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John found his nation already toiling under the iron
yoke of Rome, with its wicked Herods and their pagan
legions. He beheld the ignorant Jewish people misled by a
corrupt and arrogant clergy, the Scriptures corrupted and
replaced by a superstitious ancestral literature. He found
that that people had lost all hope of salvation, except that
Abraham (pbuh) , who was their father, would save them.
He told them that Abraham (pbuh) did not want them for his
children because they were unworthy of such father, but
that “Allah could raise children for Abraham (pbuh) from
the stones” (Matt. iii). Then they had a faint hope in a
Messiah, a descendant from the family of David (pbuh) ,
whom they expected then, as they do to-day, to come and
restore the kingdom of that monarch in Jerusalem.

Now when the Jewish deputation from Jerusalem
asked, “Art thou the Messiah?” he indignantly replied in
the negative to this as well as to their subsequent questions.
God alone knows what rebukes and reprimands they did
hear from those fiery utterings of the Holy Prophet of the
Wilderness, which the Church or the Synagogue have
been careful not to let appear in writing.

Leaving aside the exaggerations, which have been
evidently added to the Gospels, we fully believe that
the Baptist introduced Jesus (pbuh) as the true Messiah,
and advised the multitudes to obey him and follow his
injunctions and his gospel. Nevertheless, he clearly told his
people that there was another and the last, great Luminary,
who was so glorious and dignified in the presence of Allah
that he was not fit to undo the laces of his shoes.

(2) It was not Jesus Christ (pbuh) who could be intended
by John, because if such were the case he would have
followed Jesus (pbuh) and submitted to him like a disciple
and a subordinate. However, such was not the case. On
the contrary, we find him preaching, baptizing, receiving
initiates and disciples, chastising King Herod, scolding the