prophet Elijah, “get ready for Jehovah a prepared people.” Hence John was expecting Jehovah’s Son to come to him for identification. He told the repentant Jews: “I, on the one hand, baptize you with water because of your repentance; but the one coming after me is stronger than I am, whose sandals I am not fit to take off. That one will baptize you people with holy spirit and with fire.”—Matt. 3:11; Luke 1:17.

11. How did Jesus come to know his true relationship to Joseph and that he was the royal heir of the kingdom covenant with David?

¹¹ Jesus was still carpentering with his mother and his half brothers and half sisters up in Nazareth. But Jesus knew that he was not to keep carpentering always. His mother had told him how he was God’s Son by means of God’s holy spirit that had come upon her for her to conceive him. Joseph his foster father had also told him that he, Joseph, was not Jesus’ father but that he had been begotten in Mary by holy spirit. Mary had also told him that the angel Gabriel had said that Jehovah God would give Jesus the throne of his earthly forefather David and he would be king over the house of Jacob (or Israel) forever and his kingdom would never end. So Jesus knew he was the royal heir of the covenant that Jehovah had made with David for the everlasting kingdom.

12. How did Jesus know when to make his appearance as kingdom heir?

¹² But when was he to enter in upon his kingdom career? He was now in his thirtieth year of human life. He could not start out on his own accord. He had been told that the angel Gabriel said that John the son of priest Zechariah was to be his forerunner. So he must let the forerunner first appear and run on his mission for about six months, announcing the coming one. Then one day the news did come to Jesus at Nazareth that John had begun baptizing repentant Jews and that John was proclaiming: “The kingdom of the heavens has drawn near.” At that Jesus must have been stirred to the depths of his soul. Ah, now, the time had drawn near for him to appear as kingdom heir!

13. What prophetic week was then to begin, and where did Jesus go, and to have what done to him?

¹³ He was now reaching thirty years of age, the age of a fully mature man The sixty-ninth week of years, foretold by Daniel 9:24-26, was also coming to an end and the seventieth week of years counting from Nehemiah’s rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem was about to begin. Jesus here realized it was the due time for him to appear as the Messiah, the Christ, about whom the angel had made announcement at his birth in Bethlehem. Jesus laid down his carpenter tools. He left his shop and home. He headed southeast to his forerunner John, who was announcing there at the banks of the Jordan River the approach of the kingdom of the heavens. He would go, not to Jerusalem, the city of the great King Jehovah, not to the temple of Herod to be anointed as king of the Jews by the high priest, Annas. He would go to his forerunner, this priest’s son, not to be anointed with holy anointing oil as king over earthly Israel, but to be baptized in water.—Matt. 3:13; Mark 1:9.

14. Why was John backward about baptizing Jesus in water?

¹⁴ John the Baptist was glad to see Jesus. But why should Jesus ask to be baptized in water? John knew he was baptizing Jews who were sinners and who were repentant over their sins against the law of Jehovah God given to the nation of Israel through Moses. Jesus was no such repentant sinner. John knew that Jesus was holy, for he was God’s Son conceived in Mary by holy spirit. Why, John knew that when he was yet unborn in his mother’s womb he had leaped in her womb in acknowledgment of the then unborn Jesus as his “Lord.” So John tried to prevent Jesus from being baptized, saying: “I am the one needing to be baptized by you, and are you coming to me?”

15. How were John’s objections overcome, and after baptizing Jesus what confirmation did John have made to him?

¹⁵ How did Jesus overcome John’s objections? Jesus said: “Let it be this time, for in that way it is suitable for us to carry out all that is righteous.” Submissively John joined in doing what was suitable for them at that time. He baptized Jesus the Heir of the kingdom covenant, Jesus praying during this procedure, not confessing any sins. Then John had the identity of the Son of God confirmed to him, not an identification of him merely in a human sense but one of him in a spiritual sense, in a sense different from his being begotten in a human womb. What happened?

16. How did this confirmation come to John, and how did he know in what way to understand it?

¹⁶ “After being baptized Jesus immediately came up from the water; and, look! the heavens were opened up, and he saw descending like a dove God’s spirit coming upon him. Look! also, there was a voice from the heavens that said: ‘This is my Son, the beloved, whom I have approved.’” (Matt. 3:13-17; Luke 3:21-23) This was the miraculous event that John later told his disciples he had been awaiting: “I viewed the spirit coming down as a dove out of heaven, and it remained upon him. Even I did not know him, but the very One who sent me to baptize in water said to me, ‘Whoever it is upon whom you see the spirit coming down and remaining, this is the one that baptizes in holy spirit.’ And I have seen it and have borne witness that this one is the Son of God.”—John 1:32-34.

17. (a) To what was Jesus thus begotten, and of what did he become the Heir? (b) In him what was now found in the midst of the Jews?

