The Question the Crowds Asked
What They Recognized. What They Missed. What Yeshua Confirmed.
Part 10 of 10
The Question That Frames the Entire Series
Across the nine documents that preceded this one, we have examined eight named vessels through whom the divine presence manifested during the thousand year reign, from Yehoshua (Joshua) at the Jordan to Mattityahu (Matthew) at the tax collector’s table. In every case we have seen the same pattern. A name bearing YHWH. A life that fulfilled what the name declared. A presence acting through the vessel that was larger than the vessel itself.
Now we arrive at the question that proves the pattern was not invented by this series. It was observed by the people who were there.
When Yeshua walked among the crowds of first century Judea and Galilee, they asked him directly and repeatedly: who are you? And the answers they proposed were not invented. They were drawn from a framework the Hebrew scriptures had given them, a framework in which YHWH appeared through named human vessels across the history of Israel, manifesting in one vessel, withdrawing, returning in another.
They asked because they recognized something. They could not name it precisely. They did not have the full framework articulated. But the instinct was correct. They were seeing a presence they had encountered before, in the records of the prophets, in the stories of the covenant history, in the names that bore the divine signature. They were asking: which manifestation are you?
They asked because they recognized something. The instinct was correct. They were seeing the presence they had read about in the names. They just did not yet understand that they were seeing it in full.
The First Instance
At the Jordan
The first recorded instance of the question occurs before Yeshua has spoken publicly at all. It is directed not at him but at Yochanan (John the Baptist), and it sets the framework for every subsequent asking.
The religious authorities in Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to Yochanan to ask: Who are you? He confessed and did not deny, I am not the Messiah.
They asked: Are you Eliyahu (Elijah)?
He said: I am not. Are you that prophet, the one Moshe (Moses) promised would come?
He answered: No.
Then who are you? What do you say about yourself?
He answered: I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord. Quoting Yeshayahu (Isaiah) 40.
The questions the priests asked, are you Eliyahu, are you that prophet, were not random. They were drawn from the specific prophecies of the Hebrew scriptures that described expected manifestations of the divine presence. Malachi had promised Eliyahu would return. Moshe had promised a prophet like himself would come. These were the categories the tradition had given them for identifying when YHWH was acting through a human vessel.
Yochanan said no to both questions, not because the framework was wrong, but because he was not the one the questions were ultimately about. He was the voice. The one whose way he was making straight was the answer to both questions. And that one had not yet appeared at the river.
The Second Instance
Herod’s Question
In Mark 6 and Luke 9, after Yeshua had been teaching and healing throughout Galilee, word reached Herod Antipas the tetrarch. He was troubled. He had executed Yochanan and the reports of what Yeshua was doing disturbed him.
The people were saying various things. Some said Yochanan had been raised from the dead. Others said Eliyahu had appeared. Others said one of the old prophets had risen.
Herod said: Yochanan I beheaded, but who is this about whom I hear such things?
The people’s identification of Yeshua as Eliyahu, or as one of the old prophets risen, was not theological speculation for its own sake. It was pattern recognition. Something in the way Yeshua spoke and acted recalled the presence that had spoken and acted through those earlier vessels. The crowds were not trained theologians. They were ordinary people responding to what they were experiencing. And what they were experiencing triggered the memory of the presence they had read about in the names.
Eliyahu had confronted power. Yeshua confronted power. Eliyahu had healed and raised the dead through the divine strength acting in him. Yeshua healed and raised the dead. Eliyahu had spoken with an authority that was not his own but the presence speaking through him. Yeshua spoke with an authority that astonished everyone who heard him, not as the scribes, but as one who had authority from within, not from without.
They were recognizing the presence. They had no framework yet to understand that they were not seeing a previous vessel returned, but the source of all the previous vessels arrived in full.
The Third Instance
Caesarea Philippi
The most direct and theologically concentrated instance of the question occurs in Matthew 16 at Caesarea Philippi.
Yeshua asked his own disciples: Who do people say that the Son of Man is?
They answered: Some say Yochanan (John the Baptist). Others say Eliyahu (Elijah). And others Yirmeyahu (Jeremiah) or one of the prophets.
Three names. Three specific named vessels from the series this series has been examining. Yochanan, YHWH is gracious, the last voice before the full appearing, the one who had recently been executed. Eliyahu, my God is YHWH, the prophet of Carmel and the still small voice, the one who had departed without dying and been promised to return. Yirmeyahu, YHWH appoints, the weeping prophet, rejected by the establishment, imprisoned for his faithfulness, the one whose life most closely mirrored the pattern of rejection the full appearing was walking.
The crowds were not guessing randomly. Every name they proposed was a YHWH-bearing name from the prophetic tradition. Every vessel they named was one through whom the divine presence had manifested in a way that left a recognizable signature. They were identifying the presence by comparing what they were experiencing to the recorded history of that presence in the named vessels.
