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John2 - A man came to be…

A man came to be, having been sent out from God, his name: John. 
 
The “John” specified here in John’s Gospel (his first-century eye-witness biography of Jesus) is John the Baptist. The historian Titus Flavius Josephus (37-100 AD) wrote about John the Baptist in Book 18 of his “Antiquities of the Jews”. John the Baptist was a definite historical figure.

Despite that, John writes that the Baptist “came into being” (like all creation) and was “sent out from God”. I wonder. Am I also known to the Almighty? Was there – and even now is there – a divine purpose for me as well?

This one came for a testimony, so that he may testify concerning the light, in order that everyone may believe through him. 

John had already recorded (John1), about “the Word” which was “in the beginning” (pre-Big Bang) – that “in him” (in the pre-Big Bang Word) “was life and the life was the light of humanity”. 

Now two further facts appear. First, that the Baptist himself came with that same desire within himself. He wanted to be “a witness” to the first-century AD world about that “light”. Second, that God’s and the Baptist’s purposes for others were also identical: “so that all might believe through him”. 

That one was not the light but so that he may testify concerning the light. The true light, which enlightens every man, was coming into the world.
 
Make no mistake. John the Baptist “was not the light”. No. He was “a witness about the light”. The “light” was altogether other. So significantly other was the “light” that another definite article (“the”) and another descriptive adjective (“true”) are recorded to describe the “light”. “The true [one] was coming into the world”.
‘Truth exists. Only falsehood has to be invented.’ (Georges Braque, French artist, 1882-1963)
I wonder. We are in the midst of an information technology revolution – a global revolution much bigger than the Industrial Revolution. All is intended to enlighten us. But is the information both “true” and “light”?

He was in the world, and the world came to be through him, and the world did not know him. 

Jesus’ biographer makes a giant leap here. He has written about “the light”, “the true” “coming into the world”. Now he writes that this has taken place and that it was a “he” who “was in the world”. The Baptist bore witness to a “he”.

I think you will agree that the world exists. In that case, what do you think about the fact that the one through whom the AD 30 world came into being was actually present in the AD 30 world?

You may well have thought the same thing that John wrote. It rather obviously must be the case that, at that time, “the world did not know him”. It still doesn’t accept him.

He came into his own and his own did not take hold of him. 

The creator comes to his creation. The pinnacle of that creation – human beings – “did not accept him”. Nothing has changed.

In fact whosoever laid hold of him, to them he gave authority to come to be children of God—to those believing into his name. 

In fact the “light”, the “true” – “he” who "came to his own things" - actually came to give. And “he” is still giving. What he gives is even better than any heaven which any of us could imagine.
 
He gives full family membership rights. These “whoever”, they “become children of God”. They become children of “the Word” who was “in the beginning” before Big Bang. Who selects them? They select themselves by receiving him – receiving the “he” who “came”. 
‘In Islam there are ninety-nine names for God but ‘Our Father’ is not among them.’ (Anon.)
These - not from blood, not even from a desire of the flesh, not even from a will of a male - but from God were born. 

As with John the Baptist, those receiving “he” “who came” find that their purpose in receiving him is also the purpose of God because God gives them a new birth from above. Unlike becoming a child in an ordinary family which occurs by human “will” alone, these "from God were born”. Born from above.
 
Sinner Syvret
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