Why John the Baptist Doubted Jesus

Transcript edited for the page.

[0:00]

Picture the scene for a second. Okay. The man saw the heavens literally tear open. Like, he heard the voice of the Creator boom out over the water. Yeah. He stood waist-deep in the rushing currents of the Jordan River and personally baptized the promised Messiah. The ultimate spiritual high. Exactly. But now? Now he is sitting in a cold, pitch-black dungeon. Oh, man. He's shivering in the damp, just listening to the heavy footsteps of guards above him. Which is terrifying. And from that dark cell, He manages to smuggle a message out to the very man he baptized, and he asks, this is crazy, he asks, did I get this all wrong? Are you actually the one? It is just such a jarring contradiction, you know? Right. You have the ultimate prophet, the guy who is supposed to be completely fearless, suddenly sounding, well, completely broken.

[1:02]

Welcome back to Babel Report. We are so glad you're here. If you are joining us for the first time, this is a show where we take a massive stack of sources. So historical research, ancient texts, and we pull out the insights to help you understand these huge moments in the biblical narrative. And today, I mean, we have an incredible stack of sources on the table. We really do. We're looking at the historical writings of Flavius Josephus. To understand the brutal realities of first-century prisons, right? Yeah. And we're looking at the gospel narratives of Matthew and Luke to examine this specific prison correspondence. Plus, we pulled from the ancient Hebrew scrolls of the prophet Isaiah. Yes. And we are referencing several foundational theological papers on Second Temple Judean expectations. So our mission today, the central question we are answering on Babel Report, is really this. How do we make sense of John the Baptist's crisis of faith? Right. Why would the man who prepared the way suddenly doubt everything? And how does his doubt from that exact prison cell actually reveal the most profound shift in human history? Because it does. It changes everything. It really does. We are talking about John the Baptist and his cousin Jesus, or Yahusha, as his own mother would have called him. Which is such a cool historical detail. Yeah, that warm family reality of his life.

Just a quick note for the listener as we get into these ancient texts. Whenever we talk about God on Babel Report, we use his actual name, Yahuwah. Exactly. We want to ground this in the reality of their world. So bring it back to John. sitting in that cell.

It is basically the ultimate cliffhanger of the first-century.

[2:44]

It really is. And honestly, reading through our sources today, it validates a surprise that a lot of people feel when they encounter this story. Yeah. Because typically, we are taught to view doubt as a sin, or at least a weakness. Well, for sure. Like a failure of nerve. Right. A lack of faith. But the research points to something entirely different here. Which is what? John's doubt wasn't a lack of faith at all. His doubt was actually the result of him paying too close attention to his Bible. Whoa. He doubted precisely because he knew the scriptures better than anyone else. That is exactly the thread we need to pull today. Yeah. To understand John's doubt, we can't just look at it as some, you know, spiritual abstraction. We have to start by looking at the stark physical reality of where he is sitting. The historical context is brutal.

[3:33]

It is. Let's detail the psychological reality of his situation. According to the historian Josephus, John is locked away in Machaerus. Machaerus. Yeah. This is Herod Antipas' desert fortress. It's located on the eastern side of the Dead Sea. Which is not a hospitable place. No, it's perched on these incredibly high, craggy cliffs. It's desolate. So we need to erase any modern ideas of a penitentiary here. Oh, absolutely. This isn't a facility with visiting hours and a cafeteria and like a library. No. Machaerus was a military stronghold. A fortress. Exactly. It was a lavish palace at the very top where Herod could throw his drunken banquets. But it was a nightmare at the bottom. Because the dungeons were carved deep into the bedrock. Right.

It's isolating. It's brutally hot during the day, freezing at night. And it's completely removed from the lush, wild openness of the wilderness where John spent his entire life. That sensory deprivation must have been overwhelming. Think about it. Here's a man whose entire ministry was defined by the outdoors. Yeah. The rushing water of the Jordan, the open sky, the desert wind. And now he is chained to a stone wall in the dark. Entirely dependent on the whim of a corrupt political ruler.

