John the Baptist didn’t write a book—not even a slim one. Indeed, he left no written record of his life and ministry. All we know of him, we know from others. And among the most striking things they tell us about this messenger sent by God to prepare the way of the Messiah is that he didn’t recognize Jesus for who he was until God personally announced it at the time John baptized him.
His failure to recognize the person whose arrival he was supposed to announce is all the more surprising because, as a babe in the womb, he recognized without the slightest difficulty, the unborn messiah when the pregnant Virgin Mary came to visit his mother, Elizabeth. No less surprising: Even after hearing God hail Jesus as the Messiah in his own voice, John still entertained doubts about him—so much so he sent two of his followers to check him out.
The episode says as much about human nature as it does about John. Not least, we have to accept that we have a natural predisposition to disbelief when God declines to act according to our preconceived notions of how he ought to do things. John the Baptist expected the Messiah to be a soldier, but God gave us a teacher.
This is a lesson we should take to heart when we consider the matter of the Second Coming. If a vast majority of human witnesses got things wrong the first time, are we really any more likely to get things right a second time around? After all many things remain constant in the Holy Land—not least the population and how the various racial and religious groups interact with one another. Today the country has the same ethnic mix as it had in the 1st Century AD. And people there are up to exactly the same sort of mischief they were engaged in 2,000 years ago.
In the 1st Century AD, terrorists were trying to drive the Roman military out of the Golan Heights, where troops were performing the same thankless peacekeeping task the U.S. Army is often called to undertake. A slick young political operative named Publius Sulpicius Quirinius had been appointed military governor of Syria, of which Judea was temporarily part—and his orders were to pacify the region.
Quirinius—the “Cyrenius” of St. Like’s Gospel—put a lid on things thanks to fast political footwork and a touch of brutality. He was the guy who figured out how to conduct a census of the Jewish population without breaking Jewish religious laws.
At the time Jesus began his earthly ministry, the terrorists had made the major highways so dangerous travelers could only venture on them in heavily armed military convoys. The road from Jerusalem to Jericho—a stomping ground of bandits for more than 1,000 years—was so fraught with peril that for centuries it had been known as ‘The Valley of the Shadow of Death.”
The terrorists—collectively labeled Zealots—belonged to a variety of groups, with different names, but similar agendas. At least two of Jesus’ disciples were terrorists or former terrorists: Simon Zealotes or Simon the Zealot, and Judas Iscariot.
Diplomacy and constant vigilance were needed to maintain a fragile calm among the country’s religious and ethic groups—most of which were engaged in pursuing directly competing agendas. The threat of riots and civil unrest was ever present. It was fear of provoking a riot that convinced Pilate to permit Jesus’ execution.
Absent our technology, the Holy Land of 2,000 years ago suffered from the same political and social ills manifest there today. The problems were so intractable the Jewish population longed for the messiah to be a warrior king like the great David and usher in a Golden Age of peace, prosperity and national supremacy
People, thus, projected their own heartfelt longings on God’s promise of salvation, picturing the Messiah as a warrior king of old. It was as if we in the 21st Century were expecting King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table to charge in on horseback and solve the world’s problems by lopping off heads and cracking a few skulls. Tragically, the Jews in 1st Century Judea were so blinded by their romantic preconceptions they failed to recognize the Messiah when he actually arrived.
We would be foolish to imagine ourselves immune to similar romantic illusions. Back in 1999, a member a fundamentalist church, for example, told me the Second Coming was going to take place in the year 2000 and that he was greatly looking forward to being “raptured.” What particularly enthralled him was the prospect of being given a white horse and sitting on a mountaintop next to Jesus watching the Battle of Armageddon in the valley below. He rejected any suggestion that the white horse, the mountaintop, and Armageddon might be metaphorical or allegorical. He was completely and utterly convinced that the prophecies of St. John’s Revelation would be fulfilled quite literally.
I am not trying to make fun of his beliefs or claim that the Battle of Armageddon will not take place exactly as St. John foretells. But I would not bet the farm on it either. If the prophecy is to be taken literally, if there is to be a physical battle on the Plain of Megiddo (as opposed to a spiritual battle), it seems reasonable to think it will be fought with tanks and missiles rather than saber-wielding cavalrymen. Truth to tell, the only things certain about the Second Coming are those that Jesus, himself, has told us: The event will take us all by surprise and, unlike the first time, there will be no mistake about who has arrived and what he is about to do. GUY HAWTIN✠
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