<p>7:20 <i>And when the men came to him, they said: John the Baptist has sent us to you to ask: Are you he that comes, or do we look for another?</i>- 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. 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;<i>herald</i>&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>