John the Baptist of John arrested, executed, and buried in a tomb as a conscious foreshadowing of the fate of Jesus. As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, "Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, the voice of one crying in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,'" John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their
John the Baptist "personification" of the Old Testament prophet Elijah. Elijah did not know the True God (as opposed to the Abrahamic God), and thus had to be reincarnated in Gnostic theology. As predicted by the Old Testament prophet Malachi, Elijah must "come first" to herald the coming of Jesus Christ. Modern anthroposophy concurs with the idea that the Baptist was a reincarnation of Elijah, (cf. Mark 9:11–13), Matthew 11:13–14, Luke 7:27 although John the Baptist in the Gospel of John explicitly denies being linked to Elijah (John 1:21). Among the early Judeo-Christian Gnostics the Ebionites held that John, along with Jesus and