Letters from Adina - #4

Letter IV. A Voice in the Wilderness

John The Baptist at the River Jordan

My Dear Father,

In my last letter, which will not reach your hands for some days yet, I commenced giving you the narrative of John, the cousin of Mary, who went down into the wilderness to see and hear the prophet of Jordan.

"Having passed out of the city of Jericho, my friend of Arimathea and myself separated a little from the crowd, and crossed the plain toward Jordan which was about a mile and a half off. The morning was balmy; the sun made all nature glad. The dew reflected a myriad lesser suns, and the earth appeared strewn with diamonds. As the great body of the people took their way obliquely across the plain, we knew the prophet must be in that direction, as it proved; for we at length found him on the banks of the Jor- dan, full half a league below the landing and ford, which is, opposite Jericho, on the great caravan road to Balbec and Assyria. "We drew near a dark mass of human beings which we had beheld afar off, assembled around a small eminence near the river. Upon it, raised a few cubits taller than their heads, stood a man upon whom all eyes were fixed, and to whose words every ear was attentive.

His clear, rich, earnest tones had reached us as we approached, before we could distinguish what he said. He was a young man not above thirty, with a countenance such as the medallions of Egypt give to Joseph of our nation, once their prince.

His hair was long, and wildly free about his neck; he wore a loose sack of camel's hair, and his right arm was naked to the shoulder. His attitude was as free and commanding as that of a Caucasian warrior, yet every gesture was gentle and graceful.

With all his ringing and persuasive eloquence there was an air of the deepest humility upon his countenance, combined with an expression of the holiest enthusiasm. The people listened eagerly to him, for he spake like the Prophets of old, and chiefly in their prophetic words! His theme was the Messiah.

"'Oh, Israel, return unto the Lord thy God, for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity,' he was saying as we came up, as if in continuation of what had gone before. 'Take with you words, and turn unto the Lord, and say unto him: Take away all iniquity, and receive us graciously.

Behold, He cometh who will heal your backsliding, and will love you freely. And it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered, for beside Him there is no Savior.'

"'Of whom speaketh the prophet these things?' asked one who stood near me, of his neighbor, and then of me, for by this time we had taken places as close to the prophet as we were able.

"'Of Messiah—listen!' answered him a Scribe near, as if not pleased to have his attention interrupted by this side talk. 'His words are plain. Hear him.'

"'Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, for the day of the Lord cometh,' continued the prophet, in a voice like that of a silver trumpet; for, behold, the day is at hand when I will bring again the captivity of Judah. Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. The day is at hand when the Lord shall roar out of Zion and utter his voice from Jerusalem."

"'Art thou not Elias?' asked one aloud.

"'I am he of whom it is written. The voice of one crying in the wilderness, make straight a highway for our God. The day of the Lord is at hand. I am but the herald who is sent before to prepare the way of the Lord.'

"'Art thou not the Messiah?' asked a woman who stood near him, and seemed to worship his very lips.

"'He who cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear," he responded, in the deepest humiliation of manner.

“He who cometh after me hath his fan in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor and gather the wheat into the garner; but will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.

Therefore, repent ye, repent ye, take words and return unto the Lord your God. Repent and be baptized for the remission of your sins; for the day cometh which shall burn as an oven, and take heed that ye be not consumed!

The axe is laid at the root of the tree; therefore, every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit shall be hewn down and cast into the fire.”

"'Master,' said a Levite, 'dost thou speak these things to us, who are of Israel, or to these Gentiles and Samaritans?' for there were not a few Roman soldiers among the multitude, drawn hither by curiosity, and also many people from Samaria, nay, even from Damascus.

"'Go and cry in the ears of Jerusalem, saith the Lord, for my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water. And yet thou sayest, O Israel, thou hast not sinned.

Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backsliding shall reprove thee. Repent and do works meet for repentance, every one of you, for ye have polluted the land; neither say, Where is the Lord that brought us up out of the land of Egypt? I am provoked to anger every day by your hardness of heart and stiffneckedness. Amend; amend your doings!

Trust not to lying words, saying, The Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord! Ye have made it a den of robbers. Your sacrifices therein are become an abomination to the Lord!"

