<p>1:25 <em>Again they asked him: Why then do you baptize, if you are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?</em>- Like many today, they mistakenly assumed that to baptize people, you need authority. They also indicate their belief that before Messiah's revelation, there is to be mass baptisms of Jews. The command to all in Christ to go forth and preach-and-baptize (the command is all one) would have been shocking to a first century Jewish audience, who believed that only Messiah Himself or &ldquo;the prophet&rdquo; could baptize (Jn. 1:25). The implication of the Lord&rsquo;s command was that all in Him are in fact Him, in their preaching of Him.</p><p>John&rsquo;s humility is brought out by the way John fields the question as to whether he is &ldquo;the Christ or Elijah or the Prophet?&rdquo;. He could have answered: &lsquo;I am the Elijah prophet&rsquo;- for the Lord Himself said of John that &ldquo;this is Elijah&rdquo;, with perhaps conscious reference back to this question (Mt. 11:14). But John didn&rsquo;t answer that way. His reply was simply to speak of the greatness of Christ and his unworthiness to be His herald (Jn. 1:26,27). John&rsquo;s humility is brought out yet further by reflection on the fact that he clearly baptized huge numbers of people, and yet also had a group of people known as &lsquo;the disciples of John&rsquo;. Clearly he didn&rsquo;t intend to found a sect, and was so taken up with trying to prepare people for the Lord&rsquo;s coming that he simply wished to lead them to some level of repentance and baptize them, without necessarily making them part of &lsquo;his disciples&rsquo;. John's low self-estimation is seen in how he denied that he was &quot;Elijah&quot; or the &quot;prophet&quot; whom the Jews expected to come prior to Messiah (Jn. 1:21). The Lord Himself clearly understood John as the Elijah prophet- &quot;this is Elijah&quot; (Mt. 11:14), He said of John. John wasn't being untruthful, nor did he misunderstand who he was. For he associates his &quot;voice&quot; with the voice of the Elijah prophet crying in the wilderness, and appropriates language from the Elijah prophecy of Mal. 4 to his own preaching. His denial that he was 'that prophet' therefore reflects rather a humility in him, a desire for his message to be heard for what it was, rather than any credibility to be given to it because of his office. There's a powerful challenge for today&rsquo;s preacher of the Gospel.</p>