Page 177 - Demo

173John found his nation already toiling under the iron yoke of Rome, with its wicked Herods and their pagan legions. He beheld the ignorantJewish 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 inJerusalem.Now when the Jewish deputation from Jerusalem asked, “Art thou the Messiah?” he indignantly replied in the negative to this aswell asto theirsubsequent 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