Реферат: Biography Of John The Baptist Essay Research

separated from the chaff and the chaff burned “with unquenchable fire.”

The rite of baptism, a symbolic act signifying sincere repentance as well as a desire to be

spiritually cleansed in order to receive the Christ, was so strongly emphasized by John that

people began to call him “the baptizer.” The Scriptures tell us of the day when Jesus joined

the group of those who wished to receive baptism at John’s hands. John knew Jesus for

the Messiah they had so long expected, and at first excused himself as unworthy. Then, in

obedience to Jesus, he acquiesced and baptized Him. Although sinless, Jesus chose to be

baptized in order to identify Himself with the human lot. And when He arose from the

waters of the Jordan, where the rite was performed, “the heavens opened and the Spirit as

a dove descended. And there came a voice from the heavens, Thou art my beloved Son, in

Thee I am well pleased” (Mark i, 11).

John’s life now rushes on towards its tragic end. In the fifteenth year of the reign of the

Roman emperor, Tiberias Caesar, Herod Antipas was the provincial governor or tetrarch

of a subdivision of Palestine which included Galilee and Peraea, a district lying east of the

Jordan. In the course of John’s preaching, he had denounced in unmeasured terms the

immorality of Herod’s petty court, and had even boldly upbraided Herod to his face for his

defiance of old Jewish law, especially in having taken to himself the wife of his

half-brother, Philip. This woman, the dissolute Herodias, was also Herod’s niece. Herod

feared and reverenced John, knowing him to be a holy man, and he followed his advice in

many matters; but he could not endure having his private life castigated. Herodias

stimulated his anger by lies and artifices. His resentment at length got the better of his

judgment and he had John cast into the fortress of Machaerus, near the Dead Sea. When

Jesus heard of this, and knew that some of His disciples had gone to see John, He spoke

thus of him: “What went you to see? A prophet? Yea, I say to you, and more than a

prophet. This is he of whom it is written: Behold I send my angel before thy face, who

shall prepare thy way before thee. For I say to you, amongst those that are born of women

there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist” (Matthew xi, 10-12).

Herodias never ceased plotting against the life of John, who was not silenced even by

prison walls. His followers now became even more turbulent. To Herodias soon came the