The Riverbank
The desert sun baked the stones white. The Jordan slid by, brown and restless, cutting through the wilderness like a scar. On its banks stood a man who didn’t belong in the city. His clothes were rough, woven from camel hair. His food was wild honey and locusts. His words were fire.
“Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 3:2, KJV).
The people came anyway—farmers, fishermen, mothers holding children, tax collectors with guilty eyes. They waded into the water, confessing their sins, and John lowered them beneath the current as if the Jordan itself could wash away the years of compromise.
Then came the Pharisees and Sadducees. Robes pressed. Heads high. The establishment. John’s eyes narrowed. “O generation of vipers,” he thundered, “who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance” (Matthew 3:7–8, KJV).
It wasn’t the kind of sermon that won friends in high places. But John wasn’t there to win friends. He was there to prepare the way.
The Palace
Far from the Jordan, inside Herod’s palace, the air was heavy with perfume and politics. Herod Antipas sat on his throne, a ruler under Rome’s thumb. At his side was Herodias, once his brother’s wife, now his own. The arrangement was scandal wrapped in luxury.
John’s words traveled quickly. He had said aloud what others only whispered: “It is not lawful for thee to have thy brother’s wife” (Mark 6:18, KJV).
Herod flinched. Herodias seethed. The king had soldiers, wealth, Rome’s backing. John had nothing but truth. And somehow, that was enough to make a palace tremble.
The Prison
The cell was dark and damp. Chains rattled when John shifted. Outside, the banquets rolled on. Inside, the silence stretched long. Yet even there, John’s voice could not be silenced. His disciples still came. His words still burned.
Josephus, the historian, later wrote that Herod executed John because he feared his influence: “Herod slew him, who was a good man, and commanded the Jews to exercise virtue, both as to righteousness towards one another, and piety towards God” (Antiquities 18.5.2). Even outside Scripture, John was remembered as a man who insisted that faith meant integrity in public life.
The Banquet
One night, Herod’s birthday feast glittered with laughter and wine. Herodias’s daughter danced, and Herod, caught up in spectacle, made a rash promise: she could ask for anything. Herodias whispered her revenge. The girl spoke her mother’s words: John’s head on a platter.
And so the prophet who shook palaces lost his life to a grudge. But even decapitated, his voice echoes still.
The Wilderness Today
Two thousand years later, the same story repeats. Different costumes, different stages, but the same patterns.
-
A young pastor stands before his church board, refusing to ignore financial impropriety, and finds himself quietly removed from his post.
-
A journalist digs into corruption and faces pressure to soften the story.
-
A believer at the office speaks up against discrimination and suddenly finds the promotion slipping away.
They don’t wear camel hair. They don’t eat locusts. But in their refusal to bow, they sound strangely familiar.
Ellen White once wrote: “In this age, just prior to the second coming of Christ in the clouds of heaven, such a work as that of John is to be done” (Testimonies for the Church, vol. 8, p. 332). The work is not exotic. It is simply the courage to call things by their right name, to live in such a way that the road is cleared for Christ to be seen.
Standing, Even When It Costs
John reminds us that truth-telling is not safe. His wilderness cry landed him in a dungeon and eventually in the hands of an executioner. Yet Jesus said of him: “Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist” (Matthew 11:11, KJV). Greatness, in heaven’s dictionary, has little to do with applause and everything to do with faithfulness.
Brennan Manning once wrote that the deepest need of the church is for “prophets who will call us from the anesthetizing grip of mediocrity.” John was such a prophet. And every generation needs them still.
The Echo
The Jordan still runs. The palaces still scheme. The prisons still hold those who refuse to be silent. But so does the voice. It is the cry in every wilderness, the whisper in every conscience: Repent. Prepare. The King is coming.
And when the world asks why we speak up at all, when it would be easier to stay quiet, perhaps we will remember the wilderness prophet who paved the way for Christ. We may not all be John the Baptist, but in a world of compromise, every Christian is called to sound a little like him.