Original subtitles

Repaired.

With the kingdom of heaven,

Is it hard

As it is written by isaiah

The prophet?

To prepare your way,

Every ravine will be filled

And every mountain and hill

Will be brought low.

The crooked

Will become straight and rough road.

Smooth

And all flesh.

All flesh will see the salvation of god.

How it marks gospel.

The first gospel to be written.

The first character we meet is not jesus, is not

Mary is not joseph.

It is john the baptist.

Come with me

And you will see,

Come.

Come all out in the wilderness

Proclaiming a message of repent.

It's the gospels.

There's a picture of john that emerge as he

He wears camel's hair, he eats locusts and wild honey.

He looks like the prophets of old.

His hair is unkempt, he's dirty.

He probably smells terrible.

He is a wild man.

And so like one would think

That people would just ignore him or run away from him.

And yet you've got this group of people

Going down to the jordan to listen to john preach.

For your repentance.

Behold

The lamb of god

To wash away your sins.

You'll see.

You will see.

I baptize you with water

For repentance.

God loves you, brother.

John is immersing

People in water in the jordan call

Baptism for the forgiveness of their sins.

When people emerge from the water,

According to john, they are born again.

This ritual of immersion gives john his nickname.

That is john the baptize her.

John is focusing on repentance because he thinks

The deep problems they choose is their willingness to sin.

Boldly and not repent.

And he finds this to be a problem.

The jewish religious authorities

Come all the way from jerusalem to the jordan to hear him

Give a message there where he actually rails against them.

And you come to be baptized and wash away.

You said.

Who are you

To me?

Guess

Elijah,

The prophet.

I am the voice of one

Crying out in the wilderness.

I straight the way of the lord

Right?

What should we do then?

Hebrew to vipers

Who warned you to flee from the coming

Wrath?

Produce fruit

In keeping with repentance.

The ax is already

At the roots of the trees.

And every tree that does not produce good

Fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

John's message is one of repentance,

A turning of changing your ways.

And it's a message so compelling and perhaps so threatening

That the powers of the time find in john not just a prophet

In the wilderness, but a threat to their power.

For john, his anger, I think,

Is helped out by the injustice that he sees in everyday life.

Whoever has two coats

Must share with anyone who has none. Work

And whoever has food

Must do likewise.

Repent

For the kingdom of heaven comes near.

And end up like them.

After me

Comes one who is more powerful than I

Who sandals.

I am not worthy to carry.

John is

Preparing the way for a messiah,

For deliver for a liberator.

He sees what has gone awry, and he's in

Imagining a possibility of god's agents, of god's prophet,

Of god's messiah coming to set the world right.

Somewhere between jesus at age 12.

And when jesus begins his ministry

Roughly around age 30, joseph seems to have died.

The image that we sometimes see in western art is jesus

As this meek, pious, doe eyed person that couldn't lift

More than a little pebble.

We have to remember that this is someone who worked hard,

You know, a physical laborer.

I think that most people would be surprised.

They think of jesus with short hair.

You often see jesus portrayed as a long haired person,

But that's more of a medieval idea.

Most jewish men at the time of jesus probably

Had short hair.

He kept us safe all these years.

To me, a trade.

You have to be a good man.

What will you do now?

Their house is to be built.

Your father's work to continue.

Family is the central core

Of jewish life in the first century.

So when joseph dies,

He leaves the family without their central figure,

Without their patriarch, without their breadwinner.

A friendship has come to an end.

It's time to build

A different kind of house.

Are you going to

Have heard of a man who preaches by the river

Each year?

They need me.

You have james.

A lot of people are surprised to find out

That jesus had a brother and that we know his name.

It's mentioned all over the new testament,

And that's because there's a kind of later catholic doctrine

That says that after mary gave birth to jesus, her virginity

Sealed back up and in fact, she had no other children.

So catholics would probably say that these were step

Brothers and step sisters, not the natural children of mary.

Protestants have no trouble with the idea

That they were actual brothers and sisters.

We can imagine there might be a little bit

Of a frosty relationship between james and jesus, because

When jesus leaves the family to go and conduct his ministry,

James is left having to support his family.

We're doing the lord's work.

Andrew

And you can't do the lord's work

Without food.

According to the gospels,

One of john's followers is a man by the name of andrew.

He's going to play

A central role in the movement of jesus of nazareth.

Andrew I think without question is a spiritual seeker.

