In Matthew 3:7 baptist John
speaks of “the vengeance that draws near.” John is
reportedly addressing Pharisees
and Sadducees together. However, with regard to Sadducees,
the account is false and
dishonest. While Pharisees are strong believers, Sadducees
are strong unbelievers. Matthew
himself writes subsequently about Sadducees heckling
Jesus over a main saying of his.
John was only Jesus’ precursor. It is incredible that
Sadducees for no reason at all
would suddenly go to John to be baptised by him. Since
Pharisees are believers and since
moreover they live strictly in accordance with the law
given to Moses by jehovah, the
vengeance against them that John speaks about is
uncaused vengeance.
The word identity is defined as
“sameness of essential or generic character in
different instances” (Merriam
Webster’s). One distinguishing character of the devil or
Satan is “uncaused vengeance,”
against man. This unique character is visible both in
jehovah and Jesus.
Let us begin with jehovah.
Jehovah meets Moses at the
mountain of Horeb. There Moses is asked to set out
to Egypt to meet the Pharaoh. To
this Moses said “Oh, my Lord, send, I pray, some other
person” (Ex. 4:13). But then the
anger of the lord was kindled against Moses that he was
forced to agree. “So Moses took
his wife and his sons, and set them on an ass, and went
back to the land of Egypt” (Ex.
4:20). But, “At a camping place on the way to Egypt the
lord met Moses and tried to kill
him” (Ex. 4:24).
Since Moses was executing his
demand there was absolutely no cause for this
attempted murder on the part of
jehovah. The generic character of uncaused vengeance is
thus well defined in jehovah.
Now, to Jesus.
“He saw in the distance a
fig-tree covered with leaves, so he went to see if he
could find any figs on it. But
when he came to it, he found only leaves, because it was not
the right time for the figs.”
Jesus said to the fig-tree, “No one shall ever eat figs from you
again!” (Mark 11:13-14).
“Early next morning as they
walked along the road they saw the fig-tree and it
was dead all the way down to its
roots” (Mark 11:20).
The bible itself says because it
was not the right time for the figs, there was no
figs on the fig-tree. Then why
did Jesus curse the tree to death? There is no cause for this
vengeance. We sense in the Jesus
an advanced symptom of this uncaused vengeance.
Thus the distinctive and unifying
character of jehovah and John is also found in Jesus.