YHWH Is Gracious
The Last Voice Before the Full Appearing.
The One Yeshua Identified as the Returning Eliyahu.
Part 8 of 14
The Name
His name was Yochanan (John).
It means: YHWH is gracious.
Not YHWH is powerful. Not YHWH is just. Not YHWH is coming to judge. YHWH is gracious. The one sent to prepare the way for the full appearing of the divine presence carried in his own name the declaration of the character of the God whose arrival he was announcing. Before he opened his mouth in the wilderness. Before he called anyone to the water. Before he pointed to the one coming after him. His name had already said what needed to be said about the nature of the one he was sent to announce.
Grace. That is what was coming. Not the law renewed. Not the covenant conditions restated. Not the judgment that the tradition had been anticipating. Grace. YHWH is gracious, carried in the name of the messenger, announced in the messenger’s identity before the message was delivered.
The angel who announced Yochanan’s coming birth to his father Zekharyah (Zacharias) said: You will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great before the Lord. He must not drink wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb. And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. He will go before him in the spirit and power of Eliyahu (Elijah).
In the spirit and power of Eliyahu. The same manifestation pattern we have been tracing throughout this series, the presence of YHWH that had been in Eliyahu, that had been in Yehoshua (Joshua), that had been in Yeshayahu (Isaiah), Yirmeyahu (Jeremiah), Tzekaryahu (Zechariah), Yechezkel (Ezekiel), manifesting now in Yochanan. Same presence. Different vessel. Different moment in the same reign.
YHWH is gracious. The messenger’s name declared the character of the one whose arrival he was announcing.
Before he spoke a word, the name had said everything.
Born Into the Name
Before Birth
Yochanan’s story begins with a divine interruption of the impossible. His father Zekharyah (Zacharias) was a priest, serving his week of duty in the temple. His mother Elisheva (Elizabeth) was advanced in years and had never been able to conceive. By every human measure, the story of Yochanan should never have existed.
The angel Gavri’el (Gabriel) appeared to Zekharyah at the altar of incense and announced the birth. Zekharyah questioned, how will I know this, for I am an old man and my wife is advanced in years? And he was struck mute until the day of the birth. He could not speak. For nine months, the priest who served at the altar of YHWH was silenced.
When Yochanan was born and the neighbors and relatives came to celebrate and assume he would be named after his father, Elisheva said: No. He shall be called Yochanan. They objected, no one in your family has this name. They made signs to Zekharyah asking what he wanted the child called.
He asked for a writing tablet and wrote: His name is Yochanan.
At that moment his mouth was opened and his tongue loosed and he spoke, blessing YHWH. The silence of nine months broke the instant the name was written. YHWH is gracious. And the first sound from the priest’s restored mouth was praise.
The name was not chosen by the parents from personal preference. It was given by the angel before conception. The presence that was already planning to manifest through this vessel had named it before it was formed, exactly as it had named Yirmeyahu before the womb, exactly as it had named Yeshua before the birth. The name preceded the person because the person was being formed to carry the name’s declaration.
The Voice in the Wilderness
When Yochanan began his public ministry, he went into the wilderness of Judea preaching. He wore camel’s hair and a leather belt. He ate locusts and wild honey. He stood at the Jordan River and called the people to immersion, to a washing that declared the willingness to turn, to be cleansed, to prepare for what was coming.
The religious authorities sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. Are you the Messiah? No. Are you Eliyahu? No. Are you that prophet? No.
Then who are you? What do you say about yourself?
He answered in the words of Yeshayahu (Isaiah): I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord.
He did not claim a name for himself. He claimed a voice. The one crying in the wilderness, whose cry Yeshayahu had recorded seven centuries before, was Yochanan. The same presence that had spoken through Yeshayahu, and had spoken the cry of the voice in the wilderness, was now making that cry audible through Yochanan. The recorded word of the prophet was becoming the actual sound in the desert.
Make straight the way of the Lord. Not the way of a coming teacher. Not the way of a political deliverer. The way of the Lord. YHWH himself. Coming in full. The one whose presence had been manifesting through named vessels across the entire thousand year reign was now arriving in complete and permanent human form. And the last vessel before that arrival bore the name that declared what the arrival would be. YHWH is gracious.
He did not claim a name. He claimed a voice. The voice Yeshayahu had recorded seven centuries before was now sounding in the wilderness through the vessel whose name declared the character of the one whose way was being made straight.
Yeshua Confirmed
He Is Eliyahu
This is the theological heart of this document and of Document 3 in this series. What Yeshua said about Yochanan is one of the most structurally significant self-identifications in the entire New Testament, and it confirms the framework of manifestation this series has been establishing throughout.
In Matthew 11, after sending messengers to Yochanan in prison, messengers who returned with the report that the blind were seeing, the lame walking, the deaf hearing, the dead being raised, Yeshua turned to the crowd and began to speak about Yochanan.
He said: Among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than Yochanan (John the Baptist). Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.
Then: If you are willing to accept it, he himself is Eliyahu who was to come.