¹⁷ By this divine act Jesus had been begotten by means of God’s spirit, apart from Mary’s womb, to become a spiritual Son of God, a “new creation” with spirit life in the invisible heavens in view. By this act also he had been anointed, not by Israel’s high priest with a horn of oil, but by Jehovah God and with holy spirit. By his human birth into the family of King David and by being adopted by the carpenter Joseph who was in the royal line, Jesus had become the heir of King David, naturally and legally, according to Jehovah’s covenant for the kingdom. But now by his being begotten from heaven and being declared to be God’s Son and by his being anointed with God’s holy spirit, Jesus became God’s Anointed One or Christ. He became the anointed Heir to a kingdom grander and higher than that of King David’s earthly Israelitish kingdom in the Promised Land of Palestine. Jesus became the Heir of the heavenly Kingdom. Truly in him Messiah, “the anointed one, the prince,” had come in that year of 29 (A.D.), at the end of the sixty-nine weeks of years, in accurately timed fulfillment of Daniel 9:25 (AS). Truly in him as Kingdom Heir the “kingdom of the heavens” had drawn near; in fact, it was in the midst of the Jews.—Luke 17:21.

18, 19. Why did John not baptize Jesus in a symbol of repentance, and why, then, did Jesus come to be baptized in water?

¹⁸ What, then, had the water baptism of Jesus signified? Not that he was a repentant sinner, for he had kept God’s law perfectly. He did this in a way far better than the Jew did who wanted to inherit everlasting life and who told Jesus: “Teacher, all these things I have kept from my youth on.” (Mark 10:17-20) Recognizing Jesus as the holy human Son of God, John did not baptize Jesus in symbol of Jesus’ repentance over sins. What form of words, if any, John used when submerging Jesus beneath Jordan’s waters the Bible does not tell us. But Jesus knew why he had come to be baptized. It was to do his heavenly Father’s will on earth as well as in heaven.

¹⁹ Paul the apostle explains it, saying concerning his Master Jesus: “It is not possible for the blood of bulls and of goats to take sins away. Hence when he comes into the world he says: ‘“You did not desire sacrifice and offering, but you prepared a body for me. You did not approve of whole burnt-offerings and sin offering.” Then I said, “Look! I am come (in the roll of the book it is written about me) to do your will, O God.”’ After first saying, ‘You did not desire nor did you approve of sacrifices and offerings and whole burnt-offerings and sin offering’—sacrifices which are offered according to the Law—then he actually says, ‘Look! I am come to do your will.’ . . . By the said ‘will’ we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all time.” (Heb. 10:4-10) The apostle Paul was here applying to Jesus at his baptism prophetic Psalm 40:6-8.

20. What, then, did Jesus there symbolize, and what shows whether, at his baptism, his will died?

²⁰ By Jesus’ water baptism he was symbolizing his dedication of himself, body and all, to do Jehovah’s will in a way more than the law given through Moses demanded. At his water baptism, at his being buried by John under the waters, Jesus symbolically died to his past situation in earthly life. His will did not die, for when he was lifted out of the Jordan he still had his power of will. He said after that: “My food is for me to do the will of him that sent me and to finish his work.” “I seek not my own will but the will of him that sent me.” “I have come down from heaven to do, not my will, but the will of him that sent me. This is the will of him that sent me, that I should lose nothing out of all that he has given me but that I should resurrect it at the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone that beholds the Son and exercises faith in him should have everlasting life, and I should resurrect him at the last day.” And in prayer to God just before he was betrayed by unfaithful Judas, Jesus said: “My Father, if it is not possible for this to pass away except I drink it, let your will take place.” “Nevertheless, let, not my will, but yours take place.”—John 4:34; 5:30; 6:38-40; Matt. 26:42; Luke 22:42; see also 1 Corinthians 7:37.

21. Why was Jesus not a hypocrite when he taught his disciples to pray: “Let your will come to pass”?

²¹ Till the day that Jesus was actually baptized into literal death by impalement on a torture stake, he continually had to exercise his power of will in harmony with God his Father’s will. (John 21:22) He was not a hypocrite when he taught his disciples to pray to God: “Let your kingdom come. Let your will come to pass, as in heaven, also upon earth.”—Matt. 6:9, 10.

(To be continued)

“Every Discovery”

In a lecture on “Joseph in Egypt in the Light of the Monuments,” Professor A. S. Yahuda of London said: “In conclusion, let me say this—Every discovery made in Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Egypt, has confirmed the Bible, and now at length the linguistic evidence is coming forth to support and complement archaeological evidence. I hope, nay, I am sure, that future archaeological discoveries, excavations, and researches will assist us still further in establishing the accuracy of the Book of books.—Journal of Transactions of the Victoria Institute, Vol. LXV, p. 54