We all know John The Baptist as the Prophet who announces Jesus as the Messiah pointing him out to the Hebrew people living in the region of Jerusalem at the time.
Some might ask if Jesus had any family, any relatives on earth besides Mary his mother and Joseph his father or step-father.
To answer this and scripturally authenticate it we must look into the Gospel of Luke for the answer.
Luke tells us that an angel who identifies himself as Gabriel appears to Zacharias and declares that God is going to answer Zacharias prayer and give him a child through his wife Elisabeth as we read at:
LUKE: 1: 13 “But the angel said unto him, fear not Zacharias: for thy prayer is heard and thy wife Elisabeth shall bear the a son and thou shalt call him John.” We will later discover that this child John will become John the Baptist.
We are further told that Mary is also visited by this angel Gabriel and just before Mary agrees to permit God’s Holy Spirit to artificially inseminate her Mary is informed that her cousin Elisabeth will also give birth to a child LUKE: 1:36 “And behold thy cousin Elisabeth, she has also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month,”
Through these two scriptural passages we can now state with documented scriptural proof that just as Mary and Elisabeth are cousins, so also are John the Baptist and Jesus cousins by flesh.
What I find so interesting and fascinating about this is that God more than 600 years prior begins to reveal his plan starting with his prophet Jeremiah, through to his prophet Isaiah telling us that He is going to manifest himself as a human, telling us the lineage he will follow to arrive as the fleshly son of God, describes to us how Jesus will be received and seen by the Hebrew people, some seeing him as a prophet, some as a miracle worker sent by God and some as the Messiah, the deliverer.
God even personally selects the one who will actually announce his arrival through of course John The Baptist who just happens to be Jesus cousin.
God establishes a road map if you will, with a direct line leading from Noah, thru Abraham, to David, dropping clues through His prophets leading to a little stable in Bethlehem, and years later on to Jerusalem and Mount Calvary and Jesus crucifixion.
It is through Jesus crucifixion that we are given a second chance through faith to be re-instated as children of God and become joint heirs with Jesus.
It doesn’t take a university degree to be able to follow the road map to discover the truth that Jesus is God keeping his word to man to rescue us from ourselves, and our sins, and lead us back to salvation, to sactification, to heaven and to himself and Our Father.