Quote
xyz asks:Can we have chapter and verse, please?

John's preparatory baptismal ministry, to which Wes referred you* above, was publicly and explicitly mandated by God:
Quote
...he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb. And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared." (Luke 1:15-17, ESV)
::
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness. And he went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet,

"The voice of one crying in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.
Every valley shall be filled,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
and the crooked shall become straight,
and the rough places shall become level ways,
and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.'" (Luke 3:1-6)

Please note again the clear calling of John by the angel of the Lord, by the word of God, in the Holy Spirit, both from birth and at the outset of his ministry, to do exactly what he did, that is, call all Israel to repentance.

* And yes, people do use direct 2nd-person references with some frequency here, since most of these posts are not a "civil debate" at all, but rather an attempt to encourage and exhort real, individual people to find, turn to, or return to, or not turn away from, the faith once delivered to the saints.

In Christ,
Paul S