John the Baptist believed Jesus to be God

In the opening part of chapter 3, we read that John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea. Matthew shows us that John was not just a man, but a messenger of the Creator:

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[3] For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.

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When we read the story of Christ’s baptism, we quickly see that John was not only preaching about repentance and baptizing the crowd, but he was also telling the people who had come to him about the coming Christ:

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[11] I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire:

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Right away what we notice is that Jesus is greater than John. This here is very important to understand because it displays to us that Christ was not limited to being just a prophet because Jesus was greater than a prophet. So the question arises: why did John believe Jesus to be so much greater than he? What made him so special? The answer is given by John in the following passage:

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[12] Whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.

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This little story about the wheat and the chaff is pointing to Judgement day. As we know from the scriptures, God is the only one who is fit to judge mankind on the last day. Yet what we see here is John believing that Jesus will take this role upon himself. It is Christ who will bring the believers (wheat) into heaven (the garner) and it is he who will burn the unbelievers (chaff) with fire. Another thing that is important for us to notice is John’s wording when it comes to Christ purging the floor. The phrase does not say THE floor, but HIS floor. The floor as we can see from the context refers to the world. In other words, the world belongs to Jesus Christ.

So what we see when we examine the story is that as God is the judge of mankind, Jesus is the judge of mankind. As the world belongs to God, the world belongs to Jesus.

So the reason why John believed Jesus to be greater than he was not because he was some better prophet. It was not because he was some enlightened being. But because he was God in the flesh.