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| John the Baptist Was Sent. From Where? His Soul Was Sent from a Higher Region.
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24. John the
Baptist Was Sent. From Where? His Soul Was Sent from a
Higher Region.
“There was a man sent from God, whose name was
John.”4747
He who is
sent is sent from somewhere to somewhere; and the careful student will,
therefore, enquire from what quarter John was sent, and whither.
The “whither” is quite plain on the face of the story; he
was sent to Israel, and to those who were willing to hear him when he
was staying in the wilderness of Judæa and baptizing by the banks
of the Jordan. According to the deeper sense, however, he was
sent into the world, the world being understood as this earthly place
where men are; and the careful student will have this in view in
enquiring from where John was sent. Examining the words more
closely, he will perhaps declare that as it is written of
Adam,4748
“And the Lord sent him forth out of
the Paradise of pleasure to till the earth, out of which he was
taken,” so also John was sent, either from heaven or from
Paradise, or from some other quarter to this place on the earth.
He was sent that he might bear witness of the light. There is,
however, an objection to this interpretation, which is not to be
lightly dismissed. It is written in Isaiah:4749
“Whom shall I send, and who will
go to the people?” The prophet answers: “Here
am I,—send me.” He, then, who objects to that
rendering of our passage which
appears to be the deeper may say that Isaiah was sent not to this world
from another place, but after having seen “the Lord sitting on a
throne high and lifted up,” was sent to the people, to say,
“Hearing, ye shall hear and shall not understand,” and so
on; and that in the same manner John, the beginning of his mission not
being narrated, is sent after the analogy of the mission of Isaiah, to
baptize,4750
and to make ready
for the Lord a people prepared for Him, and to bear witness of the
light. So much we have said of the first sense; and now we adduce
certain solutions which help to confirm the deeper meaning about
John. In the same passage it is added, “He came for
witness, to bear witness of the light.” Now, if he came,
where did he come from? To those who find it difficult to follow
us, we point to what John says afterwards of having seen the Holy
Spirit as a dove descending on the Saviour. “He that sent
me,” he says,4751
“to baptize
with water, He said unto me, Upon whomsoever thou shalt see the Holy
Spirit descending and abiding upon Him, the same is He that baptizeth
with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” When did He send him
and give him this injunction? The answer to this question will
probably be that when He sent him to begin to baptize, then He who was
dealing with him uttered this word. But a more convincing
argument for the view that John was sent from another region when he
entered into the body, the one object of his entry into this life being
that he should bear witness of the truth, may be drawn from the
narrative of his birth. Gabriel, when announcing to Zacharias the
birth of John, and to Mary the advent of our Saviour among men,
says:4752
That John is to be “filled with
the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb.” And we
have also the saying, “For behold, when the voice of thy
salutation came into mine ears, the babe leaped in my womb for
joy.” He who sedulously guards himself in his dealings with
Scripture against forced, or casual, or capricious procedure, must
necessarily assume that John’s soul was older than his body, and
subsisted by itself before it was sent on the ministry of the witness
of the light. Nor must we overlook the text, “This is
Elijah which is to come.”4753
For if
that general doctrine of the soul is to be received, namely, that it is
not sown at the same time with the body, but is before it, and is then,
for various causes, clothed with flesh and blood; then the words
“sent from God” will not appear to be applicable to John
alone. The most evil of all, the man of sin, the son of
perdition, is said by Paul to be sent by God:4754
“God sendeth them a working of
error that they should believe a lie; that they all might be judged who
believed not the truth, but had pleasure in
unrighteousness.” But our present question may, perhaps, be
solved in this way, that as every man is a man of God, simply because
God created him, but not every man is called a man of God, but only he
who has devoted himself to God, such as Elijah and those who are called
men of God in the Scriptures, thus every man might be said in ordinary
language to be sent from God, but in the absolute sense no one is to be
spoken of in this way who has not entered this life for a divine
ministry and in the service of the salvation of mankind. We do
not find it said of any one but the saints that he is sent by
God. It is said of Isaiah as we showed before; it is also said of
Jeremiah, “To whomsoever I shall send thee thou shalt
go”;4755
and it is said of
Ezekiel,4756
“I send thee
to nations that are rebellious and have not believed in
Me.” The examples, however, do not expressly speak of a
mission from the region outside life into life, and as it is a mission
into life that we are enquiring about, they may seem to have little
bearing on our subject. But there is nothing absurd in our
transferring the argument derived from them to our question. They
tell us that it is only the saints, and we were speaking of them, whom
God is said to send, and in this sense they may be applied to the case
of those who are sent into this life.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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