When Jesus was thirty years old, people began to talk about the great man who had come to Palestine.

"This man is so great," they said, "that he may be the Messiah."

But it was not Jesus they were talking about. It was his cousin, John.

John was a preacher. He was afraid of no one, and as a result everyone was a bit afraid of him. John was a rough, strong man. Next to his skin he wore leather, and over that he wore a cloak of camel's hair. Honey and locusts were his food.

Every day John preached down by the river Jordan. The people flocked out from Jerusalem and from all the countryside round about to hear him preach. It was a wild and dreary place to come to, but when John preached everybody wanted to be there.

This was how he preached:

"Give up your sins, and begin a new life at once, for God is coming to rule over men! I am a voice crying in the wilderness. I tell you—prepare for the Lord!"

And when the people heard him, they were afraid. Many of them cried out, "We have sinned!" and came forward out of the crowd. John led them down the bank into the river and baptized them as a sign that they wanted to be cleansed of their sins and begin a new life. Thus John came to be known as "John the Baptist."

But when John thought that a man was not in earnest, then he refused to baptize him. Some of the Pharisees and the Sadducees came to be baptized, and John would have nothing to do with them. They might be great men in Jerusalem, but John called them "snakes in the grass." He told them:

"I've seen the snakes out here in the wilderness, wriggling for dear life to get out of the way when the grass catches fire. That's what you remind me of. You're scared. You think that something terrible is going to happen, and so you're pretending to be good people so that it won't go so hard with you. You will have to show me that you want to be something different from what you are! And don't think that you amount to anything just because you are Jews. God could make as good Jews as you are out of these stones."

That is how John the Baptist talked to some of the great men of Jerusalem. It made people think more than ever that he might be the Messiah. Who except the Messiah would dare to talk that way to Pharisees and Sadducees?

But others shook their heads and said, "No—this couldn't be the Messiah!" For they thought that when the Messiah came he would drive the Romans out of the country; and many people said that the only way to do that would be to get an army together. Some men were meantime killing all the Romans they could. They were called "Zealots," because they were so much filled with zeal about killing off the Romans. A few even carried daggers with them, and stuck the daggers into Romans whenever they got a chance.

"The Romans will not be overthrown," they said, "just by preaching. You will have to get out and kill the Romans."

John himself said that he was not the Messiah.

"There is someone coming who is greater than I," he told the people. "Someone is coming whose shoe-laces I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. Compared to him, I am nobody. I am just preparing the way for the Messiah."

One day there was a great crowd, as usual, down by the Jordan, and John was busy baptizing the people as fast as they came to the water. One after another they came. It went on for hours.

John had just baptized one man and helped him to the bank. The next one was coming forward. John looked up to see who it was. He was looking into the face of Jesus of Nazareth.

"You! Not you!" John spoke in a hoarse whisper. "No! I can't baptize you. You must baptize me instead!"

Before anyone could notice that anything was wrong, Jesus stepped to the water's edge.

"Don't say anything about it, John," he said softly. "Treat me just like the rest of them. We shall all be baptized together into a new life."

Jesus went forward into the river and John baptized him. In a moment Jesus was up the bank and lost in the crowd. The next man was coming forward.

John stared after the vanishing figure of Jesus. The crowd made way for Jesus, thinking, There goes another man who came to be cleansed of his sins.

But John said: "When I baptized him, I saw the Spirit of God come down out of heaven like a dove, and light upon him. Jesus is the Son of God. I am nothing. He is everything. He is the Messiah. He is the Lamb of God!"

The next man was coming down the bank toward John. John stood peering into the crowd. Jesus was nowhere to be seen.

Jesus had gone away to be alone, as God wanted him to do. He went into the loneliest part of the desert, where there were only the wild animals to keep him company.

I am the Messiah, he thought. There is no doubt that I am the Messiah. I must save my people. How should I begin?

There was nothing to eat in the wilderness, and Jesus grew hungry. He looked around him, and saw that the stones were shaped like loaves of bread.

There seemed to be a voice inside him which was not his own. The voice said:

"If you really are the Messiah, you oughtn't to be hungry. If you really are the Messiah, you would just have to say the word and these stones would be turned into bread. Then you would have plenty to eat for yourself, and, besides, you could go and give bread to all the hungry folk out there who are waiting for you to help them."

It was very quiet in the wilderness. The voice spoke up again.

"But maybe you are afraid to try. Suppose you said to the stones, 'Stones, become bread!' and then nothing happened! That would prove that you weren't the Messiah, wouldn't it?"

Jesus shook his head, to get rid of the thought. Some words from the Scriptures came into his mind. "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." No, it would not do to try playing tricks with stones. It would not matter if he did turn them into bread. Bread was not the most important thing in the world. People might think that there was nothing so important as eating, but there were bigger things in life than that. People might think that what the Messiah ought to do was to make the country prosperous, but that would not help them so much as they thought. That was not the kind of Messiah he was going to be.

But what was the best way to prove that he was the Messiah? The tempting voice inside tried again.

"Maybe the best idea," it said, "is to go to Jerusalem and climb up on the tower and jump down! Everyone says that the Messiah is going to come suddenly out of heaven. You would come down suddenly enough that way! And nothing would happen to you. It says in the Scriptures that God will send his angels to hold you up and keep you from being hurt. Surprise the whole city by jumping off the Temple, and everybody will worship you at once!"

