The ministry of John the Baptist was to prepare the way for the Messiah. He had a prophetic understanding that there are two kingdoms: the Kingdom of God, and the kingdom of darkness. In keeping with this understanding, he preached mostly a message of repentance, to move people from one kingdom to the other.
The traditional Jewish understanding of the concept of repentance was a change of direction. This meant a person was heading in a specific direction and literally turned in a different direction. On the other hand, the Greek understanding of repentance was a change of belief. Because the dominant culture of the time was Roman/Greco, the common understanding of the day was a mixture of both: repentance meant a change in thinking and belief that resulted in a new direction.
This, I think, explains John's harsh reaction when Pharisees and Saducees began showing up asking to be baptized. They were thinking of this baptism as a religious symbol -an outward sign. But John was not sensing any change of thinking -no change of belief -and, so, no real change of spiritual direction. He was basically saying that an outward sign of repentance without the inward reality is useless. Religious performance without transformation was meaningless.
The Kingdom that John was announcing and preparing for was about total separation of right from wrong and good from bad. A clear separation of the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness. Being a prophet (prophets tended to see everything as black and white) John saw the separation of these two kingdoms very clearly, but he did not quite grasp that the implementation of The Kingdom was through mercy and grace. He did, however, see that when Jesus came, He would baptize (fully immerse and overwhelm) people with the Holy Spirit. This immersion in the Holy Spirit (God actually indwelling His people) creates a relationship with God so deep and intimate and personal that religious laws would be fulfilled and outdated. The Kingdom would come and the separation of wheat and chaff would be a normal, natural outcome.
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