HELL, FIRE AND BRIMSTONE ….

WE all know that the word Gospel means “The good news”, that is the message brought about by Jesus Christ to all humanity. But what a great contrast is the news being spread by John the Baptist ; he is preaching, “hell, fire and brimstone.” Yet thousands, from all the regions around the River Jordan flocked to him and asked for ‘baptism’.

The Baptist lived in the Desert and so he must have had afirst hand experience of what life in the desert meant. The face of the desert was covered with stubble and brushwood, as dry as tinder. When a spark set the face of the desert alight and out of their crannies came the vipers, scurrying in terror from the menacing flames, the result was ‘hell fire and brimstone’. The Baptist likened the people who came to be baptised to these vipers. For their Baptism was not the fruit of repentance but the fruit of fear and panic.

The Jews did not have the slightest doubt that ‘they’ were God’s favoured ‘people’. They believed that God’s rule of measurement on Judgement Day, with the Jews was different from the other nations’. They were the preferred lot because they were the ‘sons of Abraham’. They in fact held that a man was safe from judgement simply because he was a Jew.

But the Baptist, as a prelude to the Baptism water, gave them a cold shower by informing them that God had no preference when it comes to Judgement; there was no racial privilege, that one’s life well lived was God’s standard of judgement and not the lineage. John’s message was based on a ‘tripod’; that God demanded that ‘sharing’ was the code of behaviour of every man, be it food, shelter, clothes, money and the rest. The second point was that a man should perform his job well and be paid for it.

With reference to the ‘Tax Collectors’ whose customary asking for more than was licit to fatten their pockets. ‘the soldiers’ also got a dishonourable mention, soldiers were expected to do their duty and nothing but their duty. John’s third prong was his declaration that he was only the messenger, the forerunner. The King was still to come, and with Him would come judgement. The winnowing fan was a great flat wooden shovel; with it the grain was tossed into the air. The heavy grain fell to the ground and the chaff was blown away. And just as the chaff was separated from the grain, so the King would separate the bad from the good.

Let us hope in God that we shall be part of the ‘grain’ and make haste to get rid of the ‘chaff’ whilst we can and may.

John the Baptist was one of the world’s supremely effective preachers. It is clear that John preached for action and produced it. He did not deal in theological subtelities … but in life.