Again Jesus shook the thought away, and again he thought of what the Scriptures said.

"Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." I can't go and put God to the test, to see whether he will keep me from being hurt. And it won't make me the Messiah just to cause a big sensation in Jerusalem. That's what everyone is expecting, but that is not the right way at all. There must be some other way.

And the voice spoke up again.

"There is something else you could do. What the world needs is a ruler like you. Everybody says that the Messiah is going to be a world ruler, great and good. Don't let the people down! You are a great man. You could be anything you wanted to be—a general, a governor, a king."

Jesus thought, That's Satan tempting me, that's the devil himself talking!

He spoke out loud:

"Go away from me, Satan! For the Scriptures say, 'Thou shall worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve!'"

The voice said no more. A great quietness came over Jesus. There was no great thing that he needed to do right away. He was the Messiah, but he did not need to make the country wealthy. He did not need to jump from the Temple, and he did not need to command an army or rule an empire.

There was one thing that he would have to do, but he could not tell anybody about it yet. It was going to be his secret for a while. But someday everybody would see what he was doing. Someday it would be understood.

And now it was time to be on his way. He had been in the wilderness forty days, and that was long enough. He found the trail back to the outside world, and soon he was on the road to Galilee.

When Jesus got home to Galilee, he began to preach to people in the streets. What he said at first was very much like what John the Baptist said:

"Give up your sins, and begin to live a new life, for God has come to rule over you!"

But the crowds that heard Jesus were not so large as those that went to the Jordan to hear John.

Jesus needed some followers now who would be with him all the time, and learn everything he had to tell them. John the Baptist had his followers; "disciples" was what they were called. Jesus began to look for disciples of his own.

One morning he went down to the shore of the Sea of Galilee. When he came back to the town, he had four disciples with him.

Two of them were brothers named Simon and Andrew. Andrew remembered Jesus, for he had once been a disciple of John the Baptist. He had seen John point to Jesus, and heard him say, "He is the Lamb of God!" Andrew had told Simon all about it.

When Jesus came to them along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, he found them putting a net into the water, for Andrew and Simon were fishermen.

Jesus said to them,

"Come and follow me, and I will make you fishers of men."

Fishing was good business, but Simon and Andrew were ready to give it up to follow the man John had called "the Lamb of God." They came away with him at once.

Farther along the shore was another pair of brothers. One of them had also been with John the Baptist. Their names were James and John, and they were with their father, Zebedee. They had done so well at fishing that they could afford to have servants to help them. But when Jesus called them they also came at once, and left their father and the servants behind.

That was four to start with, and soon he had eight others. But no one of them was a very important person, and people said that one of them was wicked. That was Levi, who was also called Matthew. The trouble with Levi was that he was a taxgatherer. Everybody hated taxgatherers. They were called "publicans," and it was thought that no one could be much lower than a publican.

The publicans worked for the Roman government. They were not Romans themselves, but Jews, which made it all the worse. They were looked upon as traitors, for they collected the taxes for the hated Romans, and made a fortune for themselves by cheating the people.

Levi's job was to collect the fee for traveling along the road, and what he could collect over and above the amount he ought to have charged, he kept for himself. Then Levi heard Jesus preaching. He heard him say that he ought to give up his sins, and begin to live a new life. When Jesus came to Levi's table one day, and said, "Follow me," just as he had said it to the honest fishermen by the lake shore, Levi was ready to come away. Without a word Levi got up and left his taxgathering behind, and all his fortune. Levi became a disciple like the other eleven, and was treated like the rest.

But other people were shocked when they saw a publican with Jesus, and tongues began to wag. No one seemed to notice that Levi had stopped collecting taxes. He had been a publican once, and no one except Jesus was ready to give him a second chance.

Other publicans sometimes came to have dinner with Jesus and his disciples, along with many people who were looked down upon in the community.

The Pharisees in particular were angry when they saw the company that Jesus kept. One day they came to one of these dinner parties, and told the disciples that they did not care for Jesus' choice of friends.

"How is it," they asked, "that your master eats and drinks with publicans and sinners?"

Jesus heard them, and replied:

"It is not well people who need a doctor, but the sick. I didn't come here for the sake of the good people, such as you think that you are, but for the sake of sinners—to lead them into a new life."

But the Pharisees still objected. They said:

"Look at John the Baptist. John is a good man. His disciples are so religious that they sometimes go without their meals. Your disciples always seem to be eating!"

"Why shouldn't they eat and feast and be merry?" Jesus answered. "They are like the friends of a man who is being married. When someone is to be married, his friends have a great feast. They are joyful because the bridegroom is with them. In the same way my disciples are joyful because they have me with them."

Jesus meant that they were joyful because he was the Messiah, and his disciples were glad to be with him. But he did not say that he was the Messiah, and no one knew what he was talking about. The Pharisees would have had more respect for him if he had had a better class of friends. Fishermen might do, but not publicans and sinners of that sort! If only Jesus were more like John the Baptist!

They never once thought that Jesus might be the Messiah. When they saw the kind of friends he had, they wondered if he was even a good man.