The Gospel writers communicate the providential ordering and pattern, as John stays in the wilderness (so to speak), while Jesus will emerge with the fullness of the Spirit from the wilderness to conduct His mission in the land of Israel. John as Jesus’ forerunner begins and ends his ministry in a way that shows how the kingdom he has preached will come: by defeat in the eyes of the world, but victory in the plan of God. Having set the stage for the coming King, John is then removed from that stage. Or is he?

The relationship between John the Baptist and the Lord Jesus is one of the most fascinating in the Gospels. They are blood relatives through their mothers Elizabeth and Mary, and in a very memorable family reunion between the miraculously pregnant women, John in the womb recognizes and rejoices in the presence of Christ (Luke 1:39–45). Later in their lives, they are each misidentified and mistaken for one another: early in his ministry, John is thought to be the Messiah (John 1:19–20), and then in the middle of His kingdom activity Jesus is feared to be John raised from the dead (Mark 6:14). In his preaching, John points to Jesus as the preeminent Lord and “coming one” (John 1:26–29); Jesus in His public proclamation points back, saying, “Among those born of women there has arisen no one greater” than John (Matt. 11:11).
The great movement from prophecy to fulfillment is realized as the Lord sends the trailblazing messenger and then the triumphant King. John sums up the “Law and the Prophets,” and Christ fulfills them (Matt. 11:13; 5:17). Taken together, they represent the very climax of God’s redemptive revelation in terms of the “old and the new”—Augustine’s lovely phrase is thus applicable not only to two testaments, but to two men: “The new is in the old concealed, the old is in the new revealed.”
This symbiotic interplay between John the baptizer and Jesus the baptized (“anointed”) opens up a very significant theme in the gospels: to recognize the identity of the one means to realize the identity of the other. It is no accident then that when the temple authorities present an inherently skeptical question: “By what authority are you doing these things, or who gave you this authority to do them?” Jesus responds with a question of His own: “Was the baptism of John from heaven or from man? Answer me” (Mark 11:27–33). The assumption is that if John’s ministry is accepted as carrying the authority of God Himself, Jesus’ also bears this same authority in consummate form. If one rejects John’s prophetic word, however, such recalcitrance will only be magnified when confronted by the word and presence of Jesus.
One of the most memorable summaries of John’s ministry comes from his own lips when he says, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). Before universalizing this statement to apply to all ministers of the gospel, it is important first to particularize it in the character of John himself. Remarkably, this utterance concerning the necessity of his own diminishment for the sake of the enhancement of Christ is fulfilled in the very pattern of John’s life and death. For instance, Jesus commences His public preaching of the kingdom only after John is first arrested and imprisoned (Matt. 4:12; Mark 1:14).
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As we stay alert and maintain allegiance to Jesus, we are protected from Satan’s traps and the spiritual deflation that they bring. Jesus’s promise of blessing those who embrace the role of staying alert rests on God’s justice to reward the faithful. Will not God be alert to those who are alert to him?