[4:49]

But let me push back on this a little bit. Sure, go ahead. Because I think a lot of listeners might be wondering the same thing. What's that? If John is the ultimate prophet, you know, the guy eating locusts, wearing camel's hair, calling down fire on the religious elite. The toughest guy in Judea. Right. Why is he suddenly wavering just because he got arrested? I mean, prophets get arrested all the time in the biblical narrative. They really do. Jeremiah was thrown into a literal pit of mud and left to starve. Yeah. Elijah had a bounty on his head. Didn't John know what he signed up for? That is a brilliant point. Right. And it's the perfect question because it forces us to do a little detective work with the text. Okay, let's do it. Because when you really look at the sources, this isn't just a guy complaining about bad food and cold nights. He's not just whining. No. He isn't even asking to be rescued. He is having a profound theological crisis.

[5:40]

Okay. Look at the agonizing irony of his situation. John spent his entire ministry preparing the way for the kingdom of Yahweh. Right. He was the herald for the one who, according to ancient prophecy, would literally set the captives free. Oh, man. So the Messiah arrives and the prison doors are supposed to swing open. That's the promise. That's the promise. And yet John is the captive. The doors are emphatically shut. Wow. He spent months proclaiming the imminent downfall of corrupt, compromised rulers. He warned them that the axe was already laid to the root of the tree. And yet Herod Antipas is still upstairs? Exactly. Herod Antipas is the textbook definition of a corrupt, compromised ruler. A guy who literally stole his brother's wife. Right. And he's still sitting comfortably on the throne, eating imported delicacies, while John is rotting downstairs. That has to sting. And meanwhile, Jesus is out walking freely in the sunshine in Galilee. Preaching to crowds. Seemingly ignoring the fact that his own herald, his own cousin, is in chains.

So what you're saying is John's doubt isn't about his personal comfort. It's about the fact that Jesus's actions don't match the job description of the Messiah. You hit the nail on the head. He did his job, but Jesus isn't doing his. From John's perspective, yes. Because the job description of the Messiah was incredibly specific. Right. And it all revolved around a massive underlying concept that defined the entire worldview of a first-century Judean.

[7:14]

We have to talk about the theology of exile. Let's unpack that. Because when we hear the word exile today, we usually think of geographical displacement. Yeah, physical movement. Like you are forced to flee your country as a refugee and you physically cannot return home. Right. But if you look at the map in the first-century, the Judean people had been back from Babylon for hundreds of years. Exactly. The temple in Jerusalem had been rebuilt. They are living in Judea. They are farming in Galilee. Yeah. How can they be in exile if they are physically living in their own homeland? That is the great tragedy of the Second Temple period. Okay. They were geographically home, yes, but they were theologically and politically in exile. Explain that. Let's trace the history for a second. Back in 586 BC, the Babylonians destroyed the First Temple and dragged the people away. The original exile. Right. Decades later, they were allowed to return to rebuild. But when they returned, things were never the same. The glory days of King David and Solomon were just gone. Gone. They were just a tiny province being passed around by massive empires. Like a political football. Exactly. They were ruled by the Persians, then the Greeks, and we know how brutal Antiochus Epiphanes was. Oh, incredibly brutal. Then the Ptolemies, the Seleucids, and now, in John's day, the Romans. The biggest, baddest empire of them all. Look at the reality on the ground for the average person listening to John. The Romans are the ones collecting the taxes. And those taxes were crushing. Unbelievable. We're talking about a poll tax just for existing. Land taxes, tolls on the roads. And all of this wealth is being siphoned out of Judea to fund pagan temples in Rome. Not to mention the sheer humiliation of it. Oh, yeah. Foreign Gentile governors like Pontius Pilate are the ones making the ultimate life and death decisions. Right. They can literally execute you on a whim. Let's define another key term here for the listener.

