But we should do an injustice to the subject if we failed to allow for the fact that according to the prophetic ideal this kingdom was to be a blessing to the world, and to abolish all violence and oppression; the kingdom of God was to be a kingdom of universal peace and joy, a kingdom of righteousness based on social justice. It was because of this widespread expectation that the austere preacher, John the Baptist, obtained his hearing in the wilderness of Judea. All John had to preach about was the kingdom of God, which he declared to be near at hand. He believed that he had been sent to herald the coming of the Messiah, and from his words we can gather what people thought about the Messiah: "Whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire." According to the Baptist, the Messiah would spare no kind of sham or hypocrisy; he would root out and utterly destroy every kind of social evil, no matter what. John insisted that it would be of no use for Jews to imagine that simply because they were descendants of Abraham they would escape this general visitation; hence his words to the Pharisees were particularly scathing: "O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" It is clear, therefore, that, in the opinion of the man who has now come to be regarded as the forerunner of Jesus, the kingdom of God was to be an earthly kingdom, was to come suddenly, and was to be inaugurated by a sort of general judgment or clean sweep of all the elements that made for oppression, cruelty, foul living, and pretentiousness of every kind. It had not the remotest reference to a world to come or a Divine Redeemer whose principal duty it should be to suffer and die in order to secure a blessed immortality for those who believed in Him.