<p>7:19 <i>And John calling to himself two of his disciples, sent them to Jesus, asking: Are you he that comes, or look we for another?</i>- 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 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><p>And yet for all this, it could simply be that John had a crisis of faith in prison. It can&rsquo;t be insignificant that John sends two disciples out just after the Lord had sent out&nbsp;<i>His</i>&nbsp;disciples two by two in Matthew 10. Surely this is a literary device to set up John in negative contrast to the Lord at this time; John sent out his pair of disciples in response to his crisis of faith. He knew Jesus was to do mighty works- but he had heard of them only by report. Those he sent out had already heard and seen the Lord&rsquo;s miracles (Mt. 11:4), and yet John sends them to Jesus to ask if He is Messiah. It all reads rather negatively about John. It could even be that he died at a low point in his faith, and yet the Lord&rsquo;s positive comment about Him surely suggests that He saw John as being ultimately saved. The records of the Kings of Israel and Judah, along with various passages in Ezekiel 18, place great emphasis upon how a man&nbsp;<i>finishes</i>&nbsp;his spiritual journey, and yet there are also Biblical examples of faithful men dying at low ebb spiritually; this will not necessarily exclude from the Kingdom, and John the Baptist may be another example.</p>