1 ^1-3 The Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God begins with the fulfilment of this prophecy of Isaiah—‘Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you’. ‘The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight’.

^4-5 For John came and began to baptise men in the desert, proclaiming baptism as the mark of a complete change of heart and of the forgiveness of sins. All the people of the Judean countryside and everyone in Jerusalem went out to him in the desert and received his baptism in the river Jordan, publicly confessing their sins.