Quotes about John the Baptist

They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, that a prophet of old has arisen.”

Then Jesus went back across the Jordan to the place where John had first been baptizing, and He stayed there.

As far as we have any historical information on the subject, the public history of Jesus began when he was about thirty years old (Luke 3.23), with John the Baptist.

What clear doctrine characterized John the Baptist's preaching. He exalted Christ — "After me One is coming who is mightier than I." He spoke plainly of the Holy Spirit — "He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.

John the Baptist's training was in God's University of Silence. God takes all His great men there.

Karl Barth imagined the Christian theologian in the role of John the Baptist in the painting of Matthias Grünewald: he is standing to the side of the cross, holding the open Hebrew Scriptures in one hand and pointing with a finger of the other to the crucified Christ.67 A theologian ought to draw attention to the way of life and to the one who originally embodied it, not to the intellectual prowess, fertile imagination, or dazzling rhetoric of the theologian.

The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, Generous inside and out, true from start to finish. John pointed him out and called, "This is the One! The One I told you was coming after me but in fact was ahead of me. He has always been ahead of me, has always had the first word.

As the people came to a desert place to hear John the Baptist proclaim, "Thus saith the Lord," so [man] in his confusions, frustrations, and bewilderment will come to hear the minister who preaches with authority.

Religion is best when it points beyond itself, like Isaiah or John the Baptist. It is worst when it gives you just enough of the forms to inoculate you against the substance, when it substitutes rituals for reality, the container for the contents, the wineskins for the ecstatic wine.