert till the day of his showing unto Israel.” But we must not forget that through his childhood and youth he was under the care of a wise, loving mother. Elizabeth’s unfaltering faith and prudent counsel, we must believe, exerted a lasting influence over this child of the desert.

The child thus supernaturally born, was surely a sign that God was again visiting His people. His providence, so long hidden, seemed once more about to manifest itself in the person of Elizabeth’s son, who, doubtless must be commissioned to perform some important part in the history of the chosen people. Could it be the Messiah? Could it be Elijah? Was the era of their old prophets about to be restored? With such grave thoughts were the minds of the people occupied, as they mused on the events which had been passing under their eyes, and said one to another, “What manner of child shall this be?”

So when John passed out from under the wise training of Elizabeth, his reputation for extraordinary sanctity, and the generally prevailing expectation that some great one was about to appear, were sufficient to attract to him a great multitude from “every quarter.” Brief and startling was his first exhortation to them, “Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” His preaching of repentance, however, meant more than a mere legal ablution or expiation, it meant a change of heart and life. While such was his solemn admonition to the multitude at large, he adopted towards the leading sects of the Jews a severer tone, denouncing Pharisees and Sadducees alike as “a generation of vipers,” and warning them of the folly of trusting to external privileges as descendants of Abraham. He plainly told them, “the axe was laid to the root of the tree,” that formal righteousness would be no longer tolerated. Such alarming declarations produced their effect, and many of every class pressed forward to confess their sins and to accept John’s ministry.

This son of Elizabeth is one of the most striking characters in the Bible. Destined from before his birth to be a prophet, his life was worthy of his high office. Pure, unsullied, earnest, fearless, humble, he much resembled his great predecessor, Elijah. Like him, he was an ascetic, and like him, he had his time of fearless outspeaking and of reproval of kings, and hypocrites; and like him, also, a time of depression, as when he sent to Christ to ask, “Art thou He that should come, or shall we look for another?”

A noble example of the fearless manner in which he proclaimed the truth is illustrated in the denunciation of the unlawful marriage of Herod Antipas, the Tetrarch. He had married a daughter of Aretas, King of Petra, but seeing Herodias, the wife of his half brother, Philip, he became infatuated with her, divorced his own wife and married Herodias, who abandoned Philip to marry him. Herodias was a grand-daughter of Herod the Great. This unprincipled woman wrought the ruin of Herod Antipas. Aretas, angry at the treatment of his daughter, made war upon Herod. John reproved Herod for all this, and he evidently had not minced words. Neither had he spoken in such low whispers that he might seem to others to disapprove the crime, but still escape the notice of the king. He thundered out his denunciations in a way to make even the royal couple alarmed, and caused them to shut John up in prison, lest his growing popularity should undermine the security of Herod’s throne. And then Herodias secured the execution of John, which angered the Jews, for they counted John as a prophet and held the subsequent defeat of Herod by Aretas as a judgment upon him for this wicked deed.