Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ

by Fleming Rutledge

John the Baptist’s lonely, austere style of life bears witness to a reality that is coming, a reality that will expose all worldly realities, all earthly conditions, all human promises as fraudulent and transitory. His appearance on the scene at this time of year exposes our pretensions for what they really are. Never have we needed him more! For here in this city we are in a culture where a big decision is whether or not to get a face-lift, while around the world people do not know if they will be able to eat or work or worship or see their children grow up. When John the Baptist—probably the most single-minded person who ever lived—said, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” his whole being, his entire existence, was on fire with the reality of the One Who Comes. He was in the grip of what I’ve been calling apocalyptic transvision—that vision given to the church that sees through the appearances of this world to the blazing power and holiness of the coming of the Lord. John the Baptist is the ultimate embodiment of the apocalyptic character of Christian faith—faith that is oriented not to the past but to the future, not to the repetition of religious exercises but to the person of the Messiah, not to arrangements as they are but to an utterly new authority and dominion. In the most extraordinary way, John is truly our contemporary; he stands at the very precipice of the collision of two forces, at the juncture where the world’s resistance to God meets the irres...