He's not happy with the state of his religion

And he's looking for preachers who could help them

Find a better way to be faithful to god.

You, the messiah.

I am not the messiah,

But I have been sent ahead of him.

He will baptize

You with the holy spirit and fire

His fork in his hand,

And he will clear the threshing floor,

Gathering his wheat into the barn

And burning up the chaff.

Unquenchable fire.

Unlike many jews,

John is not expecting a messiah who will be a military leader

Like king david, the greatest king in israel's history.

John's messiah will burn up everyone

Apart from those who've repented and will usher in a new era

Of god's rule here on earth.

The poor will no longer be poor, the oppressed will no longer

Be oppressed.

This will be the kingdom of god right here,

Right now.

Will you baptize me?

Ready to

I baptize you

With water for repentance.

You'll be baptized.

I have come

To see my cousin

Paris. Boy

Traveled a long way

To find you, john.

We've

Come in the gospel of luke.

Jesus and john are related to one another

And the other gospels.

It's not clear what the relationship is before

They meet on the banks of the jordan,

But it seems evident that jesus hear

Something in john's voice

And he feels drawn to it, feels compelled by

The holy.

Holy, holy

Is the lord almighty.

The whole

Is full of his glory.

You speak my words

With such power.

I'm starting to wonder if it is me

That should be learning from you.

Your conviction

Is inspiring.

The gospels make it seem like the time that john the baptist

And jesus spent together was very short.

But in historical reality, it's possible

That they spent much more time together learning

From one another and becoming part of the same community.

Many new testament scholars believe that

Jesus was, for a time a member of john's circle,

Really actually a disciple of john.

In this case, it looks like john

The baptist is the kind of teacher, even role model

For jesus as he thinks about his own ministry.

I've dedicated my life

To preaching the word of god,

Preparing the ground

For the one that follows me.

The people.

The people cry out for an end

To their misery, the fall of their enemies,

And the time

Of the one true lord.

It is a future I long to see

Jesus.

What future do you see?

You are the teacher.

I see a time when prophecies

Will come to pass

And god's fire

Wipes away the pain of his people.

Like a sandstorm.

The jewish

People are looking for a very strong messiah

Who will lead them out of rome and occupy nation.

John the baptist expects the messiah

To be not only disruptive, but even violent.

He is going to burn up those who are involved

In the roman occupation and.

And that includes

The new roman governor of judea,

Pontius pilate.

At some point during his governorship, pilot builds

A aqueduct, bringing fresh water to the city of jerusalem.

Which is a great idea.

There's only one problem.

He decides that this extremely expensive project will be funded

From the treasury of the jerusalem temple.

And this causes

An outcry because those funds are sacred.

It is their money.

It's not the roman empire's money,

And they don't want it used for a secular purpose

Like building an aqueduct

For that.

Another

Man can live without many things

Wine, women,

Money, even.

But water.

It's the blood of life.

Think of an aqueduct as a heart pumping blood,

Or in this case, water.

The aqueduct flows.

Your children drink fresh water, your crops grow.

But if it stops,

You die.

So everyone will benefit.

And all we ask is that

You contribute

Now. Very quickly to.

This pilot sends a small group of soldiers dressed in plain

Clothes into the crowd, armed with cross.

Having people use clubs

Instead of swords as a way to inflict terror

Without causing an outright massacre.

Surely the day is coming.

It will burn like a furnace.

All the arrogant

And every evildoer will be stubborn.

And the day that is coming will set them on fire.

Oh, they

Hardly.

Oh, yes, the lord almighty.

John the baptist,

Is preparing the way for the messiah.

The son of god, who just so happens to be

Potentially his cousin jesus.

And then this moment, jesus is potentially

Getting ready to launch into his own ministry.

Here's the question who is jesus to john the baptist?

Or more importantly, more intriguing is who is john

The baptist to jesus?

The time has come.

I should be baptized by you.

Why are you coming to me?

This is how it should be.

If there is one event that we know definitively

Happened in jesus's life, it's that john baptized jesus.

It's the one thing that every jesus

Scholar agrees on.

Does jesus need to be baptized?

Not really.

His son of god.

The way I like to look at it

Is that jesus cast himself with the rest of humanity.

So in as much as others were getting baptized, jesus decided

Really in an act of humility to get baptized by john

Ready for.

All my sons so beloved

With you, I am well pleased.

Oh, did you say

That everything.