When John the Baptist preached by the Jordan river, he proclaimed with boundless confidence that Jesus was the promised Messiah of Israel. Crowds came streaming from Jerusalem to hear him speak. In those days, it must have seemed like the kingdom of God would appear on earth at any moment.  But things did not turn out as everyone imagined. John was now in prison for telling King Herod that he was wrong to divorce his wife and marry another. John the Baptist had once proclaimed that the Messiah would depose worldly tyrants. Now, John is a prisoner of the very sort of tyrant the Messiah should have deposed, and this fact nearly strains John’s faith to the breaking point.