Popularity and the Christian Minister

I often here fundamentalists speak ill of Billy Graham and Rick Warren as being somehow flawed in their ministries or are preaching a weak or partial gospel. This is absolute nonsense, of course, but these fundamentalists often find evidence for their accusations in the fact that these ministers are popular with the world, meaning the non-Christian “secular” world. These fundamentalists then find verses in the Bible that support their view that the world is supposed to hate true messenger of God and if the world loves Graham and Warren (and Joel Osteen and T.D. Jakes), then, therefore, they are not true messengers of God. So their logic goes.

Let us take a look at John the Baptist. He was a recognized prophet of God. No one really doubted this among the people of Palestine and neither did Jesus or His disciples.

John was filled with the Holy Spirit from the womb. He had great godly parents. He may have had some religious affiliation with the Essenes or Qumran community. He lived a humble, Nazarite lifestyle in the wilderness away from the world. But the world came to him. He was a revolutionary leader who instituted believer’s baptism and was the real originator of his time that stated that racial ties to Abraham were not sufficient to earn salvation. He taught that even Jews needed to repent.

It is quite odd that we really know very little about one of the most important individuals in history.

As a prophet, he was highly critical of King Herod and the royal family. He was highly critical of the religious Pharisee party.

John appears to have been quite humble in his attitude toward himself.

John was apparently a great speaker and teacher. He amassed many disciples, including Jesus Himself. They were related by birth and were followers of each other. Indeed, John the Baptist taught Jesus a lot that deeply affected His ministry.

And John the Baptist WAS POPULAR. He was extremely popular. The people of his day believed that he was either the messiah or Elijah, the prophet. Many of the Pharisees didn’t like them but were very afraid to speak ill of him because he was so popular. Even years after his death, they were too afraid to speak against him because of his continued popularity. Herod himself was very reluctant to arrest and execute John because of this popularity. Twenty to thirty years after his death, the apostles of Jesus were still finding disciples of John as far away as Greece and Asia Minor. For many centuries after his death, there still remained John the Baptist sects. Even in the Gospel of John, the author is making the point that although John the Baptist is a great man he was not himself the Messiah.

John the Baptist was more popular in his life than Jesus was at any point in His life. Jesus was the Messiah and John was not. Both John and Jesus taught this but still John was more popular. The Pharisees always feared John because of his popularity even after the prophet’s death. Jesus had some popularity to give Him cover but towards the end of His life on earth, the Pharisees felt that they had enough support to withstand any scrutiny. They appear to have been correct because they were not at all afraid of bad-mouthing Jesus after His death as they were with John’s. Again, Herod was very reluctant to arrest John; he was not at all afraid to arrest Jesus.

John was a great man as far as great men go but he was not perfect in any way. Now this does not mean he wasn’t a true prophet and messenger of the Lord. He was and everyone knew it, but He was still popular. He was popular and this popularity didn’t mean he was preaching a weak or partial gospel. Far from it! He was one of the most revolutionary religious figures in the history of humanity and received the highest praise from Jesus … but he was still popular with the world.