By and by, Jesus came back into Galilee and began teaching that the Kingdom of God was at hand, that the Kingdom of God was among them. And He did many great things. Some said that The Prophet spoken of in the Decalogue had come. Others doubted. But His compassion for them fed their minds and their souls, their spirits, and He healed their infirmities.

In Judea, John, called the Baptist, was locked in Herod’s prison. He pondered over the reports he’d heard about cousin Jesus. Certainly, Jesus was doing Great Things. But He wasn’t doing the things expected of the Messiah. The Messiah was supposed to come, raise an army, wage war against the Gentiles, throw off the yoke of the Romans, and establish Israel as the central power over the world. That was the Messiah. But John’s cousin Jesus wasn’t doing any of these things. This Jesus was talking about a Kingdom already present in the Spirit, not one He would be bringing with a sword. And because John doubted, he sent a question to Jesus from prison, "Are you the expected one, or do we look for another?"

Jesus listened to the question with patience. He let a respectable time pass before responding. That shows the respect of a proper listener. When He spoke, He slowly and deliberately. Jesus answered, "The blind receive sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have the Gospel preached to them."

This was a quote from an ancient prophecy about the coming of the Messiah. It was about the coming of the Kingdom of God. And this Jesus had applied it to what He was doing. It was in this answer that people around Him began to realize that if this Jesus were the Messiah, their expectations about the Messiah were wrong. But how could this be?