The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as it is written in the prophets: “Behold, I send my angel before thy face, who shall prepare thy way before thee. A voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.” There came to be John baptizing in the wilderness, and preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. And there was going out to him all the Judean country, and the Jerusalemites, and all were being baptized in the Jordan river by him, confessing their sins. And John was clothed in camel’s hair, and a girdle of leather around his loins, and he ate locusts and wild honey. And he was preaching, saying: “There cometh one mightier than I after me, the latchet of whose sandals I am not worthy, having bent down, to loose. I indeed baptized you in water, but he shall baptize you in the Holy Ghost.”