Reality 101--The Ultimate Revelation Of God Series

Now John the Baptist came from God, very specifically as the final prophet from God whose entire purpose in coming was to point mankind to his contemporary, Jesus of Nazareth and reveal him as the Messiah, that deliverer, that light and life of God that all men seek.

Now John, in verse 8, pauses to make a careful distinction. The prophet, John the Baptist, Himself, was not the Light himself, but He came, verse 8, to testify or witness about the Light. In other words, God was making Himself as clear as possible. He sent one final prophet before He revealed Himself in the most ultimate way. This prophet solitary purpose was to point men to the God-man Himself, the Messiah, the Light and the Life.

Now as it turned out, John was such an incredibly powerful prophet, that confused men were so confused that they would be tempted to follow John himself, rather than the Messiah he pointed them to. You see, this John was so powerful in His mission that thousands of people traveled from cities and great distances to repent of their sins in the middle of the wilderness at his preaching. So powerful was his preaching that 20 or 25 years later, the Apostle Paul would come across people in modern-day Turkey, hundreds and hundreds of miles away from Israel, who were still following John and John alone, who had no knowledge of Jesus. In fact, there is still a cult in Iraq, just south of Baghdad, which follows John the Baptist and somehow managed to become hostile Christianity. Just to be clear, and just to prevent if possible this sort of error from coming to pass. John the Apostle makes it crystal clear that John the Baptist was not the light or the life to follow. Rather, he point all mankind to the man who was the ultimate reality, who was the source of all that existed, who was himself the light and the life all mankind should follow and seek—and that one was the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, the God man.

So John the Apostle knew, in part, that He had encountered ultimate reality, God in the flesh, when he encountered Jesus—he knew because this powerful prophet whom he had previously followed, John the Baptist, told him so.

And John the Baptist still speaks today, because John the Apostles tells us today what He said: Jesus is the light and life of mankind. Jesus is the Messiah. Follow Him. Jesus is the Ultimate Revelation of God--A person who explains God far better than any hole in the ground ever could, for God is a person, with a mind, with a will an with feelings, just as we are.

So why is it that so many men don’t know this? So why is it that in a discussion of Jesus Christ between two men, that one of them says, if God would only do something to prove his existence, why doesn’t he do it? And the other man, a self-professed Christian agrees with Him. Why don’t we get it? Why don’t we get it that God has done the one thing, the greatest thing He could ever do, to prove His existence, and show us more than that, exactly what He is like in terms we could understand.