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oppressions, robberies, and insatiable greed for conquest
and money than all the rest of humankind put together.

(5) John the Baptist (pbuh) could not be the precursor
of Jesus Christ (pbuh) in the sense in which the Churches
interpret his mission. He is presented to us by the
Gospels as a “voice crying aloud in the wilderness,”
as the fulfilment of a passage in Isaiah (xl. 3), and as a
herald of Jesus Christ (pbuh) on the authority of the Prophet
Malakhi (Mal. iii. 1). To assert that the mission or duty
of the Baptist was to prepare the way for Jesus (pbuh) -the
former in the capacity of a precursor and the latter in
that of a triumphant Conqueror coming “suddenly to his
temple,” and there to establish his religion of “Shalom”
and make Jerusalem with its temple more glorious than
before (Hag. ii. 8) - is to confess the absolute failure of
the whole enterprise.

Nevertheless, one thing is as true as two and two
make four - that the whole project, according to the
extravagant view of the Christians, proves a total
failure. For, from whatever point of view we examine
the interpretations of the Churches, the failure appears
to be obvious. Instead of receiving his prince in
Jerusalem at the Gate of the Temple clad in diadem
and purple, amidst the frantic acclamations of the
Jews, the precursor receives him, naked like himself,
in the middle of the River Jordan; and then to introduce
him, after immersing or plunging his master into the
water, to the crowds as “behold, this is the Messiah!”
or “this is the Son of God!” or elsewhere “behold the
Lamb of God!” would either be tantamount to simply
insulting the people of Israel or to blaspheming; or to
purely mocking Jesus (pbuh) as well as making himself
ridiculous.