June 20

After Me Will Come One More Powerful Than I

And so John came, baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River. John wore clothing made of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey.

And this was his message: “After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

Mark 1:4-8   

John the Baptist paved the way for Jesus. He did not offer the complete message. He was only preparing hearts to be receptive to the message that would follow. William Wade Harris played a similar role in West Africa.

Propelled by a heavenly vision in 1910, this African Christian from Liberia began a preaching ministry that took him into the neighboring country of the Ivory Coast. Wearing a white robe and carrying a cross in one hand and a Bible in the other, he walked barefoot from village to village. He believed he was a prophet sent by God to warn the people of the holy commands. His message was simple: “Repent, burn your fetishes, believe in the One God, and be baptized.”

In 1913, Harris reached the Dida region of the Ivory Coast. Thousands of people thronged around him to hear his message, and about one hundred thousand people were baptized and hundreds of churches were built. When people accepted his simple message in one village, he moved on to another, always exhorting them to wait for the white missionaries—“for people to open this book and you must obey its message.”

When missionaries did come into this region, they were amazed at the churches and congregations of Christians who were waiting for them. When J. W. Platt, a Methodist missionary, visited the area in 1924, “he was received in village after village with overflowing joy. Everywhere there were flags, torchlight processions, crowded churches, and excited people who hailed the new messenger of the gospel, whose coming Harris had foretold. ‘We have waited ten years for you,’ they said.”

While the missionary was reaping the harvest, Harris was back in his homeland. He had been deported from the Ivory Coast and imprisoned for a time. Like John the Baptist, he was “a man sent from God,” who paved the way for the gospel message but did not have the joy of seeing it come to fruition. His death went virtually unnoticed a few years later, “but thousands of earnest Christians in the Ivory Coast remembered him as their spiritual father with deep gratitude and respect.” ²⁰