THE WITNESSES
FIRST SIGN
75
AND
The Lord's own testimony to His forerunner we find in Matthew:
`... A prophet? yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophet. For
this is he, of whom it is written, Behold, I send My messenger
before Thy face, which shall prepare Thy way before Thee. Verily
I say unto you, Among them that are born of women there hath not
risen a greater than John the Baptist' (11:9-11).
The events immediately associated with the birth of John the
Baptist obviously indicated the arrival of some one of no small
importance, and it is not surprising that those who heard of them said,
`What manner of child shall this be?' We must also remember the
testimony of the Acts to the fact that his ministry had had an effect
outside the land of Palestine, for we find that Apollos of Alexandria,
and the twelve disciples at Ephesus had come under its influence
(18:25; 19:1-4). The greater must be the King he represents: if the
forerunner therefore be so great, Whose shoe-latchet John felt himself
not worthy to unloose, how great must He be!
John opens his testimony in verse 19 by recording the questions put
to John the Baptist and his answers to them. The priests and Levites
sent from Jerusalem simply asked the question, `Who art thou?' They
did not actually say, `Art thou the Christ?' but knowing that this
question was uppermost in men's minds (see Luke 3:15), John
anticipates the inquiry by confessing - `denying not, but confessing', `I
am not the Christ'. Let us pause a moment here. John says that those
who asked the question were `Jews'. Matthew refers to his own people
as `Jews' only once (28:15), his other four references being the
statements of others. Mark speaks of the Jews only once out of six
occurrences, when he describes, apparently for the sake of the Gentile
reader, the Jewish custom of washing (Mark 7:3). And Luke, who has
the Gentile reader in mind, has only two references out of a total of
five (7:3, 23:51). John, on the other hand, uses the word `Jew'
sixty-eight times, an indication that by the time he wrote his Gospel,
his own people had ceased to be a nation, and could only be referred to
by the name in common use among the Gentiles. In contrast with
John's sixty-eight references to the `Jews' we must place his four
references to `Israel' (1:31,49; 3:10; 12:13), and Matthew's twelve
references. These are significant numbers, especially as we view them
in the light of Israel's position before and after Acts 28.