The Prisoner in the Third Cell Read Free

people can hear them? Does the fool think people are going to go out there in that infernal hell to hear him? What person in his right mind is going to that pathless wilderness and standing beneath the blistering sun to listen to a man make demands no one is going to respond to. He is mad, all right.”
    Yet it happened. Some in the caravans, on their return voyage, would search out the desert prophet. Common folk in villages on the edge of the desert made their way out to hear him. Seeking hearts, empty souls, hungry spirits—desperately longing for something they knew they did not have—dared to take their empty lives into that uncharted wasteland to find The Prophet.
    At first only a few heard him, but they came back to tell their friends of what they had experienced. Rumors about this wildman spread throughout all of Judea and Galilee.
    Listeners came first in ones and twos, then by scores and hundreds, and then by thousands. They came on foot, across burning sands. Their numbers grew daily. Some enterprising men were soon scheduling whole caravans into the desert to hear this man.
    They all listened. Some wept. Others fell earnestly to their knees. Many cried out in loud voices for undeserved forgiveness. Others cheered. No one jeered. Not a critical word came from any mouth, at least not among the common people.
    Yet those who never heard him, who lived in the far-off city of Jerusalem . . . they judged him, tried him, and convicted him . . . without having seen nor heard him. The verdict was simple. And familiar. It is laid on every nonconformist of every age. “He has a demon.”
    A few came and sat down right at his feet. Their purpose was clear: These men wished to be John’s disciples. And so it came to be.
    This handful of disciples would take on John’s lifestyle and become his constant companions. Like him, they would become austere, grave, and humorless men. They would carry within their hearts, as he did in his, the burden of the sins of Israel. These men joined John in his titanic task of preparing the way for the coming of God’s own Messiah.
    To hear John was to hear the unexpected, for each day was different. Each day John spoke, and each time he spoke he addressed something the crowd had never heard anyone else say. His daring, his fearlessness in broaching any topic, awed the multitude and his disciples.
    On one particularly hot day, when the crowds seemed to stretch to the horizon, John cried out, “The day after the next Sabbath I will go to the Jordan River. There I will immerse beneath the Jordan waters all who have repented of their way of life. I will immerse all who make their lives ready for the coming of the Lord.”
    It was on that day John received a new name, a name which was soon to be on the lips of all Israel, for on that day he became known as John the Immerser.

Chapter 6
    People came to hear John because they were seeking something to fill a deep vacancy in their lives.
    Merchants came to hear him and repented of their business practices and were then baptized in the fabled waters of the Jordan. Soldiers came, repented of their brutality, and were baptized. The camel drivers came, the farmers, the rustic fishermen, housewives, women of renown, women of the streets, all kinds and all classes came. And all who came, it seemed, came holding some secret sin, repented thereof, and disappeared beneath the Jordan waters.
    Every Jew knew the ancient meaning of a soul’s being plunged beneath the water of that particular river. It meant the end of life, the cessation of everything. Everyone awaiting baptism stood on the eastern bank, which was a foreign land. There they stepped into the water and disappeared . . . there to die. But each came up out of the water and stepped onto the western bank, safe within the border of the Promised Land, there to begin a new life with God. This simple drama was unforgettable.
    There was one particular day at the Jordan