Study Desk

Then the owner of the vineyard said, "`What am I to do? I will send my son--my dearly-loved son: they will probably respect him.'

"See to it," He replied, "that you are not misled; for many will come assuming my name and professing, `I am He,' or saying, `The time is close at hand.' Do not go and follow them.

"Master," replied Peter, "with you I am ready to go both to prison and to death."

Shortly afterwards a man saw him and said, "You, too, are one of them." "No, man, I am not," said Peter.

Thereupon they cried out with one voice, "You, then, are the Son of God?" "It is as you say," He answered; "I am He."

And remember that I am about to send out my Father's promised gift to rest upon you. But, as for you, wait patiently in the city until you are clothed with power from on high."

He avowed--he did not conceal the truth, but avowed, "I am not the Christ."

"What then?" they inquired; "are you Elijah?" "I am not," he said. "Are you the Prophet?" "No," he answered.

"I am the voice," he replied, "of one crying aloud, `Make straight the Lord's way in the Desert,' fulfilling the words of the Prophet Isaiah."

He who is to come after me, and whose sandal-strap I am not worthy to unfasten."

You yourselves can bear witness to my having said, `I am not the Christ,' but `I am His appointed forerunner.'

"How is it," replied the woman, "that a Jew like you asks me, who am a woman and a Samaritan, for water?" (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)

"I am He," said Jesus--"I who am now talking to you."

"Sir," replied the sufferer, "I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is moved; but while I am coming some one else steps down before me."

"I can of my own self do nothing. As I am bidden, so I judge; and mine is a just judgement, because it is not my own will that guides me, but the will of Him who sent me.

"But the testimony which I have is weightier than that of John; for the work the Father has assigned to me for me to bring it to completion--the very work which I am doing--affords testimony concerning me that the Father has sent me.

"I am the bread of Life," replied Jesus; "he who comes to me shall never hunger, and he who believes in me shall never, never thirst.

I am the bread of Life.

I am the living bread come down out of Heaven. If a man eats this bread, he shall live for ever. Moreover the bread which I will give is my flesh given for the life of the world."

Jesus therefore, while teaching in the Temple, cried aloud, and said, "Yes, you know me, and you know where I am from. And yet I have not come of my own accord; but there is One who has sent me, an Authority indeed, of whom you have no knowledge.