The Prisoner in the Third Cell (2 page)

“Mary,” interrupted John, speaking strongly, almost sternly, and very much out of character for a Hebrew lad. “I know what I am to do. The Lord has made this very clear to me. I am to return to the desert, and I am to live there.” John now turned toward Hannel and Parnach.

“I wish to thank both of you for your kind offers. You have all been gracious and caring. Thank you for your concern for my future. Nonetheless, I know where I belong. I am returning to the desert.”

Once more John turned to face Mary.

“You are my mother's closest friend. She loved you dearly. She spoke often of you. Nonetheless, I must leave here immediately,
alone
. The Lord has taken my father and my mother. I have absolutely no obligations. I have no brothers or sisters, no grandparents.” John paused. “You must not worry about me; and though it may seem to all of you that I have simply disappeared, I will be well. God
will
take care of me.

“I am not sure of much, except that I
must
live in the wilderness until God tells me otherwise. This I also know: Out among the Essenes I will discover what it is that my God wishes me to do. The desert will provide me with the answers. My preparation for His will is not in a city nor a village, but a desert.”

The next morning a boy not yet thirteen bade good-bye to Parnach and Hannel, to Joseph and Mary, and to his second cousin who was a year younger than he, who bore the name Jesus.

Chapter 4

John took his place once again among the Essenes, but allowed no one to adopt him. He lived alone. To provide his meager needs for food, water, and clothing, he worked with his hands.

Never once in the coming years did John touch wine. His hair grew, uncut, from the day of his birth. But because it was the one possible source of pride in his life, he gave even his long raven hair the minimum of attention, obscuring its length and beauty.

Much of this time John spent in prayer and fasting—so often so that his fingers sometimes turned purple, and he was sometimes so weak that his legs could no longer support his frame. Frequently he spent whole days and nights in unbroken prayer, doing little to protect his body from the harsh elements of the wilderness. Austere was the way he lived; stern became his demeanor.

As the years passed on, John began spending his time wandering the desert. There the fierce sun leathered his face and turned it to craggy wrinkles. By the time he reached manhood, the son of Zachariah and Elizabeth looked far, far older than his age. To John, such things were a small price to pay, for his long treks into the desert were his most coveted times. There he could spend uninterrupted hours alone with God. The howling wind, the furnace heat, the baking sun, and the cutting sand became his closest companions.

As he approached the age of thirty, when, by tradition, holy men might end their training and enter the ministry, John was one who could hear the voice of God within the desert wind, see His face within the sun, and feel His presence in the blowing sand. He was by now both a mystery and a legend among the Essenes. Few men, the Essenes were certain, had ever lived their lives so completely before God. Few men had abandoned every human comfort to be so utterly unhindered in their pursuit of knowing the Lord. In the minds of the Essenes, and even among some of the nomadic tribes, there was no doubt that a prophet was being raised up in their midst. The desert was giving birth to a man of God.

Such a man as John the world had rarely seen. His devotion to God was absolute; his life was void of all except his call to speak for God. He knew no family life, lived without entertainment, without friends, without companionship. The thought of a wife, a home, or children never crossed his mind. Everything within John was for God. The devotion of an Abraham, of a Moses, of an Elijah, of an Elisha, of an Amos, paled in the presence of this single-minded celibate whose only friend and companion was his Lord.

Never before had the world seen anything like John, nor was it likely to see such a man ever again.

One evening, while standing upon the sandstone cliffs that overlooked the Dead Sea and watching a blazing red sun set behind jagged hills, a voice from heaven spoke to him.

“John, the fullness of time has come. What you have lived your entire life for is at hand. Go. Proclaim the Day of the Lord. Pull down the mountains; fill in the valleys; prepare a highway for the Messiah. Go, John, now. Look neither to the right nor to the left. Let there be nothing else in your life. No one has ever carried so great a responsibility as do you at this hour.

“Proclaim the coming of the Lord!”

Chapter 5

The nomadic caravans were the first to come face-to-face with the desert prophet. Their eyes registered unbelief as they gazed upon the sight of such an emaciated creature. Their first thought was simple enough. “He is some madman who wandered into the desert.” Or, more charitably, “The heat has driven one of the Essenes quite mad.”

Obviously this nameless man was a Jew; but he wore the garment of an unclean animal, the loathsome camel. And it was soon rumored that for food he ate locusts—a food used by only the poorest, most impoverished people.

His outward appearance declared him a lunatic; his words declared him a prophet. His hair, unkempt, reached almost to his knees. His face was that of an old man, but his voice thundered with the vigor of youth. His eyes flashed the burning fire of the desert.

Despite themselves, men could not but stop and stare . . .
and
listen. The voice rang clear. The words were majestic and bold, almost poetic. There was power in every word. The man himself projected a dignity and integrity almost beyond the grasp of human understanding.

The caravans slowed and formed into a circle around the man. Every soul strained to hear what this man had to say.

And what these desert travelers heard resonated with their own deepest feelings. At the same moment, his words convicted each of them. Everything the man spoke was unnerving. What he predicted was impossible, but what he demanded was even more incredulous. John was not only demanding radical change from his hearers, but he was demanding it right there, right then.

No one, they were sure, would take this man seriously.

The caravans would move on, but others would come; and they, too, would stop and listen. And each caravan, when at last it exited the desert, carried with it the reports of a madman or prophet out in the desert, preaching to all who dared paused to hear.

“Why does he not come into the villages to proclaim his message? Does he not know all respectable prophets preach in the marketplaces where people can hear them? Does the fool think people are going to go out there in that infernal hell to hear him? What person in his right mind is going to that pathless wilderness and standing beneath the blistering sun to listen to a man make demands no one is going to respond to. He is mad, all right.”

