Page 173 - Demo

169Jesus (pbuh) really make such a declaration? Was Johnthe Baptist greater than Abraham, Moses, David, andJesus himself? And in what did his superiority and greatness consist? If this testimony of Jesus aboutthe son of Zachariah be authentic and true, then the greatness of the “Eater of the Locusts in the wilderness” can only consist in his absolute abnegation, self-denial, and refraining from the world with all its luxuriesand pleasures; his ardent wish to invite the people to penance; and his good tidings about “that Prophet.”Did his greatness consist -as the Churches willhave it- in being a cousin, contemporary and witness of Jesus (pbuh) ? The value and greatness of a man, as well as of a Prophet, can be determined and appreciated by his work. We are absolutely ignorant of the number of persons converted through the sermons and purified by the baptism of John. Nor are we informed with regardto the effect of that conversion upon the attitude of the penitent Jews towards the “Lamb of God!”Christ is said to have declared that John the Baptist (pbuh) was the reincarnation of the Prophet Elijah (Matt. xi. 14, xvii. 12; Luke i. 17), whereas John expressly told the Jewish deputation that he was not Elijah, nor Christ, not that Prophet (John i).Now, can one, from these Gospels full of statements opposing and denying each other, form a correct conclusion or try to find out the truth? The charge is exceedingly grave and serious, because the persons concerned are not ordinary mortalslike ourselves, but two John Prophets who were both created in the womb by the Spirit and born miraculously -one had no father, while the parents of the other were sterile and an impotent nonagenarian couple. The gravity of the charge is even more serious when we come to consider the nature of the documents in which these contradictory statements are written. The narrators are the Evangelists,