The Crown and the Cross: The Life of Christ by Frank G. Slaughter Page B

conscious of their sin. Even if they had not been, the Pharisees would not have left them unreminded of it, so John’s thunderings concerning the imminent end of the present era and the coming of God’s kingdom under an Anointed Messiah struck fear and trembling into nearly every heart. By thousands they came and camped along the banks of the Jordan and the several brooks that ran into it here. Campfires dotted the valley and extended into the hillsides, many of the campers sleeping in the caves that pocked the rocky slopes.
    The Essene community nearby gave help to those who became ill or were too poor to buy their own food, but its resources were soon considerably overtaxed. Merchants from nearby Jericho and farther up the Jordan Valley brought food and supplies on mule trains to be sold at the usual high profit under such circumstances. The caravansary nearby, open to travelers as a shelter, was always filled to overflowing.
    Every day after he preached, John led a procession of the repentant down into the shallows at the fords of the Jordan to be baptized in the Essene manner, but it was in the pulpit that he really became the prophet the people were already acclaiming him to be.
    “Brood of vipers!” he flayed the religious leaders who came to listen. “Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” He went on to warn that no mere lip service would suffice to save them. “Bear fruits worthy of repentance, and do not think to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’” he shouted, referring to the tendency of Israelites to believe that as sons of Abraham they were favored of God and their sins would therefore be more easily forgiven. “For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones,” he warned. “And even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Therefore every tree which does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”
    With the odor of brimstone, which the ignorant people firmly believed came from the very fires of hell, still rising from crevices in the volcanic terrain nearby, this pertinent reminder had an immediate effect upon his listeners. Falling on the ground before him, repentant sinners cried, in an agony of fear and conviction of their own unworthiness, “What shall we do then?”
    “He who has two tunics, let him give to him who has none,” John answered. “And he who has food, let him do likewise.” It was the simplest of God’s commandments and, because of human greed, the one most frequently ignored.
    “Teacher, what shall we do?” a tax gatherer asked.
    “Collect no more than what is appointed for you,” John advised sternly, referring to the publicans’ habit of demanding from people greater taxes than they were legally required to pay—and pocketing the overage.
    “What of me?” a soldier inquired. To him John said, “Do not intimidate anyone or accuse falsely, and be content with your wages.’’
    John’s teachings contained nothing that was really new; every Jew was required by the Law to practice these very things which John was advising. But when coupled with his dramatic appearance as a prophet who spoke the word of God directly to them, and his dire warnings that God’s kingdom was soon to come and that those not worthy would be destroyed like the tree cast into the fire, they had a powerful effect upon his listeners.
    So long as John did not claim Messiahship but identified himself merely as one warning of the coming kingdom of God, the authorities had been contemptuously tolerant of his simple doctrine. Only when he went further and attacked Herod Antipas, who, as a son of Herod the Great, ruled in the province of Peraea where the Baptist was preaching, did he bring down the fire of official displeasure on his head. Even then John could have avoided trouble by limiting his preaching to general terms, but, like the prophet he believed himself to be, he dared to attack even the ruler.
    Herod