Zechariah was John's father. He said the Angle Gabriel came to him as well as Mary to foretell the pregnancy of Elizabeth and the foreshadowing of John. It would seem as though up to the point where Gabe showed up she was barren. So, the Angel Gabriel knocked out both the profit to the Messiah and the Messiah all in one Earthly visit.
John spent most of his life preaching and bringing people to God. He practiced his faith by baptizing them in the Jordan River.
John the Baptist was a bit of an iconoclast. He had an unusual flair for fashion, wearing wild-looking clothing made of camel's hair and a leather belt around his waist. He lived in the desert wilderness of Judea, ate locust and wild honey.
He was confident the Messiah was coming and wanted people to prepare for it. He believed through baptism a person could repent and prepare for the coming of the Messiah. Evidently, the morality when one is facing slavery wasn't what John considered admirable.
John would eventually come to baptize Jesus in the River Jordan. Some speculate that Jesus actually began his message modeling it after John's message of repentance. The question is what came first, the chicken or the egg?
John the Baptist would set the stage for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. John had even asked Herod Antipas to come to be baptized. This is the same Herod that saw the coming of the Messiah and had all the male babies under 2 years old slaughtered.
Matthew 2:16
New International Version (NIV)
16 When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi.
Well, it seemed as though Herod didn't take lightly of John's insistence the Messiah was coming and beheaded him in the year 29 AD. Jesus said of him in Luke 7:28, Jesus declared John the Baptist to be the greatest man to have ever lived: "I tell you, among those born of women there is no one greater than John ...".
He was a hot topic. John the Baptist was even invisioned by others. In Isaiah 40:3 and Malachi 4:5, John's coming was foretold. All four Gospels mention John the Baptist: Matthew 3, 11, 12, 14, 16, 17; Mark 6 and 8; Luke 7 and 9; John 1. He is also referenced several times throughout the book of Acts.