[9:10]

The Davidic line. Okay. The royal family of King David, the family that Yahuwah promised would rule forever on the throne. Right, the rightful kings. They are completely powerless. By the first-century, they have basically been reduced to a family of manual laborers and carpenters in a backwater town called Nazareth. That is quite the fall from grace. It is, and most devastatingly of all, and this is something the theological papers we read really emphasize, the manifest glory of Yahuwah never returned. Wait, what do you mean? The prophets promised that the glory of God would dramatically return to the temple like it did in Solomon's day, but it hadn't. So they are physically on the real estate, but they are completely alienated from the promises of the covenant. Yes. Let me try an analogy here to help us picture this because it's such a specific weird feeling.

[10:00]

I'm all ears. Let's call it the squatter landlord. I love it. Walk us through it. So imagine you have been away on a long, arduous trip. Okay. And you finally get to return to your family's ancestral home, like the home your great-grandparents built. Right. The physical house is still there. You walk through the front door. You are standing in the living room. I'm picturing it. But while you were gone, a hostile squatter moved in. Okay. And not only did they move in, they changed all the locks. Oh, wow. They force you to pay exorbitant rent just to sleep in your own basement. And they completely ignore and sometimes outright mock all of your family's rules and traditions inside the house. That is a brilliant way to capture the humiliation of it. You are technically home, but you are absolutely still in exile. You are a tenant in your own inheritance. Right. And if you are living in that basement, paying rent to a hostile squatter, what is the obvious expectation? You are waiting for someone to fix it. Exactly. You are waiting for someone from your family to show up, an older brother, to kick the door down and throw the guy out. And everyone in the first-century knew exactly who that older brother was supposed to be. The Messiah. Right. They were waiting for Yahuwah to send a warrior king, and his job was crystal clear. Kick out the squatter landlord. Purify the house and restore the family to their rightful place of power and authority. Right.

But for a first-century Judean, political liberation was the end of exile. You couldn't separate the two. No, you could not separate the spiritual salvation from the political salvation. They were the exact same event. So what you're saying is, as far as everyone was concerned, the kingdom of God arriving literally meant the Roman Empire leaving. Yes, 100%. It's a zero-sum game. If Caesar is still minting coins, the kingdom hasn't arrived.

[12:00]

Exactly. And that brings us to the radical nature of what John was actually doing right before he was arrested. Okay, let's get into that. Because when we picture John the Baptist, we usually picture a fiery street preacher, maybe a little eccentric. The guy with the bugs and the honey? Right. But the sources show us something far more dangerous. John was out there initiating a wilderness revolution. The location of his ministry is so important here. He wasn't just picking a random spot by the river for a religious retreat. The location was the message. The location was everything. By going out to the Jordan wilderness, John was signaling a massive historic reset. A new exodus. Yes. Think about Israel's history for a second. Where did they cross into the promised land after wandering in the desert for 40 years? The Jordan River. Right there in the wilderness. That is exactly where Joshua led the tribes of Israel across the water to conquer the corrupt nations that were living there. So John standing in that exact same water is essentially planting a massive flag. He is signaling to everyone paying attention. We are doing it again. The conquest is restarting. God is renewing his covenant and we are going to march in and take the land back. That is so intense. Precisely. And what he is doing in that water is just as radical as where he is doing it.

[13:17]

We need to define baptism in the specific first-century context. Definitely. Because if you grew up in a modern church, you probably think of baptism as a nice, polite ceremony. Yeah, you wear a white robe. You get dunked. Maybe you get a certificate at the end. Everyone claps. Right. That is not what John was doing.