The framework was correct. The vessels they proposed were wrong only in the sense that they were proposing partial manifestations rather than the complete one. They were identifying the handwriting but not yet recognizing the hand itself.
Yochanan. Eliyahu. Yirmeyahu. Every name the crowds proposed was a YHWH-bearing name. They were identifying the presence. They just had not yet seen that the presence had arrived in full rather than through another partial vessel.
Then Yeshua Asked the Question That Mattered
After the crowds had proposed their answers, Yeshua turned the question. But who do you say that I am?
Shimon Kefa (Simon Peter) answered: You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.
And Yeshua said: Blessed are you, Shimon bar Yonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.
Flesh and blood did not reveal it. The framework the crowds were using, the identification of the presence through its similarity to previous named vessels, was the right instinct but not the full understanding. What Kefa declared went beyond the framework of recognizing a manifestation. He declared the fullness. Not a prophet. Not a vessel. The Messiah. The Son of the living God. The complete appearing.
The crowds had the right question. Kefa had the right answer. And Yeshua confirmed that the answer came not from the human capacity to recognize the pattern, though the pattern was real and the recognition was not wrong, but from the divine initiative revealing what the pattern had been pointing toward all along.
The Fourth Instance
Before the High Priest
In the final hours before the cross, Yeshua stood before the high priest Kayafa (Caiaphas). The high priest asked him directly: Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?
And Yeshua answered: I am. And you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming with the clouds of heaven.
I am. The divine name spoken without qualification. Not I might be. Not perhaps. Not from your perspective. I am. The same declaration he had made in John 8, before Abraham was, I am, spoken now to the highest religious authority of the covenant people, in the most formal possible legal context, under oath before the Sanhedrin.
The high priest tore his robes and said: He has uttered blasphemy. What further witnesses do we need?
They heard the claim correctly. A man claiming to be the one whose presence had been manifesting through the prophets across a thousand year reign, claiming to be the one seated at the right hand of Power, the one Psalm 110 described, claiming to be the one in whom all the YHWH-bearing names had been partial appearances, was either telling the truth or blaspheming. The high priest chose blasphemy. The tomb chose otherwise.
The Fifth Instance
After the Resurrection
On the road to Emmaus, two disciples were walking away from Jerusalem, talking about the events of the preceding days. Yeshua joined them and walked with them. Their eyes were kept from recognizing him.
He asked: What is this conversation you are holding with each other as you walk?
They stopped, their faces full of sadness.
One of them said: Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?
He asked: What things?
They told him about Yeshua of Nazareth, a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people. How the chief priests and rulers delivered him to be condemned to death and crucified him. How they had hoped he was the one to redeem Israel. How it was now the third day.
Then Yeshua said: O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and enter into his glory? And beginning with Moshe (Moses) and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.
All the Scriptures. Beginning with Moshe. All of them. Concerning himself. He walked two men through the entire Hebrew text, the same Torah, Psalms, and Prophets he had identified as the interpretive authority for understanding who he was, and showed them that every part of it was about him. Not about someone like him. Not about a figure pointing to him. About him.
When they arrived at the village, he broke bread with them. Their eyes were opened and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight.
They said to each other: Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?
The burning of the heart. That is what the presence produces when it is recognized. Not intellectual acknowledgment. Not theological agreement. A burning. The same burning that had been in the hearts of those who stood at Carmel when the fire fell. The same burning that had been in Yirmeyahu when he said the word of YHWH was in his heart like a burning fire shut up in his bones, and he was weary of holding it in. The same presence. Recognized at last, not in the form of a vessel bearing a YHWH name, but as itself. As the one all the names had been declaring. Walking the road. Breaking bread. Burning in the hearts of those who finally saw who they were walking with.
Did not our hearts burn within us while he opened to us the Scriptures? The burning is what happens when the presence is recognized. Not a doctrine understood. The presence itself encountered.
What the Crowds Got Right
The crowds who asked are you Eliyahu, are you that prophet, are you one of the prophets of old, were not confused or ignorant. They were using the only framework they had, and the framework was correct.
The Hebrew scriptures taught them that YHWH appears through named vessels. The names bear the divine signature. The presence acts through the vessel, does the work the name declares, and then withdraws. The question are you Eliyahu was a theologically serious question, it was asking whether the presence that had been in Eliyahu had manifested again in this person. That was exactly the right question to ask. The answer was yes, but more than yes. The presence that had been in Eliyahu, and in Yochanan, and in every vessel before both of them, was now present in full. Not another manifestation. The source of all the manifestations.
The crowds were looking at the handwriting and recognizing it. They just had not yet understood that the hand itself was holding the pen.