Yet it happened. Some in the caravans, on their return voyage, would search out the desert prophet. Common folk in villages on the edge of the desert made their way out to hear him. Seeking hearts, empty souls, hungry spirits—desperately longing for something they knew they did not have—dared to take their empty lives into that uncharted wasteland to find
The Prophet.

At first only a few heard him, but they came back to tell their friends of what they had experienced. Rumors about this wildman spread throughout all of Judea and Galilee.

Listeners came first in ones and twos, then by scores and hundreds, and then by thousands. They came on foot, across burning sands. Their numbers grew daily. Some enterprising men were soon scheduling whole caravans into the desert to hear this man.

They all listened. Some wept. Others fell earnestly to their knees. Many cried out in loud voices for undeserved forgiveness. Others cheered. No one jeered. Not a critical word came from any mouth, at least not among the common people.

Yet those who never heard him, who lived in the far-off city of Jerusalem . . .
they
judged him, tried him, and convicted him . . . without having seen nor heard him. The verdict was simple. And familiar. It is laid on every nonconformist of every age. “He has a demon.”

A few came and sat down right at his feet. Their purpose was clear: These men wished to be John's disciples. And so it came to be.

This handful of disciples would take on John's lifestyle and become his constant companions. Like him, they would become austere, grave, and humorless men. They would carry within their hearts, as he did in his, the burden of the sins of Israel. These men joined John in his titanic task of preparing the way for the coming of God's own Messiah.

To hear John was to hear the unexpected, for each day was different. Each day John spoke, and each time he spoke he addressed something the crowd had never heard anyone else say. His daring, his fearlessness in broaching any topic, awed the multitude
and
his disciples.

On one particularly hot day, when the crowds seemed to stretch to the horizon, John cried out, “The day after the next Sabbath I will go to the Jordan River. There I will immerse beneath the Jordan waters all who have repented of their way of life. I will immerse all who make their lives ready for the coming of the Lord.”

It was on that day John received a new name, a name which was soon to be on the lips of all Israel, for on that day he became known as John the Immerser.

Chapter 6

People came to hear John because they were seeking something to fill a deep vacancy in their lives.

Merchants came to hear him and repented of their business practices and were then baptized in the fabled waters of the Jordan. Soldiers came, repented of their brutality, and were baptized. The camel drivers came, the farmers, the rustic fishermen, housewives, women of renown, women of the streets, all kinds and all classes came. And all who came, it seemed, came holding some secret sin, repented thereof, and disappeared beneath the Jordan waters.

Every Jew knew the ancient meaning of a soul's being plunged beneath the water of that particular river. It meant the end of life, the cessation of everything. Everyone awaiting baptism stood on the eastern bank, which was a foreign land. There they stepped into the water and disappeared . . . there to die. But each came up out of the water and stepped onto the western bank, safe within the border of the Promised Land, there to begin a new life with God. This simple drama was unforgettable.

There was one particular day at the Jordan that stood out from all others. It began with the arrival of horse-drawn carriages. A delegation of dignitaries had arrived. What important personages had come out to this obscure place?

It was the nation's religious leaders.

When John saw these costumed men, every muscle in his body became motionless. There was not one outer movement on his countenance to betray his inward feelings. As these religious dignitaries cut through the crowd, John watched as ordinary people dropped their heads or genuflected in a gesture of honor. This did not at all set well with the greatest nonconformist of all time.

John read every man as he stepped out of the carriages. Some had obviously come to sneer, to gather evidence against John, and to condemn. Others came with a great deal of uncertainty, hoping to discover for themselves whether or not John was a true prophet. There were even a few among them, the youngest, who came truly believing that John was a man of God. These young men hoped the older, more respected leaders might agree with their unspoken opinion. After all, if the older leaders gave their blessing to John, some of the young men knew they would be free to become his disciples.

But John saw more than this. He looked in the heart of every man now making his way through the midst of the crowd, and discerned the ultimate weakness of each one. There was not
one
among them brave enough, on his own, to break with accepted religious traditions.

The crowd continued giving way before these vaunted leaders. The delegation was on its way to the front of the crowd, to take their rightful place of honor. This was more than the desert prophet could ever hope to stomach. The religious system of his day, coming
here
? And daring to impose their abominable practices
here
? How dare they come! How dare they bring their arrogance, contempt, disdain, and pride to
this
place!

John had not come to this earth to compromise, nor to win over such men to the ways of God. After all, these men saw themselves as authorities in God's ways. John would not attempt to do the impossible: He would not call the leaders of the religious system to come out of that system. Yet the presence of these men was perverting the freedom that the baptized ones had gained as they laid aside the systemization of this world.

John, therefore, declared war. Open, unbridled, unquartered war . . . on Israel's most revered personages. He wanted every human being present to know how he felt about the chains that traditionalists had forged upon the hearts and souls of God's people. And just how did he feel? He felt this whole religious culture must perish.

There was nothing John could do better than thunder, and on this occasion he roared like a lion. Thrusting out the forefinger of one hand, he shattered earth and heaven with his denunciation.

“Who . . . who, I ask . . . who told you to repent?

“You nest of snakes, what are you doing here?”

The crowd was stunned. No one had
ever
talked this way to
these
men. Many in the crowd instinctively rose to their feet; after a moment, wide grins began to appear on the faces of some. But every eye was now riveted on the religious leaders. What would be their reaction? And, was it possible . . . had John committed some kind of blasphemy? The people knew the rumors about John being possessed of a demon; this was not going to help. They loved him for his boldness, yet no one ever dreamed he would take on the religious leaders of their nation.
No one
did that!