Is Jesus The resurrected John the Baptist?

Take Every Passage to Prayer - Volume 2, The Gospels
^{Monday July 22, 2024}

Mark 6:14-16, Luke 9:7-9

Father, the most important question anyone can answer is, “who is Jesus?” There is only one right answer – “He is the Son of God who died on the cross for my sins. He is my savior and through him I have forgiveness and eternal life.” All other answers lead to everlasting spiritual death. Those who refuse to answer this question have already answered the question. They have said, “Jesus is not someone important enough for me to figure out what He means to me.” They have already determined Him to be something less than the Son of God who died on the cross for their sin. Who is Jesus to me? He is my Savior, the Son of God who died on the cross for my sin. He is the King of kings and the Lord of lords, the one to whom I surrender my heart and soul, and the one to whom I will serve throughout eternity.” Amen.

Father, sometime after the beheading of John the Baptist, Herod Antipas heard stories of some man named Jesus raising people from the dead and performing miracles.

“Who is this guy?” he asked his advisors.

“It must be Elijah, come back to life,” he was told.

“No. He is a prophet, like the kinds of prophets we had in times past,” others replied.

“Wrong. He is John the Baptist,” still others said.

“Wait, how could it be John the Baptist?” said Antipas. “I had him beheaded.”

“He has resurrected from the dead.”

As we reviewed in our last section, Your Word tells us in Mark 6:20 that Herod Antipas had respect for John the Baptist. He believed him to be a man of God. He was fearful of putting such a man to death. It is reasonable to conclude that Herod became anxious about the ramifications of having beheaded John the Baptist. In the spirit of wishful thinking, Antipas may have believed that John the Baptist being brought back to life would liberate Antipas from the consequences of his actions.

“No. He is John, the one I beheaded,” Antipas replied. “He has obviously been raised from the dead!”

“He’s not John the Baptist,” his advisors replied.

“Well, who is he then?” Herod answered.

The text tells us that Herod tried to “see” Jesus. I assume that means that Antipas commanded his team to track down whoever this person was and to have him brought to him. Amen.