Question 1: Why do you think God chose someone like John to be Jesus' forerunner?
It seems to me that God had had the coming of John in mind perhaps even as long as He had had the coming of Jesus in mind. I gather this from the fact that John's ministry was already prophesied in Isaiah as was Jesus'. I think God did not choose John because he was John (or strange, or a loner, or anything else); I think John was John, with his specific traits and habits, because God had planned him and had filled him with the Holy Spirit even before he was born. Luke 1 supports this idea in various places, for example in what the angel says to Zechariah when he announces John's imminent birth: "'...he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born. ... . And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah ...'” (verses 15-17), and at the end of the chapter: "And the child grew and became strong in spirit; and he lived in the wilderness until he appeared publicly to Israel (verse 80). According to an NIV footnote "in spirit" can also be translated as "in the Spirit", so that we can gather that his life was Spirit led, as had been announced by the angel; therefore I think that John didn't just live in the wilderness because he had a certain personality (which the Lord then decided to use for his purposes, though perhaps he had that too); it was probably the Spirit that led John to the wilderness. So that God indeed "fashioned" John to be what he was, as Dr Wilson puts it.
