6. JOHN BAPTIZES THE LORD 31. “I myself did not know Him before, but that he might be revealed to Israel I came to baptize with water (the ones waiting for Him)”
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ATURALLY, the emissaries thereupon asked John, ‘Since
when have you known this strange man, and how was what you have just said about him made known to you?’ - Here John replied quite naturally that he, as a man, had not known him either, but that his spirit had revealed this to him and induced him to prepare men for This One and to cleanse them with the water of the Jordan of their gross contamination through sins. 32. And John testified further, saying (after the baptism): “(As I baptized Him) I saw the spirit of God (as evidence for me) descending from Heaven just like a dove that gently lowers itself, and this spirit stayed above Him.” [2] Here John makes known that he, too, is seeing Me for the first time in person before him, and that My Spirit within observed this man during the short performance of the baptism with water, which John had initially refused to perform on me with the significant remark that I should baptize him rather than he Me. But when I insisted that it had to be done in this way, John gave in and baptized Me. But he saw what I Myself had revealed to him though My Spirit within his spirit as I had sent him to Bethabara, how the Spirit of God, that is, My very own eternal, primordial Spirit, descended upon Me from the Heavens full of light like a shining little cloud in the way a dove descends, and stayed above My head. At the same time he heard the familiar words: [3] ‘This is My beloved Son, or this is My light, My own primordial essence in which I, as the eternal, primordial essence of love, am well pleased. Listen to him.’ 33. “I would not have known Him either, but He who sent me to 23