Are you the one?
By Richard P. Joseph
I wrote in another article how John the Baptist preached that the messiah would come in wrath and judgement. John’s warnings included statements like; “Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”, “ And even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees.”, “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit [a]and fire.” “His winnowing fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clean out His threshing floor, and gather His wheat into the barn; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”
As you can see, you won’t hear this stuff in most churches as it is an affront to the sissyfied Jesus that most pastors preach about. Jesus is no more than a peace loving hippie according to modern seminary thought. The real Jesus, however, is loving and yet just. His love is what led him to die for our sins but his justice has avenged his holy name. This brings up another point about John the Baptist.
When John was in prison and near his end, he sent two of his disciples to Jesus asking him; “Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?” There are many people who have commented on this as to why John would ask such a question. Did not God confirm that this was the coming one when John saw the Holy Spirit descend upon Jesus and a voice from heaven exclaiming that this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased? In light of the disciples' ignorance, even after three years with the man, were still in the dark as to how Jesus’ mission would be rolled out.
In Matthew 16;20 Peter takes Jesus aside and begins to rebuke him saying ]“Far be it from You, Lord; this shall not happen to You!” It was clear that Peter and the apostles still did not have a clear view of how the mission of Jesus would be accomplished. In John 14:8 Phillip was astonished when Jesus had to inform him that he was God in human form. I, therefore, deduce that John the Baptist was in the same boat as the disciples. John knew that it was the end of the age and that judgement was coming. When he saw Jesus performing miracles of love and compassion, he was probably a little bit confused and therefore was wondering if Jesus was the one to pour out this wrath that he was preaching about or not. It turns out that John had the message correctly but he just did not understand exactly how and when it would occur. It turns out that Jesus did completely pour out the wrath of God on Jerusalem and executed judgement on the faithless but this was to take place in its proper sequence. Jesus performed his acts of love and healing to prove who he was so that there would be no excuses when the wrath did come. He gave Jerusalem every opportunity to repent and believe, then the judgement took place. Jesus began his ministry around AD 30, was executed by the unbelieving Jews 3 ½ years later. The disciples then continued the mission for another 30 plus years then the wrath came. First the Christians had to endure tribulation to seal the deal then a rapture occurred which emptied Hades out and took up any remaining disciple into the realm of God then the wrath was poured out on Jerusalem for 3 ½ years culminating in the destruction of the temple and the end of the Mosaic economy in AD 70. Thus John the Baptist was correct in all he said except for the simple fact that he did not have the entire sequence given to him. That is why Jesus told his disciples that no man knows the exact time or day that the parousia would occur and for good reason.
