Christ’s cleansing rampage of the court of Gentiles heartened the Baptist. He may have been an eyewitness of it. His disciples would have been there and carried the news to him if not. It excited hm. He wondered what the Nazarene’s next project would be. Jesus had a wide choice since John had planted an ax at the foot of so many tree-targets. One would be Jewish hirelings in Rome’s employ as tax collectors. Another the lack of a social conscience in Israel. So many walked-in-rags unseen by the few in linen. Even Roman soldiers could be told to mind their manners around Jewish people. Having conquered gave no excuse for brutalizing them, including their constant extortion of money for perceived offenses.
However, when both preached in the Judean countryside, John heard that Jesus spoke of God’s concern for people, not his anger at them. The very people John labelled little snakes! And why would the Nazarene perform miracles for them, when he saw them as subjects of pain and suffering? It confused the eremite. And when Herod Antipas’ long hand snatched him from his baptismal sight and imprisoned him near the Dead Sea, John began a long descent into spiritual depression. Now...lest we misunderstand: John’s appeal had nothing of the anarchist’s call to violence in the early 20th century. Or of the 21st century anarchist’s call for disruption, leaving otherwise more-rational people trapped in an emotional fervor they refuse to escape. They aim only to harm, create fear and divide people—the old “revolt against it somehow” of the early anarchists. John’s single goal was Revival. To turn Israel from the religious somnolents they had become to the Davidic-led heroes of their golden age. Revival his method, their personal return to what Moses could lead them to become his goal. And he saw the Nazarene’s method a departure from his prophetic-denunciation method. He couldn’t see, due to his obsession with instant judgment, that Christ’s cleansing of the Temple offered Israel a symbol of what would happen to both temple and national life if they rejected him as Messiah. Jesus later used Pilate’s murder of Galileans, and the accidental death of 18 dead in Jerusalem, to tell the parable of the infertile fig tree Luke 13:1-9. The owner wanted the useless tree uprooted and burned. The caretaker pleaded for one more year of particular care before destroying it. In essence, Jesus’ 3 ½ year ministry offered Israel the spiritual fertilizer that would have called to fertility any spiritual life left dormant in the culture. That it didn’t meant the spiritual life had departed beyond recall from the body politic of Israel. When the Romans came, they served as garbage men, carting away a corpse. John understood God’s judgment on Israel’s future. He didn’t, because his nature couldn’t, factor in the rousing spiritual power Jesus Christ expressed in his ministry, delaying the PUNISHMENT! End Part VII
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