He himself is Eliyahu. Not he is like Eliyahu. Not he fulfills the role of Eliyahu. He himself is. The presence that was in the original Eliyahu, the same divine presence that had confronted Baal at Carmel, that had heard the still small voice at Horeb, that had been taken up without dying and promised to return, had manifested again in Yochanan. Same presence. Different vessel. The return that Malachi had promised and four hundred years of prophetic silence had anticipated had already occurred.
After the transfiguration, where Eliyahu appeared visibly alongside Moshe (Moses) in the presence of Yeshua, the disciples asked: Why do the scribes say that Eliyahu must come first?
Yeshua answered: Eliyahu has already come, and they did not recognize him, but did to him whatever they pleased. So also the Son of Man will suffer at their hands. The disciples understood that he was speaking of Yochanan.
They did not recognize him. This is the pattern that runs through the entire series. The presence manifests through a vessel. The vessel is not recognized as the carrier of the divine presence because the observers are looking for the previous vessel rather than the ongoing presence. They expected the original Eliyahu to return in the same form. They did not understand that the presence moves through different vessels in different moments of the same reign.
He himself is Eliyahu who was to come. Past tense. Already arrived. Already present. Already unrecognized. The manifestation had occurred and the world had missed it, because it was looking for the vessel rather than the presence the vessel carried.
The Immersion
Where the Two Manifestations Met
When Yochanan stood at the Jordan immersing the people who came to him, Yeshua came from Galilee to the Jordan to be immersed by him.
Yochanan tried to prevent him, saying: I need to be immersed by you, and do you come to me?
Yeshua answered: Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.
Then Yochanan immersed him. And when Yeshua came up from the water, the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him.
And a voice from heaven said: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.
Two manifestations of the divine presence meeting at the water. The partial one, Yochanan, YHWH is gracious, the last voice before the full appearing, immersing the complete one. The vessel stepping back so the presence itself could step forward.
Yochanan understood the relationship precisely.
Later, when his disciples came to tell him that the one he had immersed was now immersing and everyone was going to him, Yochanan said: He who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore this joy of mine is now complete. He must increase, but I must decrease.
He must increase, but I must decrease. The partial manifestation stepping back before the complete one. The vessel acknowledging that it was always temporary, always pointing to the one in whom the presence would dwell permanently and fully. YHWH is gracious had done its work. YHWH saves was now present in full.
The Name That Connected Both Manifestations
There is a structural connection between Yochanan and the full appearing that has rarely been observed. The name Yochanan, YHWH is gracious, was also the name of the apostle who would write the most theologically concentrated account of the full appearing. The apostle known as John, Yochanan bar Zavdai (John the son of Zebedee), bore the same name as the one who prepared the way.
YHWH is gracious. The forerunner bore it. The recorder bore it. The grace of YHWH was embedded in the identity of the one who announced the full appearing, and in the identity of the one who wrote its most complete account. The name that declared the character of what was coming was carried by the messenger at the beginning and by the witness at the end.
The gospel of Yochanan (John) opens with the declaration that stands as the most precise theological statement of the full appearing in all of scripture: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
Full of grace. The name of the forerunner declared grace was coming. The gospel written by the one who shared his name declared that the one who came was full of it. YHWH is gracious, carried in the name of the messenger and confirmed in the nature of the one the messenger announced.
Greatest Born of Women
Yet the Least Is Greater
When Yeshua said that among those born of women no one greater than Yochanan had arisen, he was making the highest possible declaration about the partial manifestations. Yochanan was the summit of what the reign had produced through named vessels across a thousand years. The greatest of all the partial appearings. The last and most concentrated expression of the divine presence through a human vessel before the full appearing itself arrived.
And then Yeshua immediately said that the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.
This is not a diminishment of Yochanan. It is the declaration of what the full appearing accomplished. The kingdom of heaven, the reign completed at the resurrection, the new creation in which the presence of YHWH dwells in all of humanity, makes even the least of its citizens greater than the greatest partial manifestation. Because the partial was always pointing toward the complete. And once the complete arrived, the partial had done its work.
YHWH is gracious. The name of Yochanan declared what was coming. What came was so complete, so total, so all-encompassing in its grace, that the greatest human vessel of the divine presence in history became, by comparison, the least, not diminished, but superseded. The forerunner fulfilled in the one whose way he had prepared.
Yochanan (John the Baptist). YHWH is gracious. The last manifestation before the full appearing, born to an aged and barren mother by divine interruption, named before conception by the angel’s word, silencing his priest father for nine months until the name was written, crying the recorded voice of Yeshayahu (Isaiah) in the wilderness, immersing the one whose way he had prepared, stepping back with the declaration that he must decrease so the other must increase.
Yeshua (Jesus) said it plainly and without qualification: he himself is Eliyahu who was to come. The manifestation had returned. The promise of Malachi had been fulfilled. The four hundred years of prophetic silence had ended not with a trumpet but with a voice in the wilderness, a voice carrying a name that declared the character of the one whose full appearing was hours away.
YHWH is gracious. He was always going to be gracious. The name said so before the messenger was born.
And the one the messenger announced arrived full of exactly what the name had promised.
The Gospel Revolution • Mike Williams Ministries
William Ethan Massengill • Michael Lilborn Williams • Daniel Thomas Rouse
Published by Audrey Williams