Many of us can’t focus for 5 minutes. The technological resources available to us opportune new pursuits without end. We can go in 1,000 directions and nowhere at the same time. This is a spiritual danger. The Bright Shiny Object fabricates a tale of fulfillment but lures us from reality. It promises what it cannot deliver, and we are susceptible if we are not paying attention to our spiritual lives. Challenging life situations, relational strife, and boredom—these and so many other circumstances can be a greenhouse of distraction from God.
John’s audience in Revelation was tempted by the Bright Sinny Object of safety and security, getting by and fitting in to get along and stay alive. Tempted to live for the here and now, to live as earth-dwellers instead of citizens of the soon-to-be-revealed heavenly city, John’s audience, too, was vulnerable to Satan’s lies.
Blessed are the Alert
What is required of God’s people in this atmosphere of spiritual warfare? In Rev 3:3, Jesus urges the church in Sardis to keep alert since his coming is like a thief. In the sixth bowl judgment (Rev 16:12–16), John records the only speech report attributed to Jesus in any of the seal, trumpet, or bowl judgments. Jesus said, “Look, I am coming like a thief. Blessed is the one who is alert and remains clothed, so that he may not go around naked and people see his shame” (Rev 16:15, CSB). John ties together the role of keeping alert with the role of keeping one’s clothes. It is as if, in John’s mind, the level of the believer’s alertness is visible to the believer and the watching world.
We should understand the broader context of Jesus’s statement during the sixth bowl judgment recorded in Rev 16:12–16.
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Qualls decided in high school he didn’t want to become a casualty of a broken home. But it wasn’t until he started dating Sheila that he saw up-close the true blessings of an intact family. Qualls watched Sheila’s father—a former sergeant major in the Army—sit quietly in his chair reading the Bible, then work demanding rotating shifts at a Goodyear plant. Qualls began attending church with the family. In 1986, Qualls and Sheila married, after he became a first-generation college graduate and entered active military service. Eventually, they had five children, one of whom is adopted. 

She says she heard constant lies from Democratic politicians, and they made her angry: “Stop telling me how oppressed I am. That’s not my experience or my parents’. This country gave me many opportunities.”
Five-year-old Kendall Qualls stepped off a city bus onto the streets of Harlem with his weary mom and four siblings. It was still daylight, but he was worn out, too. Kendall clung to the suitcase he had lugged from Fort Campbell, Ky., on the Greyhound bus that rolled into the city just a few hours earlier. He thought about his dad back at the Army base. He didn’t know why, but his parents had divorced. Now, his mom was leading Kendall and his siblings along the last stretch: the garbage-strewn sidewalks of a towering tenement project, to his grandparents’ apartment.
Suddenly, a tall man blocked their path and demanded Kendall’s mom give him money. As she pleaded with him, another man moved out of the shadows and warned she’d better hand it over. Unsure what to do, Kendall could only watch his mother cry. Even today, he remembers thinking in that moment: “I’m never going to be like those men.”
It was the first time Kendall Qualls understood the life he didn’t want. It would take a few more years to figure out what kind of life he did want: one in which he would never again be—or even consider himself—a victim.
Today, Qualls has achieved that vision and is working to make it a reality for others. As the founder of the Minnesota nonprofit TakeCharge, he’s building a national network of like-minded people—he calls them ambassadors—to dispel what he considers the false narratives of systemic racism and white privilege. His goal: to create coalitions that help restore the black community to its pre–War on Poverty self-reliance and productivity.
TakeCharge focuses on three foundational areas Qualls believes must be revived: faith, family, and education. Qualls, 60, and his wife Sheila want minorities in particular to understand that American free enterprise rewards industriousness and merit, while generational entitlement programs—along with blaming others—destroy a people and a country.
Living in the housing-project squalor of New York City in the late 1960s and early ’70s, Qualls usually hiked up 10 floors to get to the family’s apartment since the elevator rarely worked. In the stairwell, the stench of urine assaulted him. He then stepped around addicts shooting heroin or passed out in shadowy hallways where they’d knocked out the lights. But there’s another scent lodged in his memory, a better one: When he opened his apartment door, the fresh scent of Pine-Sol wafted out.
His mom never got a high school education or a driver’s license, but she kept their two-bedroom apartment spotless. She spread a plastic checkerboard tablecloth under every meal. She told Qualls daily, “I love you, and God loves you.” From his mother, he learned compassion, love, and a moral code rooted in the Ten Commandments. But from the housing projects, he learned men don’t care for their families.
In the 1960s, nearly 80 percent of black families had two parents. But by 2015, nearly 80 percent were fatherless. Today, urban areas are the worst. In Minneapolis, for example, nearly 90 percent of black families don’t have a father in the home.
“We do not have a systemic race problem in America,” Qualls says emphatically. “We have a fatherless home problem.”
He adds that black culture was once rooted in the Christian faith. Men worked hard to provide for families, which in turn sought better education for their children.
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