Why Did Jesus Not Save John the Baptist from Beheading?

[Shri Anil Antony asked: Padanamaskaram Swami, one person asked the following question in quora forum. Why did Jesus not save John the Baptist from beheading? Please give Your answers. At Your Lotus Feet, Anil]

Swami Replied:- God gave freedom to every soul to do whatever good it feels. God helped the souls by preaching which is good and which is bad through holy scriptures, holy devotees and holy incarnations. Freedom means freedom in all directions, which has no trace of force on the mind of any soul in this creation either here or in the upper worlds. God always preaches every soul to bring realisation of the truth and to reform the soul. Only through knowledge induced into the mind of the soul, the soul is expected to realise and reform itself through which only the soul can be saved. It is only the force of knowledge that can be induced in to the mind of the sinner without any physical force or miraculous power. The king tries to reform the sinner through physical force in the form of punishment, but, such reformation is only temporary.

Even the horrible punishments in the hell can’t reform the soul permanently since eternal reformation can never be attained through punishments. In spite of such defect in the punishment, still, it is used to reform the soul temporarily. Only the spiritual knowledge of God in human form can bring eternal reformation in a soul. Generally, the cloud rains everywhere and makes the seed present in the fertile soil to grow up in to a plant. But, a seed fallen on the rocky soil can’t give rise to a plant immediately in spite of any amount of the rain. Such devilish or demonic souls are like the rocks present here and there on this earth. The God-cloud will not use His miraculous power to change the rocky soil in to fertile soil since God never interferes with the soul to use any type of force. Since Judas was like a rocky soil in the association of Jesus, hearing His continuous preaching, he realized, confessed his sin and punished himself. The priests of the church were not hearing at all the preaching of Jesus and never got reformed like real rocks. Judas was like the soil having some rocky nature and hence, the germination of the seed was late. Apart from the divine force of spiritual knowledge, the receiving nature of the mind is also important. There are some good souls like good soils with full receiving nature, which get reformation immediately on hearing the spiritual knowledge preached by human incarnation of God. There are some average souls like rocky soils, which are reformed after taking some time like Judas. Both these types of souls are reformed and saved. But, there are certain souls (like the priests, who crucified Jesus), which have no hope of reformation like real rocks and these souls are condemned forever. Such worst souls are punished forever in the liquid fire of the hell. Such punishment is forever because such souls will never get reformed. Such souls are kept aloof from the mankind in the lives of wild animals, worms etc., (Tānahaṃ dviṣataḥ...—Gītā). The trails made by God are only confined to good soils and rocky soils only. The moment the soul is reformed, it is saved forever.

Regarding John (John, the disciple of Jesus is a different person), who baptised Jesus was a good fertile soil with good seeds, but, could not hear the preaching of Jesus. This John received the grace-rain from the cloud-God in his generation and was already saved. Hence, he recognized Jesus as human incarnation of God. Every soul hearing the knowledge of God in human form need not be reformed totally, which is based on the fertility of the mind-soil. He might have been killed by a king, which may be the punishment for his some unknown (to us) sin and such death is not related to his spiritual life. Being the Baptist for Jesus, we can’t be sure of his full reformation by which only all the pending punishments get cancelled. We are not aware of the total case history of John to decide that he is fully reformed. Only the omniscient God knows the full truth. The death punishment given by the king may be the divine test from God for his faith. Even Jesus was also given death punishment. Does it mean that the savoir Jesus is not saved? There will be so many divine factors in the background, which are not understood by us. We should not be hasty to draw fast conclusions since we are ignorant of the total background of the soul. The nature of death does not decide the quality of the spiritual life of the soul. The natures of deaths of several human incarnations were very horrible and the reason for that is that the human incarnation takes up the punishments of the sins of its dear devotees even in the last minutes of life.

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