<p>11:3&nbsp;<em>And said to him: Are you he that comes</em>- The emphasis may be on the word &ldquo;you&rdquo;. The coming one was a well-known term for Messiah, based upon Ps. 118:26.</p>
<p><em>Or look we for another?</em>- Despite John&rsquo;s clearly stated belief that Jesus was the promised bridegroom, the lamb of God and Son of God (Jn. 1:29-34), it seems things had not gone according to the prophetic program John had imagined- and he now had doubts about Jesus. For a man claiming (at least implicitly) to be Messiah, it would&rsquo;ve been an unnecessary question to ask Him &lsquo;Are you Messiah?&rsquo;. It could be inferred that John still believed in Jesus as Messiah and Son of God, but had begun to wonder if He was only the&nbsp;<em>herald</em>&nbsp;of &ldquo;another&rdquo; whom they should be looking for in order to establish the Kingdom. It could be that John&rsquo;s understanding of himself as the Elijah prophet had led him to expect that all Israel would repent, and then Messiah Himself would come and establish His Kingdom immediately. For this is indeed how the prophecies of Isaiah 40 and Malachi 4 could be read. Perhaps John was full of such self-doubt that he wondered if he really had been the Elijah prophet, and was thinking that maybe he had just heralded the Elijah prophet, Jesus, who was in turn to herald &ldquo;He that should come&rdquo;. This is the problem with holding a dogmatic view of prophetic sequences- when they prove wrong, either because our interpretation was faulty or because human lack of response means they are to come true in another way than ideally planned, then often peoples&rsquo; faith in Christ Himself is damaged. If we have an open ended view of prophecy, whereby we understand it to state possibilities which may have other ways of fulfilment than what is ideally intended, then such crises don&rsquo;t arise. &ldquo;Look we for another?&rdquo; doesn&rsquo;t sound as if John was simply asking for a sign, in the spirit of Gideon. He had major questions about the whole prophetic program, sensing that something had changed; the word for &ldquo;another&rdquo; is also translated &ldquo;altered&rdquo; (Lk. 9:29). In this sense, his question may not necessarily reflect a crisis of faith in Jesus personally, but rather an earnest desire to know the new details of the revised prophetic program.</p>
<p>So even John the Baptist, whose teaching had prepared most of the twelve to accept Jesus, seems to have not been altogether clear about what we might consider fundamental things. He speaks here of Jesus as &ldquo;the one to come&rdquo;, a commonly understood description of the Elijah prophet, based on the phrase being used about him in Mal. 3:1- and not of Messiah Himself. Thus John the Baptist anticipated that this &ldquo;one to come&rdquo;, his cousin Jesus, would be a refining fire (Mt. 3:12)- which is exactly Malachi&rsquo;s language about the Elijah prophet (Mal. 3:2; 4:1). This would explain why John the Baptist had apparent &lsquo;doubts&rsquo; whilst in prison as to whether Jesus really was the Messiah. And it would also explain why the disciples expected Jesus to act like Elijah in Lk. 9:52-56. It was not until the baptism of Jesus that John the Baptist came to understand Jesus as the &ldquo;one to come&rdquo;; so the preparatory work which he had done with the disciples must have had what we would call a flimsy doctrinal basis. When Jesus called them to follow Him, and they so quickly obeyed, it is often assumed that John the Baptist had prepared them for this. But that preparation must at best have been very shallow and incomplete, given John&rsquo;s own admission that he did not recognize Jesus for who He was until His baptism. Why, however, was John&rsquo;s misunderstanding recorded in the Gospel records? Or the misunderstanding of his father Zacharias, that John was in fact the promised Messiah, &ldquo;the prophet&rdquo;, the one would bring forgiveness of sins and freedom from the Romans (Lk. 1:71-79)? Perhaps for the same reason as the language of demons is used, especially to describe the miracles at the beginning of the Lord&rsquo;s ministry. He didn&rsquo;t correct this. But over time it became evident that the sheer power of the Son of God meant that in practice, demons didn&rsquo;t exist. Likewise, as the ministry of Jesus unfolds to us in the Gospel records, it becomes apparent that He was Son of God, the Messiah- and not merely an Elijah prophet.&nbsp;</p>