Jesus said that of all those born of women, there s none as great as he, yet the smallest in heaven is greater than he Matt 11:11 . One might wonder what it meant, for surely Abraham, the father of believers, or Moses or Elijah was greater than he? In what does his greatness lie? In the Old Testament it ends with the prophet Malachi, after which there was silence for 400 years until John arrived on the scene. God sent John. It is said that he grew up in the wilderness of Judea. There were only five or six small villages in Judea. We re not told exactly where he grew up. We read of the Lord Jesus in Jerusalem, but nothing of John the baptist. He was all the while in the wilderness. Even his birth was miraculous, in that he was filled with the Holy Spirit while still in his mother s womb!
