I just watched a show that has two prologues. Did you know you're allowed to do that? I didn't I thought there's probably a rule or something, but apparently you can just have as many prologues as you want. It had two, and it was very disorienting at first. Now that I kind of understand the storytelling structure of the show, you know, I get it more, but I didn't get it at the time. No, two prologues. The I'm not going to tell you what show it is, by the way, because, well, because. But it's a show that's kind of been all the rage on the internet. There's been a lot of talk about it. Sure enough, as is the case with many shows in this genre, there is a prologue at the beginning that kind of sets the scene and wets your appetite for who this very interesting, unique character, maybe even a character from beyond, is going to turn out to be. It's a good prologue. It was well shot, well acted. I was like, yeah, this could be a good show. I like this. Now, when I say prologue, you know, I mean the thing on the front end of a story that kind of frames it up. Sometimes that's a black screen with white letters. Sometimes it's a dramatic voice, like Kate Blanchette reading over the top of the action in the prologue to the Lord of the Rings stuff. Sometimes it's just a scene that tells a story that's kind of set in the past. And then you jump forward to current time where most of the story is going to live. You know, I'm watching this show. The first episode is a nice clean prologue. I'm like, all right, I get what we're doing here, storytelling-wise. And then a couple episodes go by and I feel all oriented. And then just abruptly a thing happens and it like it wrecks the whole story. And you're like, whoa, wait, what? What what happened? And then I realized, oh, it was another prologue. They had a prologue that was like 10 minutes long, and then they had like a two-episode prologue arc, and then they do the rest of the story after that. And if you really think about it, the rest of the story is kind of a prologue as well. Two prologues. Fascinating. So I was thinking about that this week. Got that rattling around in the back of my noggin. Of course, I'm always thinking about our conversations as well. Then I'm over here working on stuff in the Gospel of John. I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking about the structure of the thing. And I started thinking, well, wait a dang minute here. Am I getting double prologued with John also? I don't know. I'm not sure yet. Maybe, maybe not. But I started thinking maybe you could make a case for instead of John just having one prologue, which of course we've talked about at great length. That's the in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God business in John 1, 1 through 18. I started thinking, you know, in a way, the first three chapters of John is kind of all prologue. It's like there's one big three-chapter prologue and then one little miniature right at the front end prologue as well. And the reason that I think that is because John the Baptist pretty much goes through his whole arc in the first three chapters. And he's a very big deal in the Gospel of John. Like it was clearly very important to John the Evangelist as he was writing this book to explain to the original audience what the heck the deal was with John the Baptist. He was probably very famous. Everybody had heard of him. Some people probably thought he was the big deal. Like, well, John the Baptist, he's the one who's probably the, you know, the great prophet who is to come, or maybe even the Christ himself. But here at the very beginning of the book, John the Evangelist makes it clear: no, John the Baptist was here to attest to the true word of God, the Lagos, Jesus. And then you turn the page, and people, there's a scene that John the Evangelist gives us where people walk right up to John the Baptist and they're like, hey, buddy, are you the Messiah, the Christ? And he's like, Nope. Are you Elijah reincarnated? Nope. Are you the prophet? Nope. Who are you? And then John spells out who he is. I'm the voice of one crying out in the desert in the wilderness, make straight the way for the Lord. Then right after that, John the Baptist is on screens pointing to Jesus and saying, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And then after that, some of John's disciples come up to John. And John again points at Jesus. He's like, That guy right there, the Lamb of God. Like he's shoving his disciples and followers toward Jesus. Go to him. He is the point. Get out of here. And then we get a sign in chapter two that is very brief. And it just gives us a little glimpse, a little hint of the authority of Jesus over nature, like something to give us something tangible to latch on to here as we're getting to know Jesus and considering the claims of John the Evangelist and John the Baptist. Then we see what authority Jesus believes himself to hold on display when he goes and flips tables in Jerusalem. And then we see the authority of Jesus in the arena of ideas, going toe-to-toe with maybe one of the most famous