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So now you want us to believe the lie that you can't read and understand the English language below. You don't have the right to post lie after lie about the English language below. Get right with God the Holy Spirit.
Elijah was in heaven when Jesus said, 11 And He answered and said, “Elijah is coming and will restore all things;……..12 And He said to them, "Elijah does first come and restore all things.
John said, "Are you the Prophet?" And he answered, "No."
Yes, I can read English and honestly believe Jesus was saying that the "Elijah who was to come" was John the Baptist. Sorry you can't see that and believe those who do are "liars."
Mark 9.13 But I tell you, Elijah has come, and they have done to him everything they wished, just as it is written about him.”
Jesus here clearly identified the Elijah who was to come as John the Baptist. To deny that is to fail to understand the verse, in my opinion. So I'm saying precisely what Jesus said and what Mark recorded.
You must surely believe that too? If you believe and understand what this verse is saying, then you must see things the way I do?
But you're apparently saying that Jesus was saying two things at the same time, that Elijah who was to come was John the Baptist and that the actual Elijah is still going to come, immediately before Christ's Return? In reality, if this is what you're saying, you're claiming that Jesus and Mark are saying two things, and not one thing. And I don't see any indication in these verses that two different things are being said?
At any rate, whether or not you use logic to arrive at that conclusion, Jesus does not explicitly come out and explain that he is saying two distinctly different things, that he is talking about two separate people! The Scriptures do not themselves clarify that one person being spoken of is John the Baptist and the other is Elijah the Prophet.
Obviously, this would be confusing if indeed that's what Jesus meant. It would be an intentional obfuscation of the meaning, apparently determined to confuse his listeners, expecting, perhaps, his followers to understand. But this is no "parable!" It would just as easily confuse his followers as his enemies!
So I prefer to believe what the Scriptures explicitly say, which is that "Elijah who is coming" is actually being fulfilled by John the Baptist. There is not a thing in this passage about John the Baptist being one of the Two Witnesses in Rev 11. To try to fit Rev 11 together with this passage is well beyond what Jesus was saying.
It would be trying to "logically fit" Rev 11 into the passage in Mark, and to 2nd guess what Jesus was saying. He clearly identified the Elijah Prophecy as fulfilled in John the Baptist. To then go beyond this to say Jesus was admitting that Elijah the Prophet was *literally coming again* before the 2nd Coming is far beyond the scope of what Jesus was actually doing.
Jesus was identifying John the Baptist as the actual fulfillment of this prophecy. To ignore that and to claim Elijah is still coming is to miss the whole point Jesus was making!
The whole point Jesus was making was that the Jewish People were expecting a literal return of the Prophet Elijah immediately before their national restoration and deliverance from the Romans. Jesus exposed this as a failure to discern the true fulfillment of the prophecy in his 1st Coming to die for their sins and in his predecessor and forerunner, John the Baptist.
To go on saying that Elijah is still to come is to say the same thing the unbelieving Jews were errantly saying, namely that the physical Elijah is going to physically return before Israel's national salvation. If we are to properly expect Salvation to come to the world we must recognize that it has nothing to do with the Prophet Elijah returning. Rather, it has to do with what John the Baptist proclaimed, "Here is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world."
