Come and study Holy Scriptures with us as Father Stephen DeYoung teaches verse by verse on the podcast, The Whole Council of God.

Father Stephen is a former Protestant pastor and Bible teacher in the Reformed Church,

but now an Orthodox priest serving at St. George Orthodox Cathedral in Charleston, West Virginia.

Through the tender mercy of our God, with which the day spring from on high has visited us,

notice that visited is in, again, the past tense. So it's already happened in Mary's womb.

To give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death

to guide our feet into the way of peace.

So the child grew and became strong in spirit

and was in the deserts till the day of his manifestation to Israel.

Now it's not stated here directly,

but it seems a pretty obvious question to me.

Why do you run off to the desert?

Right.

Parents don't live in the desert. they live in the hill country we were just told right why do you go running off into the desert for most of his young adult life

well traditionally and we know this from gospel of, what did Herod do when he found out that Jesus had been born?

Killed all the infant children.

And so St. John had to flee.

His parents were actually killed

to hide him and he grew up in the wilderness by himself.

Notice it doesn't say John and his parents were in the wilderness

or John and his mother were in the wilderness.

We're not going to see Zacharias and Elizabeth again.

...