"This would touch us who are priests” said a priest, and his brow crimsoned with anger. "We are not robbers."

"'Thus saith the Lord," answered the youthful prophet, as if it were God himself speaking from Horeb, so that we trembled as we heard him. "Woe be unto the shepherds that destroy my sheep. I will visit upon you the evil of your doings. How is the gold become dim - how is the most fine gold changed! The precious sons of Zion, how are they esteemed?" "Woe unto you, ye priests, for ye have transgressed. I have seen in the prophets of Jerusalem a horrible thing; they commit adultery and walk in lies, saith the Lord. My people have transgressed for lack of knowledge. Therefore, I wilt reject thee, saith the Lord; thou shalt be no priests to me since thou hast forgotten the law of thy God.Therefore doth the land mourn, and every one that dwelleth therein languisheth. Therefore do swearing and lying, and killing and stealing, and committing adultery, break out in the land, because there is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land. Woe unto you, ye priests!"

"Many of the Levites then turned and left him and went away greatly murmuring; and they would gladly have done the prophet a mischief, but they feared the multitude, who said he had spoken only the truth of them.

Here was heard some murmuring among a group of many Pharisees and Sadducees at these words, when, sending his lightning glance towards them, as if he could read their very hearts, he cried:

"O generation of vipers! Who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? The day cometh when he who is to come shall sit as a purifier by his furnace. Bring forth, therefore,fruits meet for repentance. Wash thy heart from wickedness, that thou mayst be saved."

“Behold the day hath come, saith the Lord, in which Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely; when I will set up shepherds over them, who shall feed them, and they shall lack nothing !

Arise! shine, for the light is come! Hear, O Israel, for Zion’s sake I will not hold my peace; I will not rest until the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness, and the salvation thereof as a lamp that burneth.

Arise, shine, for thy light is come and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee! Darkness covereth the earth, and gross darkness the people, as saith Esaias; but the Lord shall rise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee. The Gentiles shall come to his light, and kings to the brightness of his rising.

He shall be called the Lord of our righteousness, and shall be a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of thy God. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to proclaim the acceptable year of his coming. He hath set me a watchman upon thy walls, O Israel, and I may neither hold my peace day nor night, nor keep silence, nor seek rest, till He come, who hath sent me forth his messenger before His face.

How can I refrain from my message of joy? How shall I not speak of his fame? Incline your ear and come unto him. Hear, and your soul shall live.”

"Such," said John, "was the extraordinary style of this mighty prophet's preaching, and to those who read the books of the Prophets, every word shone with the brightness of the sun.

I fancied I had only to look around to behold the Messiah. The immense multitude stood awed and silent when he had ceased."

I gazed upon him with the most adoring reverence.

Leaving the eminence, he said, and I thought he fixed his eyes upon me, 'Ye who desire to be baptized for the remission of sins, that your hearts may be cleansed for the visitation of this Holy One of God, follow me to the river side.'

Thousands obeyed, and I one of the first. I trembled all over with a sweet pleasure, when he took me by the hand, and asked me if I believed in him who was to come, and would prepare the way for his abode in my heart by being baptized, which rite also was to be a sign and pledge that when I should behold the Shiloh rising, I should acknowledge him.

Not less than one thousand were baptized by him that day in Jordan, confessing their sins, and hopes of pardon through the name of the Unknown One, who was soon to come.

Joseph of Arimathea was not baptized, as he said he wished to examine into the extraordinary subject fully before he could believe.

"After the baptism, the whole company dispersed in groups, and the prophet returned into the wilderness till the cool of the evening, where his repast was locusts and the wild honey of the desert."

With this, dear father, I close my long letter. I make no comments. I will only say that my expectations are actively awake, and that I am looking, with thousands of others, for the near advent of the Messiah.

Your daughter,

Adina.

Next Letter

 LADY DONNA PROGRAM

The new Lady Donna Immersion in Spirituality, Academics and Citizenship @ the "I AM" School will study abridged excerpts of the Letters from Adina taken from Reverend Ingraham's original edited version of 'The Prince of the House of David', published by Cassell & Co. Ltd (1903), that reveal remarkable insights into the Living Etheric Record left by Beloved Jesus's Ministry in the Holy Land.