The Farmville herald. (Farmville, Va.) 1957-current, 1962-09-28
Herald Of Hope
Lesson for September 80, 1862

Lesson for september 81, 1867
He was a strange man, John
the Baptizer. Strange in many
ways. His birth was a miracle,
ard yet in all his life he never
performed one single miracle
and never tried to. He came
into this world by a miracle, and
yet when he died with his head
chopped off, no miracle wa S
there to save him. He kne "
more about Jesus than Jesus
own brothers did; and yet he
doubted Jesus in a public sort
of way as his brothers never
showed. Jesus called him the
greatest of men up to his time;
yet the world, even the Christian
world, pays more honor to many
another ancient figure than to
John.
In the Desert
People who dress in cancels
hair clothes and eat locusts and
wild honey as a regular diet are
not common nowadays and they
were not in Johns day either.
A man eccentric as he would
not get many to listen to him
nowadays; but John had a ire
mendous audience. The roa d
from Jerusalem to Jericho was
and still is-a steep winding
highway, infested with bandits;
yet crowds would walk tn e
fifteen miles or so from t n e
city to where they could hear
John preach and be baptized by
him. No evangelist in America
would set up his tent Is miles
from the nearest stable town;
but John did, and the people
came. His sermons all could
be boiled down to two sen
fences: Repent! He is coming |!
Considering everything, espec-
tally considering the fact that
some people thought he must be
Christ himself. John must have
been a very remarkable char
acter. He did not fit any pat
tern. then or now. His long stay
In the wilderness, beginning
when he was a boy flor no
doubt his aged parents did not
live till he grew up), made it's
mark on him. This was good
and had its drawbacks too. A
desert child, John would not be
tied to the conventional, the Gus
tomary. He had few if any hui
man ties. He could look at the
world SO to speak, from the
sidelines, he had a fully detach-
ed view of life. On the other
hand. because he lived all alone
he did not have the common
touch" that Jesus had. Unlike
Jesus, John had nothing to say
to the sorrowing and suffering
of the world. Where Jesus saw
the multitudes as sheep without
a shepherd. John spoke Of them
as a brood of vipers" snakes
babies, to put it in plain English.
In Hope
Yet the people, no matter
what John might call them,
however fierce his denunciation
OF them as sinners - the people
sWarmed to hear him. The read
er can think of reasons. and
by the way, any one who is in
tereSted in Johns story should
read all the Bible material, not
the few printed verses. One of
the reasons, surely, why John
was so popular in spite you
might way of all his efforts not
to be, was that he preached
just what the people wanted to
hear about the future. The
people who came to hear him
and stayed to be baptized were
poor, they were under the
crushing heel of a long staying
occupation army.
In Confusion
Jesus indeed came, though as
We saw. at first only John knew
who he truly was. But he was
not the kind of Messiah" or
God 's-Man John had expected.
We know that year or two
later, when John was near his
death in a dungeon. he. t h e
preacher of hope. began to have
doubts. He even sent to Jesus
to ask if he, John. could be
mistaken. We do not know
whether what Jesus said to him
by his messengers comforted
him. but we may believe it did,
for Jesus always knew the right
thing to say. So we may feel
sure that hope returned to him
in the end. Read about it in
Luke chap. ~ John is not the
first or the last herald of hope
who has been right about the
hope. but wrong about how the
hope comes true. John had
thought the Messiah would be
an Avenger. a Destroyer; Jesus
came a man Of peace. 10 n
looked for something spectacu-
lar; Jesus showed him miracles,
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