John's baptism was a radical, incredibly subversive bypass of the entire temple system in Jerusalem. We really need to explain the mechanics of the temple system to see why this was such a huge threat. Walk us through it. Because normally, if you wanted forgiveness of sins, if you felt alienated from God and wanted to be purified, you couldn't just pray in your bedroom. No. You had to go to Jerusalem. Right. The temple was the exclusive mediator of forgiveness and purity. It was an absolute monopoly. Like a spiritual toll booth. Exactly. If you wanted forgiveness, you had to travel to the city. You had to buy an unblemished animal, often at a huge markup from the temple merchants. Oh, for sure. You had to pay the half-shekel temple tax, and that required you to exchange your Roman coins for Tyrian shekels, paying an exchange fee in the process. Just the total racket. Then you had to hand your animal over to a priest who would sacrifice it on the bronze altar. And who controlled all of this? The Sadducees. The Sadducees. Let's define them. Good idea. They were the aristocratic priestly elite. They were the ones running the temple complex. And they were notoriously corrupt. Very corrupt. They maintain their wealth and their power by collaborating with the Roman squatters. The Romans let them run the temple and get rich as long as they kept the peace and didn't start any rebellions. So the Sadducees had a vested interest in the status quo. They loved things exactly how they were. They didn't want a new exodus. They were very comfortable. They were very comfortable. And then here comes John. Here comes John. He is out in the muddy, rushing water of a river, completely outside the city walls. Yeah. And he is offering forgiveness of sins and covenant renewal for free. Wow. Directly to the people. No animals, no coins, no priests, no altar. He is basically declaring the entire elite establishment in Jerusalem null and void. That is exactly what he's doing. He's saying the Sadducees who run the temple and collaborate with the Romans, they are irrelevant. God is abandoning that corrupt system.

He is doing something entirely new, and you can get in on the ground floor right here in the dirt. It is a complete disruption of their economic and religious monopoly. Total disruption. So what you're saying is John wasn't just a weird preacher in the woods. He was a direct political and religious threat to the establishment. Exactly. He was drawing massive crowds. The gospel accounts say that all of Judea and Jerusalem were going out to him. Thousands of people. Thousands. And if you are Herod Antipas and you see a wildly charismatic guy in the wilderness drawing thousands of people, talking about a new kingdom and a coming judge, you don't see a quirky preacher. You see an insurgency. Which makes perfect sense of why he was arrested. Totally. But John expects this pushback, doesn't he? Oh, absolutely. Because when the Messiah arrives, the clash with the establishment is exactly what is supposed to happen. He expects it completely. John's whole message was, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Right. He promised that the Messiah was coming with a winnowing fork in his hand. Ready to separate the wheat from the chaff. And burn the chaff with unquenchable fire.

[16:42]

Heavy stuff. So let's look at the collision of expectations. Okay. The moment finally arrives. Jesus shows up at the river. John baptizes him. The spirit descends like a dove. The heavens open. John hears the voice of Yahuwah from heaven. So in John's mind, this is the inauguration of the war. Yes. He is thinking, mission accomplished. I brought the remnant to the river. The true king is here. Now comes the fire. Now comes the judgment. Let's march on Jerusalem and kick out the squatter landlord. That is exactly what he anticipates. He goes to prison, probably thinking, any day now. Jesus is going to rally the troops, storm the fortress, and let me out. But then. But then.

Jesus doesn't stick to the script. Not even close. This is where we really need to look at the evidence of what Jesus actually does.

[17:31]

Yeah. Because it contrasts so sharply with what John expected. Let's walk through it. Instead of raising an army of zealots. And let's quickly define the zealots for context. Go ahead. They were the militant political faction of Judeans who believed in armed, violent rebellion against Rome. Right. That is the kind of army you would expect a warrior king to raise. Absolutely. But instead of rallying the zealots, Jesus wanders down the beach and gathers a handful of working class fishermen. Which is baffling enough. Right. But it gets worse. It gets so much worse for John's expectations.

Instead of plotting a violent overthrow of Rome, Jesus is recorded healing a Roman centurion's servant. Let's just pause on that. Yeah, we have to. Because to a zealous first-century Judean expecting liberation, healing a Roman soldier is straight up treason. Oh, completely. A centurion wasn't just some guy. He was the physical embodiment of the occupying force. He commanded the troops that collected the taxes. And beat the citizens. And Jesus uses his miraculous power to help him. It would be incredibly offensive. And it doesn't stop there. What else does he do? Instead of issuing clear battle cries, or publishing a political manifesto, or attacking the Roman garrisons, Jesus is sitting on grassy hillsides, teaching them parables about mustard seeds and lost sheep. Just so passive. And instead of purifying the nation by separating the righteous from the sinners, he is having dinner parties with tax collectors. And tax collectors were considered the worst of the worst. They really were. They were local Judeans who had sold out their own people to work for the Roman squatters. Skimming extra money off the top to line their own pockets. They were traitors. Yeah. And Jesus is sharing a meal with them.

