The small, cubicle-sized room is dark. And dusty. The smell of rain seems to be ingrained into the walls. The prisoner rubs at his eyes. What time was it? What day was it? He couldn’t remember. Easy to lose track of time in here. In a sense, he wasn’t surprised that his hands were chained together and that he was locked in the cell. That’s sort of what one can expect when they refuse to back off of a high-ranking government official, even one who was clearly in the wrong.

John had not relented in criticizing Herod because of his sin. He had taken the wife of his brother, and John wouldn’t let the issue rest. It wasn’t so much the imprisonment that bothered him.  He’d been through tough times before. In some ways, the food was actually better here than the locusts he’d snacked on for most of his life. No, but there was something eating at him. A thought that wouldn’t go away. It was his constant companion within those walls, a recurring throb in his head. Over and over again, he heard his own voice in his head, “What if I was wrong?”

As soon as he would think it, he’d try to push it away. How could he be thinking such things? It wasn’t that long ago that he would have bet his life on Jesus. But now, in this cell, staring at an unknown imprisonment and possible execution, he wasn’t so sure any more.

John, it seemed, had known about Jesus before he had even known how to know. His mother, Elizabeth, had told him how the angel had come to them to tell them about John’s identity. How he would be called great and how he would, with a prophetic voice, lead his people back to God. She’d recounted how when her cousin, Mary, visited, also pregnant, that John had leapt in her womb. He had known Jesus was the Messiah before he’d known how to eat. How to love. How to speak.

He’d gone out to the desert early, and he’d always stuck to his guns. People called him crazy, a lunatic, and often came to see him like he was a sideshow. Nevertheless, he called on the people to repent for the days of the Messiah were soon to be at hand. And then there was the day by the Jordan River.

John was giving his standard “repent and be baptized” message when up walked Jesus, and John stopped everything. With a great deal of awe, and yet without a quaver of doubt, he’d boldly declared, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is the one I meant when I said, ‘A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me’” (John 1:29-30). He had been so sure.

Then, after that, when he baptized Jesus, hadn’t he seen the heavens open? Hadn’t he seen the Spirit descend as a dove on Jesus? Hadn’t he heard the heavenly voice saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17)? He had. And yet here he was in this cell with the insistent notion that perhaps he’d been mistaken.

Could he have misunderstood? Could he have misheard? Could he have misinterpreted? What if he was wrong? John didn’t mind dying – everybody had to die. He did, however, mind very much dying for the wrong thing. What if he was wrong?

Ever had that thought? When life goes wrong? When God doesn’t meet your expectations? When things aren’t working out the way they’re “supposed” to? You wonder, in your own cell, whether possibly you might have believed incorrectly. Your circumstances provide an opportunity for the doubt to rise like bile in your throat, just as they did for John in his own cell.

So John wanted to know, and he sent a delegation to ask Jesus, once and for all, whether He was indeed the Messiah or not…