What Yeshua Confirmed
Yeshua never told the crowds their framework was wrong. He never said YHWH does not appear in human vessels or that the prophets were not manifestations of the divine presence. What he did was confirm the framework and then declare that he was its fulfillment, not another manifestation within it but the source from which all the manifestations had come.
He confirmed that Yochanan was Eliyahu, that the manifestation the tradition had expected had already occurred and been missed because they were looking for the vessel rather than the presence. He confirmed on the road to Emmaus that all the scriptures, every text in the entire Hebrew canon, were about him. He confirmed before the high priest, under oath, that he was the one seated at the right hand of Power, the one Psalm 110 described, whose reign had been active throughout the thousand years the named vessels had carried him.
And in John 8:58, before any trial, before any formal interrogation, in the middle of a dispute about Abraham, he said the words that brought the entire framework of this series to its irreducible statement: Before Abraham was, I am.
Not, I existed before Abraham. Not, I am greater than Abraham. I am. The present tense of the divine name. The self-identification that reached back behind every named vessel to the presence that had been in all of them. Before the first YHWH-bearing name was given. Before Yehoshua (Joshua) stood at the Jordan. Before Eliyahu confronted the prophets of Baal. Before Yeshayahu (Isaiah) was commissioned in the throne room. Before Yirmeyahu (Jeremiah) was known before the womb. Before Tzekaryahu (Zechariah) recorded the shepherd struck. Before Yechezkel (Ezekiel) stood in the valley of dry bones. Before Yochanan (John) cried in the wilderness. Before Mattityahu (Matthew) rose from his table.
Before all of them, I am. Present. Active. The one whose name was in every one of their names. The one whose work was in every one of their lives. The one who had never left the story because the story had always been his.
Before Abraham was, I am. Not was. Am. The present tense of the divine name reaching back behind every named vessel to the presence that had been in all of them since before the first one was given a name.
The Completion of the Series
and the Answer
Ten documents. Ten names. One presence.
Yehoshua (Joshua): YHWH is deliverance. The same name as Yeshua. The Jordan crossed. The inheritance entered. YHWH delivering in two moments of the same reign.
Eliyahu (Elijah): my God is YHWH. The fire at Carmel. The still small voice at Horeb. Departed without dying. Returned in Yochanan. Confirmed by Yeshua himself: he has already come.
Yeshayahu (Isaiah): YHWH is salvation. The same name as Yeshua in its fullest form. Commissioned by Yeshua in the throne room. Reading his own words in the Nazareth synagogue. Today this is fulfilled.
Yirmeyahu (Jeremiah): YHWH appoints. Known before the womb. Words placed in his mouth by the presence that would become the Word in flesh. Weeping the same grief over the same city seven centuries apart.
Tzekaryahu (Zechariah): YHWH remembers. The shepherd struck. The thirty pieces of silver. The pierced one. The cross pre-recorded in the first person by the one who would undergo it.
Yechezkel (Ezekiel): YHWH strengthens. The valley of dry bones. The breath that raises the dead. The resurrection declared before the empty tomb existed.
Yochanan (John the Baptist): YHWH is gracious. The last voice before the full appearing. He himself is Eliyahu who was to come. He must decrease. The partial making way for the complete.
Mattityahu (Matthew): gift of YHWH. The tax collector who rose and followed. The feast of grace. The genealogy that placed the full appearing within the story that had always been his. He is not here. He has risen.
And through every one of them, in every name, in every life, in every act of deliverance and prophecy and mourning and vision and preparation, the same presence. The same divine signature. YHWH written into the name, YHWH acting through the vessel, YHWH doing what the name declared and then withdrawing to manifest again in the next vessel that bore the signature.
Until the vessel was no longer necessary. Until the presence arrived in full, not through a name but as the name. Not through a life but as the life. Not through a work but as the work, finished, accomplished, universal, irrevocable.
Yeshua (Jesus). YHWH saves.
Not will save. Not offers salvation. Not saves those who qualify. Saves. The name declared it before the manger. Every YHWH-bearing name across the entire covenant history declared it before him. The cross accomplished it. The tomb confirmed it. And the answer to every question the crowds ever asked, are you Eliyahu, are you that prophet, who are you, was always the same.
He was not anticipated. He was not approaching from a distance. He was not a new story breaking into history from outside. He was the story. He was in the story from the first name that bore his signature. He was acting through the story in every vessel that carried his declaration. He was present at the commissioning of every prophet whose name said what he was. He was the shepherd who would be struck writing down his own striking through the prophet whose name declared he would not forget.
Before Abraham was, I am.
He was always here.
The Gospel Revolution • Mike Williams Ministries
William Ethan Massengill • Michael Lilborn Williams • Daniel Thomas Rouse
Published by Audrey Williams