[19:10]

So put yourself in John's shoes. Okay. He is sitting in that damp cell in Machaerus. He is listening to the drip of the water. Chained up. Every day, his disciples come to the prison bars to bring him food. Right. And they give him the daily report on what Jesus is doing. Which has to be so frustrating to hear. Hey, John, Jesus went to a wedding today. Oh, man. Hey, John, Jesus had dinner with Zacchaeus, the tax collector. Yeah. Hey, John, Jesus healed a Roman. And John has to be thinking, where is the fire? Yes. Where is the axe at the root of the tree that I was just preaching about? Exactly. I promised these people the wrath of God against the corrupt, and you are out there talking about lilies of the field. That is the agonizing tension of the dungeon. It's psychological torture. It's almost worse than the physical chains.

And it builds and builds until John finally reaches his breaking point. He can't take it anymore. He has to make a decision. He summons his most trusted followers, the ones who haven't abandoned him yet. Yeah. He pulls them close to the prison bars,

[20:10]

and he whispers a direct, desperate message for them to take straight to Jesus. This is the moment. And it is the ultimate question of the gospel narrative. Are you the one who is to come or should we look for another? It's such a loaded question. So loaded. He is basically throwing down a gauntlet. Yeah. If you are the Messiah, act like it. Start the revolution. And if you aren't, tell me now. So I know I wasted my life and I'm going to die in this hole for nothing. Exactly.

Jesus hears the question from John's disciples. Okay. And his answer changes how we have to read the entire Bible. Wow. It is a masterpiece of theology. But before we get to that, a quick word from our sponsors.

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[21:43]

Okay, back to it. I am so eager to hear how he responds. It's brilliant. Because Jesus doesn't just say, yes, I'm the guy or no, I'm not. He doesn't give a straight binary answer. He refuses the binary. Completely. Instead, he tells the messengers, go and tell John what you hear and see. The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news preached to them. Which, if you are John, feels like a massive deflection on the surface. It really does. John is asking for a theological and political status update. When is the war starting? And Jesus hands him a medical report. A medical report. That's a great way to put it. It does feel like a deflection until you do the detective work. Right. We have to look at the clues Jesus is dropping here. Okay, what are the clues? Why this specific list of miracles? Why list the blind, the lame, the lepers, the deaf, and the dead? He isn't just randomly listing good deeds. No. Jesus is explicitly quoting the prophet Isaiah. This is where those ancient scrolls we mentioned earlier come into play. Exactly. Specifically, Jesus is weaving together phrases from Isaiah chapter 35 and Isaiah chapter 61. Okay. If you read those texts, Isaiah explicitly predicted that when Yahweh finally returns to save his people, when he finally ends the exile and establishes his kingdom, these exact specific physical miracles will happen. Wow. The eyes of the blind will be opened, the ears of the deaf unstopped. The lame will leap like a deer. So Jesus is speaking in code, but a code he knows John will instantly understand. Yes. He is saying to John, look at the evidence. Open your scroll. The exact things Isaiah said would happen when God returns to Zion are happening right now by my hands. Right. He is proving his identity not through military conquest, but through the fulfillment of the deepest prophetic hopes of restoration. He is telling John, the kingdom is here, but it looks like healing, not war.

[23:49]

Beautifully said. But hold up. Yeah. There's a catch at the end of his message. There is. Because if Jesus is proving his identity by directly fulfilling these famous prophecies, why does he add that incredibly pointed warning right at the end? It's a tough line. He tells the messengers to tell John, blessed is the one who is not offended by me. Or in some translations, blessed is the one who does not stumble over me. That feels incredibly tense.

Like he knows John is going to hate the answer. It is incredibly tense. It's actually heartbreaking if you think about it. Yeah. Because Jesus is doing two things at once here. Okay. First, he is validating John's framework. He is saying, yes, Isaiah is the playbook. Yes, the kingdom is arriving. So John wasn't crazy. No, not at all. But secondly, he is gently, firmly rebuking John's timeline and his methodology. Ah. Jesus is fulfilling prophecy, but in a way that requires John to completely rethink how God works in the world.

