#21.2 John the Baptist Remembered

#21.2 John the Baptist Remembered

This is a good time to stop and review the great work that John the Baptist has done.  He has attracted huge crowds with his calls for repentance and baptism, and preaching that the Messiah is coming … in fact is now among them. John is very vocal, forceful, and vigorous, in his continuing testimony of Jesus as the Christ, and will not be silenced. The four New Testament gospels all tell of him baptizing multitudes before and after he baptized Jesus. With Jesus beginning his ministry John tells his disciples that Jesus will now increase and he, John, will decrease. That is the way the Father has planned it should be. Let us consider: For the first time in 400 years the people are seeing and hearing a prophet, and he is preaching by the power of the Holy Ghost.

In some six months of his ministry he has challenged the apostasy and priestcrafts among the Jewish leadership and is creating much excitement; “all Judea is going out to meet him.” We learn from the Book of Mormon that the iniquities in Jerusalem at this time were the worst of any generation in the world (2 Nephi 10: 3-5.) He alerted the Jewish nation to an awareness that the Messiah is soon coming and he, John, is the prophesied Elias, the forerunner foretold in their scriptures.  

John will be the last prophet of the Old Testament and the first of the New. The people know their own prophets have foretold of this for hundreds of years, and they have been yearning for the Deliverer to come. As a witness JB bears record of the gospel through the Son, unto all the world (JST John 1: 7.) He preaches repentance, baptism, the Holy Ghost, love, gathering, conversion, morality, true worship, resurrection of the dead, keys, judgment, and other principles of the gospel (JST Luke 3: 3-11.) The Lord made sure that his prophet was well prepared for his calling with full knowledge of the Gospel.

Joseph Smith said that John the Baptist was one of the Lord’s greatest prophets. Jesus tells his listeners that, “Among those that are born of women there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist” (Luke 7: 28.)  He was divinely called to prepare the way for the Lord, he was entrusted to baptize the Lord, and he was the only legal administrator holding the Aaronic Priesthood there at this time (TPJS 275-76.) The Savior called John a “burning and a shining light” (John 5: 35) and testified that all things that John did were true (John 10: 41.) Several passages in the New Testament indicate that some (maybe a number) of Jesus’ Twelve were originally disciples of John the Baptist. John truly magnified and fulfilled his great calling.

Glenn R. McGettigan

February 2014; Revised August 2014

References:

“A Burning Light.” Matthews

“Behold the Messiah.” Matthews