intellectuals of the day, the rabbi Nicodemus, who stands representative of the entire Pharisaic tradition of the teachers of the law. So we get that whole thing, and then we get to stuff that we haven't looked at yet, which is the rest of chapter three, which takes us back to John the Baptist. We're going to get his famous remark where he talks about Jesus and he says, He, that is Jesus, must become greater, and I, that is John the Baptist, must become less. And then chapter three is going to wrap up with it saying, Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him. And then we're going to turn the page into the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman. And frankly, I think our season is going to pick up in terms of just pace, like average number of verses covered per day. Right now we're at like uh three-quarters of a verse per day, I think is our current pace. It's going to pick up a lot when we hit John chapter four, because it just slides into narrative for several chapters. And Jesus teaches in there, and there's, you know, interesting back and forth and miracles and action and stuff. But it's different than the super dense theology of the first three chapters of John. So back to my TV show that I saw that has a double prologue. You got a tiny little prologue on the front end, it's obvious prologue. But then when you start to step back from the larger story structure, you're like, really? The first full two episodes are prologue. And I'm kind of feeling that way. Like what John is really trying to, John the evangelist, that is, is really trying to drive home in this these first three chapters, is stated once in the first 18 verses. Then it's illustrated in everything that happens after those first 18 verses through the rest of chapter one, through all of chapter two, through the first part of chapter three with Nicodemus, and then it's restated starting in 316 with the four God so loved the world business. And then John the Baptist kind of gets the last word, modeling how the reader should respond. Look, in light of who Jesus is, in light of this threefold instruction of John the Evangelist, behold, believe, have life. That's what you're supposed to do as the reader. That's all set up. By the time we get to the end of the conversation with Nicodemus section, the John 3.16 and forward stuff, it's all set up. Kind of the only remaining question is, well, does John the Baptist endorse this? What does he make of it? And what we'll see as we get into this next John the Baptist section here at the end of chapter three is, yeah, John the Baptist does endorse all of this. So the Baptist is all over this, if we could call it that, you don't have to accept my read on this, but if you would indulge me and play along with my double prologue thought here, that double prologue, if you will, ends with the firm, explicit endorsement of John the Baptist and this threefold affirmation, this thing John the Evangelist is trying to give us. It's not just that John the Baptist is vouching for Jesus. Jesus is great, you should believe in him. It is that John the Baptist specifically is saying the same stuff that Jesus is saying, you know, just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, what does that mean? Behold, believe, have life. John the Baptist is affirming what John the Evangelist is saying. Behold, believe, have life. John the Baptist is also crying out in the wilderness, behold, believe, have life. I have counted up 30-ish really tight parallels between John 3, 16 through 20 and the John 1 prologue on the very front end of the book. It's so tight, it's so obvious, it's so one for one when you really sit here and look at it, as to look like absolutely intentional matching bookends to all the material in between. Look, you do not have to accept my prologue theory for us to be friends. But what you can't fight me on is that these parallels are actually here, because that's just empirical. Everything from John 1 to the end of John 3, which is now in view for us, all of this serves to absolutely pound, drill, clown hammer the point that the reader of this book ought to behold Jesus as he is, believe in him, and by believing have eternal life in his name. That is the point. That's what we're supposed to get. That's why John keeps saying it. It's really fun to talk about all these other connections and history and structure and all of these other things, but all of those things in John are so slavishly devoted to behold, believe, have life in his name. That interpretive cipher is really holding up through three chapters. And it's really going to hold up as we round out what's left in chapter three and get into the stuff about John the Baptist that is coming up. I've changed my mind. I've decided to disclose what program I was watching this week. It's the Pendragon cycle. It's the Merlin thing, the rise of Merlin or whatnot. I would love to know your thoughts on that if you've seen it. I haven't decided what to make of it yet. That's good for now. Matt, this is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.