"22 After this Jesus and his disciples went into the Judean countryside, and he remained there with them and was baptizing. 23 John also was baptizing at Aenon near Salim, because water was plentiful there, and people were coming and being baptized 24 (for John had not yet been put in prison).
25 Now a discussion arose between some of John's disciples and a Jew over purification. 26 And they came to John and said to him, “Rabbi, he who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you bore witness—look, he is baptizing, and all are going to him.”
John 3:22-26
From this point until the end of the chapter, we have John the Baptist's final testimony to Jesus, and we must look at it with care. Jesus now moves away from Jerusalem into Judaea, into the country districts and rural areas around the capital. We are given a significant note on the chronology of our Lord's ministry in 24. It will be recalled that the other three gospel writers all alike date Jesus' Galilean ministry from the time John was cast into prison, and it is clear from this that the Jerusalem and Judaean ministry recorded by John here ante-dates by probably as much as a year what is given us by the synoptic writers.
It is not certain what was the nature of the argument that arose between John's disciples and the Jews in 25. Perhaps the Jews were taunting the disciples about the fact that their leader seemed to be losing his disciples to Jesus, and suggesting this was a proof that John's baptism was not really a purifying power, or comparing John's baptism unfavourably with Jesus'. What does seem clear is that the argument had to do with baptism, and this prompts the observation that times do not change very greatly in some respects. How people love to argue about baptism: They go on and on and on, as if the whole of the gospel was comprised in the rite. Some Christians have water on the brain, and their preoccupation with it would be comic were it not for the fact that such obsessional preoccupation generally beguiles them from the simplicity that is in Christ and takes the edge off their testimony and their usefulness in Christ's service. Their allegiance has been transferred from Him to 'another gospel' which is no gospel.