So what you're saying is Jesus didn't give a straight answer. He gave John a theological puzzle to prove the kingdom was already here. Exactly. He is essentially saying, I am doing the work of the Messiah, but I am not dispensing the violence you expected. Don't let my mercy become a stumbling block for your theology.

That is a massive paradigm shift. It is. It's a puzzle that demands John expand his entire worldview.

[25:13]

Yeah. Because to understand why Jesus was focused on healing instead of fighting, we have to grasp a concept that the scholars in our sources call the deeper exile. Let's explore that because this is where the real friction lies. It is. John and really all the Judean people at the time expected the symbolic, meaning the healings, the opening of blind eyes. Right. And the literal, meaning the violent political liberation from Rome, to happen at the exact same time. A package deal. Exactly. It was supposed to be a package deal. God shows up, people get healed, the Romans get crushed, and Israel rules the world. All in one afternoon. That was the expectation. But Jesus was targeting a deeper exile than Rome. Okay. Let's think about the big idea here. And we need to define another theological term, the Adamic curse. Taking us all the way back to Genesis. All the way back to the beginning.

Genesis chapter 3. The exile in Babylon, the current brutal oppression under the Romans, the corruption of the Sadducees. Yeah. All of these historical realities were just symptoms. Symptoms. They were terrible, painful symptoms, but they were not the root disease. Okay. What's the disease? The actual disease is humanity's alienation from Yahweh through sin and death. Wow. When Adam and Eve were exiled from the Garden of Eden, that was the original cosmic exile. The first exile. Right. Humanity was cut off from the source of life, and the result is a world infected by greed, violence, sickness, and ultimately, the grave. I want to try another analogy here to make sure we are really capturing the difference between what John wanted and what Jesus was doing.

[26:54]

Let's hear it. Is it fair to think about it like treating a symptom versus curing a disease? How's that map onto this? Walk me through it. Imagine you have a deadly systemic infection raging through your bloodstream. Okay. And one of the severe symptoms of that infection is a terrible burning fever. You are miserable. Right. Now, taking a cold bath or taking some medicine to just temporarily lower your temperature might make you feel better for an hour. Sure. It gives relief. It treats the symptom. And in our historical context, treating the symptom is overthrowing Rome. That makes perfect sense. But lowering the fever doesn't stop the infection from multiplying in your cells. No. The infection of sin and death will still eventually kill you. That is a phenomenal way to put it.

A political revolution, a military uprising led by a warrior messiah, would just be a cold bath for a dying patient. Yeah. It feels incredible for a moment. You get the catharsis of seeing your oppressors defeated, but you are still fundamentally dying. So what you're saying is without fixing the human heart and defeating death, overthrowing Rome would just lead to another corrupt empire. Nothing eternal is accomplished. Nothing. Because think about human history. Yeah. If Jesus had just raised an army and slaughtered the Roman legions, what happens next? You just get a new boss. You just swap out a Roman tyrant for a Judean tyrant. Right. You swap one corrupt violent empire for another corrupt violent empire. It's an endless cycle. Exactly. The human heart remains fundamentally broken, selfish, and prone to power hoarding. And worst of all, the grave still wins in the end. Yes. Death still comes for everyone.

So Jesus is looking past Caesar, past Herod Antipas, past the political borders of Judea, and he is looking straight at the human condition itself. He is going for the root of the infection. He is going for the cure.

[28:49]

And this leads us to the ultimate grand climax of what Jesus is doing. The big reveal. This is the ultimate exile ending event. And tragically, this is the key piece of information that John the Baptist simply did not have while he was sitting in that prison cell. He couldn't see the end of the story. He couldn't. Because the end of the story is the resurrection.

Ah. Exactly. The resurrection is the moment the puzzle finally snaps together. Right. Think about what John wanted Jesus to use. A sword.

A military victory. Sure. But think about what a sword actually does. A sword can end a human life. Yeah. It can enforce a temporary law. It can conquer a city for a century or two.

