Then the people began to tremble. They had no newspapers then to print the sermons; they had no telegraph wires to flash them over the country. But one man just took the matter up and passed it to the next, and so on, and very soon it was spread over the whole country.
“There he is,” they said, “dressed just like Elijah, with his leathern girdle and his raiment of camel’s hair.” He comes out about 9 o’clock in the morning, and there he stands on the banks of the Jordan, and there he continues his talk. Day after day he is seen there, and his cry is: “Repent! Repent!” And that was his appeal.
Well, it is not very long before every city, town and village has heard of this wonder. John preached the law just as it was given him, and as a specimen of his preaching just read this. See how bold he was:
“Then said he to the multitude that came forth to be baptized of him: ‘O generation of vipers!’”
O generation of vipers! Pretty hard talk, wasn’t it? I don’t know as you could get many people into this Tabernacle by such talk as that. But he knew what he was doing. He knew they hated his Master. He knew that, away down in their hearts, they were at enmity with God. Read a little farther, and see what he said:
“O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
“Bring forth, therefore, fruits worthy of repentance, and begin not to say within yourselves: ‘We have Abraham to our father.’ For I say unto you that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.”
He knew the men pretty well. I do not know where he had been all these thirty years. But he had found out the human heart. He had found out human nature pretty well. And those people undoubtedly said: “We belong to the seed of Abraham. We are the descendants of Abraham. We do not need to be converted. We have got the law from Moses, and we obey that. Let these poor dogs of Gentiles be converted. It is not for us.”
“We do not need to be converted. John a first-rate reformer? Oh, yes; but that does not touch us. We go to church regularly. It is for these publicans and harlots. That kind of preaching is not for us. Oh, it is all good enough--all very good.”
And no doubt they would put up a Tabernacle for them--for the harlots and drunkards to go to.