When we last left our old friend, John the Baptizer, his faith was in a free-fall.
He was here last week, sort of, to tell you his scintillating story in his own words. (If you have not heard that PODCAST, may I respectfully request that you listen? A story that I promise you, you will never forget.)
Think of it. John… The man whose coming was predicted by the prophets… Whose birth was foretold by an angel… Who identified and introduced Jesus to the world…
John the Baptizer didn’t believe in Jesus any more.
His situation was dire, languishing as he was in Antipas’ Dead-Sea-Side prison (on Eastern side of Dead Sea), his life literally dangling by a thread. The madman Antipas holding in his bloodstained hands the frayed ends of that thread…
Tormented, no doubt John was, by the unobstructed view he had of his boyhood home, directly across the Dead Sea on its Western shore, adopted and raised as John was by Essenes of Qumran…
John had to have THE answer to his doubt-fueled, double-edged question, and only Jesus was the only one who could provide the answer that he (and sometimes we) sought.
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Dewey Bertolini 
Awhile back a student of Hebrew at my church offered a lesson during the Sunday School hour. He shared a Dead Sea Scroll fragment, 4Q521, that translates to almost the identical words that Jesus used to respond to John’s disciples, but the fragment includes a line about ‘freeing prisoners’. ALL of the phrases in the DSS fragment are ALSO in Isaiah, but not together in one passage. Jesus knew that John knew the DSS fragment, and he quotes it for John’s disciples, leaving out the line about freeing prisoners. I wonder if Jesus had told John’s disciples that John would be beheaded that they would have carried that exact message back to John. Perhaps that would have been too hard of a message to convey to John. So by carefully leaving it out, Jesus’ message got back to John verbatim. And John got the message! Thank you for this 2-part series, Dewey! Most assuredly the lesson is taken to heart.