John the Baptist's Birth and Preparation (6): John in the Wilderness (Luke 1:80) by Rev. Angus Stewart
I. The Fact of It
II. The Misrepresentation of It
III. The Significance of It
Bishop George Horne: "This dispensation in the case of the Baptist [who lived for some years in the wilderness], like many others relative to the prophets, was extraordinary and miraculous; consequently, not to be literally copied in any one, but in similar circumstances and under a supernatural direction" (Considerations on the Life and Death of St. John the Baptist [Oxford: Clarendon, 1769], p. 39).
Hughes Oliphant Old: "The wilderness had always been a place of repentance, a place of preparation, a place of beginning anew. It was in the wilderness that God had for forty years prepared the children of Israel to enter the promised land. When the people had been prepared by learning the discipline of the law and by all the trials, wandering, and testings that we read about in the story of the Exodus, then they were led by Joshua across the Jordan River into the promised land" (Guides to the Reformed Tradition: Worship, p. 9).