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-- ZACHARIAH
THE PRIEST
Luke 1:5-14 There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judea, a certain priest named Zachariah, of the division of Abijah. His wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth.
So it was, that while he was serving as priest before God in the order of his division, according to the custom of the priesthood, his lot fell to burn incense when he went into the temple of the Lord. And when the time came for the burning of the incense, all the assembled worshippers were praying outside.
Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing on the right side of the altar of incense. And when Zacharias saw him, he was troubled, and fear fell upon him.
But the angel said to him: Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to give him the name John.
In the opening verses, Luke said that he wanted readers to know the certainty of the things they had been taught -- and that is what he now sets out to accomplish, showing how the events surrounding the birth of John the Baptist and Jesus were deeply rooted in the ancestry of the priesthood and the royal family, and in the historical writings of the ancient prophets.
Zachariah, for example, the father of John, was a member of the priesthood -- a gifted line of highly intelligent individuals extending right back to the days of Aaron, the first high priest of Israel, the brother of Moses himself. These were not gullible and superstitious peasants.
Notice
also that the angel, Gabriel, did not appear
to Zachariah in some secret cave out in the desert, but in the Holy of
Holies of the very Temple of God in Jerusalem
-- an inner sanctum where only the appointed priests of the day entered
in to offer incense and intercession for the people before the Lord.
It
was there, besides the altar of incense, that
the angel, the messenger of God, informed Zachariah that his wife,
Elizabeth, who was well on in years, like himself,
and barren would bear a son who was to be named John.
These events in turn laid a credible foundation for what followed a few months later when the angel then visited her cousin Mary to announce the forthcoming birth of Jesus himself.