Ezek. 1:3; Hosea 1:1; Joel 1:1) the word of God came to him. He was called to be a herald of the King, a voice calling in the desert to ‘prepare the way for the Lord’ (3:4). John was the fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophecy which had been made some 700 years earlier (Isa. 40:3–5). His task was to make straight paths for the Lord. People’s lives were wrong; they were crooked. They needed to be put right, and John’s task was to call people back to moral ways. He used great boldness in his work. He called