Day 173

  • Doctrine: John the Baptist prepared the way for Jesus.
  • Book of Mormon Reading: Alma 20:19 - 21:4
    • The scriptures are full of examples of people preparing the way for Jesus.  Particularly the message of Jesus.  How did Ammon prepare the way for the message of Jesus?
  • Read Matthew 3:1-17 and Matthew 4:1-11
    • How was John’s message preparing the way for Jesus?
    • What was John the Baptist lacking that Jesus would fulfill?
  • John’s ministry was the start of the bridge that would like the Old Covenant, Jehovah, and the Old Testament prophets with the New Covenant, Jesus Christ, and the New Testament apostles and prophets.  
  • Gerald Causse used the relationship of John and Jesus to teach the link between the Aaronic and Melchizedek Priesthood.  What do you learn about John’s role?

    • The perfect model of the close relationship that exists between the two priesthoods is found in the interaction between Jesus and John the Baptist. Can one possibly imagine John the Baptist without Jesus? What would the Savior’s mission have been like without the preparatory work performed by John?

      John the Baptist was given one of the most noble missions to ever exist: “to prepare the way of the Lord,”1 to baptize Him with water, and to make ready a people to receive Him. This “just … and … holy [man],”2 who had been ordained to the lesser priesthood, was perfectly aware of both the importance and the limits of his mission and his authority.

      People flocked to John to hear him and be baptized by him. He was honored and revered in his own right as a man of God. But when Jesus appeared, John humbly deferred to One greater than himself and declared, “I baptize with water: but there standeth one among you, … who coming after me is preferred before me, whose shoe’s latchet I am not worthy to unloose.”3

      For His part, Jesus the Christ, the Only Begotten of the Father, who held the higher priesthood, humbly recognized the authority of John. Of him, the Savior said, “Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist.”4 (https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2017/04/prepare-the-way?lang=eng)

  • How can you use John’s message to better prepare your heart for Jesus?

  • Additional Study
    • Gerald Causse, “Prepare the Way”, April 2017
    • How Great the Wisdom and the Love, Hymns No. 195
    • Baptism, Children’s Songbook No. 100