But a sword cannot defeat death itself. No, it actually just feeds death. You cannot kill death with a weapon. So true. But when Jesus goes to the cross, when he willingly absorbs the full crushing weight of the Adamic curse, the full penalty of humanity's rebellion, and then walks out of the tomb three days later, breathing, tangible, and alive. It changes everything. He is definitively defeating the ultimate squatter landlord. Death itself is evicted. The resurrection is the ultimate victory.

It is the moment the cosmic exile is broken forever.

[30:17]

This completely shifts how we have to look at the list of miracles Jesus sent back to John. It requires us to look at the deepest, most awe-inspiring layer of the text. Because Jesus isn't just a really empowered prophet doing magic tricks to prove he is special. He isn't just an agent of God running errands on earth. No. He is the Word made flesh. He is Yahuwah incarnate. Exactly. God himself has stepped into the timeline of the human story. Wow. So when Jesus touches a blind man's eyes and they open, or when he speaks to a paralyzed man and the man walks,

it is not just a nice moment of pastoral compassion. It is the creator of the universe physically restoring his broken creation. One atom, one optic nerve at a time. Every single miracle, every leper cleansed, every deaf ear unstopped was an invasion. Yes. It was a preview of the new creation pushing its way into the present reality. It was a declaration of war against the decay of the universe. D-Day for the cosmos. The beachhead of the new creation had been established in the ministry of Jesus.

[31:25]

That is incredible. And remember earlier when we talked about how the manifest glory of Yahuwah had never returned to the second temple? Right, the building was there, but the divine presence was missing. When Jesus, as Yahuwah incarnate, dwells with his people, eats with them, heals their sick, and forgives their sins in the dirt of Galilee, that is the long-lost glory of the temple finally returning. Oh, wow. It didn't return as a scary cloud of smoke to a stone building in Jerusalem controlled by corrupt Sadducees. No. It returned in flesh and blood, walking the dusty roads, accessible to anyone who would reach out and touch him.

[32:02]

Which actually validates John's entire life's work. It really does. Because for a second there in the dungeon, it felt like maybe John was just entirely wrong about everything. But he wasn't. He wasn't wrong at all. His theology of the kingdom was right. Totally right. The kingdom was at hand exactly like he preached at the Jordan River. The judgment was coming. The axe was at the root of the tree. But the judgment fell on sin and death at the cross, not on Roman soldiers in the streets. John was completely right about the what. He just couldn't see the how from inside the darkness of his cell. Right. His mission was completely valid. He really did prepare the way for Yahuwah. So what you're saying is God's plan for redemption was infinitely bigger and far more permanent than anything John could have imagined from his cell. That is exactly it. Which brings us back to the central question we asked at the very beginning of our discussion today.

How do we make sense of John's doubt? Yeah. We make sense of it by realizing that John doubted because his theological categories were simply too small for a God who came to save the entire cosmos, not just a single political nation. He expected a political warrior to fix his immediate circumstances, and he got the creator of the universe, reversing the ancient curse of death itself. So to bring this home for you, the listener, how does this massive historical and theological shift change how we read the Bible this week?

[33:33]

Here's your takeaway. Okay. When you are reading the ancient texts this week, when you read about a healing or Jesus telling a parable or even a moment of profound suffering and confusion like John experienced, don't just look for the immediate earthly fix. Right. Don't read it like you are just looking for a cold bath to temporarily break a fever.

Look for the cure. Look for how that moment points to the deeper, absolute restoration of all creation. Because God's redemption is always both far more personal and far more cosmic than our earthly political categories can ever contain.

[34:09]

And that leaves us with one final lingering thought to chew on. What's that? If John the Baptist, the man who literally saw the heavens open, who heard the voice of God, who dedicated his entire life to holiness, if he could experience this profound crisis of faith simply because God didn't meet his specific expectations, what does that mean for our own expectations? That's a great question. When our lives or human history don't unfold the way we think God should orchestrate them, will we let our disappointment become a stumbling block? Or will we trust that the cure being worked out is deeper than we can currently see? Something to think about. for Babel Report we'll see you next time